Saturday, December 23, 2017

How Islamic State holds Gaza hostage

Palestinians wait for permission to travel into Egypt at the Palestinian side of Rafah crossing, 18 November.

Yasser QudihAPA images

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh- 21 December 2017

When Rami Fawda heard that the Rafah crossing was finally due to open, his reaction was one of relief mixed with anxiety.

The relief was because the 44-year-old engineer lives in Ankara, Turkey, where he has worked for 13 years and needed to get back. He had come to Gaza in the summer to see his family, for only the second time since he first moved, but got stuck, trying but failing to secure passage through Rafah – the boundary between Gaza and Egypt – three times.

Fawda then looked set to leave in October, when the Egyptian authorities announced a scheduled opening of Rafah following the fanfare of newly concluded preliminary unity negotiations between the Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas in Cairo. But that opportunity too was scuppered, this time by an attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint in the Sinai that claimed 30 lives, including six soldiers, and was attributed to the Islamic Stategroup.

That 15 October attack was the reason for Fawda’s anxiety. In recent months, all-too-rare openings – the Rafah crossing has been functional for only around 30 days in all of 2017 – have time and again been canceled as a result of militant attacks in the Sinai.

The net effect means Sinai militants, many of whom have declared loyalty to the Islamic State, can hold two million Palestinians in Gaza hostage with its actions.

No longer an Egyptian issue

Fawda was luckier in November, but only just. The crossing was opened on 18 November for three days, and he managed to secure a permit to leave. Had he left it a week, when Cairo announced another three-day opening, he would have been disappointed again. On 24 November, gunmen stormed a mosque in the Sinai, killing more than 300 people. The Rafah crossing remained shut until last week.

From the Egyptian side, Fawda spoke of security checks and a huge military presence at the crossing. Egypt, he told The Electronic Intifada when reached by phone, has the “same fear we have.” Salafi militants in the Sinai, formerly of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis which in 2014 became Islamic State - Sinai Province, have in effect joined forces with Israel in “besieging Gaza,” Fawda said.

They have certainly found a way to pressure both Egypt and Hamas. Hamas, driven by the need to open Gaza to the outside world, has entered into a series of agreements with Cairo to help Egypt battle what has become a full-blown insurgency in the Sinai.

These include building a buffer zone along the Gaza-Sinai boundary and arresting Sinai militants in Gaza and have already caused ruptures in a long uneasy relationship between Hamas and Salafis in Gaza itself that has flared on several occasions over the past 10 years.

Hamas has paid a price for improving its relationship with Egypt, according to Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political analyst and lecturer with Al-Azhar University in Gaza. “Once Hamas clamped down on Salafi militants, Islamic State in the Sinai began retaliating, threatening Hamas operations there, including its commercial interests and weapons smuggling,” Abu Saada said.

The conflict in Sinai has thus become a broader struggle, one that directly has an impact on Gaza. Israel is largely seen in Gaza as the main beneficiary of enmity between Islamic State and Hamas.

And tensions beget tensions. Hamas security forces arrested suspected Islamic State members in the Tal al-Sultan area in Rafah as a response to the first suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State in Gaza during August. That in turn came after Hamas clamped down on infiltration in and out of Gaza.

Since then, the number of arrests has kept rising. Ashraf Issa, an officer in Gaza’s Hamas-run internal security service, told The Electronic Intifada there are now 550 suspected Islamic State fighters in jail in Gaza.

But that in turn threatens some of Hamas’ vital interests, not least supply lines through the Sinai, long used as a smuggling route for all kinds of goods and necessities, as well as weapons and munitions.

Targeting Hamas

Certainly, that is the threat Islamic State would like to present. According to one Sinai-based Islamic State leader who operates under the nom de guerre Muhammad al-Yamani and was reached through a relative’s phone, every Islamic State operation “is a response to Hamas and Egyptian actions against our members.”

Al-Yamani vowed to keep striking at Egyptian military positions in the Sinai and warned Hamas that if it continues arresting Islamic State members, “we’ll destroy their military supply lines.”

He added: “We’re watching all the convoys passing through Sinai.”

He hung up before this reporter could ask any further questions.

The main targets for the Islamic State in Sinai are Egyptian. Notably, on 24 November, armed men opened fire in a mosque near El Arish in the Sinai during Friday prayers, the worst such attack in Egypt’s modern history.

But Islamic State has also been very active in the boundary area between Gaza and Egypt. In late October, three Palestinians working near the boundary were kidnapped in an operation blamed on Islamic State. They were beaten and interrogated for some 12 hours in Egyptian territory and then released, according to Abd al-Rahman Odeh, a Hamas security official, when it became clear that none of them were members of Hamas.

Odeh suggested the operation was an attempt to gain some leverage on Hamas for an exchange of prisoners.

