Saturday, April 14, 2018

Facebook becomes a fundraising tool for Gaza’s poor

Photo shows small children sitting in front of tent shelter

Around 70 percent of Gaza’s population is dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Ashraf AmraAPA images

Amjad Ayman Yaghi- 13 April 2018

Osama al-Kahlout receives requests for help every day. There are so many that he cannot promote all of them. The most urgent cases have to be prioritized.

He is among a number of people living in Gaza who use Facebook as a tool to raise money for the poor.

Through posting photographs and information on the social media website, he has found a donor who financed the construction of a five-story home for an extended family in Deir al-Balah refugee camp. Comprising 40 people, the extended family had previously been living in the same small house. The donations came from Qatar and were arranged by cooperating with a Qatari organization already active in Gaza.

Al-Kahlout is a journalist, writing about social issues for Donia Al-Watan, a Palestinian website.

This work “makes me close to people who are in need,” he said.

Al-Kahlout regularly posts appeals for money on his Facebook page. Generally, these appeals are for families requiring food, medicine or accommodation.

One such appeal was for five families living in a cemetery. Their homes were badly built, lacking proper windows. The appeal raised enough for renovations to be carried out on their homes and to give them food and clothes.

“I wish I could help everyone who is in need,” said al-Kahlout. But he is unable to do so.

Some of the requests he receives are not deemed suitable for Facebook appeals as they require intervention from the official authorities. He also has to bear in mind that hardship is widespread in Gaza.

For that reason, he has to concentrate on cases where the problems are particularly acute.

“Calamity”

Michael Lynk, a UN special rapporteur on Palestine, stated recently that Gaza has been “moving steadily backwards in the past two decades from modest poverty to a human calamity.” At 44 percent, Gaza’s rate of unemployment is the world’s highest, while youth unemployment comes to 61 percent.

Around 70 percent of the population is dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Perhaps the most extreme form of poverty is when people no longer have shelter because they cannot afford to pay rent. According to Gaza’s ministry of social development, around 15 families are known to have been without shelter this year.

Ahmed Salah, a computer engineer, published an appeal on Facebook during February to help two families living in the streets of Nuseirat refugee camp. The families had been evicted from their homes after being unable to pay rent for three months.

The appeal was accompanied by a video. Salah felt it necessary “to show the conditions these families lived in.”

By being active on social media, Salah has amassed around 40,000 followers on Facebook. Through his appeal, one firm offered to pay the families’ rents for the next 18 months. As a result, the families found new homes.

A man living in the United Arab Emirates also sent money to help the families meet their basic requirements.

Hassan Isleih, a camera operator with Quds TV, undertakes a verification process before publishing appeals on his Facebook page.

He checks details provided about a family in need through contacting neighbors and consulting local charities. “I make sure that all the information I publish is true,” he said.

Not all of the requests that he publishes receive responses. In such situations, Isleih contacts businesspeople, asking if they are willing to make donations.

Temporary

One particular challenge is that people sometimes contact Isleih seeking help with medical assistance they cannot receive in Gaza’s hospitals. Arranging such help is difficult – and sometimes impossible – because of the siege Israel has imposed on Gaza for almost 12 years.

Israel often prevents patients from traveling outside Gaza for treatment. The approval rate for patients from Gaza in 2017 was the lowest it had been in more than a decade.

An additional problem is that the costs of medical treatment can exceed $50,000.

Most of the donors to the appeals published by Isleih are Palestinians living abroad or fellow Arabs living in the Gulf countries. “These appeals provide temporary solutions,” he said.

Gaza’s interior ministry also monitors appeals to check that the information on them is reliable and is accompanied by mobile numbers so that donors can contact people in need directly. In some cases, the ministry undertakes follow-up work to ensure that donations did actually reach those on whose behalf they were requested.

“We make sure that the assistance is provided to the people,” said Ayman Ayesh, a representative of the ministry.

Facebook is a popular means of communications in Gaza. By one estimate, 87 percent of all Palestinians between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea use the social media website. This helps explain how Facebook has become an important tool in collecting sorely needed cash.

“People in Gaza use social media networks as a means of informing themselves and connecting with the outside world,” said Ahmad Abu Jalhoum, a digital marketing specialist.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza risks getting worse. Public sector employees have seen a sharp reduction in their salaries – a problem that has not been resolved despite the preliminary reconciliation agreement reached last year between Hamas and Fatah.

