FILE PHOTO: A demonstrator holds a poster with a picture of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Turkey October 25, 2018. REUTERS/Osman Orsal/File Photo
DECEMBER 18, 2018
PARIS (Reuters) - The murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a year when more than half of all journalists killed were targeted deliberately reflects a hatred of the media in many areas of society, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday.
At least 63 professional journalists around the world were killed doing their jobs in 2018, RSF said, a 15 percent increase on last year. The number of fatalities rises to 80 when including all media workers and citizen journalists.
“The hatred of journalists that is voiced ... by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
Khashoggi, a royal insider who became a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and began writing for the Washington Post after moving to the United States last year, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
Khashoggi’s death sparked global outrage. Saudi officials have rejected accusations that the crown prince ordered his death.
The Paris-based body said that the three most dangerous countries for journalists to work in were Afghanistan, Syria and Mexico.
Meanwhile, the shooting of five employees of the Capital Gazette newspaper propelled the United States into the ranks of the most dangerous countries.
The media freedom organisation said 348 journalists are being detained worldwide, compared with 326 at this time in 2017. China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold more than half the world’s imprisoned journalists.
Two senior Saudi officials fired over their involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi were key actors in the covert relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Saud al-Qahtani, former royal court adviser, and Ahmed al-Assiri, former deputy intelligence chief, were dismissed from their posts over their suspected involvement in the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.
The two were fired amid a spate of dismissals and arrests by Saudi authorities aiming to deflect international attention from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler widely suspected of a direct role in the plot to kill Khashoggi.
Al-Qahtani “issued directives to the Saudi press to help soften Israel’s image in the kingdom,” the Journalreported.
Al-Assiri “secretly traveled to Israel on several occasions, making him the most senior Saudi official known to have set foot in the country,” according to the Journal.
Israeli daily Haaretzrevealed in November that Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group had offered the Saudi government advanced spyware that can breach a person’s phone and obtain immense amounts of data.
Representatives of NSO Group met with Abdullah al-Malihi, a close associate of a former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services, and Nasser al-Qahtani, a top Saudi official close to the crown prince, in June 2017 in Vienna, according to Haaretz.
The Saudis expressed interest in NSO’s technology at the meeting, and an agreement was later struck to sell the system to the Saudis for $55 million.
Saud al-Qahtani “was the key player in all of this,” an unnamed Saudi official told the Journal. “He wanted the best and he knew that Israeli firms offered the best.”
“The Saudi government, meanwhile, has been weighing an investment of at least $100 million in various Israeli technology companies, according to people familiar with the deal,” the Journal reported.
The firing of the two officials could strain Saudi-Israeli relations, but not irreversibly.
Israel and its lobby wanted the crown prince to get away the Khashoggi killing, as he’s seen as Israel’s key regional ally and a gateway to closer relationships with rulers in other Gulf states.
Sacrificing the two officials may be seen as a worthwhile price if it helps stabilize the crown prince’s grip on power.
Bahrain normalizes
Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa defended Australia’s decision to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, contradicting the official position of the Arab League.
كلام مرسل و غير مسؤول . موقف استراليا لا يمس المطالب الفلسطينية المشروعة و اولها القدس الشرقية عاصمة لفلسطين و لا يختلف مع المبادرة العربية للسلام و الجامعة العربية سيدة العارفين .http://bit.ly/2QWPdcm
“These words are irresponsible,” Khalifa tweeted in reference to the Arab League’s condemnation of Canberra’s decision.
“Australia’s position is without prejudice to official Palestinian demands, the first of which is East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and it does not contradict the Arab Peace Initiative and the Arab League.”
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary-general of the Arab League, criticized Australia’s decision, stating that it “clashes with international law and inalienable Palestinian rights.”
Aboul Gheit called on “the Australian government to correct its position and recognize the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital without delay.”
Australia will not move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem yet, however.
“Despite the ongoing conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a clear position on the importance of stability in the region, and the role of Saudi Arabia in ensuring that stability,” Khalifa tweeted in response to Netanyahu’s reaction to the killing of Khashoggi.
رغم الخلاف القائم ، الا ان لدى السيد بنيامين نتنياهو رئيس وزراء إسرائيل موقف واضح لأهمية استقرار المنطقة و دور المملكة العربية السعودية في تثبيت ذلك الاستقرار
Netanyahu stated that the murder is “horrendous and it should be duly dealt with,” according to Israel’s i24 News, but that at the same time “it is very important for the stability of the world, for the region and for the world, that Saudi Arabia remain stable.”