Then, later in October, Tawfiq Abu Naim, the head of Hamas’ internal security service, was wounded in a car explosion that Hamas called a failed assassination attempt. Two members of Salafi groups in Gaza were arrested after the incident. A source close to the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Hamas blames Islamic State for the operation.

Spoilers everywhere

Prominent Hamas figures had earlier suggested Israel was behind the operation but this might be more for public consumption. Certainly, Salafi militants had motive. Since Abu Naim’s appointment, hundreds of Salafis in Gaza have been arrested. Abu Naim is also responsible for security at the Gaza-Egypt boundary where several dozen security checkpoints have been erected over the past months.

Nevertheless, there is clearly a confluence of interests between the Sinai branch of Islamic State and Israel in their battle with Hamas. Some in Hamas and analysts have suggested direct collusion involving Israel and Islamic State. Both had an interest in seeing the assassination of Abu Naim, according to Hussam al-Dajani, a politics lecturer at Ummah University in Gaza.

“Israel wanted to eliminate someone who is active in the resistance; Islamic State wanted to take revenge for the restrictions they are facing in Gaza,” al-Dajani said.

Islamic State operations in the Sinai have also contributed, if not been the main reason, for the delay in the long-promised opening of Rafah crossing. There is even talk of moving the actual crossing point closer to the coast to make it harder to attack.

According to Ashraf Juma, a Fatah legislator, there is no decision on this yet. “We submitted the request to Egypt and it was discussed, but haven’t received any confirmation yet,” he said.

The opening of Rafah crossing is crucial and it remains Hamas’ Achilles’ heel. It’s the only crossing into and out of Gaza that is likely to be permanently opened any time soon and for any reasonable use.

Israel imposed a closure on Gaza more than 10 years ago that Cairo mostly has gone along with.
That closure has had dramatic economic and social effects on this narrow, overpopulated coastal strip of land that has long been on the brink of humanitarian disaster and which the United Nations deemed would be uninhabitable by 2020.

As Hamas has already shown, it is willing to take difficult decisions, short of surrendering its arms, to ensure that Gaza opens to the world again. This includes formally ending sole rule over Gaza as well as antagonizing Salafi militants in Gaza and the Sinai.

Egypt – outside cooperation to quell the Sinai insurgency – has an interest in this, too. If done correctly, allowing travel through Rafah could boost Egypt’s poorly performing economy by opening up a new market for Egyptian goods while providing a focus for the Sinai economy outside smuggling and tourism.

But spoilers lie everywhere, not least among the Islamic State - Sinai Province.

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a freelance journalist and writer from Gaza.

Saudi crown prince tried to persuade Abbas to support US peace plan: Officials

Mohammed bin Salman told the Palestinian president that the US was 'the only game in town' when it came to the peace process

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh (AFP)

Saturday 23 December 2017

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to back a US-sponsored peace plan for Israel-Palestine, officials told Middle East Eye.

Abbas was invited to Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on Tuesday where he held talks with King Salman and MbS.

The invitation came shortly following a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul where Abbas announced that he would no longer accept the US as a broker in the peace process.

However, on Tuesday MbS told Abbas that the US was "the only game in town" with regards to the peace process.

"The US is the only one with real influence on Israel, it's the only country that can put pressure on Israel in any peace process and no one else can do [that], neither EU, nor Russia or China," MbS told Abbas, according to Palestinian officials with knowledge of the meeting.

MbS told Abbas in a previous visit early this month that the US was "preparing for a peace deal, and this deal might not look good at the beginning but at the end it will be good."

The president will not accept any partial deal, and the only deal that can be accepted is the one based on the '67 borders

- Palestinian official

He also asked Abbas at the time to have the Palestinians in Lebanon align with the pro-Saudi camp and stay away from the pro-Iranian camp led by Hezbollah, the officials said.

"At some point bin Salman warned President Abbas that if he doesn't do the job in Lebanon, there are others who can do it, pointing to Mohammed Dahlan," one official told MEE, referring to the dissident Fatah politician.

'Meaningful' process

US President Donald Trump's peace plan was widely criticised last month for proposing that the question of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for the capital of a future state, and the issue of returning refugees to be postponed until later negotiations.

In the most recent meeting with Abbas, MbS attempted to use "soft diplomacy" to try to persuade the Palestinian president to return the US-sponsored peace process and to receive US Vice President Mike Pence in his upcoming visit to the region.

The official said Abbas was clear to MbS that he is fully committed to any "meaningful" peace process.

"The president kept the door open, telling the crown prince, 'if the US is willing to declare that a peace process is based on the two-state solution on the '67 boundaries - including East Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Palestine - we are ready to engage immediately, but if they want to drag us to the Israeli version of peace, we cannot'."

The officials told MEE Abbas was aware of the new US peace plan but regarded it as a copy of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vision: a mini-state on half of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, without Jerusalem, refugees, borders and water.

