‘Shipwreck’: GOP grows fearful about losing Senate as candidates struggle, Trump support tumbles

“Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and Florida. All of them too close to call,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. (Cliff Owen/AP)

By Sean Sullivan-September 11 at 8:26 PM

Republicans have grown increasingly worried about losing control of the Senate, as President Trump’s approval rating tumbles and Democrats gain steam in key battleground races.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday sounded some of the most doubtful notes of Trump’s presidency that Republicans will keep the upper chamber of Congress, telling reporters, “I hope when the smoke clears, we’ll still have a majority.”

His comments came as Republican strategists and officials fretted over a fresh round of private polling on the Senate races, while public polls registered further erosion in Americans’ approval of Trump. “Shipwreck” was how one leading strategist described the situation, adding an expletive to underscore the severity of the party’s problems.

One of the most unexpected fights is in reliably GOP Texas, where Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to fend off Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke. Republicans are so fearful about losing the seat that they are diverting resources to Texas, a sore point in the White House after the animosity between Cruz and Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

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Beyond Texas, Sen. Joe Donnelly, once seen as perhaps the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, has opened up a slight edge over Republican businessman Mike Braun in Indiana, while hopes for picking off Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) in a state Trump won by 43 percentage points have faded along with GOP confidence in state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the Republican nominee.

President Trump spoke at a fundraiser for a pair of GOP candidates, Rep. Ted Budd and Mark Harris, in Charlotte on Aug. 31. (The Washington Post)

The developments signaled the most serious peril yet for Republicans’ 51-49 majority. Losing the Senate was once an unthinkable prospect as the GOP looked to gain seats in the midterms, and with the party’s grip on the House in serious jeopardy, the chamber had been seen as the last line of defense.

At the start of Trump’s tenure, some Republicans envisioned enough wins to secure a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats, confident they could oust many of the 10 Democrats running in states Trump won in 2016. Even a few weeks ago, Republicans were talking more assuredly about flipping seats.

But less than two months till the Nov. 6 election, Republicans barely mention Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — states Trump won — as opportunities to knock out a Democrat, while McConnell reiterated that nine seats, plus Texas, were at stake.

“Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and Florida. All of them too close to call, and every one of them like a knife fight in an alley; I mean, just a brawl in every one of those places,” McConnell told reporters in Louisville.

Republicans could still emerge with an increase in their numbers if GOP candidates eventually prevail in many of these close races, with Democrats seriously concerned about Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott is running about even against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

President Trump said on Sept. 5 that his poll numbers are "through the roof" and that he will not be defeated in the next presidential election. (TWP)

The dire warnings also could serve as a wake-up call to GOP donors for the final eight weeks of the campaign.

But for the GOP, simply retaining its majority — which was whittled by a seat after a stunning upset in the Alabama special election last year — has looked like a more challenging goal by the day, as controversy swirls around Trump, the public loses confidence in the president and GOP candidates are slow to gain traction.

A Washington Post-ABC News national poll conducted in late August found just 38 percent of voters approved of the job that Trump was doing, compared with 60 percent who disapproved. His approval rating in April was 44 percent.

These difficulties have come into sharp focus in Texas, where Cruz is fighting for political survival against O’Rourke, a rising liberal star who is raising record-setting sums of cash and attracting large crowds across a ruby-red state. At the end of June, O’Rourke had close to $14 million cash on hand to Cruz’s $9 million, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

The tough realities of Texas have prompted an unexpected alliance between Cruz and the Republicans he spent years waging a vendetta against as a senator and as a candidate for president — including Trump and McConnell.

The sudden cooperation underscores how much the GOP fears losing Texas. The shock waves are being felt well beyond the state, as its several expensive media markets could force the party to spend money there that it will have to subtract from GOP hopefuls in other battlegrounds.

“Other campaigns are going to be shorted due to the lackluster nature of the campaign,” said one White House official, speaking of the Cruz operation.

McConnell recently assured Cruz in a private conversation that resources would be there for him, according to people familiar with the talk. Trump is planning to campaign for Cruz in Texas next month.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC helmed by a former top McConnell aide, has recently taken a close look at Texas, conducting polling and summarizing its findings in a memo, according to Chris Pack, a spokesman for the group.

The organization also announced a seven-figure advertising campaign in five other states on Tuesday. The ads mostly target Democratic candidates.

A Cruz-McConnell partnership would have been unimaginable when Cruz called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor in July 2015 over strategy on legislation. A Cruz-Trump alliance would have seemed equally implausible after Cruz labeled Trump a “pathological liar” and declined to endorse him at the Republican National Convention.

Beyond Trump and McConnell, Cruz angered other Republicans with his unsuccessful effort to strip funds from the Affordable Care Act in 2013, which forced a 16-day partial government shutdown, and his support for outside groups that financed primary challengers to GOP senators.

“They are working together for political expediency,” said Rick Tyler, a former Cruz spokesman. “These people don’t like each other.”

