Trump targets sick Palestinians

Palestinians protest against the US decision to stop funding UNRWA in the West Bank city of Hebron on 8 September.Wisam HashlamounAPA images

Maureen Clare Murphy- 10 September 2018

The Trump administration in Washington has slashed more than $25 million in approved aid for six hospitals in East Jerusalem providing care to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The US also announced that it is closing the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington.

The moves are the latest in a series of measures intended to bludgeon Palestinians into submitting to the White House’s “peace” process. The Palestinian Authority froze communications with the American administration in December, when Trump declared that the US would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The US announced last month that it would stop funding UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, after freezing $300 million in aid in January, throwing the body into unprecedented financial crisis.

The US has also decided to cut $200 million more in bilateral aid to the West Bank and Gaza.

The Trump administration reportedly delayed the cuts to the East Jerusalem hospitals after influential Christian supporters of the facilities lobbied for the exclusion of three of them from legislation placing severe restrictions on aid to Palestinians approved by Congress earlier this year.

Walid Nammour, director of the Augusta Victoria Hospital, told NPR’s Jerusalem correspondent that East Jerusalem hospitals weren’t notified of the the cuts.

Nammour said that US aid had been held up for months before it was finally cut this week, forcing the hospital to take out loans.

View image on Twitter

Daniel Estrin

✔@DanielEstrin

More on news that US is cutting #Palestinian medical aid: Augusta Victoria hospital director tells me the US didn't notify east Jerusalem hospitals. The hospitals give cancer/other treatments unavailable in West Bank & Gaza. The US used to pay 25% of the hospital's bills. 1/3

1:38 PM - Sep 8, 2018

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A journalist with the Israeli daily Haaretz noted that Trump’s Middle East peace envoy had praised the work of the 130-year-old St. John Eye Hospital, another institution affected by the funding cuts, as recently as March:

View image on Twitter

Jason D. Greenblatt

✔@jdgreenblatt45

Through a medical mission supported by @USAIDWBG, a team of dedicated @StJohnEyeHosp surgeons traveled to Gaza to provide critical specialized operations rarely available there. Thanks to their skilled work, this single mother has regained her eyesight.

5:19 PM - Mar 23, 2018

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Replicating Israeli cruelty in Gaza

By cutting funds for food aid programs, education and healthcare, the US is banking on the same strategy of collective punishment behind Israel’s siege on Gaza.

The blockade, imposed in 2007, has failed to achieve Israel’s aims to end Hamas’ political and military control over the interior of the territory, but has plunged the two million Palestinians living there into poverty and despair.

Daniel Seidemann@DanielSeidemann

Augusta Victoria Hospital on Mt. of Olives does God's work. Universally admired, licensed by Israel, they provide life-saving services to West Bank/Gazan Palestinians available nowhere else: oncology, pediatric dialysis etc.

This is unmitigated, unforgivable evil.

Haaretz.com

✔@haaretzcom

Trump to cut millions from E. Jerusalem hospitals; expert warns of 'collapse' https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-to-cut-budge-of-e-jerusalem-hospitals-experts-warn-collapse-1.6463851?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

4:03 AM - Sep 8, 2018

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“Let America know that all these acts will not change our position toward our cause one bit. On the contrary, it consolidates our positions toward every issue, including Jerusalem,” Adnan Husseini, Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs, told NPR.

The group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel warned that the decision to stop funding East Jerusalem hospitals may lead to the “collapse” of the Palestinian healthcare system.

“Israel – the occupier – will have to fill the void in patient care,” the group added.

Israel is not likely to fulfill its obligations under international law and provide essential services for the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza living under military occupation, and has been content for third party states to fulfill that role through aid.

But the Israeli military establishment believes that without any alternative to UNRWA, US aid cuts will lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and a “nearly inevitable” escalation in violence, Haaretzreported.

“An Israeli delegation to a donor conference in New York later this month is expected to encourage donor countries to pitch in to guarantee the continued delivery of food, education services and the salaries of the UN’s 30,000 employees in the Strip,” according to Haaretz.

Meanwhile Trump boasted of his use of humanitarian aid for political leverage during a phone call last week described by a White House transcript as including Jewish faith leaders and rabbis ahead of the Jewish new year.