"The president will not accept any partial deal, and the only deal that can be accepted is the one based on the 1967 borders," one official said.

He said any "temporary partial deal, as the one being prepared by Trump's team" would not be accepted.

Is the US covering up civilian deaths in Iraq?

We ask journalist Azmat Khan and Professor John Tirman about the lack of transparency in the so-called precision war.

23 Dec 2017

The United States claims the war on ISIL is "one of the most precise air campaigns in history",
saying that only one in every 157 airstrikes in Iraq results in a civilian death.

A recent New York Times investigation, however, found that civilians in Iraq are actually dying at 31 times that rate. So, why do so many of their deaths remain uncounted?

"What we found is that in about half of the total airstrikes...that resulted in civilian deaths, of those civilian death airstrikes, half of them were the result of poor or outdated intelligence, most likely. We were unable to discern an ISIS target nearby," says Azmat Khan, co-author of the New York Times Magazine investigation, The Uncounted.

"I came to the conclusion that many internally know that these numbers are vastly wrong, and have done very little to try to correct them".

John Tirman, executive director at MIT's Center for International Studies and author of the book, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars, says: "I think it's the unwillingness to confront the horror of what has occurred on the ground that creates this turning away and indifference, basically."

In this UpFront special discussion, Azmat Khan and John Tirman shed light on whether the US military is lying about the real impact of its airstrikes in Iraq.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.

Source: Al Jazeera

Cheka: Secret Police Russian Oligarchs Still in Love with

Why Russia’s Leaders Still Honor the Soviet Secret Police

by Mark Galeotti- Dec 22, 2017

( December 22, 2017, Moscow, Sri Lanka Guardian) Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin may have been reticent to celebrate the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, but it had no qualms about celebrating a hundred years since the founding of the Cheka, Lenin’s political police, on Dec. 20.

Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and a veteran of the old Soviet KGB, was predictable in his message. His agency was, he claimed, “free from political influence.” It “does not serve any party or group interest” and even its bloody-handed past was nowhere near as reprehensible as assumed.

Yes, he conceded, it was the engine of Stalin’s Great Terror, but “although many associate this period with the mass fabrication of charges, archive materials show a significant number of criminal cases were based on factual evidence.”

So that’s all right, then.

What else, though, could possibly have been expected from him? A tearful mea culpa for past horrors? An open admission that the FSB is part of a security apparatus unreservedly committed to Putin and the preservation of the current system?

Perhaps more important and more interesting was a talking point in Putin’s own speech on the anniversary. He called on the modern-day Chekists, those “true patriots and defenders of the state,” to “erect a safe barrier against foreign meddling in our social and political life,” pointing not just to radical and terrorist elements but also “foreign security agencies.”

Just as Moscow’s electoral meddling is a hot topic in the West, he was implying that nefarious external agencies had Russia’s 2018 presidential election in their sights.

Indeed, Bortnikov – who has long been one of the most xenophobic voices in Putin’s inner circle – went one further, claiming that “the destruction of Russia is still an obsession for many” foreign powers.

On one level, this is a classic ploy, casting accusations back at outsiders, sometimes with a knowing wink, to mislead the gullible and exasperate the rest. As a Russian criminal proverb has it, “confession is fit only for the priest and the fool.”

However, there is more to it than that. As old buttresses of his legitimacy crumble, from memories of the anarchic 1990s to discernible improvements in living standards, Putin wants to replace them with the time-worn appeal of “Russia beleaguered.”

It is hard to sustain a serious claim that NATO tanks are about to surge eastwards – though some of the Kremlin’s more fanciful propagandists do try – but the virtues of the “secret battlefield” of intelligence work is that it is precisely covert.

Appealing to largely-mythical claims of foreign subversion performs two useful functions. First of all, it plays to this fantasy that the Motherland is in danger. At such a time, the Kremlin’s line will be: it is foolish, dangerous, even unpatriotic to consider changing the helmsman. Safety first is likely to be a key message of Putin’s re-election campaign.

Secondly, it implicitly smears opposition candidates, and especially the shadow candidate Alexei Navalny. They are, at best, naive dupes of the pernicious Western “special services,” at worst, willing quislings.

These are, of course, all classic elements of the Kremlin playbook, products of a lack of imagination and a habitual reliance on mythical security threats to justify every piece of idiocy, malfeasance and repression. How well they will play with a public that has seen it many times before remains to be seen.

It also may throw up some of the tensions within the security apparatus. Bortnikov has more than usual reason to talk up the probity and vale of the FSB, because it faces a challenge from the new kids on the block, the National Guard.

Having been founded as a public order force, the Rosgvardiya is now agitating to be allowed to establish its own intelligence and analysis arms. In doing so, it is mounting a direct challenge to the FSB, which is itself seeking to cherry-pick effective control over the more politically-important and lucrative elements of the Internal Ministry.

