South Africa's New Finance Minister to 'Radically Transform' Economy

Malusi Gigaba, appointed after Jacob Zuma sacked Pravin Gordhan, promises wealth redistribution in swing to the left

Malusi Gigaba: ‘The ownership of wealth and assets remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population.’ Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images

Jason Burke in Johannesburg
Guardian
Saturday 1 April 2017 09.42 EDT

South Africa’s new finance minister has pledged to “radically transform” his country’s economy, signalling a dramatic swing to the left less than 48 hours after taking up his post.

Malusi Gigaba was appointed after president Jacob Zuma sacked his widely respected predecessor, Pravin Gordhan, in an overnight cabinet purge last week. The move, late on Thursday night, triggered a political crisis, pitching the ruling African National Congress party into chaos.

The ANC, which came to power in South Africa’s first free elections in 1994, now faces one of its biggest tests since leading the struggle against the apartheid regime.

Radical economic change in the political language of the ANC means the redistribution of wealth, land and opportunity to the black majority.

“I will not be distracted by issues that are not relevant to the task at hand: accelerating radical economic transformation,” Gigaba said. “For too long, there has been a narrative or perception around treasury, that it belongs primarily and exclusively to ‘orthodox’ economists, big business, powerful interests and international investors. The ownership of wealth and assets remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population. This must change.”

Gigaba’s pledge suggests the ANC, hit by a decline in support in the recent poll, will bank on populist economic measures to reverse its electoral fortunes. Though the ANC still has massive support, the unprecedented loss of major municipalities to a coalition of opposition parties after local elections last year is a concern as national polls loom in 2019.

South Africa has struggled to deliver growth in recent years and failed to improve the lives of millions of its poorest citizens. More than 90% of the country’s wealth is still in the hands of only 10% of the 54 million inhabitants. Ownership of land and companies remains mostly in the hands of South Africa’s white communities, who account for about 8% of the population.

Gigaba also told reporters on Saturday he was committed to protecting South Africa’s cherished investment-grade credit ratings, which analysts have said are now threatened by the removal of his predecessor, Gordhan.

Gigaba, who was previously home affairs minister and is a Zuma loyalist, said: “I am fully aware that we are at a highly politicised, polarised and contentious moment in the history of our young democracy.”

Zuma’s enemies within the ANC are backed by increasing numbers of anti-apartheid veterans, trade unions, civil groups and business leaders. The divisions within the party, which dominates parliament, were underlined by an unprecedented verbal attack on Zuma from the country’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

“I told him that I would not agree with him,” Ramaphosa said. “There are quite a number of other colleagues and comrades who are unhappy about this situation … The minister of finance … was serving the country with absolute distinction. For him to be removed … is to me unacceptable.”

South Africa’s Communist party, a historic ally of the ANC, called on Zuma to resign.

However the youth wing of the party welcomed the wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle and the appointment of “experienced and intelligent” Gigaba. “Younger ministers will mean more transformation,” ANC Youth League leader Collen Maine said, citing land redistribution, free education and the creation of a state bank as reforms the youth league wanted.

Zuma, 74, said in a statement the reshuffle was intended “to bring about radical socioeconomic transformation and to ensure that the promise of a better life for the poor and the working class becomes a reality”.

Zuma’s move has been variously interpreted as an attempt to install a minister who would allow populist measures which would reverse the electoral fortunes of the ANC blocked by Gordhan; to gain control of the finance ministry to allow deals favoured by allies in the south African business community; and to control the selection of his successor.

Zuma will step down as ANC president later this year. His replacement is likely to lead the country if, as widely predicted, the party wins elections due in 2019. Many pundits say the ANC may win less than 50% of the vote, which would be a major blow.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the president’s ex-wife and former African Union chief, is Zuma’s preferred candidate to succeed him. She may be able to shield him from looming graft charges after he is out of office, but she has little support among the ANC’s electoral base.

Zuma has repeatedly been accused of corruption, with intense scrutiny of his ties to a family of local tycoons. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The crisis may offer South Africa’s two main opposition parties an opportunity to make inroads into the ANC’s core support. The far-left Economic Freedom and the centre right Democratic Alliance said they would make a no-confidence vote in parliament. The ANC has a near two-thirds majority in the 400-seat national assembly and can block any such move to oust Zuma if its lawmakers rally behind their leader.