“The United States was paying them [the Palestinians] tremendous amounts of money. And I’d say, you’ll get money, but we’re not paying you until we make a deal. If we don’t make a deal, we’re not paying. And that’s going to have a little impact,” Trump said.

Trump recently signed a military spending bill codifying into law a record-breaking pledge made by his predecessor to give Israel $38 billion in military assistance over 10 years.

The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, meanwhile, told an Israeli newspaper that the Trump administration has not made any challenge to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

“Israel shouldn’t have to ask permission from the US” to build settlements, Friedman told Yisrael Hayom last week.

He also denied a claim made by Trump that Israel would have to pay a price for the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

“There’s nothing expected of Israel to give in return for the embassy move,” he said.

Friedman also said that “it’s possible” that the US would recognize Israeli claims to the Golan Heights, Syrian territory seized and occupied during the 1967 War.

“I personally cannot imagine a situation in which the Golan Heights will be returned to Syria,” Friedman said.

Bolton threatens ICC

Friedman was responding to comments made by John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, who stated last month that there had been no discussion or decision made about the Golan Heights.

Bolton made clear on Monday that the US would impose sanctions or seek to criminally prosecute officials at the International Criminal Court if they pursue investigations into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan or those committed by Israel.

The situation in Palestine has been under preliminary examination by the prosecutor’s office since 2015.

“If the court comes after us, Israel, or other US allies we will not sit quietly,” Bolton said during an address to the right-wing Federalist Society in Washington.

During his speech Bolton added that the closure of the Palestine Liberation Office office in Washington was due to Palestinian efforts to prosecute Israeli leaders at The Hague.

He also said that the US would negotiate bilateral agreements to prohibit other states from surrendering Americans to the court.

In addition to breaking with decades of US policy over Israeli settlements, and enshrining US aid to Israel in law, the White House is abandoning and subverting any international body that might challenge Israeli impunity.

During last week’s phone call with Jewish leaders, Trump celebrated the withdrawal of the US from the UN Human Rights Council in June.

The US “will continue to defend Israel’s sovereign rights in all international forums,” Trump stated.

Attack on Libya's national oil firm leaves several dead

Two employees of the National Oil Corporation and two attackers reported dead after several blasts heard in Tripoli

Smoke rises from the NOC offices in Tripoli following the attack (Reuters)

Monday 10 September 2018

An assault on the headquarters of Libya's state oil firm, the National Oil Corporation (NOC), has left two security guards and two attackers dead, according to a security official. 

Monday's attack on the landmark building in Tripoli, the nation's capital, comes just a week after the UN negotiated a truce between rival factions fighting for greater control of the capital.

Forces linked to the Tripoli government published pictures of a human leg, which it said belonged to one of the gunmen who had blown himself up. 

Libya's health ministry said that in addition to the deaths, 10 people had been wounded.

"The death toll so far is two killed from NOC staff and two attackers," said Ahmad Ben Salim, spokesman for the Special Deterrence Force (Rada), a militia that operates as Tripoli's police force, which had surrounded the NOC building.

Ben Salem said "the situation is under control" and that the remains of two "suicide bombers" were found inside the building.

They were discovered on the second and third floors, he said, while identifying the two people killed in the assault as security guards.

Tripoli security chief Salah al-Semoui blamed the Islamic State group for the attack, although there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State group have previously carried out attacks in Tripoli and other Libyan towns and cities.

The UN Support Mission in Libya denounced a "cowardly terrorist attack," calling it in a statement a "blow against Libyans everywhere".

Ben Salem was not able to provide details on the identity of the attackers but the Special Deterrence Force also labelled the incident a "terrorist" attack.

NOC chairman Mustafa Sanallah, who was safely evacuated from the headquarters, told the news channel Libya 218 that staff members had been killed and others wounded, some of whom were in a "serious condition".

Several armed men were reported to have attacked the headquarters on Monday morning, with a series of blasts heard before ambulances carried wounded people away, a Reuters witness said.

"Three or five gunmen were shooting inside the building," an NOC staff member earlier told the Reuters news agency after he said he had jumped out of a window to escape. "Several people were shot."

The NOC building is covered mainly in glass, and a witness said several people had been wounded by shattered windows. 