Earlier this year, Khalifa endorsed Israel’s military attacks against its neighbours.
طالما ان ايران اخلّت بالوضع القائم في المنطقة و استباحت الدول بقواتها و صواريخها ، فإنه يحق لأي دولة في المنطقة و منها اسرائيل ان تدافع عن نفسها بتدمير مصادر الخطر .
In May, amid large-scale Israeli air raids in Syria, and after President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear agreement, Khalifa tweeted that “as long as Iran breaches the status quo in the region and violates states with its troops and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, has the right to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”
Next Gulf stop for Netanyahu
Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper recently revealed that Mort Fridman, president of Israel lobby giant AIPAC, spoke about growing normalization between Israel and Arab states at a meeting with members of a Christian Zionist church in New Jersey.
The newspaper said it obtained leaks from the meeting from “trusted sources.”
Israeli military chief Gadi Eizenkot made two secret visits to the United Arab Emirates last month “and met with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed and a number of senior UAE military officials, and it was agreed to sell Israeli weapons to Abu Dhabi, and for top UAE officials to visit Israel very soon,” Fridman said according to Al-Akhbar.
Fridman stated that Israel has had political and economic relations with Qatar and Bahrain for some time, adding that it also has covert ties with Tunisia and Morocco that span decades, despite there being no formal diplomatic relations between Israel and those Arab states.
The AIPAC president said that Netanyahu’s visit to Oman in October opened doors for more normalization in the region, and suggested that Netanyahu’s next stop in the Gulf will be Bahrain.
“Saudi Arabia gave Bahrain the green light for Israel to open a representative office during the visit,” Fridman is quoted as saying.
Fridman reportedly said that Israel faced no real obstacles from Arab regimes, but still faced fierce opposition from Arab public opinion and non-state political and armed groups “that Israel and its friends need to focus on.”
Fridman stated that Saudi Arabia is “Israel’s closest ally in all regional and international affairs,” and spoke about the close US alliance with Israel.
“The current president of the United States not only pays more attention to Israel’s interests than all former American presidents, but also prioritizes Israel’s interests over those of the United States in some cases.”
In June 2017, some eight months after the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, Kremlin operatives running a digital interference campaign in American politics scored a viral success with a post on Instagram.
The post appeared on the account @blackstagram__, which was in fact being run by the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll farm that U.S. authorities say orchestrated an online campaign to boost Trump’s candidacy in 2016. It racked up 254,000 likes and nearly 7,000 comments—huge numbers for the Kremlin campaign.
But oddly, the post contained no political content.
Instead, it repurposed an ad for a women’s shoe, with a photo of women of different skin tones wearing the same strappy high heel in different colors. The caption pitched the shoes as a symbol of racial equality: “All the tones are nude! Get over it!”
But oddly, the post contained no political content.
Instead, it repurposed an ad for a women’s shoe, with a photo of women of different skin tones wearing the same strappy high heel in different colors. The caption pitched the shoes as a symbol of racial equality: “All the tones are nude! Get over it!”
While the message itself was not aimed at swaying voters in any direction, researchers now believe it served another purpose for the Russian group: It boosted the reach of its account, likely won it new followers, and tried to establish the account’s bona fides as an authentic voice for the black community.
That advertising pitch was revealed in a report released Monday by the Senate Intelligence Committee and produced by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge. The report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the Kremlin’s attempt to boost Trump’s candidacy and offers a surprising insight regarding that campaign: Moscow’s operatives operated much like digital marketers, making use of Instagram to reach a huge audience.
By blending marketing tactics with political messaging, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) established a formidable online presence in the run-up to the 2016 election (and later), generating 264 million total engagements—a measure of activity such as liking and sharing content—and building a media ecosystem across Facebook and Instagram.
That campaign sought to bring Russian political goals into the mainstream, exacerbate and inflame divisions in American society, and blur the line between truth and fiction, New Knowledge’s report concludes.
Amid the intense discussion of Russian interference in the 2016 election, investigators probing that campaign had devoted relatively little attention to Instagram until now. But following their exposure in 2016 and early 2017, the IRA’s operatives shifted resources to Instagram, where their content often outperformed its postings on Facebook. (Instagram is owned by Facebook.)
Of the 133 Instagram accounts created by the IRA, @blackstagram__ was arguably its most successful, with more than 300,000 followers. Its June 2017 ad for the shoe, made by Kahmune, was the most widely circulated post dreamed up by the Kremlin’s operatives—from a total of some 116,000. (The shoe continues to be marketed by Kahmune. Company officials did not respond to questions from Foreign Policy.)