Cruz spoke about his plight at a luncheon for Republican senators earlier this summer, according to people familiar with his remarks. One GOP senator said Cruz sought to convince them that he was facing a“real race,” citing polls and noting that O’Rourke was amassing cash.

Like others interviewed for this story, the senator spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

In Texas on Tuesday, Cruz told reporters he was eager to debate O’Rourke five times. “Typically, sitting officeholders don’t suggest that many debates. They don’t want to do any debates. But the reason I proposed that is, I think we owe it to the voters of Texas.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), whom Cruz declined to endorse in his 2014 primary, is hosting a fundraiser for Cruz in Washington next month.

Public polls have shown Cruz leading O’Rourke by single digits. David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that has long championed Cruz, said donors he has spoken with have been caught off-guard by the tightness of the contest.

“I think, particularly in Texas, it’s like: ‘Oh yeah, I didn’t think it would be a big race. Yes, we need to win it. I’ll help you do that.’ And the same around the country,” McIntosh said.

Speaking to reporters in Louisville on Tuesday, McConnell called the race “competitive” but said he expected Cruz to prevail. One advantage for any Republican in the state is the ability of voters to simply cast a straight-party-ticket ballot.

Despite Trump’s poll numbers, GOP strategists still consider the president their most effective weapon in the fight to keep control of the Senate. They say his trips to red states with marquee contests, like Montana, North Dakota, Missouri and Indiana, have provided boosts for their candidates.

The Senate Leadership Fund’s new Indiana ad begins with footage of Trump praising Braun and Braun pledging to fight for the president.

Whether the bursts of momentum will last is another question party leaders are grappling with as they eye the final two months before the November elections. A steady stream of explosive stories about dissent within Trump’s administration and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation hover over the fall stretch.

Republican strategists are closely watching suburban areas, where they fear that anger with Trump could spark a backlash against GOP candidates. The suburbs loom larger over the battle for the House, with many rural states set to decide Senate contests. But Senate strategists are still mindful of the challenges they may pose.

One bright spot for the GOP has been the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Republican leaders are confident they will confirm him this month, giving Trump and his party a landmark achievement just before voting begins.

Until then, they will have to weather a political storm that has increasingly stoked private GOP comparisons to 2006, a banner election year for the Democrats. Amid that perceived danger, every competitive Senate race is becoming more critical.

Scott Clement and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

Trump Doubles Down on War in Yemen

Despite mounting violence, the United States will continue supporting airstrikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

A Yemeni man walks past burning tires in Aden on Sept. 6. (Saleh al-Obeidi/AFP/Getty Images)

BY ROBBIE GRAMER, LARA SELIGMAN-

 SEPTEMBER 12, 2018, 5:57 PM

The Trump administration certified to Congress on Wednesday that the Saudi-backed coalition fighting in Yemen’s civil war was doing everything it could to prevent civilian casualties—a move that allows the U.S. military to continue supporting the coalition.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the certification in a memo to Congress, acknowledging that civilian casualties were “far too high” but saying Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were taking steps to bring the numbers down. Foreign Policyobtained declassified portions of the memo.

August was the deadliest month this year for civilian casualties in the war, which pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the coalition-supported forces. Most of the civilian casualties came from the Saudi-led attacks, according to the international humanitarian aid group Oxfam. This includes a U.S. bomb the Saudi coalition dropped on a school bus that killed dozens of children last month, sparking widespread condemnation.

The United States provides aerial refueling support to coalition aircraft involved in the campaign and also trains and advises the Saudi military to help improve targeting.

In a statement released Wednesday, Pompeo said the Gulf nations were “undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.” Defense Secretary James Mattis indicated his support for the certification in a similar statement released by the Pentagon.
The announcement drew swift rebukes from humanitarian organizations and several lawmakers leading the fight to pare down U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition.

“Pompeo’s ‘certification’ is a farce,” Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat and a leading critic of the U.S. role in the Yemen conflict, said in a tweet Wednesday.

“The Saudis deliberately bombed a bus full of children. There is only one moral answer, and that is to end our support for their intervention in Yemen. If this executive will not do it, then Congress must pass a War Powers Resolution,” he said.

The certification, which was required by Congress to release federal funding, came after months of fierce behind-the-scenes fighting between Capitol Hill and the Trump administration as lawmakers soured on U.S. support to the Saudis and Emiratis.

Michael Knights, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the coalition’s use of U.S.-made precision-guided munitions and U.S. refueling support does in fact reduce civilian casualties. Aerial refueling allows coalition aircraft to stay in the air longer so “they don’t have to hurry so much when they are undertaking strike operations,” he said.

Knights posited that the administration and Congress may be playing good cop, bad cop with the Saudis in order to pressure Riyadh into reducing the number of high-risk strikes.

“When you have a Congress that is threatening to cut off access to Saudi [precision-guided munitions] and refueling, it does strengthen the hand of the administration,” he said.

Under a provision in the defense policy bill, Congress required Pompeo to repeatedly certify that the coalition was fulfilling several objectives to continue to receive U.S. assistance. Congress requires Pompeo to recertify again in 180 days and a third time 360 days after the bill was signed into law.