Firefighters and onlookers gather in front of the headquarters of Libya's National Oil Company in the capital Tripoli on September 10, 2018 (Mahmud Turkia / AFP)

Security forces were smashing windows so staff could escape, witnesses said.

Libya has been divided between rival governments and military factions based in the east and west of the country since 2014, causing political deadlock and an economic crisis.

However, the NOC has continued to function relatively normally across Libya, which relies on oil exports for most of its income.

Oil production has been hit by attacks on oil facilities and blockades, though last year it partially recovered to around one million barrels per day.

‘We Live Death’: A Chronicler of Afghan Loss Is Killed on Live TV

The funeral of the journalist Samim Faramarz in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday.CreditCreditHedayatullah Amid/EPA, via Shutterstock

 

By Mujib Mashal, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi-Sept. 6, 2018

KABUL, Afghanistan — As he reported for years on the killing of civiliansaround him, the Afghan reporter Samim Faramarz grappled with the idea of mortality in a country where violent deaths are the overwhelming daily reality.

“We live death,” Mr. Faramarz, a 28-year-old reporter for the Afghan channel ToloNews, wrote on Facebook in September 2016 after a double bombing in Kabul.

“Has anyone asked who are the luckier ones: those who die in terrorist attacks and leave this world, or those who are left living to see this oppression with their own eyes,” he wrote in June 2017 after a suicide bombing inside a mosque where the poor were being fed.

This week his own death came, live on national television — the latest journalist to be killed while working to highlight the human toll of the war in Afghanistan, a 17-year conflict whose fighting is intensifying.

On Wednesday, Mr. Faramarz had finished his day’s assignment: covering what changes might come with the arrival of a new United States envoy, charged with seeking talks to end the conflict.

Then, news came of an explosion in the western part of Kabul. In the latest Islamic State attack on a civilian target, a suicide bomber had fatally shot the guard of a wrestling gym, walked in and detonated his explosives.

Mr. Faramarz and his cameraman, Ramiz Ahmady, 23, rushed to the scene, where they reported live as young men in their wrestling singlets carried bodies off the bloodied mat and onto any vehicle they could find.

 

 

The last second of Mr. Faramarz’s live report from the scene of an explosion in Kabul on Wednesday, before the blast wave from a second, much larger explosion cut off the broadcast.CreditTolo News, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

He was on air when the blast from a second, much larger explosion cut off the broadcast and killed them both, along with 24 others.

 

The reporter’s last words: “The area is completely terrorized. I can smell blood here, and as you can see in the pictures ...”

When the phones of Mr. Faramarz and Mr. Ahmady went silent after the second explosion, the TV channel’s staff started a desperate search, hospital to hospital, in the hopes of finding their colleagues alive. Then the search expanded from morgue to morgue, until their bodies were found.

“We found their bodies in the exact same place we found the bodies of our other colleagues two years ago,” Lotfullah Najafizada, the head of the channel, said of a hospital morgue in the west of the city.

Thirteen journalists have been killed in Afghanistan this year. And in less than three years, ToloNews and its parent media company have lost 11 staff members to bombings. A minibus carrying workers home was targeted by a bombing in January 2016, killing seven.

A native of Kabul, Mr. Faramarz went to school in Turkey and earned a scholarship to study in Kazakhstan. A speaker of five languages, he was considering applying for a Fulbright scholarship for a master’s degree in the United States. But he remained fiercely loyal to his homeland.

“I told him that it was a very good idea and that he should not come back to Afghanistan because this country is useless,” his brother, Tamim, said of the possibility of going to America. “He told me: ‘No, I should come back to Afghanistan. Our people are living in a tough situation — we don’t have anything to live for here. We should do something for these people.’”

Mourners at Mr. Faramarz’s funeral.CreditHedayatullah Amid/EPA, via Shutterstock

During a six-month posting in the west of the country this year, Mr. Faramarz befriended a stray kitten and brought it back with him to Kabul, and he soon took in a second kitten as well. His fellow correspondent, Tamim Hamid, recalled joking over breakfast in the ToloNews cafeteria on Tuesday about the kittens’ fate if something were to happen to Mr. Faramarz. He said the kittens could become part of his obituary.

Mr. Ahmady, the cameraman, studied law part-time and had recently started a small chicken farm on a loan.