Cuts by the US in aid to Palestinian refugees are apt to cause a further deterioration in conditions.

Appeals on Facebook are clearly no substitute for the political action needed to address Gaza’s plight. Yet as a means of getting short-term help to people in desperate circumstances, these appeals are proving vital.

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

8 Egyptian soldiers, 14 militants killed in Sinai attack: Army

Over 100 militants and 22 soldiers have been killed since the latest operation was launched in the Sinai in February

Saturday's attack in the Sinai was the largest since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was re-elected last month (AFP)

Saturday 14 April 2018

Eight Egyptian soldiers and 14 militants were killed in fighting in central Sinai on Saturday when gunmen carrying explosive belts and grenades targeted a military checkpoint, the army said.

The attack was the largest against Egyptian security forces since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi won a second term in office last month, promising to work for stability and security in Egypt.

It also came just hours after the country extended a state of emergency imposed a year ago.

The militants attacked the checkpoint at around dawn, an army statement said. Four of them detonated their explosive belts, killing the soldiers and wounding 15 others, it added.

Egypt has been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula since Sisi ousted Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, after popular protests against Morsi's rule.

Sisi in November ordered the military to defeat militants in north Sinai within three months, after an attack on a mosque that killed more than 300 people, the deadliest such incident in the Arab world’s most populous country.

The military launched what it said was a major operation against the militants in February, a month before Sisi was re-elected in a vote featuring just one other candidate, a strong supporter of the president.

More than 100 militants and at least 22 soldiers have been killed in an ongoing operation launched on 9 February, according to army figures.

Are We Over the US/UK Fomented Crisis In Syria?

Syria is not about dictatorship or building democracy. It is not about the alleged 70 victims of chemical weapons.

by Paul Craig Roberts-Apr 14, 2018

( April 14, 2018, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) It appears from the very limited US missile attack, most of which were intercepted and destroyed by Syrian air defenses, that the US military prevailed over the crazed John Bolton and carefully avoided a strike that would have resulted in a Russian response. No significant Syrian site appears to have been targeted, and no Russians were endangered.

The US ambassador to Russia said that the US strikes were coordinated with Russia to avoid a great power confrontation. Russia Insider concludes that the exercise was a face-saver for Trump

The main effect seems to be that Trump has further discredited himself and the US by violating the UN Charter and international law and committing an act of aggression, which is a war crime for which Nazi civilian and military officials were executed. Russia’s President Putin said that the wanton and illegal use of force by Washington has had “a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations” and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. China also condemned the illegal US attack.

How was the feared conflict between the US and Russia avoided? From what I have been able to learn, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff would not accept the risk of conflict with Russia. The reason is not that the Joint Chiefs are more moral, more caring about the deaths and injuries that would result, or less inclined to go to war based on lies. Their objection was based on the lack of protection US Navy ships have from the new Russian weapons systems. An attack that brought a Russian response could sink the US flotilla and present the US with a humiliating defeat that would discredit American military prowess.

Bolton’s position was that Putin is a pussy who, as in every previous case, will do nothing. Bolton’s postion is that the Russians are so scared of US military might that they will not respond to any US attack on their forces and Syrian forces. The Russians, Bolton says, will do what they always do. They will whine about the crime to the UN, and the Western media will ignore them as always.

The US Secretary of War, Mattis, represented the Joint Chiefs opinion. What, Mattis asked, if the Russians have had enough and do what they are capable of and sink the US flotilla? Is Trump prepared to accept a defeat engineered by his National Security Adviser? Is Trump prepared for a possible wider conflict?

The Joint Chiefs would rather use the orchestrated “Syrian crisis” to argue for more money, not to go to war that could be terminable of their retirement plans. The Joint Chiefs can tell Congress: “We couldn’t risk conflict with Russia over the use of chemical weapons in Syria because we were outgunned. We need more money.” The older American generation will rementer the fantasy “missile gap” of the Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign that was used to boost US defense spending.

It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude that common sense has prevailed and the conflict has been resolved. What has prevailed is the Joint Chiefs’ fear of a defeat. The next crisis that Washington orchestrates will be on terms less favorable to Russian arms.

Bolton, the neoconservatives and the Israeli interest that they represent will go to work on Mattis and the dissenting generals. Leaks will appear in the presstitute media that are designed to discredit Mattis and to foment Trump’s distrust. The neoconservatives will advance military men more in line with the neoonservatives’ aggressiveness to positions on the Joint Chiefs.

