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George H.W. Bush dead at 94
Saturday, 01 December 2018 09:21 Written by oasesnewsFormer US President, George H.W. Bush is dead.
The statement reads: “George Herbert Walker Bush, World War II naval aviator, Texas oil pioneer, and 41st President of the United States of America, died on November 30, 2018.
“He was preceded in death by his wife of 73 years, Barbara; his second child Pauline “Robin” Bush; and his brothers Prescott and William or “Bucky” Bush.”
Bush’s death comes after his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush, passed away on April 17 at the age of 92.
Bush, the 41st president of the United States, lived longer than any of his predecessors, CNN reports.
Bush is survived by his son, Jeb, the former Florida governor and 2016 presidential candidate; sons Neil and Marvin; daughter Dorothy; and 17 grandchildren.
He will be buried at his presidential library in College Station, Texas.
Canada’s moral negligence in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder
Thursday, 29 November 2018 04:54 Written by theconversationWhen the CIA announced that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered the brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, my colleagues and I published an opinion piece in a Canadian newspaper. We were critical of our government’s response, which doubles down on its rhetoric of “human rights” while failing to take any concrete action.
“We will continue to stand up for Canadian values and indeed for universal values and human rights at any occasion,” Prime Minister Trudeau said in August.
“Continue”? And “at any occasion?” But why not now, and on this occasion?
Trudeau and the Crown prince will both be at the G20 summit in Argentina this week. It’s seemingly business as usual.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has offered an explanation that she framed as morally virtuous: “When it comes to existing contracts, our government believes strongly that Canada’s word has to matter.”
Canada’s $14.8 billion contract to sell armoured combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia could not be jeopardized. Cancelling it would carry penalties somewhere in the range of “billions of dollars,” the prime minister tells us. And besides, this deal will reportedly create 3,000 jobsover 14 years in southwestern Ontario. This too is significant. But the trade-off is stark: the death of some in exchange for the livelihood of others. This can be none other than what we called a “sacrificial economy.”
‘Everybody knows’
If I could choose a soundtrack for the Jamal Khashoggi affair, it would be the ghostly voice of Leonard Cohen singing “
.” The refrain is familiar. Everybody knows about Canada’s lucrative armoured vehicle contract with the Saudi regime. Everybody knows the deal is rotten.Everybody knows that these are weapons and do not serve the same humanitarian purposes as books or pharmaceuticals or grain. Everybody knows that they deliver death and destitution and that they have helped to produce what the United Nations has called the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time in Yemen.
Everybody knows that a Washington Post journalist is not the only victim of these economies — there are countless dead who have no voice, and it is especially tragic that someone positioned to speak on their behalf was himself assassinated.
Everybody knows — or should know — that in 2017 alone, Canada sold just under $500 million worth of guns, training gear, imaging and countermeasure equipment, bombs, rockets, drones and unspecified chemical or biological agents to Saudi Arabia. We have also sold guided missiles to Bahrain, and different weapons to the United Arab Emirates — both of which support Saudi military action in Yemen.
We have also sold military helicopters to Rodrigo Duterte’s regime in the Philippines. The list goes on. So even if one Saudi contract is cancelled, not much is likely to change.
Dice are loaded
But even without these details, everybody knows that the dice are loaded. In my research, I examine the ethical relationship between the modern state’s power to “make live” and “let die” — which also means indirect killing. This is what the French philosopher Michel Foucault called “biopolitics,” a deadly and differential politics where life itself is both the means and the end of political power.
Sacrificial deaths go by many euphemisms: collateral damages (in war), opportunity costs or negative externalities (in economics). But negative “externality” is misleading here. The negation of life, or “letting die,” is internal to this general economy, a moral economy that silently underpins the rules of international law, diplomacy and trade. Everybody knows, but nobody knows what to do with this knowledge.
It is, then, as if Khashoggi’s murder — along with innumerable others less spectacular or publicized — are factored in as a tolerable threshold of death in the name of life and livelihood. This is not new, but the scale of mass destruction and its technological automation should give us pause as we contemplate the roboticization of weapons and algorithmic warfare.