‘Iron Felix’ Dzerzhinsky, founder and head of the Cheka, did not have to deal with any of these frustrating complexities of electoral politics and rival agencies. While eulogising his creation, Bortnikov may well be envying his circumstances.

Mark Galeotti is a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and coordinator of its Center for European Security. He is a columnist for the Moscow Times wherre this peice first appeared. The views and opinions expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of Sri Lanka Guardian.

Maldives to be ‘Dubai of South Asia’ where business can be mixed with pleasure

Saturday, 23 December 2017

Justly famous for its idyllic palm-fringed resorts in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, the Maldives is now eager add to its persona by becoming the Dubai of the South Asian region – an ideal place for entrepreneurs from the region and beyond to network and strike deals in a uniquely pleasant and relaxed atmosphere which only the Maldives can provide.

While continuing to be a slice of paradise on earth, the archipelago of 1,200 islands is keen to exploit the multifarious opportunities provided by its geographical location, says Imjad Jaleel, Chief Communications Strategist at the Maldivian President’s Office.

“Being on the international East-West shipping route, the Maldives could well be developed as an international maritime and trading hub, the Government of President Abdulla Yameen feels,” Jaleel says.

Yameen came into power in 2013 under turbulent political conditions. But he disregarded political animosities both at home overseas and quickly got down to drawing up a plan to exploit the country’s locational advantage. He launched his trademark “transformational development program” to propel the Maldives into the 21st Century by developing its infrastructure with international investments.

“The President correctly felt that even tourism, the country’s main breadwinner apart from fish, cannot be sustained and promoted unless it is backed by world class infrastructure and support services.”

“President Yameen’s ultimate aim is to make the Maldives an international center of commerce and communication. The Maldives aims to be Dubai of South Asia, where people from the region and beyond would congregate to interact, network and transact businesses under ideal conditions. Maldives will have the right ambience for mixing business with pleasure,” Jaleel said.

The Maldives will eventually fill the gap between Dubai in the West and Singapore in the East, he added.

The Maldives’ achievements thus far assure that the ambitious goal can be reached. Despite motivated and baseless propaganda about Islamic radicalization and terrorism, the Maldivian tourist resort sector is booming, attracting all the top international brands, including Hard Rock International. China and Thailand have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure projects.

To help the local fishing industry and also to get machinery and services for rapid infrastructural development, the Maldives has entered into a Free Trade Agreement with China. Additionally, the Yameen government has struck up a good relationship with Malaysia, an engine of growth in South East Asia. Prime Minister Najib Razak, who visited the Maldives recently, pledged Malaysian investments, Jaleel points out.

Maldives Investment Forum

To attract international investments and also to encourage Maldivian entrepreneurs and businessmen to tie up with partners overseas, the government has been periodically holding a Maldives Investment Forum (MIF) overseas. The fourth edition was held on 18 and 19 December this year in Dubai.

“In the MIF participants showcase their products and capabilities. It is encouraging to see an increase in participation in the MIF. It is also significant that the MIF in Dubai was organised both the Maldives and UAE governments,” Jaleel noted.

Nearly 40 business leaders from the Maldives representing some of the leading companies and SMEs accompanied Economic Development Minister Mohammad Saeed to the Dubai forum.

Strong and progressive economy

The Maldives had lot to trumpet at Dubai forum. The Maldives per capita GDP has almost doubled to $ 12,000 in a span of four years from $ 6,000 in 2013.

In 2017, the Maldives became one of the world’s smallest nations to receive credit ratings from Moody’s and Fitch. Both prestigious agencies commended the country on its deficit reduction, economic growth, infrastructure investment and political stability, rating the country with a “Stable Outlook”.

The second Moody’s report said: “Maldives also demonstrates strong debt affordability metrics, due to a large revenue base and a well-funded banking system.”

Adding to this, Finance Minister Ahmed Munawar said that there are no capital controls, long leases are available on properties and there are special incentives for investors who are able to reclaim land.

Sea as good as land

Communications Strategist Jaleel cautioned against dismissing the Maldives as a “small” country. “The Maldives may have a small land area, but it has a vast stretch of the ocean to itself which can be used profitably, not just for fishing and developing fish related products, but for setting up boat building, water sports equipment manufacturing, and so on. A variety of support services to keep these sectors ticking will be needed and these would require investment,” he said.

In an interview to Gulf News Economic Development Minister Mohammad Saeed said that among other things, renewable energy would be a key emerging sector in the Maldives. With plentiful sunshine, solar energy especially could be an area of investment.