The authors of the report believe @blackstagram__ served as a vehicle for Kremlin propaganda targeting the American black community, skillfully adopting the language of Instagram, where viral marketing schemes exist side by side with artfully arranged photographs of toast.
As Americans streamed to the polls on Nov. 8, 2016, @blackstagram__ offered its contribution to the Kremlin’s campaign to depress turnout, borrowing a line from a Michael Jackson song to tell African-Americans that their votes didn’t matter: “Think twice before you vote. All I wanna say is that they don’t really care about us. #Blacktivist #hotnews.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators have secured indictments against the Internet Research Agency’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and a dozen of its employees.
While the effect of the IRA’s coordinated campaign to depress voter turnout is difficult to assess, the evidence of the group’s online influence is stark. Of its 133 Instagram accounts, 12 racked up more than 100,000 followers—the typical threshold for being considered an online “influencer” in the world of digital marketing. Around 50 amassed more than 10,000 followers, making them what marketers call “micro-influencers.”
These accounts made savvy use of hashtags, built relationships with real people, promoted merchandise, and targeted niche communities. The IRA’s most popular Instagram accounts included pages devoted to veterans’ issues (@american.veterans), American Christianity (@army_of_jesus), and feminism (@feminism_tag).
In a measure of the agency’s creativity, @army_of_jesus appears to have been launched in 2015 as a meme account featuring Kermit the Frog. It then switched subjects and began exclusively posting memes related to the television show The Simpsons. By January 2016, the account had amassed a significant following and reached its final iteration with a post making extensive use of religious hashtags: ““#freedom #love #god #bible #trust #blessed #grateful.” It later posted memes comparing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to Satan.
“The Internet Research Agency operated like a digital marketing agency: develop a brand (both visual and voice), build presences on all channels across the entire social ecosystem, and grow an audience with paid ads as well as partnerships, influencers, and link-sharing,” the New Knowledge report concludes. “Instagram was perhaps the most effective platform.”
Monday’s report, which was published alongside another by researchers at the University of Oxford and the network analysis firm Graphika, is likely to increase scrutiny of social media platforms. The New Knowledge report accuses technology firms of possibly misleading Congress and says companies have not been sufficiently transparent in providing data related to the Russian campaign.
Elias Groll is a staff writer at Foreign Policy covering cyberspace. @EliasGroll
Colombo, December 17: Historically, South Asia had been an integrated region with cultures, languages, religions and values crossing natural geographical barriers and creating seamless symbiotic relations between diverse peoples.
But today, thanks to the birth of nationalisms and the emergence of nation states, South Asia is one of the least integrated and one of the most conflict-ridden areas in Asia.
Terrorism, religious fanaticism and class wars are endemic in South Asian states. There is continuous cross-border terrorism which is but a proxy war between States. There are external economic and military threats from new and old hegemonic forces. There are threats from non-State actors like terrorists, pirates , human smugglers and illegal fishers. Add to this, money laundering , cyber crime and misuse of an uncontrolled social media to spread religious hate and ethnic and civil strife, the situation is as grim as it is mind boggling.
These issues were looked at by scholars from across South Asia at the Colombo Shangri-La Colloquium 2018 held here on Sunday under the aegis of the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSSSL).
Inaugurating the colloquium, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Hemasiri Fernando said that Sri Lanka and South Asia face an “uncertain future” with cyber warfare becoming as much of a threat as nuclear warfare.
“We need to be prepared for any eventuality,” he warned as he called for a knowledge-based approach fostered and sustained by “independent” think tanks working on material from independent sources.
Fernando called for greater interaction and cooperation among scholars of the region and beyond to get the right, broad-based and realistic perspective on issues. The fact that countries in the region are yet to evolve as “nations” has given rise to internal strife, he said.
Prof. Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, Director General of the INSSSL described Asia as a “geo-political hotspot” with increasing militarization following the rise of China as an economic and naval power. He pointed out that China’s naval growth has outstripped that of all major powers. The arms build-up in the region has been unprecedented in history, he said.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister in the 1960s and 1970s had foreseen the present scenario and had proposed that the Indian Ocean be declared a Zone of Peace, he said.
The region is currently divided into the Chinese and the US camps. Globalization is taking place at a time when there are “transformational changes” taking place in the region, Goonasekera noted, and wondered if in the midst of all these transformational changes, a new security architecture can be created.