The sacrificial economy has its own sinister principles of accounting. As British intellectual and forensic architect Eyal Weizman has documented in The Least of All Possible Evils, the U.S. military has tolerable thresholds of civilian deaths for each military death; Israeli blockades in Gaza have counted the calories of food entering Gaza, based on average per-person consumption (2,100 calories per male and 1,700 per female).
Violence as virtue
Violence is framed as a moral virtue, obeying “proportionality” or the “humanitarian minimum.” Outside the theatres of war, and in the Canadian context, what is the tolerable threshold of carbon emissions and climate change to sell our oil, or the tolerable threshold of First Nations communities without access to clean drinking water? More sacrifice.
It would be unjust to blame Trudeau or Freeland entirely for our sacrificial economy. As Cohen writes, “That’s how it goes / Everybody knows.”
But there is, still, the matter of Canada’s word, our collective values and the willingness of each Canadian to remain complicit or to knowingly resist. Khashoggi’s death is significant not just for its attack on the freedom of the press, but because it occasions a grave conversation on the relationship between our livelihood as Canadians and the countless deaths that this livelihood calls for and quietly condones.
Author: Stuart J. Murray: Professor and Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics, Carleton University
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Arms and influence in the Khashoggi affair
Tuesday, 20 November 2018 03:57 Written by theconversationPresident Donald Trump’s reaction to the disappearance and death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul reveals important details about the declining influence of U.S. in the Middle East.
As a scholar who follows the links between international and domestic politics in the Middle East, it is not hard to see that what President Trump has said so far about the Khashoggi affair will accelerate the diminishing power of the U.S. in the Middle East.
New dynamic for an old alliance
American influence in the Middle East – especially over Saudi Arabia – was already waningbefore Trump’s election.
After the Bush administration’s failure to turn post-invasion Iraq into a model of pro-American democracy in the Middle East, the Obama administration attempted to avoid Middle East military quagmires.
Instead, it tried to use diplomacy to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program. But asking the Saudis to share their neighborhood with their Iranian rivals was instead seen by Saudis as asking for Arab acquiescence to Iranian power.
The recent rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman pushed Saudi Arabia from a country that preferred to work in the background in international affairs into a nation that stepped up its activity as the U.S. stepped back.
The Saudis took Trump’s election as an opportunity to push the U.S. for a harder line on Iran. They wanted the U.S. to reverse the nuclear deal and do more to block Iran’s clients in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Bahrain. The Saudis also wanted to arm themselves with more modern weapons systems.
Trump and the art of the arms deal
Trump’s vision of Saudi-U.S. relations has arms sales by the U.S. to Saudi Arabia at its center, which is an example of how his “America First” foreign policy works.
In Trump’s first foreign visit as president, he flew to Saudi Arabia and signed a deal to sell US$110 billion worth of arms to the Saudis. Trump emerged from that trip with a close relationship to Crown Prince Salman, who drives much of Saudi government policy for his aged father, King Salman.
Since then, the prince has developed a strong relationship with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who serves as a regular liaison between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Recently, Trump rejected the idea of Congress imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia if the Saudis were found responsible for killing Khashoggi.
Trump said, “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country on – I know they’re talking about different kinds of sanctions, but they’re spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs, like jobs and others, for this country.”
In another interview, Trump said that he told the King of Saudi Arabia “King, you’ve gotta pay” for American protection.
Arms or influence?
Trump’s transactional foreign policy is primarily concerned with money and American jobs. Previous bipartisan cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy have fallen to the wayside, including promoting human rights and democracy or seeking a strategic balance of power favorable to American interests.
This policy risks pushing U.S. influence in the Middle East further to the margins. In Trump’s calculations, the U.S. cannot sanction or chastise Riyadh because it would hurt the U.S. more than it would Saudi Arabia. American jobs would be lost if the Saudis turned to purchasing arms from Russia or China.
While Trump may believe his own accounting of the $110 billion in arms sales, there are questions as to whether the sales are really worth far less. Moreover, some observers haveremarked that the U.S. arms sales were trading human rights for profit. In addition to concerns about the lack of freedom within Saudi Arabia, others have worried that these arms will aid what has become a shockingly deadly Saudi intervention in Yemen.
The Saudis have threatened “that if it receives any action, it will respond with greater action, and that the Kingdom’s economy has an influential and vital role in the global economy.” The exact nature of these actions remains unclear. These threats, however, play on fears that the Saudis would cancel the arms purchase or raise the price of oil. And late on Monday, reports emerged that Saudi Arabia was going to admit accidentally killing Khashoggi in an interrogation.
President Trump has emboldened Saudi Arabia by relying on his personal diplomacy and focusing on jobs rather than broader American interests or ideals. If the Saudis are able to keep the United States out of the Khashoggi affair, then Trump has opened the door to further limits on U.S. influence in the Middle East.
Author:Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities; Associate Professor of International Relations, Michigan State University
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Saudi Prosecutor Reveals Who Gave Order For Khashoggi's Murder
Friday, 16 November 2018 06:59 Written by tori.ngPopular News
We fail our citizens in Canada – and the UN is onto us
Friday, 16 November 2018 00:48 Written by theconversationIn developed nations such as Canada, citizens might assume that governing authorities legitimately and competently act to provide them with economic and social security.
Citizens provide information to government officials on the adverse effects of the inequitable distribution of income and services with the expectation that they will respond. To name just one example, poverty researchers and food security advocates detail the extent of poverty and hunger respectively in Canada and its adverse health effects, hoping for positive policy responses from governing authorities.
Yet growing income inequality among Canadians and the scaling-back of programs that benefit many of them challenge this assumption. Instead, governments are enacting public policies that primarily benefit economic elites. Our research raises serious questions about government legitimacy and competency due to these issues, and how the dereliction has significant impacts on the health and well-being of Canadians.
The legitimacy of governments is based on processes of democracy and participation and the acceptance of public policy outcomes.
No one doubts that Canada holds “free and open” elections. However, the political process is dominated by economic elites whose calls for reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and for scaling back social programs, are enacted by the dominant political parties.
In addition, the “first-past-the-post” electoral systemdisenfranchises the political preferences of a significant number of Canadians — usually the majority of voters — while maintaining control of federal and provincial parliaments by business-oriented political parties.
Weakening the social safety net
Economic elites also dominate political discourse through ownership of the mainstream media, funding of conservative policy institutes and lobbying efforts that weaken the social safety net. And they game the tax system as evidenced by the Panama and Paradise Papers.
What’s the outcome of this domination? Growing corporate power affects labour markets, social spending and tax and transfer policy, all to the detriment of most Canadians.
Indeed, almost 50 per cent of Canadians have indicated they couldn’t meet their financial obligations if their paycheque was a week late.
Poverty rates are revealing
The poverty rate is a good measure of legitimacy. It indicates whether the distribution of resources is so skewed that it creates material deprivation that threatens well-being.
Statistics Canada reports that in 2015 that 14.2 per cent of Canadians — or 4,979,000 people — were living in poverty. Among children 17 years of age and younger, the rate was 15.2 per cent, or 1,032,000 Canadian children. Statistics Canada also reports people in poverty fall a full 30.5 per cent below the poverty line.
This shows that poverty is not only widespread, but deep. Comparatively, Canada ranks 25th of 34 developed wealthy nations in controlling poverty rates.
Another indicator of legitimacy is the extent to which the benefits of an expanding economy are distributed equitably. Over the past 20 years, the incomes of the bottom 60 per cent of Canadians have stagnated, while growing sharply for the highest 20 per cent. Canada ranks 20th among 34 wealthy developed nations in managing income inequality.
A simple definition of competence — “the ability to do something successfully or efficiently” from the Oxford dictionary — can help assess Canada’s governing authorities’ abilities to meet the economic and social needs of citizens.
Despite the Constitution’s commitment to peace, order and good government, Canada has been the subject of an ongoing series of rebukes from the United Nations regarding violations of the civil, political and social rights of its citizens.
United Nations rebukes
Indigenous Rights: The 2014 report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples identified extreme inequity in socio-economic conditions and well-being between Indigenous and other Canadians. Of the bottom 100 communities in Canada on the Community Well-being Index, 96 are First Nations.
Employment and Working Conditions: Canada has one of the highest rates of low-paid employment among developed nations. Related to this is growing precariousness of work that’s associated with very limited employment benefits, and in particular, job insecurity.
Food Insecurity: Statistics Canada’s Community Health Surveys find that 12.4 per cent of Canadians or 1.1 million households, or more than four million individuals — including 1.15 million children — experience food insecurity. Canada has been scolded by the UN for failing to meet its international obligations to provide Canadians with food.
Housing: At least 200,000 Canadians access homeless emergency services or sleep outsideeach year. A March 2013 Ipsos Reid poll found the number is 1.3 million if it includes people temporarily staying with others, in addition to those sleeping on the streets or in shelters.
In addition, Statistics Canada reports that 12.7 per cent of Canadian households were in what’s known as “core housing need” in 2016.
Core housing need refers to three criteria: Affordability (households spend 30 per cent or more of their incomes on their housing); suitability (the housing is appropriate for household composition and size); and adequacy (the household does not require major repairs, such as plumbing).
The most common reason for core housing need is housing affordability. Canada has been chastised by the United Nations for not meeting its international obligations.
Women’s rights: The United Nations 2016 review found Canada lacked a comprehensive national strategy, policy or action plan to address the structural factors that cause gender inequalities.
It noted the continued high prevalence of gender-based violence against women, in particular against Indigenous women and girls who suffer multiple forms of discrimination in access to employment, housing, education and health care.
What to do?
Canadian governing authorities wear the veneer of legitimacy and competency despite their pandering to economic elites and their unwillingness to fairly distribute resources.
The failure of Canadian governments to respond to these problems requires mobilization of the public to literally force them to act.
Canadian public policy may be creating order, and, currently, peace. It is certainly not good government by any stretch of the imagination.
Author: Dennis Raphael: Professor of Health Policy and Management, York University, Canada, Morris Komakech:PhD Student, York University, Canada, Ryan Torrence: Masters student, York University, Canada and Toba Bryant:Associate Professor of Health Sciences, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
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After 45 years, a disturbing Columbus statue has been removed from an L.A. park [Video]
Wednesday, 14 November 2018 01:44 Written by face2faceafricaA bronze Christopher Columbus statue at Grand Park, downtown Los Angeles has been removed for good over the weekend after 45 years of exuding mental torture especially to the Indigenous People of America.
Columbus is wrongly tagged as the one who discovered America, a land inhabited by human beings before his arrival on an expedition to find gold and steal lands for the Spanish king.
“It’s a natural next step of eliminating the false narrative that Columbus was a benign discoverer who helped make this country what it is … His statue and his image is really representative of someone who committed atrocities and helped initiate the greatest genocide ever recorded in human history, so the fact that his statue is coming down is the next step in the natural progression,” says Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell before the statue fell.
The statue was completely covered in October during the maiden celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day which replaced Columbus Day, after over a decade of protest by the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission (LANAIC).
The L.A. County Arts Commission finally accepted the plea for the statue’s removal and the historic day was marked by hundreds of people who had gathered to witness the restoration of their dignity.
So many accounts prove that other people have travelled to the Americas years before Christopher Columbus did. Some sources say Abubakari II, Mansa (King) of the Mali Empire in the 14th century, led Malian sailors to the Americas, specifically present-day Brazil, almost 200 years before Columbus arrived. Abubakari II ruled what was arguably the richest and largest empire on earth – covering nearly all of West Africa.
Although not all historians agree that there was evidence of Abubakari II’s journey and landing in the Americas, many do agree that there may have been Black African presence in the Americas way before Columbus.
Tiemoko Konate, head of the project tracing Abubakari II’s journeys told BBC, that Columbus, himself, said he found black traders already present in the Americas. Moreover, chemical analyses of gold tips that Columbus found on spears in America show that the gold probably came from West Africa.
Archaeologists also found a number of artefacts that indicate that Africans had set foot and lived in South America as far back as 13,000 BC to the 600 AD, even before Abubakar II.
The evidence indicates that people from Axum, Meroe and Land of Punt began settling in South America between this time, according to the skulls found in excavation projects in Ecuador, Valdivia, Chile, and among the Ponuencho of Peru.
Scientists also believe that the similarity in religion between Africans and South Americans could be a link that the two had encountered each other.
Some of the artefacts discovered included a stone head of a man wearing a circular earring on his right ear, an artefact quite similar to the carving of Akhenaton. There has also been the discovery of pots and water jars that were used in the Land of Punt.