The certification said the Saudi-led coalition was making good faith efforts to peacefully negotiate the end of the conflict, taking “appropriate measures” to reduce the widespread humanitarian crisis, and undertaking “demonstrable actions” to reduce civilian casualties. Pompeo positively certified that it was doing all three.

Pompeo said the coalition was taking concrete steps to reduce the number of civilians it killed. This included creating a “no-strike list” for its bombing campaign and committing to a $750 million U.S.-provided training program for the Royal Saudi Air Force to “reduce risk of civilian casualties.”

In the memo, Pompeo touted Saudi and Emirati humanitarian assistance to the war-wracked country, citing Riyadh’s $2 billion commitment in economic support to Yemen’s Central Bank and $1.5 billion to address humanitarian needs. In 2018, Pompeo said, the UAE separately provided $3.81 billion in humanitarian assistance to Yemen.

Notably, the memo also said Saudi Arabia and the UAE comply with applicable U.S. law on arms transfers and sales—“with rare exception”—but did not elaborate on what the exceptions were.
Despite the flood of cash, Yemen remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations. More than 22 million people, nearly three-fourths of the total population, require humanitarian aid and protection, and some 8 million people are at risk of starvation. There is little publicly available data on the total death toll, but estimates from the U.N. and other analysts put it at between 10,000 and 50,000.

Some experts and humanitarian aid workers saw Pompeo’s announcement on Yemen—and the congressional directive—as little more than a rubber stamp and sharply criticized Pompeo’s announcement.

“If ending the conflict in Yemen were really a national security priority for the United States, the U.S. government would use its considerable influence to stop the killing,” said Scott Paul, an expert on Yemen at Oxfam America.

He said the bombing was destroying critical civilian infrastructure, exacerbating the widespread humanitarian crisis.

US withdrawal from Iran’s international nuclear agreement: Winners and losers

 Wednesday, 12 September 2018

1. Introduction

The aim of this article is to examine the US withdrawal from Iran’s international nuclear agreement known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and analyse its consequences.

JCPOA is an agreement on the nuclear program of Iran that reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015 between Iran, the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States – Plus Germany), and the European Union. The nuclear agreement was endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and adopted on July 2015.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified that Iran has implemented its key nuclear-related measures described in the JCPOA and the Secretary State has confirmed the IAEA’s verification. As a result of Iran verifiably meeting its nuclear commitments, the United States and the EU have lifted nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, as described in the JCPOA.

According to JCPOA Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years. For the next 15 years Iran will only enrich uranium up to 3.67%. Iran also agreed not to build any new heavy-water facilities for the same period of time.

Uranium-enrichment activities will be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges for 10 years. Other facilities will be converted to avoid proliferation risks. To monitor and verify Iran's compliance with the agreement, the IAEA will have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities. The agreement provides that in return for verifiably abiding by its commitments, Iran will receive relief from U.S., European Union (EU), and the UN  Security Council, etc.

It has been three years since the JCPOA has signed and it is in place. However on 13 October 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally announced that the United States would not make the certification provided for under US domestic law, but stopped short of terminating the deal.

On 30 April, the United States and Israel stated that Iran did not disclose a past covert nuclear weapons program to the IAEA, which was required in the 2015 agreement. On 8 May, President Trump officially announced that the United States would withdraw from the JCPOA and terminate it. In fact, it is not a surprising one to Iran but rather it was expected by many countries. On many occasions US President Donald Trump expressed his dissatisfaction over the JCPOA and continuously criticised it over and over again. For him (Donald Trump) it was one of the “worst deal’’ that was signed by the US and other member states with Iran.

President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran-international nuclear deal may benefit only three countries while hurting many others. Trump spent months railing against the Iran-international deal and threatening to pull the US out. Finally Donald Trump did alone what he always wanted.

Losers: US, Israel

and Saudi Arabian

Donald Trump is a big loser on JCPOA. By withdrawing the agreement which was in place for over two years he insulted his predecessor, former President Barak Obama. It is a great humiliation to the US. Donald Trump was misused by Israel and Saudi Arabia to achieve their goals and ensure their interest in the Middle East Region.

It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the United States to exit Iran’s international nuclear deal. He gave a televised presentation of Israeli intelligence a few months ago that was a naked attempt to convince Trump to quit the deal. Netanyahu’s wasn’t the only Middle East country to hope for the deal’s demise. Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman has long opposed the agreement and mounted a quiet lobbying campaign to kill it. He has befriended Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and no doubt talked his ear off about the deal.

These two men lead very different countries, but they had basically converged on a similar worldview: Iran’s regional influence is the greatest concern to their country’s and needs to be confronted directly. They felt the Iran deal was dangerous both because of perceived flaws in the agreement itself and because it brought the United States and Iran closer together. The deal, in their view, made the United States too accommodating of Iran, too unwilling to challenge its broader regional wrongdoing in places like Syria and Yemen — and thus, it had to go.

