Monday, February 12, 2018

Duterte tells Philippine soldiers to shoot female rebels in their vaginas

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reviews an honor guard at the Bureau of Customs in Manila on Feb. 6. (Mark R. Cristino/European Pressphoto Agency)

By Emily Rauhala February 12 at 2:48 AM

BEIJING — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told soldiers last week to shoot female rebels in their genitals, the latest in a series of violent, misogynistic remarks.

Addressing a group of former communist rebels on Wednesday, Duterte, who served as a city mayor before becoming president, appeared to encourage the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to target women in conflict.

“Tell the soldiers. ‘There’s a new order coming from the mayor. We won’t kill you. We will just shoot your vagina,’ ” he said.

“If there is no vagina, it would be useless,” Duterte continued, according to local media reports, appearing to imply that women are useless without their genitals.

The president’s communications office included the comment in the official transcript from the event but replaced the word “vagina” with a dash.

Duterte’s presidency has been defined by violence — and often violently misogynistic language.
Since he came to power on a promise to kill all the drug users and dealers in the country, thousands of Filipinos have been shot dead, prompting the International Criminal Court to open a preliminary examination.

[International Criminal Court to probe Duterte drug war deaths in Philippines]

Duterte regularly denigrates and threatens women, but when challenged, he insists it was all just a joke. Just last week, his spokesman accused women of “overreacting” to the president’s comments. “I mean, that’s funny. Come on. Just laugh,” Harry Roque said.

According to the official transcript from the Wednesday event, the crowd did, in fact, laugh at Duterte’s remarks.

Duterte, who was elected president in 2016, has made headlines for “joking” about the rape of a kidnapped Australian who was later killed and for telling troops to rape women in conflict. He often shares unsolicited opinions on the sexual attractiveness of women, particularly female politicians who question his policies, in an apparent effort to demean, shame and silence them.

As Duterte’s translated remarks began to circulate over the weekend, feminist and human rights groups expressed dismay.

The Post's Emily Rauhala visited the city of Marawi in the Philippines after a months-long siege against ISIS-aligned militants came to an end. (Emily Rauhala, Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)

“Duterte [sic] latest nasty remark openly encourages violence against women, contributes to the impunity on such, and further confirms himself as the most dangerous macho-fascist in the government right now,” a representative for Gabriela, a feminist organization, said in a statement.

“He is pushing the fascist AFP to commit more bloody human rights violations and grave abuses of international humanitarian law, and takes state terrorism against women and the people to a whole new level.”

In a statement, Carlos Conde, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, called Duterte’s remarks “the latest in a series of misogynist, derogatory and demeaning statements he has made about women.”

“It encourages state forces to commit sexual violence during armed conflict, which is a violation of international humanitarian law,” the statement added.

India's retail inflation slightly eases in January

A customer buys onions from a stall at a local vegetable market in Mumbai, August 6, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

India’s measure of consumer price inflation, the CPI index, rose 5.07 percent in January from a year earlier, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed on Monday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted January’s rate would ease to 5.14 percent from 5.21 percent in December.

Last week, the RBI held its main repo rate unchanged, for the third straight meeting. The central bank warned that it would closely monitor inflation but also said economic growth needed to be “carefully nurtured”.

The central bank’s statement was less hawkish than many expected, and prompted some economists to change their predictions of a rate increase in the next few months.

“I do not expect a rate hike for the next five to six months,” said Raghvendra Nath, managing director of Ladderup Wealth Management.

He said apart from oil prices, the monsoon rains would be the key factor for inflation.

Consumer food prices rose 4.70 percent in January, compared with 4.96 percent in December, as prices of pulses fell 20.19 percent from a year earlier. Food prices have softened, reflecting eased vegetable costs following stepped-up arrivals in markets of fresh crops.

Fuel and light inflation stood at 7.58 percent compared with 7.90 percent in December, while housing inflation stood at 8.33 percent from 8.25 percent in the previous month.

The central bank has raised its inflation forecast to 5.1 percent for the January-March quarter,
compared with 4.6 percent for October-December, citing price pressures from higher import taxes announced in the budget on Feb. 1, pushing up food and fuel prices.

RISING PRICES

India’s retail inflation is seen accelerating, especially after a budget increase in some import taxes and the widening of the fiscal deficit for the year beginning April 1 to finance a sharp rise in spending on rural areas and health-care.

The central bank expects retail inflation to pick up to 5.1-5.6 percent in April-September before easing, assuming normal rainfall.

It will next review policy on April 5.

Separately, India’s annual industrial output grew 7.1 percent in December, data released on Monday showed, compared with 6.2 percent forecast in a Reuters poll.