Further, the Maldives has taken several measures to attract FDI. These include high return on investments in tourism, allowing 100% foreign ownerships, avoidance of red tape and regulations that block people from doing effective business. The size of the portfolios that have been given registration in the last four years for a span of five years is estimated at $ 14 billion,” Saeed said.

The Government itself is implementing a number of projects to facilitate foreign investments pooling. These include the $ 1 billion international airport upgrading project envisaging a second runway capable of receiving the giant A380 aircraft. There is a huge youth township up coming up near Male with a bridge to connect it to Male funded by China. The Government has implemented two state-of-the-art submarine cables, with 100% coverage. Every island is now capable of using phones and internet.

The Maldives also has an educated and “eager to work” young population; 99% of its 410,000 people are literate and youngsters are given incentives to study abroad, Jaleel pointed out.

Maldives currently receives 1.2 million tourists a year. But it has plans to raise it to seven million arrivals in another five to seven years. So far, Chinese tourists constitute, for the seventh consecutive year, the highest number of tourists, while Singaporeans, as a group, are the biggest foreign investors in the country.

Asked about the effects of the scare created by the Western powers about political violence, terrorism and Islamic radicalism, Communications Strategist Jaleel said that going by the growth in investments and the steady increase in tourist arrivals, false propaganda about dangers lurking in the Maldives has had no effect.

“The Government has controlled Islamic radicalism through a reform process,” said the Maldivian Police Spokesman, Ahmed Shifan. “The Maldives believes in a moderate Islam which is taught in schools,” added Jaleel.

He pointed out that the joint communiqué issued at the end of the visit of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak recently, had said that the Maldives and Malaysia are “peace-loving countries” which will work together to promote the “true values of Islam” internationally.

Both countries pledged to combat terrorism in all its forms but appealed to the world to observe “moderation” in its approach to Islamic radicalism and terrorism and use discussion and dialogue instead.

China issues public safety warning to its citizens in Australia

THE Chinese embassy in the Australian capital Canberra has posted a safety warning for Chinese students living in Australia on its website on Sunday, pursuant to an alleged rise of “insulting” and assault incidents.

Students are urged to report any safety issues to the embassy, according to ABC. The Chinese consulate-general in Melbourne issued a similar warning, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, reported.

“Recently, attacks and insults targeting Chinese students have occurred in different places in Australia,” the warning read.

“Therefore, we warn all Chinese students in Australia to keep alert of possible danger and call the police and embassy if such incidents occur.”

SEE ALSO: China not happy with Australian foreign policy white paper

‏ @JohnWren1950

Well done @TurnbullMalcolm, you idiot. >>  China's embassy in Canberra issues safety warning for Chinese nationals in Australia #auspol http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-20/chinese-embassy-issues-safety-warning-for-australia/9277202?pfmredir=sm&sf176842066=1&smid=Page:%20ABC%20News-Facebook_Organic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic …

10:28 am - 20 Dec 2017

It’s rare for such statements to be issued. News.com.au believes they are in response to recent attacks on Chinese students in Australia, where three Chinese students were allegedly bashed when they declined to give cigarettes to two teenagers who approached them for it at a Woden bus stop in Canberra.

Racist flyers which said Chinese students were banned from entering buildings and could be deported otherwise, were also found at two Melbourne universities earlier in July.

The relationship between the two countries has been tense lately, over public discussion of Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia.

SEE ALSO: Australia: Chinese students want university to recognise Taiwan, Hong Kong as theirs

A series of events in Australian universities this year – which included a group of international Chinese students taking issue over their professor describing Taiwan as a separate country and another university’s lecturer apologising for showing a map of Chinese-claimed territory as part of India – raised concerns over academic freedom in Australian universities, which are increasingly dependent on Chinese students as a source of much-needed tuition revenue.

‏Verified account @primroseriordan

Newcastle uni confirms China's Consulate-General in Syd was in contact w them over Taiwan issue (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/university-lecturer-targeted-over-separate-taiwan-materials/news-story/79febfc3fd91f84604173c79a1f249a3 …)

9:49 pm - 24 Aug 2017

ABC notes a third of all international students in Australia are from China, based on Chinese government figures.

“Over the past 11 months, some Australian politicians and media have been obsessed with one thing, that is, criticizing China … Some Australian political figures and media are going even further to hype Chinese resentment and China containment,” wrote a Xinhua article titled “It’s time for Australia to decide what kind of relationship it wants with China”, which was posted on the consulate’s official website earlier in December.

Zheng Mengqi, a 25-year-old Chinese student living in Sydney, told People’s Daily Online: “I don’t feel surprised that anti-Chinese resentment can find its spot in Australia, as the county’s leaders have publicly declaimed China with groundless accusations on many occasions. I feel very disappointed, but I believe that Australians are generally friendly and kind to us.”