Democrats capture US House majority in rebuke to Trump
Wednesday, 07 November 2018 06:48 Written by standardmediaDemocrats rode a wave of dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump to win control of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, giving them the opportunity to block Trump’s agenda and open his administration to intense scrutiny.
In midterm elections two years after he won the White House, Trump and his fellow Republicans expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate following a divisive campaign marked by fierce clashes over race, immigration and other cultural issues. But Tuesday’s results were a bitter outcome for Trump after a campaign that became a referendum on his leadership. NBC News projected Democrats would hold a 229-206 House majority, taking over control from the Republicans for the first time in eight years. Other media outlets also projected that the Democrats would pick up at least the 23 Republican-held seats they needed to win to gain a majority. With a House majority, Democrats will have the power to investigate Trump’s tax returns, possible business conflicts of interest and allegations involving his 2016 campaign’s links to Russia.
They also could force Trump to scale back his legislative ambitions, possibly dooming his promises to fund a border wall with Mexico, pass a second major tax-cut package or carry out his hardline policies on trade. Avoid fake news! Subscribe to the Standard SMS service and receive factual, verified breaking news as it happens.
A simple House majority would be enough to impeach Trump if evidence surfaces that he obstructed justice or that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. But Congress could not remove him from office without a conviction by a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats in the House could be banking on launching an investigation using the results of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s already 18-month-old probe of allegations of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election. Moscow denies meddling and Trump denies any collusion.
“Thanks to you, tomorrow will be a new day in America,” Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi told cheering Democrats at a Washington victory party, saying House Democrats would be a check on Trump.
“The American people want peace, they want results,” Pelosi added. Despite his party losing the House, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Tremendous success tonight.”
Trump - a 72-year-old former reality TV star and businessman-turned-politician - hardened his rhetoric down the stretch on issues that appealed to his conservative core supporters, issuing warnings about a caravan of Latin American migrants headed to the border with Mexico and condemnations of liberal American “mobs.” Most Democratic candidates in tight races stayed away from harsh criticism of Trump during the campaign’s final stretch, focusing instead on bread-and-butter issues like maintaining insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions and safeguarding the Social Security retirement and Medicare healthcare programs for senior citizens.
Democrats also captured governorships in Michigan, Illinois and Kansas. In Kansas, Republican Kris Kobach, a Trump ally who was a leader of the president’s disbanded voter fraud commission, fell to Democratic state senator Laura Kelly.
Francis John Calls on Young People in Kansas City to Committedly Vote Today.
Tuesday, 06 November 2018 11:48 Written by oasesnewsA Nigerian-American, Speaker, Author and a Philanthropist; Francis John Calls on Young People in Kansas City to Committedly Vote Today.
Regardless of incidences and happenings in America today, voting is still a privilege, must be honored and should not be taken for granted. Immigrants should take advantage of this mid-term elections to voice out their needs by going out en mass with family and friends to vote today. Interestingly, this is one way to be part of a democratic structure where the people elect contestants. Just that you know; if we all stopped participating in the electoral process, our democratic government could wither away less than our generation ever expected.
Please, remember, you have the right to vote, not even your job can stop you from exercising your legitimate lifetime obligations November 6, 2018.
As a U.S. citizen, you want to have a say in where your taxes go and how this country is run. Voting for a person who represents shared visions and goals for your country is an opportunity to become part of the process regardless of the cloudy ongoing political situations, that can be rescued by voting.
From the less privilege point of view; experienced many years ago, there’s the need to carry everyone along, most especially our children, almost adult and adults by teaching and persuading them the rhetoric of politics in the United States and how it plays out. As such:
* Young people be good voters.
* Young people take away your country.
* Young people participate in politics.
* Young people vote in group.
* Young people there is no wrong votes.
* Young people must step up to adulthood.
* Young people make your parents and family proud.
* Young people use your vote to defend your generation.
* Young people follow the law and have a say in making the difference.
Young people, by fully participating in today’s voting, you can be proud of taking away your country to the full actualization and benefit of future generations that your lead. In conclusion, l wish to congratulate all the young people and eligible voters that steeped up to this call.
Francis John
TipsNews Kansas City.