The world’s seventh largest economy is expected to grow 6.5 percent in the fiscal year ending in March, while the International Monetary Fund expects growth will pick up to 7.4 percent in 2018, and 7.8 percent in 2019 - driven by a pickup in domestic and global demand.

Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Richard Borsuk and Robert Birsel

The Teflon Don

Sex scandals have a long history of taking down politicians — but don't get your hopes up about the current U.S. president.

BY RICHARD EVANS-FEBRUARY 12, 2018

The first year of his presidency has not gone smoothly for Donald Trump. After a flood of stories about quarrels with senior figures in the White House, dismissals and forced resignations from his team, failure to fill important positions, policymaking by tweet without reference to the responsible government department, and allegations of collusion with Russia during his campaign, Trump has the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern history, with nearly half of Americans considering him mentally unstable.

Of course, that’s not all. Since the campaign began and into his presidency, at least 19 women have come forward with charges of sexual misconduct of one kind or another.
The latest is possibly the most serious. After a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006, a year after he had married his current wife, Melania, Trump allegedly had a brief affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who has recently been doing the media circuit telling her story. Daniels was reportedly paid $130,000 before the presidential election to keep quiet. The air is now thick with counterclaims issued by Trump supporters, who dismiss the whole story as a fabrication.

But, again, Daniels is not alone. A number of contestants in the beauty pageants run by Trump over the years — including Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and others — have claimed that he entered their dressing rooms without warning when they were naked or getting their costumes on; other women have charged him with unwanted sexual contact, including kissing and groping. Trump and his aides have said all these allegations are part of a coordinated campaign to discredit him and that all the women are lying. His case wasn’t helped by tapes from 2005, leaked during the election campaign, that recording him saying: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” But Trump simply dismissed this as “locker room talk” and denied it had anything to do with the way he really behaved toward women.

In the face of the corroborating evidence, Trump’s outright denials might seem rather desperate
, especially as other politicians, such as Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, and prominent figures in industries from film to media have recently been forced to step down for lesser sexual accusations. But the fact is that Trump’s supporters apparently find his responses to such charges to be credible or at least sufficient. Only 36 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, but that figure has not dropped since Daniels surfaced — indeed, Trump’s approval rating has slightly risen in the interim.

How should we make sense of Trump’s seeming immunity to sex scandals, especially amid the growing feminist #MeToo movement? Is it an object lesson in how the public doesn’t care about what our leaders do or say in private, so long as they respond with sufficient incredulity and are perceived to carry out their duties effectively in public? Or rather how sexual allegations have lost currency in the West’s modern media-driven cult of celebrity? Or is there simply something distinctly American about the allowances Trump’s supporters make for him?

These questions invite consideration on what kinds of sexual misconduct have pulled down politicians in the past. This reveals the ways their survival has depended on where they’re from, when they lived, and how they responded. It also demonstrates that Trump may have proved fortunate on each count.

U.S. President-elect John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and U.S. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 1961. (AFP/Getty Images)

Certainly, in the past, the media have often tacitly agreed to keep quiet about the private lives of politicians. Politicians were no better behaved in the bedroom then; it’s just that what they did there hardly ever made it into the papers. U.S. President John F. Kennedy certainly had numerous extramarital affairs, both before and during his presidency: His mistresses most likely included both Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, though the others were less well known. Kennedy was surrounded by a loyal and supportive team, which worked hard to keep these liaisons from the public, while he enjoyed excellent relations with the press, which was unwilling to compromise the seductive image of the White House as “Camelot” — as it was later dubbed — a glamorous and cultured environment presided over by the enormously popular first lady, Jackie Kennedy. The family values that had dominated public discourse in the 1950s were symbolized in the most glamorous possible way by the first family, and the news media had invested a good deal in sustaining the image of a president who was inspiring, young, and idealistic — and had no interest in tarnishing it.

It was not only the American press that kept politicians’ affairs quiet. In Britain, Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party opposition until his premature death in 1963, was known to have had a long-term extramarital affair with Ann Fleming, the wife of the author of the James Bond novels, while the leading Conservative Party politician John Major, who as prime minister in the 1990s loudly proclaimed his government’s intention of bringing Britain “back to basics,” returning to traditional family values, was subsequently revealed to have had an extramarital affair with fellow Conservative member of Parliament Edwina Currie. Such dalliances are impossible to keep entirely secret, but whoever knew about the affair in the press was happy enough not to mention it at the time.