Syria is not about any chemical weapons use. Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, reported that all chemical weapons had been removed from Syria. “Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict, and this has been accomplished within very demanding and tight timeframes.”

Syria is not about dictatorship or building democracy. It is not about the alleged 70 victims of chemical weapons. It would take a complete idiot to believe that Washington and its European vassals, who have killed, maimed, orphaned, and displaced millions of Muslims in seven countries over the last 17 years to be so upset over the deaths of 70 Muslims that they are willing to risk war with Russia.

Syria and Iran are an issue, because Syria and Iran supply the Lebonese millita, Hezbollah, with money and weapons. This support from Syria and Iran gives Hezbollah the capability of preventing Israel’s occupation and annexation of southern Lebanaon, whose water resources Israel covets.

Twice the vaunted Israel Army has been chased out of Lebanon by Hezbollah. Israel’s military reputation cannot risk a third defeat by a mere militia, so Israel is using its control over US foreign policy and its rock solid alliance with the neoconservatives to use the US military to destabilize Syria and Iran as the US did to Iraq and Libya.

Additionally, there is the crazed neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony. The interests of Russia and China are in the way of US hegemony. Therefore, these two countries are defined as “threats.” Russia and China are not threats because they intend to attack the US, which neither has shown any indication of doing. They are threats because they are in opposition to US unilateralism which overrides their sovereignty. In other words, to be clear, the US cannot tolerate any country that has an independent foreign or economic policy.

That Russia and China have independent policies is the reason that they are “threats.”

It would be a mistake to conclude that diplomay has prevailed and common sense has returned to Washington. Nothing could be further from the truth. The issue is not resolved. War remains on the horizon.

Comey's book swipes at Trump – but Mueller's inquiry is the real threat

As the fired FBI director makes headlines, the bureau’s raid on the offices of Trump’s lawyer signals peril for his presidency

James Comey likened Donald Trump’s presidency to a ‘forest fire’. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Tom McCarthy @TeeMcSee-Sat 14 Apr 2018

The first big interview with the fired FBI director James Comey is blazing toward a broadcast on Sunday night, but for the Donald Trump presidency, multiple meteors have already hit.

In Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, obtained by the Guardian on Thursday from a bookseller in New York before publication, the former official casts Trump as both “unethical” and “untethered to truth” and compares his presidency to a “forest fire”.

Likening Trump to a mafia boss, Comey describes a meeting in the Oval Office which gave him flashbacks to his career as a young prosecutor.

“As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob,” Comey writes. “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth.”

The Republican party has launched a concerted effort to get its rebuttal in before the book is published, with a Trumpian web site dedicated to branding the former director “Lyin’ Comey”.

But A Higher Loyalty is an instant bestseller online and will be supported by a media blitz to begin Sunday night with an hour-long broadcast on ABC News.

Trump called Comey a “weak and untruthful slime ball” on Friday in a Twitter response to the first reports from the book.

But Comey is not the only former FBI chief giving Trump a migraine – the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign has been accelerating and is also enraging the president.

The sky began to fall in for Trump on Monday, when FBI agents raided the offices and a hotel room used by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. The raids were a strong sign that prosecutors might soon charge one of Trump’s fiercest loyalists with a serious crime or crimes, legal experts said.

“It’s a disgraceful situation,” Trump said. “It’s a total witch-hunt … It’s an attack on our country, what we all stand for.”

As the implications of those raids continue to sink in, Trump may be lured towards the kind of drastic action that would send fissures through the executive branch and beyond, multiple former White House and justice department officials interviewed by the Guardian said.

“The raid of Michael Cohen’s office was a seismic event, for any presidency,” said Andrew Wright, a former White House associate counsel and a professor at Savannah Law School. “I think he [Cohen] is in very serious trouble.

Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen leaves a hotel in New York City on Friday. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters

“And sure enough, the president appears to have really come pretty unhinged at that news, so I think that’s incredibly significant.”

Even for a White House that can seem to cycle from crisis to extreme crisis, the current pressure on Trump, and the resulting peril for his presidency and the country, is acute, according to seasoned prosecutors.

“The pressure on the president is actually unimaginable to me,” said Betsy de la Vega, who was a federal prosecutor for more than 20 years.