New South Africa Finance Minister Gigaba Calls for Radical Reform

1 April 2017
BBC World Service

Mr Gigaba: "Wealth... remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population"

South Africa needs to "radically transform" its economy, the country's new finance minister has said.

The treasury has been seen for too long as belonging to "big business, powerful interests and international investors," Malusi Gigaba said.

"This is a people's government," he told his first news conference since President Jacob Zuma fired his respected predecessor, Pravin Gordhan.

Thursday night's sacking shook markets and divided the ruling party.

Fallout from South Africa's ministerial 'massacre'

Mr Gordhan's sudden dismissal, part of a reshuffle affecting nine ministers, led to a 5% plunge in the value of the currency, the rand.

The ruling African National Congress' deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, called it "totally, totally unacceptable" and ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe also opposed it.

What does 'radical transformation' mean?

In 2014, the ANC adopted "radical economic transformation" policies to boost the economic position of the black majority in the post-apartheid nation.

But many in the ruling party believe the process has been "too slow and in many instances superficial", said Mr Gigaba, who was previously home affairs minister.

"The ownership of wealth and assets remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population," he said.

But he added that he did not "seek to implement a reckless lurch in a particular direction".

"We will stay the course in terms of the fiscal policy stance approved by government," the new minister said.

Why has this caused such a fuss?

He was seen as a bulwark against corruption in an administration that is facing growing criticism.
He resisted calls from the president to increase government expenditure.

Malusi Gigaba, however, is widely seen as an ally of Mr Zuma and does not have a background in finance.

Why was Mr Gordhan sacked?

Opposition parties say it is because he was obstructing President Zuma and his allies - whom they accused of corruption - from gaining access to state funds.

Mr Zuma, who rejects the allegations, said the move was about a "radical socio-economic transformation".

Local media point to an alleged intelligence report accusing Mr Gordhan of working with foreigners to undermine Mr Zuma's administration.

Last October, Mr Gordhan was charged with fraud but the charges were later dropped. He has described the allegations as politically motivated

Gordhan Calls for Mass Mobilization

2017-04-01 17:59
Mpho Raborife
News24 Correspondent

Johannesburg- Axed finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, proved himself the darling of the Ahmed Kathrada memorial in Johannesburg on Saturday, with his self-deprecating humour as well as scathing remarks about the current state of the government and a call to fight corruption within the ANC.

"I am unashamedly encouraging mass mobilisation," said Gordhan, who this week was axed during a cabinet reshuffle, along with his deputy Mcebisi Jonas and other ministers.

Yet, "this ANC is still our ANC," declared Gordhan, to the cheers of an overflowing crowd at the city hall.

"We need to get this organisation of ours into a shape that shows we are truly a people’s movement."

Gordhan said the fact that various members of the ANC’s top leadership had indicated that they had played no part in the decisions around this week’s cabinet reshuffle, indicated a key problem.

"When these people say we don’t know where these decisions are made, then there is something to worry about.”

He said South Africans needed to hold the government accountable.

The ANC and democratic government "finds itself at a mini crisis," suggested Gordhan.

"Who is the problem and what is the problem are very clear."

South Africans had to fear the "animal" of state capture.

"State capture mustn’t become economic sabotage."

Gordhan also alluded to news channel ANN7, which is connected to the Gupta family, as a "propaganda channel" akin to "Nazi Goebbelism".

"Strengthen the state, strengthen the ANC and make sure you strengthen our democratic path."

The memorial service was organised by the Ahmed Kathrada foundation and the SACP. The Gauteng branch of the ANC also joined in after a state memorial was cancelled, with government communications saying it could not agree on the logistics with Kathrada’s family.

"Let me say… publically and openly that postponing the official memorial was petty and spiteful," said Gordhan.

South African Parliament's Speaker to Consider Zuma No-confidence Vote Request

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma greets supporters during a rally following the launch of a social housing project in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa April 1, 2017. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

By Ed Stoddard | JOHANNESBURG

The speaker of South Africa's parliament said on Sunday she would consider a request from opposition parties to hold a 'no confidence' vote on President Jacob Zuma.

