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Obama’s visit to strengthen America’s ties in East Africa
Saturday, 25 July 2015 00:00 Written by theconversationPresident Barack Obama makes history by becoming the first American president to make official visits to the vital allies of Ethiopia and Kenya this weekend.
All three countries, as well as the African Union (AU), will be looking to reap rewards from Obama’s historic East African visit.
Beneficial economic partnerships
There are many similarities between the two African neighbours and their economic relations with the US. Both are eligible to benefit from the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and have huge trade imbalances in favour of the US.
In 2014, US-Kenyan trade was US$2.2 billion. American exports to Kenya made up US$1.64 billion of this. The Ethiopian numbers are similar. American exports to Ethiopia were US$1.67 billion in 2014 with US importing only around US$207 million worth from Ethiopia.
The US mostly exports aircraft, machinery and agricultural products to the East African pair. In return, they export mainly coffee, tea and apparel. American investment into the countries focuses on commerce, light manufacturing and tourism.
Both countries need to use the media spotlight of Obama’s visit to showcase their various opportunities. Ethiopia, for instance, can ride the momentum of recently being named the world’s best tourist destination by Europe’s key tourism body. Tourism contributed an estimated 4.5% to its GDP last year, which equates to nearly one million jobs and more than US$2 billion in revenue.
Kenya can use the spotlight to show international investors it is one of the best African emerging economies to invest in. Its attractions are infrastructure development, a stable political and macroeconomic environment and a stronger services sector compared with other African economies that are largely focused on commodities.
Ethiopia and Kenya have big plans for the future. Ethiopia has its growth and transformation plan, while the Kenyan government aims to become a newly industrialising, middle-income country by following its Vision 2030.
Powering Africa
Kenya and Ethiopia both need more electricity to expand their industries and to diversify into new ones for these plans to succeed. In addition to being beneficiaries of the US’s Feed the Future global food security initiative, both have benefited greatly from Power Africa launched during Obama’s South African visit in 2013.
The Eastern Africa Power Pool, established in 2005 to foster interconnectivity between the power systems of the members countries of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), will soon turn Ethiopia – where it is based – into a renewable energy powerhouse. The country has an abundant amount of renewable energy resources from hydro to wind and solar. But it has minimal experience in such projects and is getting much-needed assistance from the US government as well as American companies.
In Kenya, Power Africa provides financing, grants, technical assistance and investment promotion. The goal is to mobilise over US$1 billion in private investment for geothermal and wind projects.
In total, around 600 million people or 70% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is without electricity. The US government has committed US$7 billion to combat this problem and has helped raise more than US$20 billion in private capital from more than 100 private sector partners.
Promoting peace and stability
Ethiopia and Kenya both face challenges when it comes to domestic and regional peace and security and have been working with Washington to overcome the problem. They are long-term partners with the US military through the Africa contingency operations training and assistance programme, one of the most successful long-term American programmes on the continent. Ethiopia joined in 1998, Kenya in 2000.
America’s security efforts focus on peacekeeping and preventing conflict, strengthening the security sector of its African partners, and countering terrorism and other international threats to the US. Ethiopia and Kenya support this by contributing to UN and AU peacekeeping missions.
Ethiopia is continuously in the top five of countries that contribute to UN missions. It has 8141 personnel in UN missions, with Kenya contributing 956. The country also hosts the international peace training centre in Nairobi.
Addis Ababa and Nairobi both allow the US military to operate from inside their borders. The Arba Minch Airport in Ethiopia hosts Reaper flights for the fight against al-Shabaab in Somalia. The US military also has a base in Manda Bay, Kenya, which serves as an all-purpose location. The Pentagon, specifically the US Navy, recently paid to upgrade the runway.
The future of US-African Union relations
The relationship between the US government and the AU continues to expand under the framework agreed in 2013. Last year, an amendment was signed to increase funding.
Specifically, the partnership focuses on accelerating the implementation of policies and programmes set out in the AU’s strategic 2014-2017 plan. This includes growing areas of partnership in youth, vocational education and higher education.
The AU also has bold plans for the future and has set out priorities for the continent for the next 50 years in agriculture, education, economics and health. The ambitious plan includes a continental free-trade agreement, a customs union and infrastructure for a full regional trade agreement between Africa and the US.
Steps are being taken in the right direction. The AU recently formed an African centre for disease control modelled on America’s centre based in Atlanta.
Nevertheless, the AU is terribly underfunded. The AU budget was approximately US$300 million in 2013 and US$425 million in 2014. On average, 33% is raised from AU member states and the rest is sourced from international and development partners such as the UN, European Union and the US.
Expect a large monetary donation announcement during Obama’s speech at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, a building funded and built by the Chinese. The US wants to see improvements in the AU so that African nations can deliver regional peace and security. In the end, Africa also has to invest the necessary resources if the continent is going to rise as many predict it will.