He quoted India’s former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon to say that it would be illogical to impose stability in a changing environment. Japanese scholar, Dr.Satoru Nagao, a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute (US) maintained that China is aggressively expansionist and has occupied islands vacated by Western powers. He warned nations which are joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that China is a “sinking ship” which other nations had better abandon. He predicted that the US, the world’ only super power, will win the competition against China.
Supporting the view that China is a threat to the region, the Maldivian speaker Dr.Rasheed Mohamed Didi said that when President Abdulla Yameen declared a State of Emergency in February 2018, and there was a talk of an Indian invasion to restore democracy, China had sent a Destroyer and at least two frigates along with 30,000 ton amphibian transport vessel with three tankers to support it.
China is also building an observation post in an atoll in the West which is close to India, she said. According to Didi, it will be India and not China which will come to Maldives’ rescue in times of distress.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister in the 1960s and 1970s had foreseen the present scenario and had proposed that the Indian Ocean be declared a Zone of Peace
In China’s Defense
But Prof.Huang Yunsong, Associate Dean at the China Center for South Asian Studies in Sichuan University, defended China in the face of allegations that China is driving South Asian nations into a debt trap.
He said that the interest on 61.5% of China’s loans to Sri Lanka is far below the international market rate.
“As of December 2017, Sri Lanka owed China US$ 5.5 billion which was about 10.6% of the island nation’s total foreign debt of US$ 51.8 billion. Of the US$ 5.5 billion, US$ 3.8 billion (61.5 % of the total loan) was provided at a rate fare below the international market rate. Thus, the major part of China’s loan was taken at a concessionary rate,” Huang emphasized.
“More importantly, US$ 1 billion had been taken at a concessionary rate of 2% which means that the interest on the major part of the loan was not excessive at all,” he added.
On the issues of Sri Lanka’s taking US$ 307 million at the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 0.75% pushing up the interest rate to 6.3%, Huang said that the commercial loan interest rate was based on a mutual agreement between Sri Lanka and China “as per established principles of the international market.” Referring to the description of China’s taking over the Sri Lankan port at Hambantota as “neo-colonialism”, Huang said that if one were to Google “port 99 year lease”, the first result one would get is a 99-year lease on the Port of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, a deal worth Australian Dollar 506 million with a Chinese company. Besides, port terminals in New York and Long Beach are managed by Chinese companies. But people do not term Darwin and Long Beach as China’s colonies!” Huang remarked.
Reacting to a remark made by a former Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon that ports might begin as commercial ventures but ultimately end up as military bases also, Huang said that he is certain that at least in the short and medium terms, China has no plan to put the ports it is building overseas to military use.
Need cooperation, not conflict
Former Sri Lankan diplomat HMGS Palihakkara said governments and researchers should eschew the “zero sum” approach and stress on the positives and the benefits of mutual cooperation rather than conflicts and differences.
Picking up the theme of cooperation rather than conflict, Indian scholar Dr. Swaran Singh, a Senior Fellow at the INSSSL said that despite antagonism at the political level, Indian and Chinese navies have been cooperating in stamping out piracy in the Western Indian Ocean. He recalled an incident on Aprl 9, 2017 in the Gulf of Aden when Chinese and Indian navies jointly rescued a 21,000 ton cargo ship MV 0S 35 that had been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden.
Dr.Singh said that there are three networks to contain piracy, run by NATO, EU and US. India and China are coordinating and assisting in the operation of these networks. India has repeatedly emphasized how it seeks to ensure that the Indo-Pacific arrangement or “Quad” does not become an exclusive Western allies‘ club. It is trying to get China on board in its Indo-Pacific deliberations.
India and China are engaged in maritime dialogue but this is not highlighted in the media because of the inherently competitive nature of China-India equations, Dr.Singh said.
Phenomenon of terrorism
Opening on the seminar on terrorism, Maj.Gen. Udaya Perera said that though terrorism took only a minuscule number of lives in the world, it has been a powerful propaganda tool for terrorism. Each time one talks of a terrorist deed, it is propaganda for the terrorists, he said. Terrorism cannot be fought by military means alone; it has to be fought at the political and social level too ,Gen.Perera said.
Dr.Ranga Jayasuriya, Senior Fellow at INSSSL, said that “non-violent extremism” has to be studied as much as “violent extremism” as the former creates a suitable climate for the latter.
He also pointed out that non-violent extremism is part of the armory of politicians to grab power and stay in power. It is as much part of majoritarian politics as it is of minority politics. Weak political institutions make countries a happy hunting ground for non-violent and violent extremism, Jayasuriya said.