Previous no-confidence motions against Zuma have failed as the ANC has a commanding majority, but there is a growing backlash against him from within his own party and its allies after a string of missteps which have culminated with his firing of a respected finance minister that rocked markets.

Speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also the national chairperson of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), said in a televised news conference after she cut short a trip abroad that she wanted to ensure the opposition requests were "given the appropriate consideration."

"I must stress that I am alive to the extreme challenges and sense of anxiety our young democracy is going through at this moment," Mbete said.

Analysts say the sacking of finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week may trigger damaging credit downgrades from ratings agencies, which would drive up the government's borrowing costs and restrict its ability to carry out the populist redistribution policies Zuma has indicated he wants to pursue.

Zuma's authority has been steadily undermined as his administration has staggered through a series of blunders and scandals, including the use of state funds to make lavish improvements to his rural homestead and a debacle that threatened the payment of social grants to millions who depend on them.

ANC SPLITS

The ANC, which has governed since the end of apartheid in 1994, is now riven by splits.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said he disagreed with the decision to sack Gordhan and other top ANC officials have also expressed their dismay at the move.

The South African Communist Party, a key political ally of the ANC, called on Friday for Zuma to resign.

Gordhan, an owlish technocrat who usually appears composed in public, on Saturday made an emotional call for "mass mobilization" at a memorial gathering for anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, where the crowd chanted for the removal of Zuma, who was pointedly asked by the family not to attend.

Opposition parties and ANC sources allege that Gordhan was ousted because he was obstructing access to state funds that Zuma and his allies coveted.

Ramaphosa said Zuma removed Gordhan on the basis of a "spurious" intelligence report that accused him and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas, who was also dismissed, of plotting with banks in London to undermine the South African economy. Gordhan dismissed the report as "absolute nonsense."

"We are fast running out of time to save our country from the clutches of the Zuma administration," Mmusi Maimane, leader of the biggest opposition party, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), said on Sunday.

The DA and the ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters Party (EFF) both wrote Mbete asking that she reconvene parliament and hold an urgent sitting for a no-confidence motion.

The ANC has 249 seats in the 400-seat parliament. DA sources say they cannot rely on all opposition members to support the motion, so they probably need 60 MPs from the ruling party to side with them to get the majority needed to topple Zuma.

Zuma, who turns 75 this month, is a traditional Zulu and ex-intelligence operative with an earthy demeanor who has proven himself a political survivor over the years in the face of numerous challenges, including hundreds of corruption charges that were dropped in 2009 but could still be reinstated.

(Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt, Greg Mahlich)

Hospital Struggles With Mosul’s Injured — and Its Dead

A medical technician stands next to a dead body outside the refrigerator unit in Qayara hospital 35 miles south of Mosul. The hospital receives so many corpses from Mosul, where fighting continues between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, that sometimes they do not fit in the morgue and are left in the corridors. (Mstyslav Chernov/Associated Press)

By Balint Szlanko and Yesica Fisch 
AP
April 1 at 1:50 PM

QAYARA, Iraq — The hospital in Qayara sometimes receives so many dead bodies that they do not fit in the refrigerator unit and have to be left in the corridors. Inside the mortuary, the dead are simply put on the floor because there are no containers, sometimes piled one on top of the other in a gruesome fashion and wrapped in a blanket, just as they were brought in.

The bodies are casualties from Mosul, where Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition forces have been battling the Islamic State group for over five months to take control of the city.

“We asked for shelves but they gave us nothing,” shrugged Dr. Mansour Marouf, the hospital’s chief surgeon.

The beleaguered Qayara hospital is one of only two public hospitals within a 120-mile (193-kilometer) radius, between Mosul and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. It is overwhelmed with casualties from the field clinics in Mosul. Activity in the hospitals mirrors the intensity of the operation: There were 21 dead on Friday, nothing on Saturday.

Since it reopened in January, after Qayara was retaken by Iraqi troops from IS, the hospital has treated over 2,000 patients, including some 600 battle casualties.