“For them, this comes down to: The only way to keep the United States engaged in the region, and provide a security blanket for Saudis and Israelis is to make sure Iran is not normalised through this set of international and regional agreements,” Hussein Banai, an expert on US-Iran relations at Indiana University Bloomington, tells me.

That risk is now gone, at least for the time being. With Trump re-imposing sanctions on Iran and unilaterally exiting the agreement, the US and Iran may be on a collision course. This may play out politically, economically, or militarily but however it ends up, it’s hard to imagine the US growing closer to Iran as long as Trump is in office. The lobbying campaign, in other words, paid off.

The one side withdrawal of JCPOA has brought a discredit to Donald Trump both within the US and outside the country. People in the US are not happy about his withdrawal. Many business men both in Iran and US are in great trouble. They cannot do their business activities in a proper way.  It may bring some restrictions to their business activities in the future.

In the meantime, the people outside of US also very unhappy about this withdrawal. The JCPOA is a multilateral agreement where over six countries have signed the agreement and committed to move forward. Withdrawal of JCPOA is a violation of UN resolution. It shows that US has no respect on UN or any other member countries. US, Israel aqnd Saudi Arabia are the great losers on JCPOA.

Winners: Iran, EU

and other Members

Although US President Donald Trump withdrew the JCPOA still the other UN permanent member states: UK, France, China, Russia and European Union are with Iran. None of the countries withdrew their nuclear deal yet. It seems the JCPOA still valid and Iran can join hands with other member countries in terms of political, economic, social and other aspects.

Right after the JCPOA many EU countries began to trade with Iran and some of them have already invested in Iran for their economic purposes. None of these countries are ready to withdraw their financial deposit just because of Donald Trump, nor are they ready to fall in line with what these three countries – US, Israel and Saudi Arabia – wanted to do for Iran.
References

1.Iran-United States relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations

2.Nuclear Program of Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran

3.Iran nuclear crisis: Six key points http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32114862

4.Uncertainty over Iran nuclear agreement could heighten economic tensions with Europe https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/10/uncertainty-over-iran-nuclear-agreement-could-heighten-economic-tensions-europe/750926001/

5.The historic deal that will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/328996 

Off to Turkey: Iranians flee one troubled economy for another

Iran’s economic crisis has sent Iranians – and their savings – to Turkey, a new wave of immigrants on a well-worn path

ranians have bought more Turkish properties in 2018 than all of last year (Iconicbestiary/Freepik.com)

Rohollah Faghihi-Ece Goksedef-Wednesday 12 September 2018 

TEHRAN and ISTANBUL – His parents begged him to stay, but soon 33-year-old Darush Mozafari will leave Iran for Turkey, possibly forever.

Over the past decade, the civil engineering graduate has worked a variety of jobs, saving up for an eventual move.

Iran’s recent economic crisis has sped up his plans: he’s submitted his letter of resignation at the construction company where he works.

To survive and to have a better life, we chose to migrate to Turkey,

- Ali, Iranian living in Ankara.

However, he’ll be leaving with much lighter pockets than he had hoped after the rial lost around two-thirds of its value against the dollar this year.

“Over one night, I lost half of it after the US president issued an ultimatum and then killed the nuclear deal,” Mozafari said, sitting at an immigration company to finalise paperwork for his visa.

Darush is not the only one leaving Iran. Although official statistics haven’t been released, immigration advisors in the country say the numbers of Iranians who have decided to start a new life elsewhere has jumped significantly.

And for many, that next home is Turkey.  

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when nearly two million fled to Turkey, Iranians have tread a well-worn path to their neighbouring country for a variety of economic, religious and social reasons, particularly at times of political upheaval.

Many have come to study, start a new business or invest in property, saying they find better quality education and greater employment and investment opportunities.

And now the currency crisis in Iran has set off yet another wave, but this time those willing to make the move will be trading one troubled economy for another.

The value of the Turkish lira has plummeted by more than 40 percent since the start of the year amid concern over the country’s monetary policy and as a diplomatic row between Ankara and Washington has intensified.

But this hasn’t put off Iranians. According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, TUIK, the number of properties bought by Iranians in Turkey jumped in the first six months of the year to 944 compared to 792 in all of 2017.

Their motivations include readily available loans from Turkish banks and a sense that their assets, which are currently losing value in Iran, will be in a safe place – or at least a safer place.

“To survive and to have a better life, we chose to migrate to Turkey,” said Ali, an Iranian living in Ankara. 

“Iranian currency has lost its value, even against Turkey’s," he says. Still, the Turkish lira is more affordable for Iranians than the euro or the dollar.

"That’s why Iranian’s first step would always be Turkey, even when they actually want to migrate to Europe or America.”

Home sweet home?

Google "buying house in Turkey" in Persian and tens of pages will turn up, each suggesting a new way to buy a home or get a residency permit.

Reza Kami, chairman of the Iran-Turkey Chamber of Commerce, based in Tehran said Iranians have purchased around 1,000 homes and apartments in Turkey since the spring. Most are worth between $50,000 and $200,000, and the purchaser is automatically qualified for a residency permit.