Maj.Gen.Muniruzzaman President of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies said that youth radicalization is a major problem in Bangladesh. Jobless economic growth, a poor educational system, which does not encourage or stimulate thought, and peer influence make the youth, who are 40% of the population, go for radical ideologies and modes of action which they find stimulating. There is no class distinctions here, he added.
There is no system for rehabilitation. Prisons are places where terrorists or radicals are “re-cycled” because those who are jailed turn fellow inmates into radicals, Gen.Muniruzzaman said.
Kosala Warnakulasooriya speaking on Sri Lankan Navy’s contribution to maritime security at the Colombo Colloquium 2018. Photo credit, Tang Lu
How does the West get away with its pretense of being an alliance of great democracies in which government is the servant of the people?
Nowhere in the West, except possibly Hungary and Austria, does government serve the people.
Who do the Western governments serve? Washington serves Israel, the military/security complex, Wall Street, the big banks, and the fossil fuel corporations.
The entirety of the rest of the West serves Washington.
Nowhere in the West do the people count. The American working class, betrayed by the Democrats who sent their jobs to Asia, elected Donald Trump and the American people were promptly dismissed by the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as “the Trump deplorables.”
The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve power, not the people.
In Europe we see the squashing of democracy everywhere.
British prime minister May has turned Brexit into subservience to the EU. She has betrayed the British people and has not yet been hung off of a lamp post, which shows how acceptance the British people are of betrayal. The British people have learned that they do not count. They are as a nothing.
The Greeks voted for a leftwing government that promised to protect them from the EU, IMF, and big banks, but promptly sold them out with austerity agreements that destroyed what remained of Greek sovereignty and Greek living standards. Today the EU has reduced Greece to a Third World country.
The French have been in the streets in revolt for weeks against the French president who serves everyone except the French people.
There are currently massive protests in Brussels, Belgium, with half the government also resigning in protest against the government signing a pact that will replace the Belgian people with migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The corrupt and despicable governments who signed this pact represent foreigners and George Soros’ money, not their own citizens.
Why are citizens so powerless that their governments can elevate the interest of foreigners far above the interests of citizens?
There are a number of reasons. The main one is that the people are disarmed and are propagandized to accept violence from the state against them, but not to deliver violence in return against the governments’ illegal use of force against citizens.
In short, until the conquered peoples of Europe kill the police, who serve the ruling elite and delight in inflicting brutality against those whose taxes pay their salaries, take the weapons from the police, and kill the corrupt politicians who have sold them out, the peoples of Europe will remain a conquered and oppressed peoples.
Some time past Chris Hedges, one of the remaining real journalists, made it clear that without violent revolution to excise the tumor of government superiority over the people, freedom throughout the West is dead as a doornail.
The question before us is whether the Western peoples are too brainwashed, too firmly locked in The Matrix, to exhausted to stand up and defend their freedom. Resistance is happening in France and Belgium, but the government that sold out Greece hasn’t been hung off of lamp posts. Americans are so brainwashed that they think Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela are their enemies when it is perfectly clear that their Enemy is “their” government in Washington.
Except for my American readers, Americans are locked in The Matrix. And they will kill in order to stay in The Matrix, where the controlled explanations are reassuring. Anyone who looks to Washington for leadership is an idiot.
Washington is a master of propaganda. Washington’s propaganda has even infected the Russian government, which from all reports stupidly believes that accommodation to Washington is the secret that will make Russia successful.
A government this stupid has no chance of survival.
Chicken Licken advert showed a black man finding a foreign land and naming it Europe
A still image from the banned Chicken Licken advert. Photograph: Chicken Licken
Agence France-Presse in Johannesburg-
South African regulators have banned a television advert that showed a black man discovering a foreign land and naming it Europe, ruling that colonisation is “not open for humorous exploitation”
.
The advert, for a chicken restaurant chain, tells a spoof story how the man leaves South Africa in 1650, sails overseas and, after many adventures, comes ashore and meets white local people wearing three-pointed hats and waistcoats.
“Hola MaNgamla (Hello white folk). I like this place, I think I will call it … Europe,” the man says, sticking his spear into the ground.
The Advertising Regulatory Board ruled that the commercial “trivialises an issue that is … upsetting for many South African people”.
It said: “Turning the usual colonisation story around might be perceived as having a certain element of humour. The reality though is that colonisation of Africa and her people was traumatic.”
The fast-food chain Chicken Licken said its advert was a tongue-in-cheek tale about how of its Big John burger got its name.