The hospital is also responsible for general health care, including maternity care, for the hundreds of thousands of people living in the surrounding area. Yet it receives no government support — even doctors’ salaries are covered by a foreign aid organization. It has only six surgeons who get so busy when the injured start flowing in that sometimes they sleep no more than a few hours in several days. It has only two operating theaters and 50 beds because the upper levels of the hospital were destroyed in the fighting, leaving only the ground floor usable. Medical equipment is also lacking.

“It is shameful to say this but we have received no help and no support from the government at all even though the town was liberated eight months ago,” said Dr. Mansour.

He said the only public help they got was from the local governorate, which sent forensic inspectors twice a week to try to identify the dead who come in without an identity card or a relative. Everything else, including all the equipment and the medical disposables, have been paid for by WAHA, a foreign aid organization that focuses on health issues.

It has even occurred to Dr. Mansour that they are being ignored by officials because of suspicions they might harbor toward local residents who spent over two years under IS rule. “But every employee has been checked by the security services so they cannot even blame it on that,” he said.

The hospital’s situation underscores the extent to which the Iraqi government’s efforts to reclaim the areas that it lost to IS in 2014 have been uneven at best. Military operations, assisted by the U.S.-led coalition, have been proceeding relatively evenly, if slowly, but the provision of public services, let alone reconstruction, has only barely begun or not at all in most liberated towns.

Dr. Mansour recalled that the hospital hosted a visit by the European Union’s humanitarian-aid commissioner several weeks ago when it was announced that the EU would donate $42.5 million emergency aid to Iraq this year, some of it for health care. When asked if any of that aid has reached them yet, the surgeon only laughed.

“We requested a lot of things. We sent a lot of lists. Every time we ask them they say we will help but then nothing happens,” he said.

U.S.-Led Coalition Counts 229 Civilian Deaths Before Mosul Strike

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times
APRIL 1, 2017

WASHINGTON — Facing mounting pressure over civilian casualties in American airstrikes, the United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said on Saturday that it was likely that at least 229 civilians had been unintentionally killed by its operations since they began in August 2014.

In February, the last month covered by the report and the first full month of the Trump administration, four such civilians were killed, the coalition said. The assessment, issued monthly, therefore does not include the March 17 strike against a building in Mosul in which scores if not hundreds of civilians were killed, according to Iraqi witnesses. That strike is under investigation.

The coalition’s overall count is far less than estimates by some human rights groups. Airwars, a nongovernment organization that monitors reports of civilian casualties in international airstrikes, has asserted that at least 2,831 civilians are likely to have been killed as of March 28 by the coalition’s air attacks since August 2014.

The worries about civilian casualties have grown as Iraqi forces push to take western Mosul from the Islamic State with the help of American and allied air power, rockets and artillery. President Trump has vowed to step up the fight against the militants, though the basic strategy in Mosul was set by American commanders during the Obama administration.

“We take the issue of civilian casualties seriously, every day, not just when it makes news,” said Col. John J. Thomas, the spokesman for the United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East. Colonel Thomas added that the command, in an effort to be “fully transparent,” was sharing information on unresolved cases and was even describing episodes that military personnel had reported up the chain of command but had not received public attention.

Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, asserted that while the Central Command had been working to improve its casualty counts, it was still lagging behind. “Certainly, both Centcom and the coalition have put a lot of effort into improving their casualty monitoring process, and we have been in extensive dialogue with them,” Mr. Woods said in a telephone interview from London.

“But despite these improved resources, both Centcom and the coalition appear unable to keep up with the number of allegations,” Mr. Woods added. “Given the intensity of operations in Mosul and around Raqqa, that gap continues to grow.” Raqqa, in Syria, is the Islamic State’s self-declared capital.

In western Mosul, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped, and airstrikes are an essential part of the operation. The Iraqi military has suffered enormous casualties — 284 Iraqi troops were killed in the first 37 days of the offensive to take western Mosul — and it depends on American firepower to advance. American military officials also allege that Islamic State fighters have herded Iraqi residents into buildings, calculating that escalating civilian casualties would prompt American commanders to slow the pace of airstrikes.