Despite this, many of the purchases are most likely purely for investment, Kami said.

"Besides easy regulations and no need to get visas, people's predictions about their assets losing their value have played a key role in their decisions,” he said.

Mohsen Azarnejad, a consultant at a private emigration company, disagrees: for most Iranians buying property in the country, Turkey is home sweet home.

"People are mostly going to Turkey in order to live there,” Arzanejad said. “This wave has been intensified during the past four months."

Istanbul, and the resort towns of Antalya and Alanya are the three main cities that Iranians prefer, he said.

Antalya is one of the top three places Iranians are buying property, says Mohsen Azarnejad (Max Pixel)

But given Turkey’s own financial woes and contentious relations with the US, now may not be the moment for leaving Iran behind, said Hassan Sabouri, a consultant for a different emigration company.

"People are going to Turkey for both life and emigration. But I don’t personally advise anyone to sell everything he has in Iran and go to Turkey to live,” he said. “That is an unpredictable future and it is too risky.”

‘I feel free here’

But for many Iranians, moving to Turkey has been about more about prospects for education and employment than cold hard investment.

An Iranian who has been in Turkey for eight years and works in the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM), one of the biggest organisations helping immigrants in Turkey, told MEE that in the past six months, the number of Iranian migrants who have come to ASAM for guidance has increased by 25 percent. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to give interviews.

Some are coming with saved money and will try to find work or start a business.

The quality of education is not good in Iran, and also it’s not a perfect place for youth. There is social pressure, religious pressure. I feel free here in Turkey

- Ali, Iranian living in Turkey

“If they can earn more and settle down, they call their relatives or friends who are jobless or cannot earn enough in Iran. Some of them open new businesses in Turkey, partnering with a Turkish citizen, which makes the paperwork and official process much easier,” he said.

Others will be students whose parents can afford to send them to study in Turkey, who may later seek asylum in Europe, the US and Canada after graduation because “it’s easier to go to the West from Turkey than it is in Iran,” he said.

Seven years ago, Ali was one of these students. Originally from Tehran, Ali came to study and now works for a foundation run by a government ministry. Ali is an Azeri Turk, a Turkish-speaking ethnic group mostly concentrated in northwest Iran, along the Turkish, Armenian and Azerbaijan borders, and estimated to make up one-fourth of Iran’s population.

“Some of them say they are facing discrimination,” he said. “But in Tehran, I never experienced such discrimination.”

Studying abroad was always Ali’s dream, following in the footsteps of cousins and friends. “The quality of education is not good in Iran, and also it’s not a perfect place for youth. There is social pressure, religious pressure. I feel free here in Turkey,” he said.

University students at an Istanbul library (AFP)

With the savings from the small shop his father runs, Ali’s family was able to send him to Turkey.

“They could save some money for me out of concerns for my future. We didn’t know if I could find a job after graduation, because there are so many jobless people in Iran. There are people around us who can’t find a job for many years,” he said.

“My father bought my ticket to Ankara and put some money in my pocket.”

Under an agreement between Turkey and Iran, citizens of both countries can travel to the other country without a visa and stay for 90 days as tourists.

“In these 90 days, I could easily adapt because I know Turkish. I took the university entrance exam and later started my education in Ankara University, in the department of history. I graduated in 2015,” he said.

Ali said he wasn’t sure if he would stay after university when he first arrived. But as the years have rolled by, and particularly as the economic crisis unfolds in Iran, he said he is going to stay right where he is.

Contribution of education towards national reconciliation

Commemorating the 50th Death Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.

Luther King Jr.

 2018-09-12

.Having a bitter experience of the thirty-year-old war, we have come to feel the need of national reconciliation. This has been so often expressed by the country’s present leaders. When discussing national reconciliation, Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil society activist, plays an important role in his views. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to look at how the education system of a country can be responded to in the exercise of national reconciliation. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was an American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner and one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. King’s challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped to convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States. After his assassination in 1968, King became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice. 

They relate to educational content, language policy and teacher training

The most memorable speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from his life as an activist, “I Have a Dream,” was delivered August 28, 1963 before more than 200,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The main message of the speech is that we should consolidate rights and freedom of human beings. It means every person in a society must be recognised as a human being and should have equal opportunities to education and other matters and the basis of reconciliation is equality and humanity. The sub messages of the speech are how important the principles of racial equality and nonviolent, social change, social justice, and human dignity to fulfilled Martin Luther King’s vision of the country as a place of true equality. Our world is becoming smaller and ever more interdependent with the rapid growth of technology and increasing contact between people and governments. In this light, it is important to reassess the rights and responsibilities of individuals, people and nations in relation to each other and to the world as a whole.