Author: Scott Firsing: Research Fellow, International Relations at Monash University
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The article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com) and is republished with permission granted to www.oasesnews.com
46 Drug Offenders get clemency as President Obama Reduces Sentences
Wednesday, 15 July 2015 00:00 Written by FACE2FACEPresident Barack Obama (pictured) granted a reduction in prison sentences to 46 drug offenders who were charged and convicted under strict sentencing guidelines established in the ’80s. Among the 46, 14 individuals were serving life sentences and another 14 had sentences of 20 years or more.
The commuting of the offenders was done as the Obama Administration aims to overhaul the criminal justice system and implement up-to-date sentencing guidelines across the board.
According to several media outlets, President Obama has granted clemency to nearly 90 individuals since his time in office, the most since President Lyndon B. Johnson.
For decades in the United States, there has been a disproportionate rate of arrests within the African-American community as a result of the drug laws.
White offenders received less time for powdered forms of cocaine while Black and poor citizens faced stiffer penalties if they were caught with the cheaper derivative of cocaine called “crack.”
This unfair and imbalanced approached to policing drugs in the United States led to thousands of arrests and lengthy drug sentences for individuals who had previously not committed violent crimes.
Therefore, the President’s latest round of clemency is significant.
The White House released a video related to the announcement of the commutations, with President Obama explaining in grander detail the impetus behind his decision.
“These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years. Fourteen of them had been sentenced to life for nonviolent drug offenses, so their punishments didn’t fit the crime,” said Obama in a video from the White House.
On Tuesday, President Obama will make an address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and speak further about the overhaul of the U.S. criminal justice system and other related concerns.
All 46 of the men and women commuted on Monday will exit prison at the same time this November.
View President Barack Obama’s video address regarding the prison sentence reductions below:
Beyond the Iran deal: nuclear proliferation is a myth
Wednesday, 15 July 2015 00:00 Written by theconversationAfter nearly two years of incremental and painstaking negotiations, a full deal on Iran’s nuclear programme has at last been struck. In a feat of diplomacy and patience, Iran and the P5+1 – the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – have managed to construct a deal that limits Iran’s nuclear activity and the sanctions imposed on it.
Early reactions deemed this a “new chapter of hope” in more ways than one; not just a victory for diplomacy, but a major victory in the efforts against nuclear weapons proliferation.
This is misguided. In reality, however, even a nuclear-armed Iran would not have meant that a nuclear weapons proliferation among states was underway.
Proliferation, after all, means rapid spread. And whereas nuclear weapons have proliferated “vertically”, with existing nuclear states adding to their existing nuclear arsenals, there has not been a “horizontal” nuclear weapons proliferation – that is, a fast spread of these weapons to new nations.
On the contrary, nuclear weapons have spread slowly across the world, even though academics, politicians and the media frequently discuss horizontal nuclear weapons proliferation as if it was a matter of fact.
Reality check
Currently, there are only nine states in the world with nuclear weapons among the UN’s 193 members: the US (since 1945), Russia (since 1949), the UK (since 1952), France (since 1960), China (since 1964), India (since 1974), Israel (since 1979, unofficial), Pakistan (since 1998) and North Korea (since 2006).
Other countries have dropped off the list. South Africa joined the nuclear club in the 1980s, but dismantled its weapons in the early 1990s. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union when they became independent states after the Cold War, but they transferred their nuclear arsenal to Russia in the 1990s.
In other words, only a handful of countries in Europe, Asia and North America possess these weapons, while Africa, Australasia and Latin America are devoid of nuclear weapons states.
In fact, the number of nuclear weapons states has actually decreased ever since the 1990s. And even though the Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan confirmed the existence of a global nuclear black market which purportedly provided nuclear technology, expertise, and designs to various countries, including Libya, no horizontal nuclear weapons proliferation has taken place.
Libya eventually voluntarily renounced its secret nuclear weapons efforts in December 2003. Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan have also shelved their nuclear weapons programs.
As of now, there are 31 countries with nuclear power plant units in operation; countries such as Australia, Canada, and Japan are widely believed to have the technological sophistication to become nuclear weapons states in relatively short amount of time should they want to – but they have not pursued that path.
In other words, even though there have been opportunities for nuclear weapons proliferation across a range of new states, such a development has not materialised.
All of the available evidence thus unanimously suggests that no horizontal nuclear weapons proliferation has taken place throughout the 70 years that these weapons have existed. Claims to the contrary lack basis, whether they are made for political or economic reasons, sheer ignorance, or for any other purposes. Horizontal nuclear weapons proliferation is a bogeyman that does not exist. If we are to devise sound strategies and policies regarding nuclear weapons we have to ground them in existing reality. Recognising that there is no horizontal nuclear weapons proliferation is a good place to start.