Media deference to politicians was even more common earlier in the 20th century
. In public, another Tory politician in the U.K., Harold Macmillan, prime minister from 1957 to 1963, was happily married to Lady Dorothy Cavendish, the daughter of the duke of Devonshire, but in private she had a long-term affair with another Conservative member of Parliament, the redoubtable Robert Boothby. It was not made public until long afterward, nor was the relationship, possibly never consummated, between Herbert Asquith, prime minister from 1908 until 1916, with the young Venetia Stanley, though he wrote intimate notes and letters to her virtually every day, even when he was chairing cabinet meetings. His successor, the charismatic David Lloyd George, had so many extramarital affairs that he was known to some as the “Goat,” but somehow, with the connivance of the press, he managed to keep it all out of the public domain. Not entirely so, perhaps: The popular ditty “Lloyd George Knew My Father” was enthusiastically sung (to the tune of “Onward, Christian Soldiers”) by British troops during World War I, in a reference to his relationships with married women; some have even claimed it was a watered-down version of the more explicit “Lloyd George Knew My Mother,” which it would have been impolitic to sing, given the fact that he was prime minister at the time.

It is less easy to keep an extramarital affair secret, of course, if the participants are careless enough to allow it to lead to the birth of a child. Lloyd George’s long-term mistress Frances Stevenson (“My Darling Pussy,” as he called her) — whom he did in fact marry after the death of his wife, when he was 80 — gave birth to an child in 1929, but the fact that he was the (probable) father was hushed up as well. More recently, however, it has not been so easy to keep such a thing quiet, as British Conservative ministers Cecil Parkinson and Tim Yeo discovered in 1983 and 1994, respectively, when each was forced to resign after revelations they had fathered a child outside of marriage. Yeo had compounded his offense by backing the Conservative appeal to traditional values, proclaiming years earlier: “It is in everyone’s interests to reduce broken families and the number of single parents. I have seen from my own constituency the consequences of marital breakdown.” His own behavior revealed his insincerity in the most dramatic possible way.
Such hypocrisy points to one reason at least why we don’t like our politicians to engage in extramarital se
x: How can you trust them in public if they lie and deceive in private? How can you take their policies and promises seriously if they can’t tell the truth about their own lives?

And here we arrive at the first suggestion of why Trump’s own scandals seem not to matter. Trump clearly does not enjoy JFK’s advantages: Disloyalty and betrayal have already made themselves known among his entourage and its former members; his first lady is far from popular; and the media, though not uniformly hostile, do not fawn on him with any sort of adulation. But even if dishonesty is revealed in his private life, Trump isn’t vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, because he has invalidated the necessary predicate. As commentators have pointed out, Trump has established as a “post-truth” politician, by signaling to his followers that he doesn’t care whether he tells the truth or whether he lies. As a result, his supporters don’t care either. Hypocrisy — the perceived vice of saying one thing while doing another — is not a character trait that can be coherently attributed to this president.

U.S. President Bill Clinton speaks in Washington, D.C., after the House of Representatives voted to impeach him on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, on Dec. 19, 1998. (George Bridges/AFP/Getty Images)

But Trump is still theoretically exposed to the other reason that extramarital affairs can be particularly damaging for politicians — that their exposure can make them look ridiculous. When, in the early hours of Oct. 7, 1974, the police pulled over a vehicle that had been driving erratically near the waterfront in Washington, D.C., they discovered its thoroughly inebriated occupants to be Arkansas Rep. Wilbur Mills — the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — and a stripper named Fanne Foxe, known professionally as the “Argentine Firecracker.” Foxe attempted to flee the scene by jumping into the tidal basin. The subsequent ridicule brought an end to Mills’s career but did no harm to Foxe’s, who, after the incident, changed her working name to the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

Even more bizarre was the calamity that befell the British politician Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party

in the 1960s. Thorpe had attempted to conceal the fact that he was gay by marrying Marion Stein, a concert pianist. Behind the scenes, however, he had been carrying on an affair with a would-be male model, Norman Scott. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967, but though the police and secret services knew about Thorpe’s sexual activities, they kept quiet about them. Thorpe was also able to persuade the press to hush up the affair for a good 10 years. Scott, however, became increasingly resentful of what he saw as Thorpe’s failure to help him out when his fortunes declined and began telling people about the relationship after it was over. Attempts to buy him off failed, and Thorpe, acting through intermediaries, hired a former pilot named Andrew Newton to get rid of him, or so the story went. On a lonely stretch of moor in the west of England, Newton pulled out a gun and shot Scott’s dog Rinka, a Great Dane, before turning the gun on Scott. It jammed, however, and Scott escaped. The affair became public, and Thorpe was forced to resign, though he was acquitted on all charges in a subsequent, much-publicized trial for attempted murder.