King’s was a vision of a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood would be a reality in all of social life. In his mind, such a community would be the ideal corporate expression Integration, as King understood it, is much more inclusive and positive than desegregation. Desegregation is essentially negative in that it eliminates discrimination whereas desegregation can be brought about by laws; integration requires a change in attitudes. It involves personal and social relationships that are created by love and these cannot be legislated. Once segregation has been abolished and desegregation accomplished, blacks and whites will have to learn to relate to each other across those non rational, psychological barriers which have traditionally separated them in their society. His assumption that human existence is social in nature, the solidarity of the human family is the most important factor. Liberalism and individualism provided its theoretical and philosophical foundations, and nonviolence the means to attain it. A Vision of Total Relatedness with a stagnant equality of sameness Stanza of the civil rights movement’s, the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness and meaningful relationships with other persons.
 The civil rights movement provides Justice for Everyone Obviously. The mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood In King’s view, the interrelatedness of human existence means that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

How to respond to the ideas of Martin Luther King

The great majority of countries worldwide can be characterised as multi-ethnic or multi-cultural societies. Countries are either multi-ethnic because their societies are naturally composed of different ethnic group (majority and minority groups, including indigenous populations), or because they have experienced long-standing migration. Education systems within any country have been planed and constructed to forge identities and foster loyalties, but also have the potential or either easing or exacerbating ethnic conflict through the way, it is organized and delivered to different ethnic groups. The school is where life chances are distributed-often unequally and thus may either favour or hamper social mobility of different ethnic groups.

 It is important to reassess the rights and responsibilities of individuals

This is why the policy forum explored three different models of organising education systems for addressing ethnic and cultural diversity in terms of their intellectual roots and philosophy, as well as their principles of organization and implementation: (a) the integration model where individual merit which was gained by personally, decides personal future; (b) the multicultural model whereby diverse groups – both migrant and indigenous – cultivate differences within the same unitary system in terms of language of instruction and ethnically sensitive content; and (c) the parallel model whereby different segments of the school system are designed to cater to different linguistic or ethnic groups. 

These are the three particular areas where policy-makers and educational planers can make a difference in the context of multi-ethnicity. They relate to educational content, language policy and teacher training. With regard to educational content, the policy forum discussed whether there should be a single universal set of content for all students, or if there is room for specificity of content relating to the various ethnic groups. In other words, they need to be prepared for teaching in an environment that is very different from the one in which they themselves went to school, and one that is continually adapting to the changing demography.

The main message of the speech is that we should consolidate rights and freedom of human beings

Therefore, beyond the elaborate structures of system of education, a key consideration for democracies is the strength of education institutions to prevail over private or non-state actors, from corporations to warlords. Also, education is to have an impact on societies that face ethnic and cultural diversity, it is the society that has to consciously accept such diversity and work towards assimilating the diverse cultural and different ethnicities in to the main national stream and so only can have such societies to create a truly effective plural educational system. This is the only way to make the Dream of Martin Luther King, a reality.

(The writer is the Deputy Director of Education (Planning) at the Provincial Department of Education-Southern)   

For India's poorest, an Aadhaar card can be the difference between life and death

FILE PHOTO: A woman goes through the process of eye scanning for Unique Identification (UID) database system at an enrolment centre at Merta district in Rajasthan, February 21, 2013. REUTERS/Mansi Thapliyal/File photo

Mayank Bhardwaj-SEPTEMBER 12, 2018

RAMGARH, India (Reuters) - Prem Malhar says his 50-year-old father died of hunger a few months ago because he did not have the government’s Aadhaar identity card that would have given him access to subsidised food.

At least 14 people have died of starvation in Jharkhand, the state where the Malhars live, activists say. They say the deaths have occurred since authorities cancelled old handwritten government ration cards last year and replaced them with the biometric Aadhaar card to weed out bogus beneficiaries.

Taramani Sahu, an activist with the Right to Food Campaign, blamed the Jharkhand government for delays in issuing the Aadhaar cards after one million old cards were cancelled. For some who depended on the rations for subsistence, the results were fatal, she said.

In July, three sisters under the age of 10 died of hunger in New Delhi, sparking accusations of government apathy. The deaths were not linked to possession of the Aadhaar card, but there has been widespread outrage that people are dying of hunger in a country where, according to government and industry data, grains and produce worth 580 billion rupees ($8 billion), or 40 percent of total output, go to waste every year.

Opposition parties have seized on the issue ahead of three big state elections this year and the national election in 2019, whittling into support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Modi’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the starvation deaths.
Nishikant Dubey, a BJP lawmaker and a member of a parliamentary panel on the Aadhaar policy, said linking the card to welfare programmes was the best way to check siphoning off funds meant for the poor.

On the deaths, he said: “The opposition is being irresponsible by blowing it out of proportion for political mileage.”

Malhar, who lives in a hut made of twigs, leaves and mud in a hamlet near the town of Ramgarh, says he and his brother now have the Aadhaar cards, but are still not eligible for subsidised food because of what he called “bureaucratic ineptness”.

“My father died because he couldn’t get his Aadhaar card during his lifetime and I’m not getting food because my Aadhaar card is not linked with the ration shop,” said the 25-year-old, dressed in a red vest and tattered trousers.