This article first appeared on our sister website Study International News

EU dismisses May's claim blue passports are sovereignty statement

European parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt says UK could have had navy travel documents all along

Passengers queue at Hamburg airport in Germany. Photograph: Daniel Reinhardt/EPA

Nadia Khomami-Sat 23 Dec ‘17

Britain could have chosen to have blue passports while remaining a member of the EU, the European parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator has said, dismissing Theresa May’s claim that the move is a victory for British sovereignty.

The government has said blue passports will mean enhanced freedom for Britons, but EU officials have said they could spell travel delays and extra paperwork because of diminished travel rights post-Brexit.

Guy Verhofstadt emphasised that there was no Brussels regulation stating that EU countries’
passports had to be a certain colour. There is a legally non-binding European council resolution from 1981 which recommends burgundy.
Verhofstadt tweeted on Saturday:

May divided domestic opinion on Friday when she confirmed the return of navy travel documents, which she called an expression of “independence and sovereignty” that reflected “citizenship of a proud, great nation”.

Sources in Brussels, however, told the Guardian shortly afterwards that any privileges relied on further negotiations on issues of free movement after Brexit.

One senior official said there was a significant risk that British passport-holders would lose the right to use fast-track citizens’ lanes when travelling on the continent and may also be obliged to use a new visa waiver scheme.

The EU travel information and authorisation system (Etias) is modelled on the US Esta scheme and could require British travellers to Europe to register in advance and make a small administrative payment. Although a chance remains for Britain to retain fast-track privileges if there is a further shift in the prime minister’s red lines on immigration, British experts have also said this looks unlikely.

The new passports will be phased in after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019.

The tendering process for printing them is expected to take place under existing EU procurement rules, something that the current British contractor, De La Rue, recently said could mean they were produced abroad.

Tories leavers have taken issue with this, demanding the new documents be produced in the UK. Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted: “Symbolism is important and I hope it will be printed in the UK too.”

Andrew Bridgen told the Daily Mail: “Passports are symbolic of our national identity and sovereignty and of course they should be manufactured in the UK.”

Friday’s announcement has been largely cheered by Brexit supporters, including Nigel Farage and the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, after a string of concessions by the government. During a trip to Moscow, Johnson told ITV News he remembered “a sense of personal loss and outrage” when blue passports were “taken away”.

Others rejected the prime minister’s assertions. The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted: “The open, inclusive, civic, internationalist Scottish independence movement that I’m so proud to be part of could not be further removed from this insular, inward looking, blue passport-obsessed nonsense.

“Never has ‘stop the world, Scotland wants to get on’ felt more relevant.”

The Labour MP Chuka Umunna said: “What utter nonsense. This belittles our country and your office,” and the party’s former leader Ed Miliband added: “It is an expression of how mendacious, absurd and parochial we look to the world.”

‘I hope I can quit working in a few years’: A preview of the U.S. without pensions

Tom Coomer makes a pot of coffee at his home in Wagoner, Okla., after a day of work at Walmart. (Nick Oxford/For The Washington Post)

By Peter Whoriskey December 23 at 12:26 PM

TULSA — Tom Coomer has retired twice: once when he was 65, and then several years ago. Each time he realized that with just a Social Security check, “You can hardly make it these days.”

So here he is at 79, working full time at Walmart. During each eight-hour shift, he stands at the store entrance greeting customers, telling a joke and fetching a “buggy.” Or he is stationed at the exit, checking receipts and the shoppers that trip the theft alarm.

“As long as I sit down for about 10 minutes every hour or two, I’m fine,” he said during a break. Diagnosed with spinal stenosis in his back, he recently forwarded a doctor’s note to managers. “They got me a stool.”

The way major U.S. companies provide for retiring workers has been shifting for about three decades, with more dropping traditional pensions every year. The first full generation of workers to retire since this turn offers a sobering preview of a labor force more and more dependent on their own savings for retirement.

Years ago, Coomer and his co-workers at the Tulsa plant of McDonnell-Douglas, the famed airplane maker, were enrolled in the company pension, but in 1994, with an eye toward cutting retirement costs, the company closed the plant. Now, The Washington Post found in a review of those 998 workers, that even though most of them found new jobs, they could never replace their lost pension benefits and many are facing financial struggle in their old age: One in seven has in their retirement years filed for bankruptcy, faced liens for delinquent bills, or both, according to public records.

Former McDonnell Douglas employee Ruby Oakley works five days a week as a crossing guard for an elementary school in Tulsa, Okla. (Nick Oxford/For The Washington Post)

Those affected are buried by debts incurred for credit cards, used cars, health care and sometimes, the college educations of their children.

Some have lost their homes.

And for many of them, even as they reach beyond 70, real retirement is elusive. Although they worked for decades at McDonnell-Douglas, many of the septuagenarians are still working, some full time.