Author: Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou: Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Politics & International Relations at University of Bath
CREDIT LINK: https://theconversation.com/beyond-the-iran-deal-nuclear-proliferation-is-a-myth-42441?<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/42441/count.gif" width="1" /
The article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com) and is republished with permission granted to www.oasesnews.com
So Bill Cosby Confessed To Drugging And Raping Young Women For Fun
Wednesday, 08 July 2015 00:00 Written by ekekeee
(AP) — Bill Cosby admitted in 2005 that he secured quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with and that he gave the sedative to at least one woman and other people, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
Cosby’s lawyers insisted that two of the accusers knew they were taking quaaludes from the comedian, according to the unsealed documents.
Nevertheless, attorneys for some of the numerous women suing Cosby seized on the testimony as powerful corroboration of what they have been saying all along: that he drugged and raped women.
The AP had gone to court to compel the release of a deposition in a sexual-abuse case filed by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand, the first of a cascade of lawsuits against him that have severely damaged his good-guy image.
Cosby’s lawyers had objected to the release of the material, arguing it would embarrass him. Ultimately, a judge unsealed just a small portion of the deposition.
“The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct is a matter as to which the AP — and by extension the public — has a significant interest,” U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno wrote.
Cosby, with his oft-espoused views on topics including childrearing, family life, education and crime, “has voluntarily narrowed the zone of privacy that he is entitled to claim,” the judge wrote.
Cosby, who starred as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” from 1984 to 1992, settled Constand’s lawsuit under confidential terms in 2006. His lawyers in the Philadelphia case did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on Monday. Constand consented to be identified but did not want to comment, her lawyer said.
“This evidence shows a pattern in which defendant ‘mentored’ naive young women and introduced drugs into the relationship, with and without the woman’s knowledge, in order for him to achieve sexual satisfaction,” Constand’s lawyer, Dolores M. Troiani, argued in court papers.
Cosby, 77, has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct in episodes dating back more than four decades. Cosby has never been charged with a crime, and the statute of limitations on most of the accusations has expired.
“If today’s report is true, Mr. Cosby admitted under oath 10 years ago sedating women for sexual purposes,” said Lisa Bloom, attorney for model Janice Dickinson, who says she was drugged and raped. “Given that, how dare he publicly vilify Ms. Dickinson and accuse her of lying when she tells a very similar story?”
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing several women, said she hopes to use the admission in court cases against the comedian.
Cosby, giving sworn testimony in the lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting Constand at his home in Pennsylvania in 2004, said he obtained seven quaalude prescriptions in the 1970s. Constand’s lawyer asked if he had kept the sedatives through the 1990s, after they were banned, but was frustrated by objections from Cosby’s attorney.
“When you got the quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” Troiani asked.
“Yes,” Cosby answered.
“Did you ever give any of these young women the quaaludes without their knowledge?” Troiani asked.
Cosby’s lawyer again objected, leading Troiani to petition the federal judge to force Cosby to cooperate.
Cosby later said he gave Constand three half-pills of Benadryl, although Troiani in the documents voices doubt that was the drug involved.
Cosby had fought the AP’s efforts to unseal the testimony, with his lawyer arguing that the deposition could reveal details of Cosby’s marriage, sex life and prescription drug use.
“It would be terribly embarrassing for this material to come out,” lawyer George M. Gowen III argued in June.
He also said the material would “prejudice him in eyes of the jury pool in Massachusetts,” where Cosby is fighting defamation lawsuits brought by women who say his representatives smeared them by accusing them of lying.
Robreno, the judge, had temporarily sealed some documents in the Constand lawsuit but never ruled on a final seal before the case was settled. Under federal court rules in Pennsylvania, documents must be unsealed after two years unless a party can show specific harm. The judge ruled that Cosby’s potential embarrassment was insufficient.
Robreno asked last month why Cosby was fighting the release of his sworn testimony, given that the accusations in the Constand lawsuit were already public.
“Why would he be embarrassed by his own version of the facts?” the judge said.
Cosby resigned in December from the board of trustees at Temple, where he was the popular face of the Philadelphia school in advertisements, fundraising campaigns and commencement speeches.
Lawyer Gayle Sproul, representing the AP, in court last month called the married Cosby “an icon” who “held himself out as someone who would guide the public in ways of morality.”
Troiani, summarizing her evidence, painted a starkly different picture.
Cosby “has evidenced a predilection for sexual contact with women who are unconscious or drugged. His victims are young, ‘star struck’ and totally trusting of his public persona,” Troiani argued.
Popular News
Reunited Even In Death: Bobbi Kristina To Be Buried in Whitney Houston's Grave
Monday, 06 July 2015 00:00 Written by
Bobbi will be buried in Westfield, New Jersey with her late mother.
A source exclusively tells RadarOnline: "Whitney's headstone now has a circular brick border garden, and two rosary necklaces have been added. A new sign spelling out 'Love' has also been placed to the back left of the stone".