While the public has no way of knowing how far along Mueller is in his work, De la Vega said, the decision to conduct the Cohen raids, given their high stakes, could indicate that prosecutors had completed significant work behind the scenes.

“They would have to know that setting it in motion would cause great consternation, to say the least, on the part of Donald Trump and his pals, so that gives me the sense that the pace is increasing.”
Cohen, who has denied all wrongdoing, could face charges including bank fraud, wire fraud, campaign violations, tax crimes or other charges relating to payments made to multiple women in advance of the 2016 election, and communications thereafter with at least one of those women.

The prospect of such an indictment is clearly weighing on the president’s mind. In the week since the Cohen raids, Trump has lashed out at Mueller and his superior, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.

“Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein...),” Trump tweeted in a Wednesday morning tirade against “the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama”.

Mueller has indicted or reached plea agreements with 19 individuals, including four former senior Trump campaign aides, plus three companies in Russia. He is a Republican, as is Rosenstein. So are Comey and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general.

Firing Comey one of Trump's 'greatest achievements', says White House – video

But none of Mueller’s targets has been as close to Trump as Cohen, who is a friend of the family, has been involved with the Trump children on real estate deals around the world, and who could have a lot to tell prosecutors about operations inside the Trump Organization.

The visceral threat of a prosecution so close to his company and his family could drive the president to take a step that the White House asserted last week was within his power: removing Mueller, or perhaps Rosenstein.

“There’s a clear pattern of the president seeming to think that the department of justice belongs to him,” said Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor specializing in criminal prosecution issues.

“And that’s deeply concerning. These threats to fire Sessions or fire Mueller or fire Rosenstein all fit into that.

“It’s a remarkable disregard for the rule of law. The precedent that this is setting, what this means for our country and our future, is very concerning.”

The combined pressures from the investigation, and a media cacophony with outlets such as Fox News touting an imminent Trump “personnel decision,” could be driving Trump toward a dangerous step, said Wright.

“It feels like there are people that are really trying to tempt the president to take drastic action to try and shut down these investigations, and I think that would just really send us into political convulsions in this country, and I think that would not solve the president’s problems, it would worsen them,” Wright said.

“I’m quite concerned about the precarious situation we find ourselves in right now.”

Members of congress in both chambers have said they support passing legislation to protect the special counsel, but such legislation is moving slowly.

Trump, meanwhile, appears not to have been shaken in his basic faith that the best way to handle the prosecutions swirling around him is to fight back with all the power the presidency can muster.

“No Collusion or Obstruction (other than I fight back), so now they do the Unthinkable, and RAID a lawyers office for information! BAD!” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.

“It’s the thing he hasn’t learned from the beginning,” said Wright, discussing Trump’s relationship with the prosecution.

“It’s like being wrapped by a boa constrictor. The more you struggle, the more likely you’re going to die quickly. And the less you struggle, the more likely you might be able to slip out of its clutches.
“And instead the president is just wiggling and wiggling and wiggling.”

The U.S. just bombed 3 sites in Syria. Here’s what we know about why nations choose airstrikes.

The Pentagon released video April 14 of the joint missile strike against the Syrian regime in retaliation for the suspected April 7 chemical attack. (Department of Defense)

By Carla Martinez-Machain and Susan Hannah Allen April 14 at 1:15 AM

Following his April 11 tweet that missiles “will be coming” in Syria, President Trump on Friday night announced U.S. airstrikes in multiple sites, including Damascus. The targeted sites were ones believed to be capable of storing chemical weapons and/or chemical precursors. The attacks were carried out in retaliation for last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

This is not the first time President Trump has ordered airstrikes in Syria, of course. Last April, Trump used airstrikes against Shayrat Airbase in the aftermath of another chemical attack by the Assad regime. Even though the strike appears to have been much larger than last year’s, this remained an airstrike-only operation.

Why did Trump opt for airstrikes again to retaliate against the regime? In a recently published paper in the Journal of Global Security Studies, we examine why countries use air power.

Airstrikes are one of many tools that states use to get what they want in the international system. Given that not all policy tools are appropriate for all crises, our research examines the circumstances when states choose to use airstrikes over other options (such as economic sanctions or ground campaigns) as a coercive tool.

[Why has Trump been threatening to attack Syria? (Hint: It’s probably not about Syria.)]