But critics say that the firepower that is being applied is so extensive that civilians are being put in danger. During a recent week in Mosul, the United States-led coalition carried out attacks with 700 bombs and rockets and 400 more strikes with satellite-guided Himars missiles, according to military officials.

With the United States unwilling to play a major ground combat role in Iraq and Syria, air power has become increasingly important. Between August 2014 and February 2017, the American-led coalition carried out 18,645 strikes. According to data made public on Saturday by the American-led command that is directing the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, there were 37 reports of possible civilian casualties related to the operation to evict the Islamic State from the eastern half of Mosul, which began in mid-October. But 12 of these were deemed upon investigation to be “noncredible,” sometimes because no coalition strikes had been carried out in the area.

In five cases, the command found that the reports of civilian casualties were “credible.” In a Feb. 16 strike on a site that the military said was being used to make or hide an Islamic State car bomb, two civilians were killed when they entered the target area after the munition was released.

Forty-three cases of possible civilian casualties are still being assessed, including an April 2015 strike near Mosul. That case was reopened after new information was received.

In the March 17 strike in Mosul, which led to the building collapse, American officials have acknowledged that the United States had a role, but said that the munition used should not have been powerful enough to bring down a building. They are examining whether the American strike might have set off a larger blast from explosives set by militants.

Al-Jaafari Following Talks With de Mistura: We Received No Response From Other Platforms on Papers We Submitted

31 March، 2017

Geneva, SANA – Head of the Syrian Arab Republic delegation to the intra-Syrian dialogue in Geneva Bashar al-Jaafari said that the fifth round of dialogue was concluded without the delegation receiving any response from the other platforms on any of the papers it submitted.

In a press conference on Friday following the final session of talks with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura as part of the fifth round of dialogue, al-Jaafari said that the delegation concluded this round after a session with de Mistura that lasted two hours, noting that this round began while barbaric and brutal attacks were being carried out on Damascus, attacks which failed like all the ones before it, in addition to attacks on Hama countryside and Lattakia countryside which the Syrian Arab Army and supporting and friendly forces managed to repel.

“During this round of Geneva 5, we submitted through the course of eight days several papers to the Special Envoy, the first of them being a paper on fighting terrorism, and a paper of general principles for the political solutions in Syria. These papers are about finding logical and natural grounds for addressing constitution issues. Of course, during these eight days we discussed in headlines the four baskets which are governance, constitution , elections, and terrorism, in addition to the basic principles paper which was part of our discussion about each of the four baskets,” he said.

Al-Jaafari noted that the delegation posed a number of queries about issues that the Special Envoy had brought up before and during this round, and in turn the delegation gave de Mistura papers to submit to the other sides or platforms on the basis that Geneva is based on Syrian-Syrian dialogue via a UN mediator.

“Regretably, this round is voer and we haven’t received the response of the other sides or platforms to any paper of our papers. This is no longer surprising because they don’t want to fight terrorism and they don’t want a political solution unless this political solution is tailored to their delusions which the years and facts proved that they never have and never will be realized,” he explained, adding that those sides only had one delusion in their minds which is handing over the keys to Syria and the power to them.

“They foamed and frothed, as they say in Arabic, during this round, ceaselessly making silly and tiresome statements showcasing their deviant opinions and twisted logic as if they’re contestants on one of those TV shows where competitors seek to win votes like Arab Idol or the Voice, to the point that we felt that Geneva has become hosted on satellite channels and not in the halls of Syrian-Syrian dialogue without external interference,” al-Jaafari elaborated.

He went on to say that this once again reveals that these sides are in a state of adolescence when it comes to politics, the situation on the ground, and mass media, in addition to proving that they are agents of external forces and traitors to their homeland Syria, adding “since they are tools and mercenaries in the hand of their operators and masters, it seems that they haven’t received orders yet, except orders to support terrorism, cause ruckus and disturbance, and disrupt the entire round in clear reflection of the faces of their operators who support terrorism and who want to derail the Astana and Geneva tracks.”

Al-Jaafari pointed out that despite all of that, the Syrian Arab Republic delegation completed this round of dialogue with utmost seriousness, patience, and responsibility, because it bears the responsibility of defending Syria and stopping the bloodshed, adding “the mercenaries and traitors and those who live in Riyadh, Ankara, Doha, and other capitals cannot feel the pains and sufferings of the Syrian people.”