The advert “in no way, shape or form seeks to make a mockery of the struggles of colonisation,” the company said, and was designed to appeal to “pride and patriotism amongst South Africans”.
On December 10, I stood at the U.S.-Mexico border alongside hundreds of faith leaders to protest the cruel and unjust treatment of migrants and the militarization of our border communities. As I watched Border Patrol agents arrest reverends, imams, rabbis, Quakers, and other people of faith, I thought back to what I witnessed a few weeks earlier.
I was near the San Diego border crossing when I saw Border Patrol agents fire tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades into a crowd of migrants gathered nearby. I saw a low-flying Customs and Border Protection helicopter use its rotors to push plumes of tear gas into a canal where many migrants had gathered. Even though I have been working to support and protect migrants and border communities for many years, I continue to be disturbed and horrified by these clear and egregious violations of people’s dignity and human rights.
These aggressive actions by federal agents were clearly intended to debilitate migrants, including children. But they also are part of a manufactured crisis the Trump administration is peddling – a false narrative that border communities are out of control that’s being used to justify more money for a needless border wall and deadly detention and deportation measures.
Political posturing by the Trump Administration is dangerous because it sets a precedent that suggests militarization is an appropriate response to people seeking sanctuary.
The consequences of this political posturing are devastating and dangerous, for migrants, for those of us who live in border communities, and for all residents of this country whose tax dollars are being diverted from programs that sustain communities to a militarized border that serves no one.
Border communities are feeling these impacts. According to the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, in the five hours that the cross-border traffic was stopped, more than $5.3 million were lost in revenue, just in San Ysidro.
Over the past four decades, policies under every presidential administration have systematically militarized southern border communities, criminalizing millions of immigrants and creating repressive conditions from California to Texas and beyond.
Just a week before the Border Patrol tear gassed migrants at the border, a Border Patrol agent was found not guilty for shooting and killing 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodríguez through the Nogales border fence in 2012, solidifying a message that Border Patrol agents can operate with impunity. And just days ago, a 7-year old girl from Guatemala died in Border Patrol custody from dehydration and shock.
The escalation of these policies – and the demand for billions of dollars to expand them – could lead to more disturbing cases like that of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez and Jackeline Caal.
This increased militarization coincides with dramatic efforts by the Trump Administration to restrict people’s ability to access asylum and curtail other forms of immigration. These artificially created bottlenecks in the asylum process are creating a humanitarian crisis. In Tijuana alone, there are more than 7,000 people waiting to present themselves at a port of entry, many of whom are vulnerable to safety issues.
People fleeing violence in Central America and elsewhere should be able to present themselves to immigration authorities to express their fears – not illegally turned away or criminalized for entering between ports of entry to seek refuge and asylum.
And deploying law enforcement or military personnel to the southern border – or giving additional spending authority to these agencies – endangers the rights of migrants and residents of border communities, wastes taxpayer dollars, and does nothing to make us safer.
This political posturing by the Trump Administration is dangerous because it sets a precedent that suggests militarization is an appropriate response to people seeking sanctuary. By influencing public opinion and normalizing the idea that is acceptable to criminalize migrants, real humanitarian needs are going unmet and lives and livelihoods are being destroyed on both sides of the border wall.
We don’t have to accept this reality. It is critically important that we confront the immorality of gassing and denying passage to the most vulnerable with principled action of our own. We can offer support and solidarity with those facing persecution. And we can demand that Congress take a stand by cutting funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
More than 400 people of faith traveled to the border on Monday and put their bodies on the line to lift up the message that love knows no borders. But our efforts must not stop there. Upholding the dignity of border communities and those seeking sanctuary depends on everyone’s bold and courageous actions.
Pedro Rios PeaceVoice
Pedro Rios is the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, based in San Diego.
Once a thriving, glamorous city, Venezuela’s capital is buckling under hyperinflation, crime and poverty Slum dwellers are fleeing the country because of the lack of food, medicine and work. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP
Aportrait of Hugo Chávez and a Bolivarian battle cry greet visitors to the Boyacá viewpoint in the mountains north of Caracas. “It is our duty to find one thousand ways and more to give the people the life that they need!”
But as Venezuela buckles, Chávez’s pledge sounds increasingly hollow. Vandals have splashed paint into the comandante’s face and beneath him Venezuela’s capital is dying.
“A ghost town,” laments Omar Lugo, director of news website El Estímulo, during a night-time driving tour of a once-buzzing metropolis being eviscerated by the country’s collapse. “It pains me so much to see Caracas like this.”