Lavern Combs, 73, works the midnight shift loading trucks for a company that delivers for Amazon. Ruby Oakley, 74, is a crossing guard. Charles Glover, 70, is a cashier at Dollar General. Willie Sells, 74, is a barber. Leon Ray, 76, buys and sells junk.

“I planned to retire years ago,” Sells says from behind his barber’s chair, where he works five days a week. He once had a job in quality control at the aircraft maker and was employed there 29 years. “I thought McDonnell-Douglas was a blue-chip company — that’s what I used to tell people. ‘They’re a hip company and they’re not going to close.’ But then they left town — and here I am still working. Thank God I had a couple of clippers.”

Likewise, Oakley, a crossing guard at an elementary school, said she took the job to supplement her Social Security.

“It pays some chump change — $7 an hour,” Oakley said. She has told local officials they should pay better. “I use it for gas money. I like the people. But we have to get out there in the traffic, and the people at the city think they’re doing the senior citizens a favor by letting them work like this.”

Leon Ray stands amid a collection of junk that he restores and recycles at his home in Claremore, Okla. (NICK OXFORD/For The Washington Post)

Glover works the cash register and does stocking at a Dollar General store outside Tulsa to make ends meet. After working 27 years at McDonnell-Douglas, Glover found work at a Whirlpool factory, and then at another place that makes robots for inspecting welding, and also picked up some jobs doing AutoCAD drawing.

“I hope I can quit working in a few years, but the way it looks right now, I can’t see being able to,” Glover said recently between customers. “I had to refinance my home after McDonnell-Douglas closed. I still owe about 12 years of mortgage payments.”

For some, financial shortfalls have grown acute enough that they have precipitated liens for delinquent bills or led people to file for bankruptcy. None were inclined to talk about their debts.
“It’s a struggle, just say that,” said one woman, 72, who filed for bankruptcy in 2013. “You just try to get by.”

A perk that became too costly

The notion of pensions — and the idea that companies should set aside money for retirees — didn’t last long. They really caught on in the mid-20th century, but today, except among government employers, the traditional pension now seems destined to be an artifact of U.S. labor history.

The first ones offered by a private company were those handed out by American Express, back when it was stagecoach delivery service. That was in 1875. The idea didn’t exactly spread like wildfire, but under union pressure in the middle of the last century, many companies adopted a plan. By the 1980s, the trend had profoundly reshaped retirement for Americans, with a large majority of full-time workers at medium and large companies getting traditional pension coverage, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock prices. And Americans lived longer, making a pension much more expensive to provide.

In 1950, a 65-year-old man could be expected to reach age 78, on average. Today, that 65-year-old is expected to live beyond 84. The extended life expectancy means pension plans must pay out substantially longer than they once did.

Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for extinction, at least in the private sector.

Even as late as the early 1990s, about 60 percent of full-time workers at medium and large companies had pension coverage, according to the government figures. But today only about 24 percent of workers at midsize and large companies have pension coverage, according to the data, and that number is expected to continue to fall as older workers exit the workforce.

In place of pensions, companies and investment advisers urge employees to open retirement accounts. The basic idea is that workers will manage their own retirement funds, sometimes with a little help from their employers, sometimes not. Once they reach retirement age, those accounts are supposed to supplement whatever Social Security might pay. (Today, Social Security provides only enough for a bare-bones budget, about $14,000 a year on average.)

The trouble with expecting workers to save on their own is that almost half of U.S. families have no such retirement account, according the Fed’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances.

Of those who do have retirement accounts, moreover, their savings are far too scant to support a typical retirement. The median account, among workers at the median income level, is about $25,000
.
“The U.S. retirement system, and the workers and retirees it was designed to help, face major challenges,” according to an October report by the Government Accountability Office. “Traditional pensions have become much less common, and individuals are increasingly responsible for planning and managing their own retirement savings accounts.”

The GAO further warned that “many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no retirement savings.”

The GAO recommended that Congress consider creating an independent commission study the U.S. retirement system.

“If no action is taken, a retirement crisis could be looming,” it said.

‘We were stunned’

Employees at McDonnell-Douglas in the early ’90s enjoyed one of the more generous types of pensions, those known as “30 and out.” Employees with 30 years on the job could retire with a full pension once they reached age 55.

But, as the employees would later learn, the generosity of those pensions made them, in lean times, an appealing target for cost-cutters.

Those lean times for McDonnell-Douglas began in earnest in the early ’90s. Some plants closed. But for the remaining employees, including those at the Tulsa plant, executives said, there was hope: if Congress allowed the $6 billion sale of 72 F-15s to Saudi Arabia, the new business would rescue the company. In fact, the company said in its 1991 annual report, it would save 7,000 jobs.

To help win approval for the sale, Tulsa employees wrote letters to politicians. They held a rally with local politicians and the governor of Oklahoma. And eventually, in September 1992, President George H.W. Bush approved the sale. It seemed that the Tulsa plant had weathered the storm.