Reuters spoke to three ration shop owners in the area who said they could not give subsidised food to those who did not have Aadhaar cards or failed the biometric identification process. They said the Malhars’ cards were not linked to the system because that had to be done by another government department.

In the state capital, Ranchi, Jharkhand’s food minister Saryu Rai said he had ordered local officials to distribute subsidised food to the poor even if they didn’t possess the Aadhaar card. But activists say those orders have not been transmitted to the shop level.

Rai told Reuters it was not clear that the deaths in Jharkhand had occurred because of starvation. Officials have previously said people had died because of illness, not lack of food.

“There must be a system to know what constitutes starvation deaths and I welcome food activists to work with us on this,” Rai said.

DIGITISE ECONOMY

Officials in other states say they have eased rules that insist on Aadhaar. Still, activists claim that the decree has deprived some families of subsidised food in Rajasthan, that is also ruled by the BJP.

Aadhaar is part of an ambitious effort to digitise India’s economy, and almost all transactions with the government are dependent on the card, including banking, food subsidies and tax and other payments.

Among other things, the government says the use of Aadhaar will plug theft and leakages in the $23.63 billion a year food welfare programme that guarantees ultra-cheap rice and wheat to nearly two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people.

Nearly a third of the food meant for the poor gets stolen every year, with middlemen, traders and government employees colluding to sell the produce in the open market, economists estimate. The government says nearly 30 million fake and duplicate cards have been weeded out, saving about $2.35 billion.

But in a vast nation where many of the people are unschooled and dirt poor, the Aadhaar system is far from foolproof.

FILE PHOTO: A woman goes through the process of finger scanning for the Unique Identification (UID) database system, also known as Aadhaar, at a registration centre in New Delhi, January 17, 2018. REUTERS/Saumya Khandelwal/File photo

Some of the poor have not enrolled in the programme, or their fingerprints do not match those on the database, the largest in the world. Others suffer because the identification system requires functioning electricity, an internet connection and operational servers, not always assured in interior India.

Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive of the Unique Identification Authority Of India that runs the Aadhaar programme, has said that connectivity and power problems do crop up, but added authorities have been told not to withhold social benefits if people can provide other, acceptable identification.

“People are dying because of government callousness,” said Hemant Soren, the leader of the opposition and a former chief minister of Jharkhand. “Mark my words, voters will teach them a lesson in the next election.”

In the hamlet near Ramgarh, Malhar and other men took shelter under a tree as a light drizzle came down, seeping through the makeshift roofs of their huts. They were joined by some women who said they were struggling to light damp firewood inside their huts.

Malhar lives with his 22-year-old brother Videshi in the hut with four other family members - their sole possessions are a few utensils and clothes that look like rags. They subsist on the brothers earning between 70 cents to $2.70 per day, picking through trash or working nearby rice paddies.

“We’ve lost our faith in the government which is responsible for my father’s death,” said Prem Malhar. “The most unfortunate part is that authorities still continue to be callous and their callousness is starving poor families like ours.”

($1 = 71.94 rupees)

Racist, sexist or out of order: Serena Williams debate

Fatima Manji-10 Sep 2018Reporter

The governing body of women’s tennis has backed Serena William’s claim that it was “sexism” that led to her being penalised in the final of the US Tennis Open.

She lost the match, but her outbursts at the umpire and the penalties levied have led to the tennis world taking a long hard look at whether the men and women players are treated equally.

Hanoi’s city dwellers told to stop eating famed dog meat dishes

(File) This photo taken on July 26, 2012 shows dogs waiting to be slaughtered for meat at a dog slaughterhouse in Hanoi. Hanoi officials urged residents on September 11 to ease off eating dog meat, saying the popular dish is tarnishing the city's image and risks spreading rabies. Source: AFP

 12th September 2018

VIETNAM’S capital of Hanoi has urged residents to stop consuming dog meat in a bid to protect the city’s image and prevent the spread of rabies.

Famed for its tasty street food, roasted, boiled or steamed dog meat can easily be found in markets and food shops across the capital. Traditionally, the meat is eaten with rice wine or beer.

However, Hanoi’s People’s Committee on Tuesday warned residents against eating dog meat to prevent rabies infections and other animal-borne diseases, according to the AFP.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia could be Asia’s bright spot in war against dog meat

Other than dog meat, the committee called for an end to the consumption of cat meat, commonly served as “little tiger” on menus in the country. While the delicacy is less popular than dog meat in the city, feline dishes are fairly common in rural areas.

In a statement, the city government pointed out the cruel practices used to kill the animals, expressing hope that it could gradually be phased out.

The city’s committee said it wants to preserve Hanoi’s reputation as a “civilised and modern capital” in the eyes of foreigners, who mostly believe the consumption of domesticated animals and pets were taboo.

This photo taken on July 26, 2012 shows slaughtered dogs hanging up for sale in front of a dog meat shop on a street in Hanoi. Hanoi officials urged residents on September 11 to ease off eating dog meat, saying the popular dish is tarnishing the city’s image and risks spreading rabies. Source: AFP

Hanoi is home to nearly half a million dogs and cats, the majority of which are kept as pets. But the city is also littered with over 1,000 shops selling the animal meat.