He stressed the importance of continuing to hold the Astana and Geneva meetings and insuring the success of the Russian and Iranian efforts on the Astana track, as these efforts contribute greatly to achieving steps in Geneva 6.

Regarding the new American position towards Syria, al-Jaafari said that the evaluation of the US State Secretary is carried out in Damascus, and as for the statements of the new US ambassador to the UN, he said that all ambassadors at the Security Council must understand the goal and rules of the Geneva meetings which are based on the principle of the dialogue being intra-Syria without foreign interference, adding “since the US ambassador is new to the Security Council, I think we must give her some time to digest the Syrian reality related to dialogue in Geneva and Astana. Syria’s future is decided by the Syrians themselves, not by the US ambassador at the Security Council or any other ambassador.”

Regarding the date of the next round of Geneva dialogue, al-Jaafari said that they agreed with de Mistura to continue communications via diplomatic channels to specify that date, adding that discussing any subject other than the main headlines which are the four baskets and the basic principles papers requires reaching agreement on the headlines first, so no work team can be formed before reaching agreement on the basic principles.

He said that the delegation had hoped to achieve more progress during this round but this didn’t happen, but the fact that the four baskets and the basic principles paper were discussed is good in and of itself.

In response to a question on media claims about reaching an agreement regarding Madaya, al-Zabadani, Kefraya, and al-Foua’a with Iranian and Qatari sponsorship and with the Syrian state being out of the deal, al-Jaafari said “I advise you to rid yourself of these delusions. Nothing can happen on Syrian territory without the knowledge and consent of the Syrian government, whether it’s about the activities of the UN or international NGOs or something else, so we can never allow any Qatari activity on Syrian territory before the Syrian government agrees to this, particularly since Qatar is a sponsor of terrorism in Syria.”

He went on to add that the issue of these four towns isn’t something new, and the Syrian government has worked with friends, allies, and the UN to realize humanitarian achievements there, saying that the priority is Kefraya and al-Foua’a that haven’t received the needed humanitarian aid during the past four years, as the Syrian government has been airlifting aid to them via helicopters, and once the terrorists working for Qatar shot down a helicopter carrying exam papers for the high school certificate.

Regarding the obstacles hindering progress in Geneva, al-Jaafari said that the first is the absence of a patriotic partner, and second is the lack of political will to achieve political progress among the sponsors of terrorism and the sponsors of the platforms participating in Geneva.

As for the issue of abductees, al-Jaafari said that this issue is very important for the Syrian public opinion, which is why the delegation interacted positively with de Mistura’s paper on fighting terrorism and presented a paper outlining the Syrian government’s position regarding this issue, explaining that the issue of fighting terrorism covers the issue of abductees and detainees, but sadly other platforms didn’t interact with the terrorism basket because their priorities were the delusions that their operators filled their heads with.

“Some of them and not all of them are terrorists by nature, this is why they clapped and cheered for the campaign of terrorism that started in Damascus, Hama, and Lattakia only a few days before we came to Geneva, deluding themselves into believing that they can exert political pressure with this terrorism. The strange thing is that the shelling stopped today in Damascus as if terrorists are selective in their shelling of Damascus; shelling one day and stopping on another according to the agenda in Geneva,” he said.

Al-Jaafari went on to state in response to another question that “one does not pick his enemies, so we have nothing to do with the selection of other opposing platforms. We’re not the ones who elected or picked or appointed the members of those platforms.”

Hazem Sabbagh

Syria Army Targets ISIS and al-Nusra Terrorists in Deir Ezzor, Daraa and Homs

2 April، 2017

Provinces, SANA – Army and Armed Forces units targeted gatherings and positions of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS terrorists in Daraa and Deir Ezzor provinces.

Daraa

A military source told SANA that army units targeted with concentrated fire the fortifications of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists to the north of al-Nu’aima town in Daraa province and destroyed one of their command centers, leaving all terrorists inside it dead or injured.

In the northern countryside, the source added that an army unit targeted gatherings of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the town of al-Tiha and the farms to the east of Ebta’a, destroying a tank and two heavy machineguns.