“He had covered 10 suicide attacks, and he lost his life covering the 11th,” said Atiqullah, Mr. Ahmady’s uncle, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “I asked him many times to leave his job. He kept telling me that if he left his job and his other colleagues left, who would show the sorrow and pain of the Afghan people to the world?”

When Mr. Ahmady’s family had arrived outside the hospital morgue, they joined nearly 200 others waiting for news of loved ones. A ToloNews employee said that when he walked outside to deliver the news, it seemed that Mr. Ahmady’s father, Noorullah, could immediately tell that his son had not survived. Before the employee spoke, Noorullah asked him not to say a word. He said he didn’t need to hear. He walked away, into the distance, and asked to be left alone for a while.

Atiqullah, the uncle, said that just two weeks ago he had attended the burial of another of his nephews, a police officer killed in a Taliban attack.

“I feel that I am asleep and all this is a nightmare,” the uncle said. “I want someone to wake me up and say everything is O.K.”

At ToloNews on Wednesday, the staff was in shock after the bombing. The newsroom’s most senior leaders tried to rally a tearful crew.

Karim Amini, a correspondent, delivered the news of his colleagues’ death on the air, and for the next two hours held back his emotions to speak with guests on the set. As the camera shifted from him, he would take a deep breath and a sip of water.

“I don’t know what to ask the guests — what can one ask?” said Sadaf Amiri, his fellow anchor, who walked off the set to lean back in a chair, her eyes filled with tears.

The morning news meeting the next day, where the team discussed plans for covering the burials, was quiet. Half stayed to work, while the other half went to pay their final respects.

The anchorwomen Marzia Hafizi and Shogofa Danish talked viewers through a split-screen broadcast of the two burials, in two different parts of town.

“Dear viewers,” Ms. Hafizi began as the coffins were lowered into graves, “you are watching the burial processions of our ToloNews journalists Samim Faramarz and ...”

She choked on her words and started crying.

Ms. Danish, gathering her strength, picked up where Ms. Hafizi had trailed off.

In Mr. Faramarz’s final Facebook post, last Friday, his eloquence reflected the frustrations of a generation losing hope in the face of cruel attacks.

“In an era of passivity, fake reality and meaningless violence, what is it really that we should look up to?” he wrote. “The corrupt leaders who are dragging us into more conflicts while filling their pockets? The disputed god who is watching the whole world being destroyed in vain? Or the highly overrated democratic system which is already falling apart?”

“As of now one thing we know for sure is that the long-lasting struggle and war in our small part of the world is a direct consequence of fights over power and greed,” he continued. “What we don’t know is how much longer it is going to last and where it is taking us.”

This Is Where Iran Defeats the United States

Iraq’s Kurdish kingmakers used to side with Washington. Now, Tehran seems like a more attractive partner.

Massoud Barzani, a leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, in Iraq's Nineveh province in Nov. 2015. (Reza/Getty Images)

BY PETER W. GALBRAITH-

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018, 4:54 PM

In foreign policy, as in life, it is always a good idea to be nice to your friends, because you never know when you might need them. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Masoud Barzani, the leader of the largest Kurdish party in the Iraqi parliament, to ask for his support on an urgent foreign-policy goal: securing a second term for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, therefore blocking an Iran-backed alternative.

Once upon a time, the answer would have been an automatic yes. But last October, the Trump administration allowed a Shiite militia leader (and convicted terrorist) to use U.S.-supplied tanks in an anti-Kurdish operation directed by Qassem Suleimani, the general who heads Iran’s Quds Force. Not surprisingly, the Kurds are today less inclined to accommodate what they see as a faithless ally.

What a difference a few years makes. Back in 2010, when the United States requested Barzani—then president of Iraqi Kurdistan—to support Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bid for a second term, Barzani quickly agreed. (It was a decision that both the Kurds and U.S. diplomats subsequently regretted). And in June 2014, when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to ask Barzani to postpone a planned declaration of independence, the Kurds consented to wait until the fight against the Islamic State was over.