A generation ago, Venezuela’s capital was one of Latin America’s most thriving, glamorous cities; an oil-fuelled, tree-lined cauldron of culture that guidebooks hailed as a mecca for foodies, night owls and art fans.
A view west across Caracas, which was once a buzzing metropolis. Photograph: Tom Phillips
Its French-built metro – like its restaurants, galleries and museums – was the envy of the region. “Caracas was such a vibrant city … You truly felt, as we used to say around here, in the first world,” says Ana Teresa Torres, a Caraqueña author whose latest book is a diary of her home’s demise.
In 1998, as the setting for his election celebrations, Chávez chose the balcony of the Teresa Carreño, a spectacular, brutalist style cultural centre. Built during the 1970s oil boom and reminiscent of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, it has hosted stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Ray Charles and Luciano Pavarotti, and epitomised the country’s new ambition. “Venezuela is reborn,” Chávez declared.
Twenty years after that upbeat address, an economic cataclysm experts blame on ill-conceived socialist policies, staggering corruption and the post-2014 slump in oil prices has given Caracas the air of a sinking ship.
Public services are collapsing, businesses closing and residents evacuating on buses or one of a dwindling number of flights still connecting their fallen metropolis to the rest of the world.
“It’s a feeling of historic frustration,” sighs Lugo as he steers through shadowy streets counting the apartments where the lights are still on. “A country that performed a miracle in reverse – it’s just impossible to believe.”
Abandoned apartments
Caracas’s crash has left no community unscarred, from its vast redbrick shantytowns to leafy middle- and upper-class areas such as La Florida.
Luis Saavedra, a former oil industry security consultant, said his 13-storey apartment block had lost more than half of its residents since Venezuela entered an economic and political tailspin after Nicolás Maduro took power following Chávez’s death in 2013.
Luis Saavedra, 65, holds the keys to the apartments and vehicles he now cares for in Caracas after their owners fled overseas to escape the crisis. Photograph: Tom Phillips
Fourteen of its 26 flats are now empty, their owners exiled to Spain, Portugal, Germany, Argentina and the US. The price of an 180 sq m home has plunged from $320,000 (£253,000) to $100,000 yet buyers are hard to find. In November, the building went 16 days without electricity.
“This populism – this so-called socialism – has finished off our country,” Saavedra, 65, complained as he showed the Guardian around one of five empty homes he now cares for. “It isn’t finishing the country off. It has finished it off.”
Inside the flat, cream sheets had been draped over sofas to shield them from dust. Abandoned family photographs offered hints of a life recently interrupted by Venezuela’s decline. “They couldn’t carry on living here. They’re in Porto,” Saavedra sighed. “Such a shame.”
Saavedra, whose two daughters live in Spain, said he was now reluctantly considering joining a historic exodus the UN says has swollen to 3 million – nearly 10% of Venezuela’s population or an entire pre-crisis Caracas – since 2015.
Soaring crime and the breakdown of a city where even those regarded as well-off now often live without water or power meant he saw few alternatives. “It’s astonishing. By 6 or 7pm you don’t see any more cars on the streets and by 8pm it’s completely deserted. This is a capital city that used to have a night life. Not anymore. Everyone’s holed up at home.”
Saavedra recalled returning from a recent trip to Miami to find Caracas’s international airport – once linked to Paris by six-hour Concorde flights – cloaked in darkness due to a power cut. “The people at customs couldn’t even inspect us because there was no light!” he scoffed. “We’ve stopped [in time], gone back 40 years and are heading back to the dark ages.”
Shrinking slums
When he took power in 1998 Chávez declared war on the “immense poverty” that blighted his homeland despite its vast oil wealth. But Caracas’ slum dwellers are now fleeing too, forced overseas by a lack of food, medicine and work, a collapsing public transport system and hyperinflation the International Monetary Fund fears will hit 10,000,000% in 2019.
Solangel Jaspe, the deputy head of a Catholic school in the deprived and notoriously violent Cota 905 neighbourhood, said she had begun the year with 909 students. “Today it is 829 and falling.”
Only that morning, the parents of nine children said they were dropping out: six because they were leaving the country – for Colombia, Chile and Peru – and the other three because they could no longer afford the fees or find transport.
Staff shed tears as they described seeing children turn up for class only to faint because they had not been fed. “They are the future of our country,” said William Orozco, a 57-year-old teacher at Paulo VI College. “It breaks my soul.”