Reliance on air power has greatly increased in recent decades as technology and targeting have improved. Drawing on earlier work, we consider the ways that air power is used in modern warfare.

Importantly, we find key differences between the choice to use airstrikes alone (as occurred in NATO’s war for Kosovo in 1999) and uses of air power in conjunction with boots on the ground — like the 1991 Gulf War.

Here’s how we did our research

We look at all international crises, based on the Interstate Crisis Behavior Project, that occurred between 1908 and 2006. We used a range of primary and secondary sources to collect new data on whether or not air power was used in each crisis, and how air power was deployed. We also looked at political goals in the crisis to see how a country’s choice of foreign policy tools relates to the stakes of the crisis.

Democracies aren’t more prone to use airstrikes — but rich states are

We looked at some popular expectations about why states would choose air power. Traditionally, there is the perception that democracies are more likely to use airstrikes — and only airstrikes — because democratic leaders are too afraid to put boots on the ground and risk casualties.

Policymakers and even potential target states themselves have shared this perception. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, numerous militarily weaker states have gambled on their ability to outlast American public acceptance of casualties.

[Trump’s supporters don’t care about his flip-flops on Syria. We checked.]

Contrary to popular perceptions about the cost sensitivity of democracies, we find that democratic states are not more likely than their autocratic counterparts to employ air-only campaigns. But rich states — and by extension, militarily powerful states — are more likely to use airstrikes. This dynamic helps us understand Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, for instance.

Cruise missiles as well as U.S., French and British manned aircraft targeted sites in and around Damascus and Homs. (The Washington Post)

Airstrikes are more likely when the stakes for an intervener are low

The second popular expectation we examine is whether or not airstrikes are a signal of low resolve. Do rich and powerful states just use air power when they don’t care enough to put boots on the ground? Both Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic certainly acted like they believed just that — they attempted to resist U.S.-led airstrikes on multiple occasions.

We found support for the idea that lower stakes make an airstrikes-only strategy more likely. In high-stakes conflicts, states are much more likely to couple airstrikes with ground forces. With airstrikes alone, targets may rightly infer that the crisis is a lower foreign policy priority for the attacking state. Of course, those leaders conducting the airstrikes may argue that airstrikes are a costly signal of future uses of force.

While airstrikes may indeed be used as a means of escalation, states are likely aware that airstrikes are a limited signal — and realize that the most salient crises cannot be resolved with airstrikes alone or without a stronger signal of resolve.

Airstrikes alone as a crisis response may thus lead the target to conclude that the attacker is unresolved. This may lead the state being attacked to hold out, and not make major concessions.

[Americans feel a moral obligation to help humanitarian victims (like those in Syria) with military force]

Airstrikes alone are not particularly effective

When states choose to use airstrikes alone, do they work?

In previous research, we found that air power strategies that include efforts to deny targets military capabilities as well as punish target publics and regimes are more likely to be successful. The April 2017 airstrikes on Shayrat Airbase represented only a minimal effort at military denial, and therefore, it is unsurprising that, despite the wealth and military superiority of the United States, there was no long-lasting impact.

The bottom line

President Trump’s decision to employ strikes is not particularly surprising. Leaving aside his own personal views, he is the leader of a rich state with few good military options in Syria, a country where the stakes for the United States are relatively low.

For a second time in his presidency, Trump has chosen airstrikes. It probably won’t be the last.

Susan Hannah Allen is an associate professor at the University of Mississippi whose research focuses on coercion in the international system. Find her on Twitter @lady_professor.

Carla Martinez-Machain is an associate professor at Kansas State University whose research explores military effectiveness and public perceptions of the military. Find her on Twitter @carlamm.

Playing With Nuclear Matches

Believe very little of what we are told about Syria. Trump threatens to again attack Syria because it is alleged to have used chlorine gas on anti-government defenders and civilians in the Ghouta enclave near Damascus. This may be true – or a fabrication.

by Eric S. Margolis-Apr 14, 2018

( April 14, 2018, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Behind President Donald Trump’s bluster and threats over Syria, powerful forces are pushing the US towards war with Russia and Syria: the neocons and the military industrial complex.

For a candidate who once proposed a normal relationship with Russia, just peace in the Mideast, and an end to America’s foreign wars Donald Trump is now hurtling towards a full-scale war with Russia and a new disaster in the Mideast. Not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis has the danger of nuclear war seemed to close.