The headline in the Oklahoman, one of the state’s largest newspapers, proclaimed: “F-15 Sale to Saudi Arabia Saves Jobs of Tulsa Workers.”

But it hadn’t. Within months, executives at the company again turned to cost-cutting. They considered closing a plant in Florida, another in Mesa, Ariz., or the Tulsa facility. Tulsa, it was noted, had the oldest hourly employees — the average employee was 51 and had worked there for about 20 years. Many were close to getting a full pension, and that meant closing it would yield bigger savings in retirement costs.

“One day in December ’93 they came on the loudspeaker and said, ‘Attention, employees,’ Coomer recalled. “We were going to close. We were stunned. Just ran around like a bunch of chickens.”
A few years later, McDonnell-Douglas, which continued to struggle, merged with Boeing. But the employees had taken their case to court, and in 2001, a federal judge agreed that McDonnell-Douglas had illegally considered the pensions in its decision to close the plant. The employees case, presented by attorneys Joe Farris and Mike Mulder, showed that the company had tracked pension savings in its plant closure decisions.

The judge found McDonnell-Douglas, moreover, had offered misleading testimony in its defense of the plant closing. The judge, Sven Erik Holmes, blasted the company for a “corporate culture of mendacity.”

Employees eventually won settlements — about $30,000 was typical. It helped carry people over to find new jobs. But the amount was limited to cover the benefits of three years of employment — and it was far less than the loss in pension and retiree health benefits. Because their pension benefits accrued most quickly near retirement age, the pensions they receive are only a small fraction of what they would have had they worked until full eligibility.

“People went to work at these places thinking they’ll work there their whole lives,” Farris said, noting that the pensions held great appeal to the staff. “Their trust and loyalty, though, was not reciprocated.”

Dreaming of work

The economic effects were, of course, immediate.

The workers, most of them over 50, had to find jobs.

Some enrolled in classes for new skills, but then struggled to find jobs in their new fields. They wondered, amid rejections, whether younger workers were favored.

Several found jobs at other industrial plants. One started a chicken farm for Tyson. Another took a job on a ranch breaking horses.

The Post acquired a list of the 998 employees, reviewed public records for them, and interviewed more than 25.

Of those interviewed, all found work of one kind or another. Yet all but a handful said their new wages were only about half of what they had been making. Typically, their pay dropped in half, from about $20 per hour to $10 per hour.

The pay cut was tough, and it made saving for retirement close to impossible. In fact, it has made retirement itself near impossible for some — they must work to pay the bills.

A few said, though, they work because they detest idleness, and persist in jobs that would seem to require remarkable endurance.

Combs, for example, works the graveyard shift, begins each workday at 1:30 a.m. His days off are Thursday and Sunday. He worked 25 years at McDonnell-Douglas, and more than 20 loading trucks.
He shrugs off the difficulty.

“I don’t want to sit around and play checkers and get fat,” Combs says. “I used to pick cotton in 90-degree heat. This is easy.”

Coomer, too, even if he would have preferred to retire, seems to genuinely enjoy his work. At Walmart, his natural cheerfulness is put to good use.

“Hi, Tom, how are you?” a customer on a motorized scooter, one of many who greet him by name, asks on her way out.

“Doing good . . . beautiful day,” he says, smiling warmly.

Later he explains his geniality.

“I like to talk to people! I like to visit with them. I can talk to anyone. I’ve always been like that, since I was a kid.”

When he sees someone looking glum, he tells them a joke.

Why does Santa Claus have three gardens?

So he can hoe, hoe, hoe.

“People really like that one,” he says.

Coomer grew up on a farm in Broken Arrow, got married when he was 17 — his wife was 15 — and says he’s always liked work.

“I really loved working at McDonnell-Douglas,” he says, One time, he says, he worked 36 days straight: 11 hours on the weekdays and eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays. He joked that the factory was his home address. All along, for his 29 years there, he had his eye on the pension. And then, for the most part, it was gone.

After the plant closed, Coomer worked as a security guard. Then he worked for a friend who had a pest-control company. When that slowed down, he picked up seasonal work at the city, doing some mowing and chipping.

Then came Walmart.

Soon, he said, he expects to cut back from full time to about three days a week.

Along with his Walmart check, he gets $300 a month from the McDonnell-Douglas pension. Had he been able to continue working at McDonnell-Douglas, he calculates that he would have gotten about five times that amount.

“After they shut the plant down, I would dream that I was back at McDonnell-Douglas and going to get my pension,” Coomer recalled. “In the dream, I would try to clock in but I couldn’t find my time card. And then I’d wake up.”

In the dream, he would have retired years ago.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of years pensions were calculated to pay out in 1950 for a person retiring at 65.