Relationships with prostitutes seem in the U.K., as well as the United States, to have been more dangerous for politicians’ reputations than regular, long-term affairs, as Lord Antony Lambton, a minister in Edward Heath’s Conservative government, discovered in 1973, when the husband of the prostitute he was seeing took clandestine photographs of them in bed to the tabloid press. The affair suggested another reason why stories about politicians’ impropriety have become more common in recent decades: As the popular press has gotten into financial difficulties, beset with rising costs and falling circulation, it has grasped for ever more sensational stories with which to win back readers, and politicians’ private lives have become fair game in the struggle to survive.

Of course, the moralizing commentaries with which papers like the News of the World accompanied their stories of politicians’ sex affairs were themselves nauseatingly hypocritical, as was the salacious delight with which their readers consumed them. As the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay said long ago, “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” Macaulay’s dictum applied particularly to the Profumo affair of 1963, in which British War Secretary John Profumo had had an affair with the model and showgirl Christine Keeler, who had also been seeing a Russian agent. Even before Keeler had gone public, the secret services had become aware of the affair, and in the wake of several other revelations about Soviet spies and agents, they took the matter seriously. The affair got into the public domain, and Profumo was forced to resign when he admitted having lied to the House of Commons when he was first obliged to deal with the story.

Profumo, overcome by shame at the exposure of his misconduct, spent the rest of his life atoning for his sins with charitable work in the poverty-stricken East End of London. Shame, however, seems to be an emotion entirely absent from Donald Trump’s repertoire of feelings. This is the second explanation for Trump’s resilience against sexual allegations. He has long lived in the world of tabloid sensationalism, a world that gave him a kind of fame few businessmen have achieved and even fewer have aspired to. In the end, he may feel that even the most embarrassing revelations are all justified in the name of entertainment.

Then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attends a press conference during the G20 Summit in Cannes, France on Nov. 4, 2011. (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Perhaps there is a larger trend at work. It’s not just the American public in recent times that seems to have become more relaxed about sexual misconduct. The French, for example, have taken a relaxed attitude to the sex lives of their politicians for decades. François Mitterrand, president of France from 1981 to 1995, is known to have had two children outside of marriage, one of whom, Mazarine — born in 1974 to the art historian Anne Pingeot — he acknowledged as his. The press said nothing about this until near the end of Mitterrand’s life. In his book Twenty-Five Years With Him, Jean-Claude Laumond, Jacques Chirac’s chauffeur, describes the French president as having had “the party militants, the organization secretaries, every woman he had spent five busy minutes with on the sixth floor of 123 rue de Lille, coming back downstairs with a bright eye and his socks in a corkscrew.… A witticism ran through the ranks of the feminine personnel of the rue de Lille: ‘Chirac? Three minutes, including shower!’

” Whether or not this was to be believed, it does not seem to have done Chirac any harm. And Chirac’s successor, François Hollande, was so widely known to ride through the streets on a moped, his face disguised by a helmet, on his way to spend time with his mistress, that you could play a video game online where you gained points by steering the president on his moped past obstacles such as road works and traffic jams until you finally reached your goal.

The French media, whether they keep quiet about their politicians’ extramarital affairs or send them up in humorous video games, don’t really seem to take them very seriously. The situation was quite different in Italy, where the billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi was convicted in 2013 for paying for sex with a minor at one of his infamous “bunga bunga” parties, in which models and prostitutes were alleged to have performed an African-style dance in the nude. The conviction, however, was quashed on appeal. Berlusconi’s wealth and ownership of major media companies ensured that criticism of his behavior in the press was muted. He was liberal in pursuing lawsuits against his critics, and for nine years scandals — both financial and sexual — seemed to have no effect on him. A businessman-turned-populist politician, pro-Russian, anti-immigrant, and a vocal critic of the judiciary and the newspapers (at least, the ones he did not own himself), Berlusconi has been compared by some to Trump. He was certainly free with his derogatory remarks about women, calling German Chancellor Angela Merkel an “unfuckable lard-arse” and appointing women to his government on the basis of their looks rather than their qualifications.

The scandals that enveloped Berlusconi eventually led to his downfall

, as he was debarred from holding office after a conviction for tax fraud. Among the many ways in which he caused offense were his statements about Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. He saw himself in the dictator’s letters to his mistress Clara Petacci, he said on one occasion, and described Fascist Italy as a “democracy in a minor way.” Mussolini himself was even more priapic than Berlusconi, boasting of numerous one-night stands with female admirers, a demonstration of his virility that did no harm to his image among the Italian people. The contrast with the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany could not have been more striking, as Hitler projected an image of celibacy and restraint, “married to Germany,” and kept his conventionally monogamous relationship with his long-term partner Eva Braun out of the public eye.