While Trump fulminates about the alleged use of toxic gas in Syria, US B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers are flattening villages in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The bloodbath in Syria was ignited in 2011 by the US, Saudi Arabia and their allies in an effort to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who was failing to accept US tutelage and too friendly with Iran. By my count, this was the third attempt by Washington to overthrow a Syrian government since 1948.

Believe very little of what we are told about Syria. Trump threatens to again attack Syria because it is alleged to have used chlorine gas on anti-government defenders and civilians in the Ghouta enclave near Damascus. This may be true – or a fabrication.

Much of our information on Syria comes from ‘false flag’ outfits set up by western intelligence like the ‘White Helmets’ and ‘Syrian Observatory,’ Britain’s once independent BBC, now a major organ for government information warfare, and the majority of US government ‘guided’ mainstream media hankering for a Mideast war.

Interestingly, the reliable Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz just reported that Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, donated $1.1 million to a rabid American anti-Muslim group during the 2016 elections.

Lauder was joined by Robert Mercer, another leading far right Muslim-hater and Trump supporter. Such religious/racial hatred will likely blow up in their faces one day when the anti-Muslim far right turns on Jewish Americans.

Israel’s government plans to fragment Syria, just as was done with Iraq. This would eliminate the only remaining credible Arab state opposing Israel’s domination of the region and, equally important, allow Israel to begin expropriating chunks of Syria, notably water sources and pipeline routes.

Britain is trying to show the old lion still has some teeth. France used to be colonial ruler of today’s Syria and wants to reassert its influence there.

The timing for Israel is ideal. Trump may have been a Trojan Horse for US neocons. He has named ardently pro-Israel figures to senior posts: the loathsome Nikki Haley to the UN; the well-known ‘crazy’ from Bush days, John Bolton, as National Security Advisor; the notorious torturer madame, Gina Haspel, as new CIA chief and so on and nominated tea-party Mike Pompeo from darkest Kansas as Secretary of State of all people. The State Dept. has been quietly purged of ‘Arabist’ experts who understood the Mideast. The Christian fundamentalist machine that provided Trump his support base is running white hot promoting modern-day Crusader passions and hatred of Muslims. Nice bedfellows for Ron Lauder.

With this potent neocon amen chorus now singing at high volume, Trump, who evaded military service during the Vietnam War (when this writer was in US uniform), now thinks he can bully Russia into crying uncle and backing down in Syria, leaving it to the US and Israel.

He has misread President Vladimir Putin who is hard as steel but also very clever and deft. Trump is violating the most important rule of US diplomacy: never, ever get into a confrontation with a nuclear-armed power. Russia, which lost 30 million dead in World War II will not be lightly bullied into retreat. The Russians know if they back down over Syria, the US will then proceed to its ultimate objective, dismantling the Russian Federation and turning it into a client state. This almost happened under the drunken Yeltsin and is why Putin came to power.

Let’s hope Gen. Jim Mattis and the US military will deter Trump from more war-mongering. Trump is a child playing with nuclear matches. Putin may even help Trump find a way out of this game of nuclear chicken, as he did with President Obama. That is, provided the neocons clustered around him don’t manage to trigger a war with Russia.

Focus: U.S. trade war fears ripple through China's 'workshop of the world'

Aluminium heater tubes are seen inside a factory in Dongguan, China April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

James Pomfret-APRIL 13, 2018

DONGGUAN, China (Reuters) - Allan Chau, the general manager of a Chinese factory making precision metal parts for U.S. customers, is still calling it a “proposed” trade war, but that hasn’t stopped him from planning for the worst.

Unlike last year, when U.S. President Donald Trump sounded protectionist warnings that were largely dismissed as bluster, Chau and other factory bosses across China say the risks from this trade spat are now far more tangible.

As a result they warn of a possible wave of small factory closures, a shift of some production away from China, and the use of questionable practices to dodge increased tariffs.

“Before, we didn’t think we’re affected because we’re doing little metallic parts,” said Chau at his three-storey beige-colored-plant in Dongguan. “(Now), everybody is talking about this proposed war.”

The city of Dongguan is one of the main export hubs in southern China’s Pearl River Delta. The region has been dubbed the “workshop of the world” and accounts for around a quarter of China’s exports.

As hundreds of computer-controlled lathes hummed around him, fashioning slender aluminium, steel and brass rods into intricate parts, Chau pointed out a car valve, the size of a thumb - used in car braking systems assembled in U.S. plants - as an example of a product caught up in the storm.

Of the 1,500 or so metal parts made in Chau’s plant, including needles for espresso machines to puncture coffee capsules, he says around 200 could be hit by the proposed U.S. tariffs that stand to affect $50 billion worth of Chinese goods.

“If they’re going to propose 25 percent tax on those things, we have a lot of counter-measures we’ve got to do to keep ourselves alive,” said Chau, whose company, Tien Po International, has run factories in China for more than 30 years.

Chau says he’s now considering building a warehouse in Malaysia, Vietnam or Thailand, where he could ship his goods for re-export, or he talks of setting up a small factory in a Southeast Asian country to avoid the increased tariffs altogether.

EXACERBATE THE PAIN

China’s reliance on exports as an economic driver has declined over the past decade, with total exports as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product dropping to 18 percent in 2017 from 35 percent in 2006, according to research by Credit Suisse.

But at a more micro level, at the heart of China’s vast industrial supply chains, the tariffs stand to exacerbate the pain of already struggling plants.

Many have already been buffeted by an appreciating currency, soaring wage costs, and labour shortages as a younger generation shuns a life on the factory floor.

The Trump threat has been a further sideswipe for many exporters and soured sentiment, even as the full implications are unclear.

“The U.S. is a huge market and some of the companies, especially those less competitive, may be washed out,” said Danny He, the founder of Alpha Lighting, a small LED maker in Dongguan with 100 workers.

In interviews with six other Chinese manufacturers of LED lighting products, another affected sector, four expect some closures of Chinese factories, particularly those making more generic products like bulbs and LED panels.

Places like Dongguan, with large clusters of grittier industrial plants, are especially vulnerable.

Dongguan’s economic growth of 8.1 percent last year while robust, doesn’t fully reflect its long struggle to upgrade rusting factories and catch up with the likes of neighbouring technology powerhouse Shenzhen.

“If you are those without special technology or products, you will die,” said Rose Qiu, a director with Zhejiang Fonda Technology, another LED maker.

Jacky Patel, the president of OM Lighting, an exporter of Chinese lighting products to several U.S. states including Florida, said the tariffs would be passed onto U.S. consumers.

“The customer will have to pay 30 to 35 percent more.”

“They won’t be happy but we have no other choice. We just have to go with the flow.”
All six LED makers interviewed by Reuters also said they would pass on any extra costs to U.S. customers.

“We are considering moving our core market out of the U.S., said James Chou, the boss of Poly Dragon, who has run an LED factory in Dongguan for the past 17 years.

“I worry even more about the global economy going into a recession under a trade war.”

A worker checks tailor-made magnetic stainless steel inside a factory in Dongguan, China April 10, 2018. Bobby Yip

A worker checks tailor-made magnetic stainless steel inside a factory in Dongguan, China April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

Chinese manufacturers talk of being stuck in limbo.

“Over in the U.S. right now they don’t dare make new orders ... So everyone is just monitoring things and no one knows what will happen next,” said Chau from the precision metal parts factory.

GREY AREAS

Under a so-called harmonised system of tariffs - Chinese products are now coded specifically so that the same product would face higher U.S. tariffs if used in a higher-tech sector like nuclear energy, rather than a more generic category like household electronics.

“There’s still a grey area,” said one manufacturer who declined to be named, adding that there was scope for some factories to fudge such codes to avoid tariffs.

He said some U.S. customers were also proposing components be shipped to Mexico to blur the country of origin. Such a practice could technically be illegal.

More broadly, should the retaliatory trade moves escalate, and the U.S. slap tariffs on more mainstream goods like household appliances, consumer electronics or toys, the repercussions would be substantially higher.

Ye Xiaqing, with the China Household Electrical Appliance Association, told Reuters that so far, only 5 percent of household appliance exports to the U.S. were affected by the proposed increase in tariffs.

“If they impose tax on the household appliances, they’re going to raise the price and that will affect the citizens of the U.S. at the end,” said Chau, the Dongguan factory owner.

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“Donald Trump doesn’t want to do that. He’s already pissed off enough people there.”
($1 = 6.2785 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting by James Pomfret in Dongguan, Additional reporting by Wyman Ma and Tina Ge in Hong Kong, Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Martin Howell