A colleague, Luisa Valdéz, said many were being cared for by grandparents because their parents were seeking “better horizons” overseas. “I don’t have the words to explain what is going on,” said Valdéz, whose sons live in Ecuador and Argentina, gasping and covering her face to mask her grief.
“It’s horrible. I’ve never lived through anything like it … It’s so hard. But we have to ask God for the strength to go on.”
Armando Martínez, a music teacher who lost 8kg last year because of the so-called “Maduro diet”, said staff were also struggling. “A litre of milk costs 280 soberanos (about 73 pence), a box of eggs is 1,000, a kilo of cheese 1,000. If I buy this, that’s my whole monthly salary.”
New clothes had become an unthinkable luxury, added Martínez, whose left sole was peeling off his shoe. “We look like down and outs. There are people eating rubbish,” he said. “This is no life for a child.”
Empty stomachs
The elderly have been hit too.
One recent lunchtime, pensioners came to a food bank in the eastern district of Chacao to collect supplies provided by the local council and members of the diaspora. Among them was Rosemarie Newton, a retired language teacher who had signed up because she could no longer afford to eat.
Rosemarie Newton, a former language teacher, has lost 14kg as a result of being reduced to eating one meal a day. Photograph: Tom Phillips“My dear, I feel so sad about this because I lived the good times in Venezuela … the money ran everywhere,” the 73-year-old said, recalling when her country had been known as Saudi Venezuela.
No more. Newton said her weight had fallen from 50kg to 36kg. “I was so skinny my friends couldn’t believe it … I was reduced from three meals to practically one meal a day.”
“Every day food is more expensive. Prices change from week to week. The expected inflation for next year is a million per cent,” Newton added, in fact underestimating official projections. “Just imagine that. A lot of people are going to simply die of hunger.”
Newton, whose father was a British economist, said she would not abandon Venezuela, the country of her birth, for the UK. “It’s the climate that makes me think twice,” she joked.
But political change was needed, fast. “The government has shown us that they cannot manage – everything has gotten out of hand,” Newton said. “The situation is unbearable.”
The decaying theatre
Even the Teresa Carreño, the once dazzling theatre where Chávez launched his Bolivarian revolution, has been laid low.
Former director Eva Ivanyi recalled it being conceived in the 1970s as South America’s answer to Milan’s La Scala. “It symbolised the future. It signified civilisation. It signified Europe. It signified success,” she said. “It was like a step towards modernity – the future the country aspired to.”
Outside, the stairwell to the balcony where Chávez delivered his post-election address reeks of urine and has been defaced by taggers who have written “Fuck police”. In a squatted building over the street – once the HQ of Venezuela’s state-run airline, Viasa – special forces recently gunned down at least eight people, a reminder that Caracas has become one of the world’s deadliest cities.
Ivanyi said she believed the good times would one day return: “There are some things that you just can’t destroy.”
Teresa Carreño, a cultural centre built during Venezuela’s 1970s oil boom, has fallen into disrepair. Photograph: Tom Phillips
But when might that day come? “Ah, I don’t know. When this government is over and we have someone who starts to think about restructuring the country,” she said.
“The day that the water, the electricity, the food distribution system – the basic things human beings need to exist - start to work better then we can start thinking about culture again. Right now, it’s clearly not a priority.”
Orozco, the teacher, took part in last year’s fruitless anti-government demonstrations and said his priority was to stay and fight for his pupils and country. He saw two possible solutions to Venezuela’s woes – international help and Maduro’s exit. “We want Maduro out because he has turned this country upside down.”
Torres, the author, imagined either the optimistic path of a political transition that brought some economic stability, or the realistic one of continued collapse, deprivation and, perhaps eventually,
some kind of foreign intervention. “If nothing changes [Venezuela] could become the poorest country in the world,” she warned. Torres said she remained reluctant to abandon Caracas even though her children left for Canada a decade ago: “I belong to this country, for better or worse.”
But as the crisis worsened and “diplomatic pressure” from her offspring intensified she sensed the day of her exit was drawing nearer.
“It will be very painful, very difficult to go through with - but I suppose this is what will end up happening in the end,” she admitted.“[Caracas] is a city that is dying, little by little.”
DECEMBER 18, 2018 
Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. (
Instagram star user Jiffpom appears during the F8 Facebook Developers conference in San Jose, California, on May 1. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“We need to be prepared for any eventuality,” he warned as he called for a knowledge-based approach fostered and sustained by “independent” think tanks working on material from independent sources. 
Slum dwellers are fleeing the country because of the lack of food, medicine and work. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP
