Germany's Merkel calls for 'zero tolerance' of anti-Semitism, hate

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a visit at the German School of Athens, Greece, January 11, 2019. REUTERS/Costas Baltas

Andrea Shalal-JANUARY 26, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel underscored the urgency of combating anti-Semitism, racism and hatred more than 70 years after the Holocaust, calling for new ways to keep alive the memory of the millions of people killed by the Nazis.

Merkel, in a video address released ahead of Sunday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, said it was everyone’s responsibility to ensure “zero tolerance” of xenophobia and all forms of anti-Semitism.

“People growing up today must know what people were capable of in the past, and we must work proactively to ensure that it is never repeated,” Merkel said.

Millions of people were robbed of their rights, tortured and murdered — including an estimated six million Jews — across Europe from 1933 to 1945, when the Nazis ruled Germany.

The German leader called for new forms of remembrance due to the dwindling number of eyewitnesses from the Nazi era, and because of persistent hatred and incitement today.

Merkel expressed deep regret about anti-Semitism among Germans, as well as hatred of Jews among Muslim migrants and a hatred of Israel that she said could not be tolerated.

Germany last year appointed a commissioner to oversee efforts to combat ant-Semitism and will also set up a central repository to collect information about such incidents and attacks, with an eye to bolstering prevention, Merkel said.

“It will be crucial in the coming time to find new ways of remembrance,” she said. “We must look more closely at the personalities of people who were victims back then, and to tell their stories.”

Merkel cited the importance of supporting Holocaust memorials and private initiatives such as the “stumbling stones” project, which installs brass bricks inscribed with the names and key details of people near the homes from which they were deported during the Nazi era.

“I think these forms of remembrance ... are very important and will become more significant in the future,” Merkel said.

On Friday, the director of the memorial at the largest Nazi concentration camp on German soil barred the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) from a commemoration for the 56,000 people killed there during the Holocaust.

Volkhard Knigge, director of the Buchenwald Memorials Foundation, told AfD politicians in the state of Thuringia where the camp is located that he was responding to anti-democratic, racist and anti-Semitic tendencies in the party.

The AfD, whose popularity surged amid anger over Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome over a million mostly Muslim migrants, says Islam is incompatible with the German constitution, but rejects charges of racism.

Are Labour inflating their membership figures?

By Georgina Lee-24 Jan 2019

Labour have been fighting off claims that they are losing huge numbers of members.

Newspaper reports claimed this week that the party had lost 100,000 members or more over the last year.

If true, this would be damaging for Labour, who emphasise grassroots support for the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Labour have publicly called the story a “total fabrication” and “completely made up”. But they have declined our requests to provide any figures that prove it wrong.

The last time Labour published official membership figures (for December 2017) they said they had a massive 564,000 members. But is this number trustworthy?

FactCheck understands – based on the party’s own rulebook, leaked internal documents, and sources with detailed knowledge of Labour processes – that the way Labour calculate their membership figures allows them to include people who haven’t paid their fees for up to 18 months in the official tally. The Labour party deny this.

In arrears

Political parties are not legally obliged to publish information on their membership figures. Most are less than transparent on the matter – as FactCheck found in October when the Conservatives were unable to provide stats to back up their claims about a purported rise in young recruits.

Labour voluntarily include “the total individual membership of the Party” in their annual accounts, which they submit to the Electoral Commission each year.

The latest accounts, published in August 2018, state that “as at 31 December 2017 the total individual membership of the Party was 564,443”.

Labour told us that this number includes individuals who are in arrears – behind with payments on their party membership fees.

How long can you be in arrears before you are no longer considered a member?

When you join Labour, you can pay a whole year’s subscription fee in one go with a single annual payment.

But Labour tell us that the “vast majority” of members pay in monthly instalments through Direct Debit.

Even if you opt to pay monthly, the rules say you begin a membership year defined as “12 months from the date of joining the Party”.

The rule book goes on: “All members shall be issued with a card… which shall indicate the expiry of their membership year…

“An individual member shall be deemed to be in arrears from the expiry date until they renew their subscription.

“An individual member shall be deemed to have lapsed from membership if s/he has been in arrears for six months and has not paid following a request to pay the arrears.”

That looks like you could stop making monthly payments after the first one, and Labour would not start chasing you until the end of a full year of membership. And that then, they would give you another six months to pay up before striking you off the list of members.

So if you tried to leave Labour one month into your “membership year” by cancelling your monthly Direct Debits, could you still be considered a member for up to 18 months? Sources with detailed knowledge of Labour party processes told FactCheck that this was indeed the case.

And it appears to be the understanding among party officials. A leaked “weekly internal update” from January 2018 quoted a Labour staffer: “The number of lapsers in the period is high as a result of a spike in joiners around 18 months ago.” The suggestion here is that the party assumes that it takes a year-and-a-half for some members to come off the books after they stop paying.

How many people are allowing their membership fees to lapse because they disagree with the direction the party is taking? How many are stopping payments because they can’t afford them? It’s hard to say.

But those who thought they’d left the party by stopping their Direct Debits may be surprised to learn that they could have stayed on Labour’s books long after that.

What do Labour say?

We put all this to Labour.

They told us “this is nonsense. No one has been a member for eighteen months without paying. The Party allows members a six-month window to update their payment information and pay off their arrears before their membership lapses, as do many membership organisations.

“When membership lapses after six months, they cease to be members. This isn’t new information.”
The party accepts that people who are behind on their payments are included in their official membership count – they’ve never denied this, although it’s not spelled out in the accounts they submit to the Electoral Commission.

The sources FactCheck spoke to are clear that the “six-month window” where someone is officially in arrears only begins after the membership year expires – something that is also suggested by the party rulebook.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that an individual could be counted in Labour’s tally of total members, even if they had not paid a penny in membership fees for up to 18 months. Labour continue to deny this.

For Xi, ‘Toilet Revolution’ is next only to Belt and Road Initiative

Saturday, 26 January 2019 

For the Chinese President Xi Jinping, bringing about a ‘Toilet Revolution’ in his country is next only in importance to his international flagship project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) involving the building of multiple ports, airports and highways linking China to countries across the globe.

On the one hand, China has registered amazing progress in modernising its industries and cities, but on the other, its rural areas show comparative neglect.

That is reflected in poor sanitary facilities in rural China. The Chinese State media have themselves described a typical village toilet as “nothing more than two bricks, one hole, breeding insects, and a fiery stink”. Bad domestic toilets have been a key reason for the poor health of the rural masses.

Smelly and poorly-maintained public toilets have been threatening to deter tourist arrivals. About 4.3 million foreign tourists visit China annually. But many of these dread to come back because of the horrible public toilets they had had to use.

Distribution of good toilets in China shows regional variations. The “penetration rate” of good toilets in the poorer central and western parts of China is lower than in those provinces in the east which are better off.

Although the movement for better toilets dates back to the 1980s, it attained national centrality with President Xi Jinping himself adopting it as his own in April 2015.

Xi told the 19th Congress of the Communist Party (CCP) that it should “resolve the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life”. Xi was alluding to the fact that China still has around 30 million living in extreme poverty.

Xi realised that improving sanitation has knock-on effects on public health. The UN estimates that for every $ 1 spent on sanitation facilities, the spending on mitigating faecal-borne diseases like cholera can be reduced by $ 9.

Holistic view of ‘Toilet Revolution’

Given its all-round importance, the ‘Toilet Revolution’ has been comprehensively defined as “a step-wise campaign which tries to ensure hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact, to provide sanitary and comfort space for users, to prevent human excreta from pollution of environment, and to realise the resource recycling”.

In Xi’s perspective, a clean and sound public toilet system is an explicit marker that divides a developing country from an advanced one. China may rival Japan in industry but Japan’s toilet technology marks its status as a truly advanced country.

On 1 April 2015, Xi personally made written comments on a National Tourism Agency (NTA) report, instructing the agency to “seize” the ‘Toilet Revolution’ to combat “perennial maladies and ugly habits” and “upgrade tourism quality”.

Such an explicit endorsement from Xi himself ensured that the ‘Toilet Revolution’ went “viral,” a leading international publication noted. Within days, the NTA released its ‘Three-Year Action Plan,’ which envisaged the building or renovation of 57,000 toilets in officially-designated tourism zones before 2018.

The plan also called for improving the quality, cleanliness, accessibility, and female-male ratio of toilets.

Xi’s early experience

The absence of clean and functioning toilets has been worrying Xi since his early days as a party functionary in the rural areas. He had had personal experiences of rural deprivation when he was a ‘sent-down youth’ in the village of Zhaojiahe in Shaanxi province in the late 1970s. ‘Sent down youth’ are young people sent to the countryside compulsorily to experience the life of the deprived. This system lasted till the end of the Cultural Revolution.

According to the book ‘Xi Jinping’s Seven Years as a Sent-Down Youth,’ Xi built the first gender-segregated toilet in Zhaojiahe. And when he served as a young cadre in Zhengding in Hebei province in the early 1980s, Xi led efforts to significantly improve the filthy local toilets.

Even now, in his tours of the countryside as China’s Supremo, Xi would always enquire about the toilets and bathroom facilities in the villages, whether they had pit toilets or flush toilets.

When Xi launched his ‘Toilet Revolution’ on 1 April 2015, more than 57 million households did not have their own sanitary toilets, though 40 million of these had access to a public toilet and 17 million households had serious hygiene issues resulting from poor toilets.

However, it was not as if the pre-Xi toilet construction program had nothing to crow about. The coverage of sanitary toilets in rural areas had increased from 7.5% in 1993 to 78.5% in 2015, while the coverage of harmless sanitary toilets reached 57.5% by end of 2015.

In 2015, faecal sludge collected in the urban areas totalled 14.28 million tons. Out of this, 6.76 million tons or 47.3 % was treated. In Beijing, the national capital, the treatment ratio of faecal sludge had reached 92.3%.

Tourism sector took lead 

Since bad public toilets in the urban and outlying areas were severely impairing tourism, it is no wonder that the tourism sector fired the first shot of the Toilet Revolution.

In 2015, the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) set a target of upgrading 25,000 public toilets and newly building another 33,500 in three years. It was later reported that 89.33% of the task had been finished by February 2017.

As per present plans, the national coverage of rural sanitary toilets should reach 85% by 2020. The five developed municipalities/provinces including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang will have reached 100%, with another twelve provinces reaching 82% by 2020.

Comprehensive approach

It was evident that education, water supply and sanitation were inter-connected. Therefore, steps were taken to inter-link elementary education, water supply, sanitation, and public health.

The entire bureaucracy was made to act in a coordinated way. The NTA got central ministries involved in land-use rights to streamline processes to build toilets.  Until May 2017, the top leaders of 27 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities had issued instructions and State requirements for local implementation of the ‘Toilet Revolution’. Many localities set up “small leading groups” to implement the policy.

The NTA also held local tourism officials accountable. If the toilets were not up to the mark, they would lose ranking. In 2016, the NTA promulgated an evaluation system for “tourism toilet quality.” The NTA offered financial rewards and other awards to top performers.

The mobilisation of resources and local enthusiasm have produced results. According to State media, between 2015 and 2017 the NTA was able to get the Ministry of Finance to allocate $ 254 million to subsidise toilet construction. This helped motivate local bodies to collectively invest a further $ 2.9 billion of their own budgets into toilets over the same period.  In November 2017, the NTA announced that 68,000 toilets had already been constructed or upgraded, exceeding its original target by nearly 20%. The target for 2020 is 64,000. The new plan also extended the ‘Toilet Revolution’ to the thus far neglected western and central regions.

The Government subsidises households which buy toilets. This has increased access to sanitary toilets from 7.5% in 1993 to over 80% by the end of 2016. Full coverage by 2030 is envisaged.

According to the latest official document, toilets for rural households in the country’s eastern regions and mid-western city outskirts should “basically” go through pollution-free renovations by 2020. By 2020, around 85 percent of rural households in mid-western areas where conditions permit should have access to sanitary toilets. Toilet waste is to be “effectively” treated or utilised by 2022.

The coverage of sanitary toilets in remote and underdeveloped regions should be increased “gradually” by 2020 and “markedly” by 2022, according to the guidelines.

In some cities popular with tourists, such as Beijing, Haikou and Taiyuan, plusher public toilets have been built, offering bank ATMs, snack machines and Wi-Fi. Some toilets have also been expanded to include cubicles for the disabled, elderly and adults with young children. But officials have been warned not to lavish too much money on new facilities.

Dismal global situation

While China is making rapid advances in sanitation, the rest of the developing world presents a dismal picture. In 2015, 946 million people still practiced open defecation. Globally at least 1.8 billion people use a source of drinking water is faecally contaminated.

The World Bank estimates that poor sanitation costs the world $ 260 billion annually in terms losses due to poor health. Poor sanitation contributes to 1.5 million child deaths annually from diarrhoea, which is the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children under the age of five.

The darkness of the Congo

 2019-01-26

The Algerian philosopher and revolutionary writer, Frantz Fanon wrote, “Africa is shaped like a gun, and Congo is its trigger. If that explosive trigger bursts, the whole of Africa will explode”.  

The Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s largest country, is now caught up in the aftermath of its first proper election since independence from Belgium in 1960. Towards the end of last year one could say, after years of non-stop wars and massive carnage, the country was 90% bereft of fighting. The authoritarian regime of President Joseph Kabila was still in power but at last it had been pressured to call an election by the African Union, the Western aid-givers, some of the big Western businesses that mine in the mineral-rich country and, not least, the Catholic Church.  

At first the election held on December 30 seemed to be peaceful and reasonably well organized, but then as the ballots were counted and the winner announced, it became clear that Kabila could still pull strings behind the curtain and was able to use his influence with the electoral commission to push the man in second place, Felix Tshisekedi, to first place.  

In fact, the well-placed Catholic Church with priests, nuns and active lay people all over the country announced that it considered Martin Fayulu the victor. The Financial Times in a detailed on-the-ground survey of leaked polling data concluded the same. The African Union said there were “serious doubts” about the validity of the election and called for “the suspension of the proclamation of the final results”.  

 It’s inevitable that the Congo will now face another bout of upheaval.  The crowds and the riot police may well continue to confront each other  in Kinshasa, although at the moment things are reasonably quiet. There  will, for certain, be widespread passive resistance- over the last  decade or more there has been an upwelling of a grassroots’ movement

Hours before the African Union statement the Southern African Development Community issued its own statement supporting the election result. Surprisingly, the South African government, led by the very democratically minded President Cyril Ramaphosa, was one of signatories of this announcement.  

It’s inevitable that the Congo will now face another bout of upheaval. The crowds and the riot police may well continue to confront each other in Kinshasa, although at the moment things are reasonably quiet. There will, for certain, be widespread passive resistance- over the last decade or more there has been an upwelling of a grassroots’ movement. Foreign investors, fearing instability, will wait and see. Maybe the UN will refuse to recognize the new government. That would be a momentous step. The UN is heavily involved in peacekeeping. It first was a presence in the 1960s when civil war broke out after independence. The past eight years it has been the UN’s biggest peacekeeping deployment ever.  

Congo is rotting from within. As John Prendergast and Fidel Bafilemba write in a new book, “Congo Stories”, “Today’s corruption cannot be separated from the kleptocratic system, the roots of which go back to colonial-era depredations, as well as more than a century of massive bribery and kickback schemes by multinational corporations.”  

The Belgian colonial regime was perhaps, write the authors, “the ugliest chapter in all of Africa’s colonial history”.  

A turbulent Congo is the last thing the multinationals want, even though they have done so much in past years to corrupt it and exploit it. The world needs Congolese products: key raw materials needed for cell phones, laptops and video games- tantalum, tungsten and tin; for electric cars, cobalt, for which it produces 60% of the world’s output, the main ingredient for the lithium battery. (The latter is responsible for a sharp increase in child labour.)  

Later, after independence, the Soviet Union made a large effort to “capture” Congo’s political leaders and push the US, Belgium and France aside. It supported Patrice Lumumba who was the Congo’s first prime minister. Congo was the first African country to become part of the “tug-of-war” between the two superpowers. Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, ordered the Congo’s station chief to remove Lumumba. Washington sent him vials of poisons. In fact Lumumba was murdered with Mobuto’s connivance while visiting the province of mineral-rich Katanga which some Western countries had helped secede. Not coincidentally, both Ambassador Burden and Dulles had financial interests in the Congo. All this is well documented.  

The US, Britain, France, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund started giving General Mobutu, who had staged a coup in 1960 and ruled with an iron fist for 32 years until he was driven out by a popular revolt, enormous amounts of aid- the US itself over the years gave around a billion dollars. President Ronald Reagan called Mobutu “a voice of good sense and good will”. He was President H.W. Bush’s first African state official visitor with Bush calling him “one of our most valued friends”. Mobutu amassed for himself a fortune.  

Perhaps the Congo is at its darkest just before sunrise. Let us hope so, even if its history suggests otherwise. 

Maduro’s Power in Venezuela Seems Stable, for Now

Despite the recognition by a wave of countries of the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president, Maduro’s patronage of the military insulates him from the need to negotiate.

The opposition leader Juan Guaidó speaks during a meeting with deputies, media, and supporters, organized by the National Assembly, at Plaza Bolívar de Chacao in Caracas on Jan. 25. (Edilzon Gamez/Getty Images)

BY JOE PARKIN DANIELS, MARIANA ZÚÑIGA

| JANUARY 25, 2019, 5:53 PM
 
 CARACAS—When Juan Guaidó stood before tens of thousands of supporters in Caracas, constitution in hand, and took the oath declaring himself interim president, many Venezuelans thought that President Nicolás Maduro, widely regarded as a dictator, could finally be ousted from the presidential palace. Attendees at the rally could barely contain their joy as the wiry freshman leader of Venezuela’s once-toothless opposition spoke. They broke down in tears and embraced loved ones, singing “Down with chains!” as the national anthem’s rousing lyrics go.

“Guaidó did what he had to do,” said Carlos Martínez, 41, who had come to watch the young leader speak.

Just moments later, the White House announced that the United States would recognize Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader, at least until free and fair elections could be held. This was followed by similar declarations from a dozen Latin American countries—with the notable exception of Mexico—as well as Canada. Over the course of the day, Venezuela’s reliable allies Russia, China, Cuba, Bolivia, and Turkey reiterated their backing for Maduro, but still the jubilant atmosphere in Caracas reached fever pitch.

That optimism, for now at least, seems premature.

The military—long the kingmaker of Venezuelan politics—did not defect en masse. These protests, the largest in at least two years and held in several onetime bastions of government supporters, were met with repression and did little to faze Maduro. On Wednesday night, he gave a speech to several thousand gathered supporters—a fraction of the turnout for the marches against him—with a rundown of his bellicose rhetorical hits. “We are defending the right to the very existence of our Bolivarian republic,” he said from the balcony of Miraflores, the opulent presidential palace. “Do you want a puppet government controlled by Washington?”

By Thursday morning, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López broke his silence after 24 hours of speculation over the military’s loyalty to Maduro. He and eight regional military commanders appeared on state television to denounce what they called a coup, confirming suspicions that, for now at least, Maduro’s grip on the military leadership holds firm.

In response to the U.S. recognition of Guaidó, Maduro has broken off diplomatic ties with Washington. The U.S. State Department has stated that he lacks the authority to do so. As tensions rise ahead of Sunday’s deadline to call back all U.S. diplomatic personnel, the countries across the region that also backed Guaidó face a difficult decision: Which president do Latin American countries back in practice?

“Is all of Latin America going to expel their Venezuelan diplomats and replace them with ones named by Guaidó, diplomats who have no actual ability to do things like grant visas or advance commercial interests from Caracas? What does this mean for consular and diplomatic affairs, let alone commercial ties?” said Geoff Ramsey, the assistant director for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank. “I can’t see support for a parallel government lasting for very long before countries start to yield to their very real interest in maintaining communication with the de facto authority, meaning Maduro.”

Maduro gained prominence as a fiercely loyal lieutenant to his late predecessor Hugo Chávez, whose Bolivarian brand of socialism endeared him to leftists around the world. When his charismatic mentor died of cancer in 2013, Maduro assumed power and narrowly won an election shortly after. Then, the economy—little more than a state–run oil business—began to tank.

Now, with dwindling public support, he has grown increasingly authoritarian.He has dispatched the national guard to stamp out protests and in 2017 sidelined the democratically elected but opposition-held National Assembly, replacing it with a pliant Constituent Assembly. He has also stacked the supreme court. His electoral victory last May was widely labeled a sham, and when he began his second term in early January, Guaidó challenged his rule, triggering the current escalation of the crisis.

However, Maduro keeps the loyalty of the armed forces by granting leaders stakes in PDVSA, the state-run oil company, and turning a blind eye to their involvement in illegal activities, including drug trafficking and gold mining. That quid pro quo is bolstered by an anti-American ideology, something U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement on Wednesday inadvertently fueled.

“These are guys that fought with Chávez, that believe in their hearts that the U.S. is the enemy,” said Eva Golinger, the author of Confidante of ‘Tyrants’ and a former defender of Chávez.

The lower ranks are not bought off like their bosses and would likely be more willing to see Maduro go. They suffer the same crisis as the average Venezuelan. Guaidó, in a bid to mobilize the military, will canvas military bases this Sunday, offering amnesty to troops who switch sides.

A negotiated solution to the crisis now looks unlikely. Maduro has previously used the prospect of talks to buy time and lock up opponents, and when he called for dialogue at a press conference on Friday, many observers felt he was singing the same tune. Guaidó’s coalition still lacks the vital support of the military. Mexico and Uruguay have offered to broker talks in good faith, though mistrust exists on both sides, and ultimately Maduro has little to gain and everything to lose from stepping aside. 

“Looking around at most authoritarian breakdowns over the last few decades, one doesn’t see all that many negotiated transitions—and most of them are in cases of military dictatorship or institutionalized party rule,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die. “In weakly institutionalized cases, autocrats and their inner circle know they have little to gain and much to lose from a transition, so they have little incentive to negotiate.”

“I would not hold my breath waiting for a negotiated transition in Venezuela unless—and this is quite possible—the military steps in, pushes Maduro aside, and negotiates,” Levitsky said. “The army could negotiate a transition. Maduro is very unlikely to do so.”

Aside from Wednesday’s developments, the oil-rich nation’s woes show little sign of abating.

Caught in the middle of the geopolitical wrangling are 32 million Venezuelans who are enduring an intractable crisis. Hyperinflation is predicted to reach 10 million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, drawing comparisons to Germany’s Weimar Republic. Basic food staples and medicines are in scarce supply and prohibitively expensive when they are available. Water and power outages are a daily reality. More than 3 million Venezuelans have already left, according to the United Nations refugee agency, worrying South American neighbors ill-equipped to receive more refugees.

“I suppose conditions could still get worse for the average Venezuelan, but they are so, so bad right now,” said Katrina Burgess, an associate professor of political economy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. “My fear is that this is just another outburst with an opposition leader who has support inside and outside of Venezuela, but Maduro just lets it play out, and it goes poof, with some repression thrown in, and we’re back to where we started.”

Venezuela on a knife’s edge

Jan 26, 2019Jan 26, 2019

There is a right-wing coup attempt underway in Venezuela orchestrated by the Trump White House and the CIA along with its junior partners — the so-called Lima Group. The democratically-elected government of Nicolás Maduro has broken relations with the U.S. government and ordered the U.S. embassy in Caracas closed and all its agents to leave the country within 72 hours. We are witnessing once again a classic example of U.S. imperialism and its proxies attempting to carry out an illegal regime change operation against a progressive government. People all over the world need to stand in solidarity with Venezuela in this critical moment.

The declaration by Juan Guaidó that he is assuming the presidency of the country is an outrage, and represents an attempt by the Venezuelan capitalist elite and their masters in Washington to overturn the country’s Bolivarian Revolution, which has empowered Venezuela’s poor and laid the foundations for the construction of socialism. Guaidó, a member of the far-right Popular Will party, was virtually unknown in the country until a few weeks ago — he has no popular support and is simply a vessel for the conspiracy underway directed by the Trump administration.    

In a statement, Trump claimed that “In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly [which Guaidó leads] invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant.” This is a ridiculous distortion of the truth. President Maduro was re-elected last year with 67 percent of the vote in an election that was judged to be free and fair by independent observers.

In fact, it is the National Assembly that is illegitimate. The National Assembly was declared to be in contempt by the Venezuelan Supreme Court after it defied the National Electoral Council and seated legislators whose elections were nullified on the basis of vote buying. All decisions made by the National Assembly, including the selection of Guaidó as its leader, are unconstitutional and null and void.

This is far from the first time that the United States has sponsored a coup against a democratically-elected government. The overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, and Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 are just some of the more well-known examples. On a press briefing call today, a senior State Department official pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of the United States taking military action against Venezuela.

The Trump administration’s rhetoric about human rights and democracy is completely hollow. Venezuela is in fact being targeted because it has a socialist government that challenges the dominance of western corporations and refuses to obey the dictates of Washington.  

We call on all progressive people and opponents of U.S. wars to rally in defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty and the Bolivarian Revolution. Actions are taking place outside the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C. today at 6:30 p.m., in Los Angeles on Thursday at CNN headquarters at 6:00 pm, in Washington, D.C. on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. in front of the White House, and in San Francisco on Friday at 5:00 p.m. at 24th and Mission Sts. Now more than ever, we need to take to the streets and demand: “U.S. hands off Venezuela!”

'She should have been warm': Refugees mourn children killed by cold in Syria camp

Eight children have died in Rukban camp this month, as families blame terrible living conditions and lack of humanitarian aid for their deaths

Masoud al-Awwad lost his one-and-a-half-month-old daughter Yasmeen due to lack of medical services and dire living conditions (MEE)

Zouhir Al Shimale-Kaamil Ahmed-Friday 25 January 2019 

Clutching her young baby to her chest to warm her up during one of many freezing nights that Syria's Rukban refugee camp has had to endure this winter, Samah al-Awwad unwittingly fell asleep.

When she woke with the sunrise, the bundle between her arms had turned cold.

“It was one of those dark, freezing nights when my Yasmeen was sleeping in my arms. There should be nowhere warmer than on my chest but it was cold even there,” said Samah, 33, choking on her words as she relived the moment.

“I don’t know how I fell asleep, but when I woke up at sunrise I felt a coldness between my hands, where my baby was. She was supposed to be warm.”

Yasmeen was born a month-and-a-half earlier in the neglected camp, located in a demilitarised zone of southeastern Syria near the Jordan border, just as it was enveloped by a hostile winter.

There should be nowhere warmer than on my chest but it was cold even there

- Samah al-Awaad, mother of one-month-old baby who died earlier this month

More than half of the 15 Syrian children who have died in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon this winter lived in Rukban, an impoverished settlement of at least 40,000 internally displaced Syrians, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

When Samah got pregnant almost a year ago, she and her husband Masoud were hoping they would either be able to return to their home by the time Yasmeen was born, or be allowed to leave the camp for a hospital. Neither happened.

The couple had spent weeks trying to get Yasmeen through the winter, sleeping in shifts to ensure they could tend to the illnesses she had suffered since her difficult birth.

The delivery almost killed both mother and child and left Samah in a 24-hour coma. She puts her survival down to the “miraculous” work of a camp midwife. The camp had no incubator to keep the frail newborn in.

“Health care facilities are barely functioning and have very few staff or medical supplies. There are no generators or fuel to provide even minimum warmth to alleviate the bitterly cold weather,” WHO said in a statement on 17 January.

Some 40,000 internally displaced Syrians live in Rukban, cut off from humanitarian aid and fearful of being forced back into government-held areas (MEE Khaled al-Ali)

The organisation urged for it to be given access to the camp, where it said diseases and illnesses linked to the cold are especially dangerous for young children.

Similar conditions led to Saqr and Fadilah al-Mouawad losing their daughter Basma, who at three-and-a-half months old was barely older than Yasmeen.

Basma made it through a difficult delivery but was malnourished and the aid supplies available in Rukban were not enough to sustain her.

Her parents said she should never should have been born in Rukban anyway.

“Before Basma’s delivery we were trying to leave the camp, but it’s unbelievable how strict things have become,” Saqr told MEE. He said he tried to supplement the aid supplies with whatever he could buy from traders inside the camp.

“I talked with camp officials, with many UN employees who come for food distribution, about helping us out, but [I was given] only lies and promises that weren’t fulfilled.”

Talks to dismantle Rukban

In November, a convoy of 70 trucks delivered the first UN aid supply to the camp since January last year.

To access a basic clinic, residents must cross into Jordan - through a border that has been largely closed since 2016.

Those at the camp began arriving in late 2015, after fleeing areas of Syria previously controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Look at our children who are about to die from lack of medicine or food. How is this possible in the 21st century?

- Abdul Aziz Aghani, teacher in Rukban

They wanted to cross into Jordan, which has taken in 670,000 Syrian refugees since the civil war began in 2011, but the kingdom sealed the crossing at Rukban in June 2016 after seven Jordanian border patrol soldiers were killed in a bomb attack claimed by IS.

Jordan announced earlier this month that it was holding three-party talks with Russia and the US aimed at dismantling Rukban, arguing that the conditions are right for the refugees to return home.

However, residents of the camp have said they fear reprisals or conscription if they are forced to go back to government-held territory.

'My beloved daughter Basma should have had a warm room and enough milk,' Fadilah al-Mouawad told Middle East Eye (MEE)

Abdul Aziz Aghani, a 46-year-old history teacher in Rukban, said all of the camp’s facilities were basic, with schools nothing more than tents furnished with a small board for him to write on.

Storms have forced the schools to close and left some of the students homeless once again.

'Trashy, remote prison'

“What should be done to end this tragedy is to finally give everyone the right to move, or move everyone to northern Syria, not force everyone to stay in this trashy, remote prison,” Aghani told MEE.

“We call everyone responsible to look at our children who are about to die from lack of medicine or food. How is this possible in the 21st century?

“Every family can barely feed their children once a day - some only have one meal every two days, sadly,” he added. “As teachers, it is the same for us. We can’t help ourselves, let alone the poor, starving kids.”

Since her daughter’s death, Fadilah has now focused on supporting her two older sons, Mohammed and Khaled. “Both are struggling from lack of food and weak immune systems. They are skinny and barely have anything to eat,” Fadilah said.

“My beloved daughter Basma should have had a warm room and enough milk, but none of that existed,” she added. "I woke up and she was a cold thing wrapped in her baby blanket.

"May God rest her innocent soul."

Revealed: 'dozens' of girls subjected to breast-ironing in UK

Perpetrators consider it a traditional measure to stop unwanted male attention


 A stone used for breast-ironing is placed on a fire. Photograph: Joe Penney/Reuters

Inna Lazareva-Sat 26 Jan 2019 07.01 GMT

An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.

Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.

Margaret Nyuydzewira, head of the diaspora group the Came Women and Girls Development Organisation (Cawogido), estimated that at least 1,000 women and girls in the UK had been subjected to the intervention. There has been no systematic study or formal data collection exercise.

Margaret Nyuydzewira, who herself was subjected to the practice of breast-ironing as a young woman. Photograph: Inna Lazareva

Another community activist, who did not wish to be named, said she was aware of 15-20 recent cases in Croydon alone.

“It’s usually done in the UK, not abroad like female genital mutilation (FGM),” she said, describing a practice whereby mothers, aunties or grandmothers use a hot stone to massage across the breast repeatedly in order to “break the tissue” and slow its growth.

“Sometimes they do it once a week, or once every two weeks, depending on how it comes back,” she added.

The perpetrators, usually mothers, consider it a traditional measure which protects girls from unwanted male attention, sexual harassment and rape. Medical experts and victims regard it as child abuse which could lead to physical and psychological scars, infections, inability to breastfeed, deformities and breast cancer.

The United Nations describes it as one of five global under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence.

One woman living in the suburbs of an English city told the Guardian how she went about ironing her daughter’s chest at the first sign of puberty.

“I took the stone, I warmed it, and then I started massaging [my daughter’s chest],” she said. “And the stone was a little bit hot. When I started massaging, she said: ‘Mummy, it’s hot!’” The child developed bruising and the mother was eventually questioned by police, before being released with a caution.

British-Somali anti-FGM campaigner and psychotherapist Leyla Hussein said she has spoken to five women in her north London clinic who had been victims of breast-ironing.

“They were all British women, all British citizens,” Hussein said. One of the women said she became flat-chested as a result of the practice, said Hussein. “She kept saying: ‘I have a boy’s chest.’ But no one has ever questioned her about it. No one had physically checked her. This was in north London, just down the road,” said Hussein.

“I was a nurse in the UK for over 10 years and watched the numbers grow,” said Jennifer Miraj, who worked in hospitals in Essex, Glasgow, Birmingham and London until 2015. Miraj said she came across confirmed cases of breast-ironing in approximately 15 adults and eight girls.

“I took care of a young 10-year-old girl who had an infection, which had been going on for a few years from ironing,” she said, describing a case from Broomfield hospital in Essex.

Mary Claire, a church minister in Wolverhampton, said she had spoken to four victims in Leeds, originally from west Africa. “You could see the marks,” she said.

Police say they have fielded no allegations about breast-ironing in the UK, but suspect it is happening.

“If I knew it was happening, I would do something about it,” said the Insp Allen Davis from the Met police.

“Prosecutions are really important,” he added. “People have to recognise these practices for what they are – child abuse.”

A recent London borough of Brent mental health report mentioned that voluntary sector organisations working across the African diaspora felt that breast-ironing was “an emerging issue” which “was not receiving enough attention”.

“It is surprising to me that the police and other authorities are not allocating even the resources clearly needed to deal with this horrific phenomenon,” said Alex Carlile, one of UK’s leading QCs, who is a former deputy high court judge and a member of the House of Lords.

“Surely it’s high time for the police and prosecuting authorities to address and tackle the issue in a robust manner, sensitive to the personal issues that arise for young victims and their communities.”

“It’s not only an issue of funding, it is also an issue of political will to tackle something that historically has been accepted as a cultural practice,” said Conservative MP Maria Miller, who also chairs the women’s and equalities select committee in parliament.

“I think public service providers have to start being more honest and realistic about some of the things they are encountering, and to have the support to challenge what are abusive and barbaric practices, particularly aimed against children,” she added.

The government has said it is “absolutely committed” to stamping out the practice. But activists and social workers say that little has been done thus far.

“Nothing came out of this – nothing!” said campaigner Geraldine Yenwo of Cawogido. “We talk about early marriage and violence against women and girls but no one ever mentions breast-ironing,” she added.

Nyuydzewira, who was herself subjected to the abuse as a girl, said British authorities were not taking the problem seriously, and have not prosecuted those doing breast-ironing on their children on grounds of it being seen as a “cultural practice”.

“The British people are so polite in the sense that when they see something like that, they think of cultural sensitivities,” she said. “But if it’s a cultural practice that is harming children … any harm that is done to a little girl, whether in public or in secrecy, that person should be held accountable.”

Skinny genes the 'secret to staying slim'

By Smitha MundasadGlobal Health Correspondent, BBC News-25 January 2019

Scientists say they have discovered the secret behind why some people are skinny while others pile on the pounds easily.

Their work reveals newly discovered genetic regions linked to being very slim.

The international team say this supports the idea that, for some people, being thin has more to do with inheriting a "lucky" set of genes than having a perfect diet or lifestyle.

The study appears in PLOS Genetics.

You may also be interested in:

• Celebrities shunned Prince William charity
• Footballer's love for Argos embraced
• Man 'who stole own car' wins settlement

In the past few decades, researchers have found hundreds of genetic changes that increase the chance of a person being overweight - but there has been much less focus on the genes of people who are thin.

In this investigation, scientists compared DNA samples from 1,600 healthy thin people in the UK - with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18 - with those of 2,000 severely obese people and 10,400 people of normal weight.

They also looked closely at lifestyle questionnaires - to rule out eating disorders, for example.

Researchers found people who were obese were more likely to have a set of genes linked to being overweight.

Meanwhile, people who were skinny not only had fewer genes linked to obesity but also had changes in gene regions newly associated with healthy thinness.

'Rush to judgement'

Lead researcher Prof Sadaf Farooqi, from the University of Cambridge, called on people to be less judgemental about others' weight.

"This research shows for the first time that healthy thin people are generally thin because they have a lower burden of genes that increase a person's chances of being overweight and not because they are morally superior, as some people like to suggest," she said.

"It's easy to rush to judgement and criticise people for their weight but science shows that things are far more complex.

"We have far less control over our weight than we might wish to think."

Scientists say the next step is to pinpoint the exact genes involved in healthy thinness.

Their longer-term goal is to see if this new knowledge can help shape new weight-loss strategies.

'Genetically different'

Commenting on the research, Prof Tom Sanders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics, at King's College London, said: "This is an important and well conducted study confirming that precocious severe obesity is often genetically determined and showing convincingly that those who are very thin are genetically different from the general population."

But he added: "Most obesity is acquired in adult life and is linked to the obesogenic environment we live in - a sedentary lifestyle and abundant access to calorie-dense foods."

Prof Tim Spector, also from King's College London, said about a third of people in most countries managed to remain thin despite this.

"Some of this is down to genes but other factors like individual differences in lifestyle or gut microbes are likely to also be responsible," he said.

Health experts say whatever your shape or genetic make-up, the age-old advice of a healthy level of exercise and good diet still stands.