With a bloc of 50 seats in Iraq’s newly elected parliament (and some additional seats from Sunni allies), the Kurds are in a position to decide who will be Iraq’s next prime minister. This is because the country’s May 12 parliamentary elections ended in a stalemate between two Shiite-dominated blocs: one jointly led by Abadi and the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the other led by former Prime Minister Maliki and Hadi al-Amiri, the head of a Shiite militia. Both Maliki and Amiri have close ties to Tehran; Amiri even fought on Iran’s side during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. While the Sadr-Abadi bloc isn’t exactly anti-Iran—Sadr spent four years in exile there between 2007 and 2011, and Abadi is a member of the Iran-backed Dawa Party—they are not nearly as close to Tehran as are Amiri and Maliki. The Trump administration rightly fears that if the latter two form the next government, it will greatly increase Iran’s influence in Iraq—a huge setback for a policy intended to accomplish the opposite.

This is where the Kurds come in. Following the election, Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party formed an alliance with the other major Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Together, the Kurds then made a deal with the largest Sunni bloc, the Axis Alliance, to act together in choosing between the two Shiite blocs. These alliances give the Kurds and Sunnis collectively between 60 and 90 seats (out of 329) in the new Iraqi parliament, depending on whether the entire Axis Alliance sticks with the Kurds or parts of it make separate deals with the two Shiite blocs. Regardless of what happens to the Sunnis, the Kurds appear to be Iraq’s kingmakers. And as the leader of the largest Kurdish party, Barzani is well positioned to decide how the Kurds go.

The problem for U.S. President Donald Trump is that Barzani no longer believes he can rely on the United States.Having acceded to Kerry’s request not to declare independence when the rest of Iraq was near total collapse in 2014, the Kurdistan leadership decided last year that, with the Islamic State’s defeat imminent, it was time to realize the Kurds’ longstanding dream. In June of last year, Kurdistan’s election commission scheduled an independence referendum for Sept. 25, 2017. Throughout the summer, the Trump administration barely reacted. Then, in September, it launched a full-court press to get Barzani to postpone or cancel the vote. Two days before the referendum, then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made an offer. Should Barzani postpone the vote, the United States would engage diplomatically to resolve the problems between Erbil and Baghdad, and if the three sides couldn’t sort things out within a year, Washington would then “recognize the need for a referendum.” Barzani, however, was reluctant to trust the word of a secretary of state so obviously on his way out. On a practical level, it also would have been nearly impossible to scrap an independence referendum so fervently desired by the Kurdish people just two days before it was to take place.

The referendum passed with 93 percent in favor of independence. Abadi decided to teach the Kurds a lesson. He shut down Kurdistan’s airspace, cut off the banking system, and gave a green light to a military assault on Kirkuk, the ethnically mixed city that the Kurds had controlled since the Iraqi Army abandoned it to the Islamic State in June 2014. Rather than rely on the regular—and ineffective—Iraqi Army, Abadi let the Popular Mobilization Forces, a Shiite militia, spearhead the assault.

Abadi apparently believed that being the wartime leader who defeated the Islamic State and put the Kurds in their place would guarantee him a new term in the following year’s Iraqi parliamentary elections—he even named his electoral alliance “Nasr,” meaning “Victory.” And instead of protecting its Kurdish allies, the Trump administration allowed the Popular Mobilization Forces to use Abrams tanks—originally sold to the Iraqi Army and transferred to the Shiite militia with U.S. permission—in the attack on the Kurds. The White House seemed unfazed by the fact that Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, planned the attack and that it was led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a terrorist sentenced to death in absentia for his role in blowing up the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait City in December 1983.

The whole episode left Barzani and the Kurds both angry and shaken. Much of the anger was, and remains, focused on Abadi. As one Kurdish leader told me, “Maliki cut our budget, but Abadi attacked us.” But the attack also undermined Kurdish confidence in the United States as an ally.
Rather than do Washington any favors, therefore, the Kurds and Sunnis are now negotiating with the two Shiite blocs to see which will give them a better deal.

The Sunnis want reconstruction funds and the withdrawal of Shiite militias from their area. The Kurds have a longer list of demands based on promises made to them in Iraq’s Constitution, including guaranteed payment of their share of the federal budget, recognition of their oil rights, a national census to determine Kurdistan’s share of the federal budget, the holding of a plebiscite to determine the status of Kirkuk, the establishment of a second chamber in the Iraqi parliament, and the establishment of the constitutionally prescribed Supreme Court. (For the time being, they have moved independence off the agenda.)