Another army unit targeted dens of terrorist groups in the neighborhoods of Daraa al-Balad and al-Karak, killing a number of terrorists and destroying their arms and ammunition.

Deir Ezzor

An army unit killed 10 ISIS terrorists in operations against their gatherings and infiltration axes in Deir Ezzor city and the surrounding area.

A military source told SANA that an army unit targeted with concentrated fire the gatherings of the ISIS terrorists in al-Erifi neighborhood in Deir Ezzor city and their positions in the surroundings of the Regiment 137 to the southwest of the city, killing 10 terrorists and destroying two machinegun nests and a vehicle.

Homs

A military source said that army units foiled infiltration attempts by Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists from the direction of the villages of Ghajar Amir and Kafrnan towards military posts and from the direction of the projects area towards Qinyat al-Asi village in Homs province’s northern countryside, killing a large number of terrorists and injuring others, in addition to destroying a number of their vehicles.

936 Gunmen and Dome of Their Families Leave al-Waer in Syria

1 April، 2017

Homs, SANA- The third batch of gunmen and some of their families who rejected to join the reconciliation agreement left al-Waer neighborhood on Saturday in a step towards evacuating the neighborhood of gunmen and arms and to return all the governmental institutions to it.

SANA reporter in Homs said that 50 buses carrying 836 gunmen and some of their families on board left al-Waer neighborhood heading for Idleb countryside in implementation of the reconciliation agreement, indicating that the evacuation process will continue till completing the third batch.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi told SANA that the agreement of al-Waer neighborhood basically aims at restoring security and stability to the neighborhood and the return of the displaced families to the neighborhood.

Barazi indicated that some of the displaced families have started to return to the neighborhood and that the Education Directorate has opened 4 schools to receive the students who have returned to the neighborhood.

The Governor called upon the locals of al-Waer neighborhood and the gunmen to stay in the neighborhood and to settle their legal status benefiting from the amnesty decree, saying that the number of those who settled their status has reached 700 persons over the past two weeks.

Al-Barazi highlighted that even the militants and their families who already left the neighborhood within the first two groups can go back if they are willing to do so, as the governorate is ready to welcome all those who want to get back on the right track.

He noted that seven militants with their families who left within the second group to al-Dar al-Kabira area had already returned to al-Waer and had their legal status settled.

He said the positive atmosphere witnessed in al-Waer neighborhood over the past few weeks and the fact that those who reach the arrival point at Jarabulus receive bad treatment will further encourage people to stay in the neighborhood under the umbrella of the state.

Last Monday, more than 500 gunmen and some of their families who rejected the reconciliation agreement left al-Waer neighborhood while the legal status of hundreds was settled according to the amnesty decree no./15/ for the year 2016.

R.J/ Mazen

Syrian Army Foils Jabhat al-Nusra Attack Against Military Posts in Lattakia, Kills More Terrorists in Other Provinces

1 April، 2017

Lattakia, SANA- An army unit on Saturday thwarted an attack by Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists on military posts in the northern countryside of Lattakia coastal province.

SANA reporter in Lattakia said that an army unit engaged in fierce clashes with a terrorist group affiliated to Jabhat al-Nusra after it had infiltrated into the surroundings of the military posts on the axis of the villages of Fulla, al-Shahra and al-Shammas in Lattakia northern countryside.

The reporter added that the terrorist attack was foiled and all members of the terrorist group were killed or injured, while the remnants fled away.

Deir Ezzor

Army units bombarded over the past hours gatherings and movements of ISIS terrorists in the surroundings of Talleh al-Sannouf and and al-Sam gas station on the southern axis of Deir Ezzor.

SANA reporterin the province said a number of barricades and a vehicle equipped with a machine gun were destroyed in the army’s bombardments, while a number of terrorists were killed.

The reporter noted that ISIS terrorists targeted several neighborhoods in Deir Ezzor with rocket shells, causing material damage to public and private properties, but no human casualties.

Daraa

Army units kill almost all members of a terrorist group that was moving east of the al-Roubaei intersection in Tariq al-Sadd neighborhood of al-Sadd and destroy a command center in al-Nazihin camp in Daraa.