It bears noting here that political sex scandals have been extremely rare in modern German history. You have to go back before World War I to find a really major one, the Eulenburg affair, when an opposition journalist accused leading figures in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s court circle of carrying on homosexual relationships with one another. This might be an indication that only homosexual dalliances have qualified as scandalous to the German media and public. But perhaps modern German public servants have simply better learned to steel their will against their libido than their peers in other countries. That would certainly be the most foolproof way of avoiding scandal.

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump return to the White House on Feb. 5. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

It’s worth remembering that sex has only really been a feature of scandals surrounding politicians in modern times. In Britain, the moral rectitude encouraged by Queen Victoria in the mid- to late 19th century superseded the libertinism of the Regency era, spawned a number of societies for the improvement of public morals and led to the downfall of men like Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist leader, when his relationship with a married woman, Katharine O’Shea, came to light through her husband’s filing of a divorce suit naming Parnell as co-respondent A similar train of events led to the disgrace of the Liberal Party politician Sir Charles Dilke, accused of seducing a whole series of women, including maidservants, and introducing them to “every French vice,” according to one of his lovers.

The coming of democracy and the rise of a free press have made politicians vulnerable to public knowledge

and public disapproval of their private lives, at least where the political culture has demanded moral conformity and sexual restraint. Perhaps, too, this has been more the case in Protestant cultures, such as those of Britain and America, than Catholic ones, such as in France and Italy.

Will this happen with Trump? It does not look as if it will. It requires a concerted campaign to make allegations of sexual misconduct have any real impact — one like the campaign mounted against President Bill Clinton by Republicans over his affairs in the 1990s. But organizing such a campaign would be impossible in our fragmented, internet-dominated media landscape, where one person’s facts are another person’s fake news. And, of course, even the campaign against Clinton went nowhere.
There are, to be sure, many other reasons to criticize Trump. True, some 60 percent of Americans believe the allegations about his sexual misconduct (though only a fifth or so of Republicans do), and most think they should lead to his impeachment. But that is not going to happen, with Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress. We are currently going through a period in which sexual misconduct of all kinds, including the groping and gawping of which Trump has been accused, is ruining the careers of a number of men in the media and the movie industry and rightly so. But more politicians have been undone over the decades by financial misdeeds than by sexual ones, and this may be the way Donald Trump’s political career eventually comes to an end.

Richard Evans is a British historian of 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany and World War II. His latest book is, “The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914." (@richardevans36)

Oxfam scandal: charity's deputy chief executive resigns

Penny Lawrence quits as Haiti calls on charity to identify staff who used sex workers

Haiti said it was ‘appalled’ that Oxfam let the aid workers leave the country without reporting them. Photograph: Jason Alden/Rex/Shutterstock

Robert Booth and Kevin Rawlinson Mon 12 Feb 2018 15.37 GMT

Oxfam’s deputy chief executive has resigned after it emerged that concerns about the behaviour of senior staff in Haiti and Chad were raised with the charity but not properly handled.

Penny Lawrence, who was the international programmes director when the concerns were reported, quit on Monday.

Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, said: “Penny feels that happened on her watch and she takes responsibility.

“More stories have come out over the weekend, which have suggested people did report concerns in Chad and Haiti which were not properly acted on at the time.”

Her resignation came after a meeting between senior Oxfam staff and the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, who has threatened to remove the charity’s state funding.

Lawrence said: “It is now clear that these allegations, involving the use of prostitutes and which related to behaviour of both the country director and members of his team in Chad, were raised before he moved to Haiti. I am ashamed that this happened on my watch and I take full responsibility.

Penny Lawrence. Photograph: Charlotte Ball/Oxfam/PA

“I am desperately sorry for the harm and distress that this has caused to Oxfam’s supporters, the wider development sector and most of all, the vulnerable people who trusted us.”

Earlier, Haiti demanded Oxfam and the British government identify the aid workers who paid for sex in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, calling for them to be prosecuted “in the international system”, and said it was considering legal action against the charity. It is alleged that those who were paid by the staff may have been underage.

Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s ambassador to the UK, said the country was “shocked and appalled” by the way Oxfam allowed the senior workers in question to leave the country without reporting them to the Haitian authorities.

“For the executive to know these crimes were committed and to allow those people to leave without informing the authorities is wrong,” he told the Guardian. “We might be dealing with a paedophile ring. Prostitution is illegal and we believe they may have been underage kids.”

'I am deeply ashamed' says Oxfam CEO of the Haiti sex scandal - video

On Sunday, Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, said the charity did not report its workers to Haitian police because it feared this would endanger the women involved.