So far, other than make a few budgetary payments, Abadi has refused all the Kurds’ demands. Washington’s intervention—including Pompeo’s telephone call—may actually encourage Abadi’s intransigence. In the past, the Kurds have done Washington’s bidding without Baghdad having to make concessions. Abadi may well conclude that they will come around this time again without any compromises on his part—compromises he is worried would undermine his support among the Iraqi nationalists in his camp. A top Kurdistan negotiator has told me that he believes U.S. Special Envoy Brett McGurk is encouraging just such thinking on Abadi’s part, telling him that if he can make a deal with the Sunnis, the Kurds will come around.

For all these reasons, the Kurds and Sunnis may decide to cut a deal with Amiri and Maliki instead. After all, if they can no longer count on U.S. support, then it would be better for them to come to terms with the one remaining undisputed power in the region: Iran. Unlike Abadi, Maliki has also expressed support for some Kurdish goals in recent months. And the Sunnis know that Amiri, unlike Abadi, can actually get all the Shiite militias out of their areas.

Wishful thinking has long dominated U.S. policymaking in Iraq, and the Trump administration is no exception. Like Abadi himself, the administration apparently believed that military victories would translate into an overwhelming electoral mandate for the prime minister. For Washington, sacrificing the Kurds seemed a price worth paying to empower an ally in Baghdad, especially since the relevant U.S. officials—McGurk and the now departed Tillerson—were also angry with the Kurds for having gone ahead with the referendum.

The Kurds have been the kingmakers in every Iraqi election since 2005. A more realistic U.S. policy might have considered that something similar could happen in 2018. Ignoring that history could lead to the one outcome the United States wanted to avoid in Iraq: empowering Iran.

 

Peter W. Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and the author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

Trump’s top economist says he can’t explain Trump’s false tweet on the economy

Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett said Sept. 10 he couldn't explain President Trump’s false tweet about the economy. (The Washington Post)

By Damian Paletta and and Jeff Stein-September 10 at 3:21 PM

The White House’s top economist on Monday acknowledged that President Trump had made a false statement hours earlier when he used a pair of statistics to describe the strong economy.

Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, speaking in the White House press room, said he did not know how Trump obtained the false information.

"The history of thought about how errors happen is not something I can engage in, because from the initial fact to what the president said, I don't know the whole chain of command," Hassett said.

"I'm not the chairman of the council of Twitter advisers," he added later.

On Monday morning, Trump tweeted that “The GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!”

The Washington Post, Fox News, Bloomberg News and several other news organizations published reports finding that the tweet was untrue. Such a relationship between GDP and the unemployment rate has occurred many times, most recently in the first quarter of 2006, before the financial crisis pushed the unemployment rate high and economic growth slowed markedly.

It also wasn’t clear why Trump focused on those numbers. Economists do not usually compare the GDP rate, which measures the pace of economic growth, with the unemployment rate in that way.

Hassett said the statement the president should have made is that the GDP rate rising above the unemployment rate had not happened in 10 years. Hassett said the “100 years” statement was a mistake he could not explain.

"What is true is that it's the highest in 10 years, and at some point somebody probably conveyed it to him adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that," Hassett said. "You'd have to talk to the president about where the number came from, but the correct number is 10 years."

Hassett’s press briefing was largely supportive of Trump’s record on the economy, and the comments about the erroneous Twitter post came in response to a question from a reporter.

Trump at times boasts about economic news that he sees on Fox News in the morning, but Fox was one of the news organizations that noted the Twitter post was wrong.

Top advisers usually fervently defend the president when he is accused of spreading false information.

This wasn’t the first time Hassett has weighed in on a presidential tweet. Several months ago, Trump broke precedent by issuing a Twitter post that appeared to tout government data that had not yet been released. Administration officials have historically avoided commenting on such sensitive information before it has been released to the public.

At a Washington Post event a few weeks later, Hassett said it was “probably best” for the president not to tweet before such data is announced.