Vietnam consumes five million dogs every year, the Asia Canine Protection Alliance said earlier, while China is estimated to consume about 10 million dogs a year.

SEE ALSO: Deadly as well as disgusting? Dog meat targeted by activists in Indonesia  

The animal rights group estimated over 30 million dogs are slaughtered for meat across Asia each year and the consumption continues unabated despite many campaigns calling for their end.

According to official figures, Hanoi has recorded three deaths from rabies since the beginning of the year while two others were confirmed infected with the disease.

Tests show E coli killed British tourist couple, says Egypt prosecutor

Deaths of John and Susan Cooper while on holiday at Red Sea hotel blamed on bacteria

John and Susan Cooper died on holiday in Hurghada. Photograph: Blue Sky hotel/Facebook

Haroon Siddique, Kevin Rawlinsonand Ruth Michaelson in Cairo-Wed 12 Sep 2018 19.02 BST

The deaths of a British couple who were staying at a hotel in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Hurghada were caused by E coli bacteria, according to test results released by Egypt’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday.

John Cooper, 69, had acute intestinal dysentery caused by E coli, and 63-year-old Susan Cooper had haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), probably because of E coli, said the Egyptian general prosecutor Nabil Sadek.

He said the couple’s bodies showed “no criminal violence”; other tests on air and water at the hotel found nothing unusual. Thomas Cook evacuated 300 guests from the hotel as a precaution.

Their daughter, Kelly Ormerod, who was with them the night before they died, has said they used perfume to mask a strange odour in the room.

The forensic report denied there had been any leakage of harmful gases into the room. However, it detailed how the “unknown smell” noticed by Ormerod was “due to a leak of insecticide used in the next room”.

he report added that the insecticide, lambda-cyhalothrin, a chemical commonly used to control pests in home gardening or in agriculture to prevent insects eating crops, was safe to use, and denied that it had anything to do with the deaths.

The report added that the postmortems showed John Cooper died from a cardiac arrest after blockages to an estimated 80% of the veins in his heart. He also tested positive for the E coli bacteria, which caused the vomiting and diarrhoea he experienced shortly before his death. The report adds that he had consumed alcohol and hash, a kind of marijuana. There is no indication in the report that either contributed to his death.

Susan Cooper is detailed in the report as suffering from Hemolytic uremic syndrome, a condition that affects blood vessels and blood, and often occurs after people are infected with E coli. The report mentions that it was suggested that she contracted E coli “as she was staying with her husband and had eaten the same food”.

The report also states that at 11.30am on the day they died, the Coopers’ daughter called doctors in the hotel to examine her parents. John Cooper was experiencing diarrhoea and vomiting and the “doctors gave him medicine they thought was appropriate, this being Ringer’s solution (rehydration salts) and a dexamethasone injection, a corticosteroid”. His condition worsened and he died in his room.

Ormerod said she had “no faith” in the Egyptian authorities’ claims, saying she wanted more transparency and would wait for the results of tests done by the UK Home Office before coming to any conclusions about how her parents died.

“Thomas Cook put a report out that there were high levels of E coli at the hotel. Whether the Egyptians have honed in on that, I have no idea.”

She expressed doubt that anyone could die so shortly after exposure to the bacteria, accusing the Egyptian authorities of seeking a quick answer in order to protect the nation’s tourism industry.

“I don’t know what tests they have done. The report I have seen, from the media, not sent to me, was very, very brief ... Exactly what have they tested for?”

She said she had been told the UK authorities were due to carry out a postmortem examination soon.
Thomas Cook said it was clear “something went wrong in August at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic hotel in Hurghada and that standards fell below what we expect from our hotel partners”.

The travel company said high levels of E coli and bacteria that could cause toxic shock syndrome were found at the hotel. Guests reported that some people were so ill they defecated involuntarily in the swimming pools, and some complained of being served undercooked and raw chicken as well as drinks from dirty glasses.

The Steigenberger hotel said: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic deaths. All of our thoughts are with the family. In addition to our full support of the authorities, the tour operator and the franchise partner, we are highly engaged in running our own investigations.”

After the attorney general’s reports release on Wednesday, Egypt’s tourism minister, Rania al-Mashat, said: “The causes of death, E coli bacteria, were medically determined by a team of internationally accredited pathologists, which I hope for the family’s sake will put an end to previous speculative suggestions of what might have happened.

“We will review the attorney general’s autopsy reports in fine detail to determine our next course of action to look after the welfare of our visitors.”

Thomas Cook is preparing a compensation package for customers who reported an illness while staying at the hotel in August. It has also rolled out a programme of “specialist hygiene assessments”
to all its hotels that experience a higher-than-average reported level of sickness.

A spokesman said

it had yet to see the Egyptian prosecutors’ full report adding: “We will need time for our own experts to review it. We are deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of John and Susan Cooper. We will continue to offer every support to their daughter Kelly and the rest of their family.”
Additional reporting by Adham Youssef