But Edmond described this as “wrong and really insulting”. “How do they know the women would have been endangered?” he said. “Oxfam should recognise they failed and showed a lack of leadership.”

An Oxfam spokesperson said: “Consideration was given at the time to contacting the police, but the legal advice we received in Haiti was that given the nature of the allegations, especially with the continued upheaval and chaos post the earthquake, it was extremely unlikely that any action would be taken.”

Edmond said legal action against Oxfam was also being considered.

The former international development secretary Priti Patel claimed the Oxfam scandal was the “tip of the iceberg”. She told BBC Radio 5 Live that people in the Department for International Development knew about wider problems of sexual abuse in the aid sector.

Oxfam is also braced for an impact on donations from the public after days of escalating stories about the conduct of its workers.

Any hopes the charity’s leadership had that the scandal might quickly subside were dashed when it was reported in the Observer that Oxfam staff in Chad had also paid sex workers and when Oxfam’s annual report resurfaced, showing it dealt with 87 allegations of sexual abuse by staff in 2016-17.

It emerged on Monday that Oxfam managers were concerned about the behaviour of two of the men who were involved in the Haiti scandal while they were working in Chad.

An internal document about Roland van Hauwermeiren, who later became the Haiti director, reported by the Times, said “recruitment [process] identified some weaknesses in his management (eg gender issues)” and reportedly asked: “Were sufficient checks put in place to monitor this?”

Further documents showed Van Hauwermeiren handled at least four complaints of sexual harassment or misconduct against another worker, but allowed him to stay in his job, the newspaper reported. The concerns included the use of sex workers and sexual harassment of female colleagues. The two were among seven men dismissed or allowed to resign by Oxfam in 2011, following allegations including paying sex workers.

An Oxfam spokesperson said: “We are shocked and dismayed about the latest revelations from Chad.
“While we can’t corroborate the information at the moment, it highlights again unacceptable behaviour by a small number of people and the need for a sector-wide approach to tackle the problem.”

Oxfam has proposed changes including a new whistleblowing procedure and stronger vetting for staff.

Goldring said if funding were cut by the UK government, Oxfam would “carry on delivering as best we can, because that’s what the people of Yemen, Syria, Congo and indeed Haiti need and deserve”.

The charity is also facing a day of talks with the Charity Commission this week. The regulator’s director of investigations, Michelle Russell, said it had not been told the full story at the time Oxfam first investigated the misconduct allegations in 2011.

“We’ve made very clear that had the details of what has come out over the last few days been told to us, we would have dealt with this very differently,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We were categorically told there was no abuse of beneficiaries involved in the allegations. Nor were we told that there were issues or possible issues around possible crimes, including those involving minors.”

Do the Freemasons’ claims stack up?

By Martin Williams-12 Feb 2018

Last week, the Freemasons took out a full-page advert in several newspapers claiming that its members felt “stigmatised”.

It followed news reports about the fraternal organisation, questioning their influence in policing and politics.

In response, the Freemasons called for a change in attitudes and highlighted their extensive charity work.

But do their arguments stack up?

Charity cash?

The advert, by the United Grand Lodge of England, started by claiming they value service to the community, saying: “Last year we raised over £33 million for good causes.”

FactCheck has found that nearly half of the money (£15.8m) was spent on charitable causes that support their own members. That leaves slightly over £17m given to non-masonic charitable causes.
Almost all of the cash for masons was distributed via the Masonic Charitable Foundation (MCF).

This includes paying private school fees for the children of masons, when life-changing circumstances prevent them from meeting the costs themselves. They also pay for “specialist tuition, and a host of extracurricular activities”.

According to the latest accounts, the MCF also pays for masons to have private healthcare when NHS waiting lists are too long.

The charity says: “Most grants involve a financial test to ensure that support is targeted to those who need it most.”

Other grants include “daily living expenses” for “Masonic families who are unable to afford everyday living costs and to participate actively in their community”. This includes financial help with household bills and “a reasonable allowance for leisure activities”.

The MCF’s non-masonic spending includes grants to many charities, such as Dementia UK and the Royal College of Surgeons.

There is no suggestion that the Freemasons or the MCF have broken charity rules.

The United Grand Lodge of England, which provided FactCheck with the figures, pointed out that its money goes to many different charitable causes.

Back in 2014, the Freemasons’ Grand Lodge sought a huge VAT rebate on subscription fees, citing its charitable giving. But a court ruled that it was not “wholly philanthropic,” because of the focus on supporting its own members.

The judge said: “To the extent that monies were paid with the hope or expectation of self-insurance, their payment does not seem to us to be an act of philanthropy.”