Dodging debt’s death-spiral is a vain hope

All countries except a few are in an inexorable and deepening debt trap

September 8, 2018, 5:37 pm 

Sri Lanka debt outstanding (lower part domestic, upper part foreign)Source: Central Bank https://asia.ub-speeda.com/en/country-report-2017-sri-lanka-the-dollar-hungry-nation/ 

Kumar David

The well-known American economist Irving Fisher wrote "The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions" in 1933; its full relevance is unfolding now. Though Fisher is deemed the founder of the now discredited theory of neoliberalism, this paper is seminal; debt today is an ubiquitous ailment. In mighty USA government debt is $18 trillion or 105% of GDP and rising, Japan (250%), Italy (130%), France (95%), UK (90%) and to a degree Germany (65%). Little Greece (175%), Lanka (78%, $55 billion) and a legion other miserable minions are in a deep hole. The few not afflicted by spiralling debt are China (20%), oil-rich kingdoms and sheikdoms of the Middle East, Taiwan (36%) and South Korea (40%). The national debt of Singapore reads 115% but that’s an accounting oddity since large sums are stashed away by foreigners in the city state. These few examples apart, all the world’s awash in debt.

An aside about Japan is that it is a "construction state" where politicians, criminal syndicates and bureaucrats coordinate to invest in exorbitant projects (some utterly inane like the "bridge to nowhere"). Projects are financed by debt funnelled from the public via taxes and mandatory savings at rock-bottom interest rates; everyone is required to deposit savings in accounts run by the post office. The huge debt overhang is all domestic, not foreign. Another useful bit of data to know is about foreign reserves. The top five are China ($3 trillion), Japan ($1.3 trillion), Switzerland ($700 billion), Saudi Arabia ($500 billion) and Russia ($450 billion).

Ok let’s get back to the debt-spiral. Fisher’s term of choice ‘debt-deflation’ was influenced by the circumstances of the Great Depression. Many have brought his concept up to date in the context of 21st Century economic trends (for example J is for Junk Economics, Michael Hudson, publisher SLET, 2017). I propose ‘debt-spiral’ as a more appropriate term for today then debt-deflation. The bottom line is this; if a country (or a person) sinks too deep into debt it’s a pit of no return. It is not possible in the context of current global realities to beat a return to growth and liquidity even with austerity and "wise" policy choices. Greece from 2012 to today is a living example; the road from hyperinflation to Hitler is history’s horror story. The ECB, Germany and the IMF drove policies that goaded Greece into crisis; more on that in a moment after a bit of theory.

A trivial version first: Say a country’s (or individual’s) debt is 100% of GDP and the average interest rate 5% but the growth rate only 4%. Indebtedness will rise by 1% and there will be no surplus to invest. Consumption has to decline and the government, say Yahapalana will be ostracised. Indebted countries face the mathematical terror of compound interest unless exports rise quickly enough to pay down foreign debt really fast - a Sanderatne El Dorado? At 6% compound interest debt doubles in 12 years and rises four-fold in 24 years. (A rule of thumb is 72 divided by the compound rate is the years to double. At 10% compound growth a quantity will double roughly in 7.2 years and double again every further 7.2 years. Use it, the 72-Rule is a useful guideline).

A complication is that when debt grows a stage is reached when one needs to borrow to meet interest on current liabilities thus pushing one ever deeper into the trap. This truism economic pundits pussy-foot around at seminars and in newspaper columns. There is no salvation but to write off debt, however creditors and global finance capital - the 1% - won’t stand for it. Lanka maybe faces an average interest rate of about 5% and US 10-year bond yield is about 2.5%. Furthermore, say a fiscal deficit (budget deficit) of 3% is also unavoidable (or do you want revolution?). This will add another percentage point or so to annual borrowing needs. This is a double whammy and descent into the spiral accelerates. US government debt is forecast by web-site ‘Statistica’ to rise to $34 trillion by 2028. The Congressional Budget Office says it will be 150% of GDP by 2048 and interest payment will be 6.3% of GDP. Trump’s recent corporate tax cuts would have eroded these numbers further.

This is not the end; there’s a third whammy. From 2008, central banks and Western governments have bailed out banks and bondholders with direct handouts and injecting huge sums - quantitative easing (QE) which has now reached a cumulative $3 trillion. QE is not to be confused with Keynesian state- led spurring of the real economy to raise production and employment. The beneficiaries of QE are banks, bondholders, property owners, stock-market investors and Ponzi operators. The 99%, the public, do not benefit from QE which is offered to finance capital and global Wall Streets at large. A similar story is true when interest rates are held down to the floor encouraging financial bubbles. QE has led to a boom in asset prices (equities and real estate) benefitting the 1% and impoverishing the 90% - the 9% in between has had mixed luck. Absurdly the US 10-year bond yield hovers below the rate of inflation providing the government with a temporary free-lunch bonanza till the Fed is compelled to raise rates. There is so much froth building in US assets that a stock-market bust seems very likely.