A source tells the site: "The graves around Whitney are occupied. Bobbi Kristina's remains could be placed atop Whitney's coffin, with mother and daughter together into eternity".
Bobbi, 21, has been on life support and fighting for her life since January 31, 2015 when she was found face-down in the bathtub unresponsive by her husband, Nick Gordon, in the bathroom of their home in Roswell, Georgia.
She was only just last week moved into a hospice where she would reportedly live out her last days.
Canadian economy heading for recession: banks
Sunday, 05 July 2015 00:00 Written by nation.co.keThe Canadian economy is likely headed for recession, two major banks said Thursday, predicting a successive contraction in the second quarter.
Canada, the world's fifth-biggest oil producer, has been hard hit by tumbling global oil prices and its economy shrank 0.6 percent at an annualized rate in the first quarter.
A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction.
Nomura bank said it expected the Gross Domestic Product to contract by 0.5 percent in the second quarter, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch said a 0.6 percent decline in that period was likely.
SURPRISED
"The economy has surprised to the downside this year and appears to have entered a recession in 1H 2015, even after policy easing in January," Bank of America economist Emanuella Enenajor said.
Nomura's Charles St-Arnaud said the dip was not just the result of forest fires in Alberta that forced the temporary closure of two facilities that account for 10 percent of the oil sands' output.
"The Canadian economy is likely in recession," he said.
The downturn is likely to hit the Canadian dollar, which could drop down to 70 cents on the US dollar by the end of the year.
AFP
Obamacare victory shows failure of Scalia’s conservative revolution
Tuesday, 30 June 2015 00:00 Written by theconversation
By upholding a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in King v Burwell, a majority of the US Supreme Court demonstrated that while the conservative revolution led by Justice Antonin Scalia may have had a strong impact on the court (and on the nation) it has not succeeded in winning over Justice Anthony Kennedy or Chief Justice John Roberts. Thus, while Justice Scalia has won many battles, he has not won the war. And in today’s King v Burwell decision he lost a major battle.
Justice Scalia has fought tirelessly both to limit the court’s focus in interpreting statutes (in other words, to look only at the letter of the law and not at the broader purpose of the legislation) and to limit the power of the national government.
King v Burwell seemed tailor-made to vindicate both goals.
The basic question in King v Burwell was whether the phrase an “exchange established by the state” included health care exchanges established by the federal government in states that refused to create their own. The plaintiffs in King v Burwell argued that “established by the State” means that health insurance subsidies could not be offered in states that had chosen to use the federal health insurance market instead of their own. This is, indeed, a very strict interpretation.
For Justice Scalia, the answer was easy: “established by the state” could not possibly mean “established by the state or the federal government.” Had Justice Scalia’s textualism prevailed, the decision would have gutted the ACA. Six million people in the 34 states where the federal government runs the insurance marketplace could have lost subsidies, and premiums could have skyrocketed.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Chief Justice Roberts wrote an otherwise unremarkable opinion that invoked traditional principles of statutory interpretation and examined the meaning of the phrase “established by the state” in context.
The chief justice looked beyond the plain language of the clause at issue. He insisted that a court should interpret the language of the law in light of the overall legislative purpose. As the chief justice wrote:
Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.
And a contrary interpretation would have defeated the central purpose of the statute. In this approach, the court acts as Congress’s partner, not its censor.
In his dissent, Justice Scalia was clearly furious that Chief Justice Roberts refused to endorse his revolutionary approach to statutory interpretation.
From Justice Scalia’s perspective, Chief Justice Roberts’ heresy was magnified by the fact that the chief justice cast the deciding vote to validate the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v Sebelius in 2012, in which the legality of the individual mandate was upheld.
When Justice Scalia gets mad, he does not hold back. He has often adopted fairly sharp language in his dissents, but even by that standard, his dissent in King v Burwell is extraordinary in tone:
normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present court: the Affordable Care Act must be saved.
His vituperation reaches a crescendo in the conclusion where he snipes, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
One can debate the appropriate moniker for the ACA, and one can debate whether we should call this the Roberts Court or the Kennedy Court, but what is beyond debate is that this is not the Scalia Court.
Author: Dean and Professor of Law at Emory University
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NBC Fires Presidential Candidate Donald Trump For Inflammatory Comments
Monday, 29 June 2015 00:00 Written by ekekeee
Following Donald Trump‘s inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants during a speech announcing his candidacy for president, NBC will no longer be airing the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.
The controversy started when Trump announced his run for president and called for a great wall to be built in order to stop illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States. “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
“At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values,” reads a network statement released to Deadline on Monday. “Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.”
The statement continues: “To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBC and Trump, will no longer air on NBC.”
Trump, 69, will also not be participating in The Apprentice, according to NBC, “as Mr. Trump has already indicated.”