The Freemasons told us: “[The MCF charity] was not set up as a result of the ruling and in effect the spending does not differ.”

Discrimination claims

In the newspaper advert, the Freemasons say they have written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) because of “discrimination” and “stigmatisation” of its members.

Their letter to the EHRC, seen by FactCheck, says that individual Freemasons and the United Grand Lodge of England frequently encounter “unlawful discrimination”, citing sections of the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act.

So far, it is unclear whether there is any evidence of laws actually being broken. Many Freemasons keep their membership private, so it might potentially be hard to prove someone was discriminated against specifically because of their membership.

But further, it is not clear what kind of a legal basis there is for the Freemasons’ arguments.

FactCheck spoke to discrimination lawyers who pointed out that being a member of the Freemasons is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. So they would probably need to show that they have a collective religious belief system in order for them to qualify.

In their letter, the Freemasons claim: “Freemasonry is not a religion but all Freemasons must profess a belief in a supreme being.”

Their potential case under the Human Rights Act is also unclear, but again, they would need to give specifics in order for any potential case to get to court.

The Human Rights Act allows for the freedom to “peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others”. It also says that freedoms extend to everyone, “without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.”

Appeal for help in Marawi as 50,000 families remain displaced

2018-01-23T044526Z_2137474881_RC19BD24EA80_RTRMADP_3_PHILIPPINES-MILITANTS-ISLAMICSTATE-940x580 — A view of the damaged facade of Marawi's Grand Mosque, which was used as a hideout by Islamic State militants during the five-month siege in Marawi, Philippines January 13, 2018. Picture taken January 13, 2018. Source: Reuters/Tom Allard

A view of the damaged facade of Marawi's Grand Mosque, which was used as a hideout by Islamic State militants during the five-month siege in Marawi, Philippines January 13, 2018. Picture taken January 13, 2018. Source: Reuters/Tom Allard

THE United Nations’ humanitarian agency has appealed for sustained relief assistance as many of the 77,000 families displaced by the five-month conflict in Marawi City in the southern Philippines continue to languish in squalid evacuation centres.

Mark Bidder, the head of UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Philippines, urged the donor community to continue supporting more than 350,000 civilians affected by the war in Marawi, which the military liberated from the clutches of Islamic State-aligned militants last October.

“As the government develops a comprehensive recovery and rehabilitation plan for Marawi City, humanitarian needs (of the refugees) remain,” he told Asian Correspondent last week.

“Displaced communities are gradually returning to some areas of Marawi and surrounding municipalities. Both returnees and the displaced need continued support to address their basic food and nutrition requirements, among other priority needs,” Bidder said.

SEE ALSO: How Marawi pushed Asean nations to join forces against terrorism

In December, OCHA Philippines appealed for donations amounting to PHP2.2 billion (US$43.7 million) for continuing support to the needs of the displaced civilians, including food supplies, for the first half of 2018.

Latest data from the government’s social welfare department showed that 26,450 families from 36 of the city’s almost 100 villages have been allowed to return to Marawi as of early December.

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Residents who left their homes to avoid the intense fighting between the government forces and insurgents from the Maute group are seen inside the evacuation centre in Iligan city, southern Philippines, on June 18, 2017. Source: /Romeo Ranoco

The remaining 50,550 displaced families continue to languish at 66 evacuation centres or with their relatives in towns surrounding lakeside Marawi, desperately waiting to go home amid dwindling relief assistance.

Eduardo del Rosario, a retired military general heading the Task Force Bangon (Rise) Marawi, the body formed for the war-torn city’s recovery and rehabilitation composed of various government agencies, said in a recent press briefing that the reconstruction of ground zero is expected to begin late April.

The main battle area straddling 250ha in 24 villages has an estimated population of at least 11,000 families, he said.

“Ground zero remains restricted to civilians because of the ongoing clearing operations by the military for unexploded ammunition and ordinances. After the military finishes the clearing operations, we will immediately start rehabilitating the 250 hectares,” said del Rosario, also the government’s current housing czar.

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Residents staying at evacuation centres at an open gym in Basak, Malutlut district in Marawi city, southern Philippines, on Oct 29, 2017. Source: Reuters/Romeo Ranoco

The five-month battle levelevelledldings that left three million tons of debris, the official noted, stressing that repairing ground zero will take four years or until December 2021, a few months short before the Duterte administration bows out of power.

Bidder said that restoring the food supply chain in Marawi and surrounding areas must be given top priority as it is crucial for the transition from emergency to recovery.