Interest payments and debt trimming diverts money from capital expenditure and from production and employment creation. The Troika, IMF, ECB and European Commission, bailed out no not Greece - perish that thought - but super-rich creditors and bank bond holders and equity owners. Greece was NOT bailed out, German and European finance capital WAS. Greece continues indebted to new overlords the Troika, instead of German and European financiers. Yes, "Haircuts" (reduction of interest on some debt was allowed) and complex repayment schedules were introduced. In exchange unbearable austerity was enforced. As James Galbraith noted "There is no rescue going on. What is going on is SEIZURE of assets owned by the Greek state, businesses and households. This has nothing to do with the recovery of the Greek economy".

Seizure? When an economy crashes, privatisation is enforced and finance capital grabs public assets for a song as in Russia in 1990-95. When a country is unable to deal with debt for reasons outlined before, the final denouement is to downgrade credit-rating and declare it credit unworthy. In quick order the economy collapses (Argentina, Russia in 1990-92, Greece, Mexico and Pakistan) and privatisation is enforced as Galbraith says. China’s grab of Hambantota Port in a 99-year lease is similar.

A bitter truth is that IMF insistence on austerity during economic downturns is counterproductive. Government spending in a downturn is vital stimulation; a prescription as old as the New Deal and Keynesianism – of course that spending must be wise. Austerity (conditionality) enforced by the IMF on near insolvent countries takes money out of the productive economy, QE injects liquidity into private money markets and rock bottom interest rates lubricate acquisition of public assets by domestic and foreign capital. The IMF, IBRD and ADB are conscious of their class motives; they are knowingly with the 1%. Nowadays they do not have to pretend to be much interested in the 99%.

Indrajit Coomaraswamy, bless him, his stalwart efforts notwithstanding, cannot stand against the tide of history. He is the uncle of my buddy Jayantha, a peripatetic preacher in Australia, who beholding all the world arraigned against his uncle is leading prayers and lighting candles for the salvation of his immortal soul. Bless them both but it’s a tough call when global finance capital stands against you. The bar-chart reproduced from Central Bank sources shows inexorable growth of indebtedness – I don’t have 2017 figures but the trend is unlikely not have reversed. The trend cannot be written off merely as Rajapaksa clan thievery. In a recent column I estimated the family’s global treasure at about $0.1 billion. Lanka’s indebtedness of $55+ billion is much larger and the trend more systemic than can be attributed to graft. Corrupt governance, illicit deals with the Chinese etc., but the underlying trend is global. Water flows downhill thanks to gravity; in Sri Lanka it went down with the sewage.

In ancient times, kings and emperors wiped all debt clean every so often, maybe every five to ten years or on some auspicious occasion like victory in battle or the birth of an heir. At the end of WW II all German debt was forgiven making possible the miracle German recovery. Wiping off debts of farmers and tradesmen in the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt let agriculture, handicraft and trade make a fresh start. The relevance to modern times is that now like then, debt is mounting inexorably from production cycle to cycle and cannot be cleared by intrinsic mechanisms. There has to be some debt write off. A laxative will relieve Indrajit’s constipation and ease Jayantha’s supplications.

Debt forgiveness is bitterly opposed by the 1% - bond holders - not only in the Greek case but everywhere; think Argentina and Africa. If all the world’s in debt, who are the creditor pray? There has to be someone on the other side of the balance sheet. Ha you’ve hit the nail on the head! It’s the 1% (or 10% depending on how you count the cash) which holds 80% (what did Piketty estimate?) of global wealth. Global state-debt may be $75 trillion, say four times US government debt (I am using the logic that US GDP is a shade below a quarter of world GDP). About a third of US government borrowing is from the Social Security Trust Fund and pension funds, nominally owned by the people. Likewise I conjecture the creditor of two-thirds of all global debt is global finance capital that is the 1%. My guess could be off by five or ten percent, but surely not more. The moral of my story is that the peoples of this planet are in eternal hoc to the super-rich, the super-swamp.