SEE ALSO: While guns are silent in Marawi, displaced civilians continue to suffer

“This includes restoring production, functioning markets, and all the crucial points in the food supply and agriculture chain,” he said. Bidder stressed there is also an urgent need in restoring sources of income and livelihood to reduce food insecurity and dependency on external assistance.

Livelihood intervention and skills training should be aligned with market needs, including for women and the youth of working age, he said.

The Marawi siege that erupted on May 23 left some 1,100 individuals killed, mostly terrorist gunmen. President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao hours after the Islamic State-inspired Maute Group launched the attack.

Only 20 percent of the 6,400 temporary housing units intended for those who lost their homes during fighting in Marawi had been completed by late January, the government said.

Heartbreaking Footage Of Africans Being Sold At Open-Air Slave Markets In Libya

February 7, 2018

It’s 2018, and horrifying footage has emerged of African people being sold at auction at Libyan open-air slave markets. Tens of thousands of defenseless African migrants and refugees risk everything to reach Libya’s coast and next across the Mediterranean into Europe – which is considered to be the most dangerous route on Earth. According to reports, the migrants who end up in business detention centers are sold off like goods.

Libya has become a modern-day slave market, keeping migrants at the mercy of a complex trafficking web tolerated by the country’s many militia groups, an issue largely ignored by the world, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer said on Wednesday. Narciso Contreras, who spoke to migrants kept as slaves during a documentary photography project in Libya, said global attention focused on the North African country as a gateway for migrants attempting to reach Europe by sea.

As Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration tells Counting the Cost: “As shocking as it seems, it’s indeed true. The reason slave trade is happening is that there is really no rule of law across much of Libya. Libya is a country as big as France, with a lot of space there. Migrants are coming there … they see the promise of a new life when they go to their Facebook feed, and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe because a smuggler has abused the system and has sold them that lie.”

Doyle explains that when the people arrive in Libya, “they get off the bus and they are quickly put into a kind of murder machine, an extortion machine. They are robbed of their possessions, their families are called. They are forced, they are tortured, they give them money. And then they are sold. Unbelievable, but they are sold in open, public auctions: $400 for a laboring man, maybe a bit more for a woman who can be put in the sex trade. And this is what’s happening across the country.”

He also stresses that this issue demonstrates that the international community has to pay more attention to post-Gaddafi Libya. He adds: “Modern-day slavery is widespread around the world and Libya is by no means unique. It’s happening in the developed countries of the world as well as the undeveloped countries. But what’s particularly shocking is that this is happening effectively in the open, where people can go to a farmhouse, place a bid and end up ‘owning’ a human being.”

The video shows how 21-year-old Victory that fled Nigeria’s Edo state was sold at a slave auction. The young man talks about the dire living conditions, the lack of food and the abuse that he had to suffer at the hands of his captors.

Schizophrenia patients calmed by video game

Rocket video games used by the patients in the study

Patients in the study had to control the rocket and bring it down to earth-KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

12 February 2018

People with schizophrenia can be trained by playing a video game to control the part of the brain linked to verbal hallucinations, researchers say.

Patients in a small study were able to land a rocket in the game when it was connected to the brain region sensitive to speech and human voices.

In time, the patients learnt to use the technique in their daily lives to reduce the power of hallucinations.

But this is a small pilot study and the findings still need to be confirmed.

The research team, from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and the University of Roehampton, says the technique could be used to help schizophrenia patients who do not respond to medication.

People with the condition are known to have a more active auditory cortex, which means they are more sensitive to sounds and voices.

All 12 patients in the study experienced nasty and threatening verbal hallucinations every day - a common symptom of schizophrenia.

To try to control their symptoms, they were asked to play a video game while in an MRI scanner, using their own mental strategies to move a computerised rocket - and in doing so they were able to turn down the volume on the external voices they heard as well.

The auditory cortex (in yellow) in the brain

The auditory cortex (in yellow) is hypersensitive in the brains of people with schizophrenia-KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

Dr Natasza Orlov, from King's College London, said: "The patients know when the voices are about to start - they can feel it, so we want them to immediately put this aid into effect to lessen them, or stop the voices completely."

She said all the patients in the study, who each had four turns in the MRI scanner, found that their voices became less external and more internal, making them less stressful. They were also better able to cope with them.

Dr Orlov added: "Although the study sample size is small and we lacked a control group, these results are promising.

"We are now planning to conduct a randomised controlled study to test this technique in a larger sample."

Prof Sukhi Shergill from King's, and a consultant psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, said the research offered "a novel approach" for helping patients.

"While this is preliminary data, it's particularly promising that patients were able to control their brain activity even without the MRI scanning - suggesting that this may be a strategy that people, who have followed the MRI neuro-feedback training protocol, can benefit from at home."

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.