Syria Army Restores Security to Several Towns in Northern Hama

31 March، 2017

Provinces, SANA – More members of terrorist organizations are being killed as the army continues to hit their positions and gatherings in various provinces.

Hama

Army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, restored security and stability to five towns and villages and a number of strategic areas in the northern countryside of Hama.

A military source said that army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, restored security and stability to the towns of Khattb, al-Sheer, al-Majdal, Soubin, Zour Jadidd, Tallet Beijo and Rahbat Khattab after inflicting heavy losses upon Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists.

The source added that the army is continuing its military operations in chasing terrorists of Jabhat al-Nusra and other affiliated terrorist groups in several directions in parallel with the dismantling of explosive devices planted by the terrorists on Hama-Maharda road.

Later, a military source announced that army units reestablished control over the towns and villages of Shaliout, Hijama, Zour al-Masaleq, Tasliba, and Oum Hassan in the northern countryside of Hama province, killing more than 500 terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra including some of Arab nationalities, and destroying 3 tanks, 40 vehicles some of which were equipped with machineguns, along with an ammo depot.

The source said that the terrorists that were killed included members of “Tahrir al-Cham” terror organization Amin al-Bayour who was in charge of training camps, Abu al-Fahed al-Enezi and a Saudi named Abelrahman Abdullah Duaid who were leaders in the group, and Mohammad Ahmad Joulaq who was a “legislator” in the terror organization, in addition to Abu Riyaq al-Turkistani who was a leader in the “Turkistani Party.”

Homs

The source also said that the army killed at least 10 members of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups that attacked the locals in the villages of Akrad al-Dasnyieh and Qniet al-Assi in the northern countryside of Homs.

The source told SANA that army units clashed with the terrorist groups that attacked the two villages from the direction of Sneisil, Jwalik, al-Masharei and al-Qudra.

The source stressed that the attack was foiled, where at least 10 terrorists getting killed, others injuring others and a number of vehicles, some of which equipped with heavy and medium machineguns, destroyed.

Daraa

Army units carried out operations against gatherings and sites for Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups affiliated to it in Tariq al-Sad neighborhood, al-Nazihin Camp, to the south of al-Abbasyia Bakery and to the north of al-Masri Rotary in Daraa al-Balad area in the southern province of Daraa.

The source added that 8 terrorists were killed during the operations, in addition to the destruction of 3 command centers, 4 barricades, an SUV car, a bulldozer, a machine gun and a number of motorcycles which were used by terrorists to attack
military points and infiltrate into safe areas.

Lattakia

Army units shot down 2 RC drones carrying ammunition to terrorist organizations in the northern countryside of Lattakia, according to a military source.

The source said that Army units targeted 2 RC drones carrying ammunition, downing them before they arrived at their target, in addition to destroying a 130 mm artillery piece in the area surrounding the towns of Kabbaneh and al-Sirmania in the northern countryside of the province.

U.S.-backed Forces Repel Islamic State Attack Near Syrian Dam

FILE PHOTO: A view shows part of the northern part of the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, Syria March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN

U.S. backed Syrian forces repelled a major counter-attack by Islamic State militants holding out at the country's largest dam and in the nearby town of Tabqa, the group and activists said on Sunday.

The dam is a key strategic target in the military campaign to isolate and capture the Syrian city of Raqqa, 40 km (25 miles) to the east and Islamic State's biggest urban stronghold.

The U.S.-backed group said militants attacked their positions north-east of Tabqa and at an airbase to the south of the town where dozens of their fighters were killed; but the coalition of Kurdish and Arab militias was making slower advances in a village east of the town.

Jehan Sheikh Ahmad, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, said the militants were stepping up their resistance as SDF forces got closer to encircling the town and the dam.

"Our forces are advancing...(Islamic State )are facing large difficulties and so they are starting counter-attacks," said the official whose forces have U.S. special forces with them.

The SDF began an assault to capture the dam and the nearby town almost two weeks ago after the coalition landed some of its fighters on the southern side of the Euphrates near Tabqa, leading to its capture of an air base.

The SDF has been waging a multi-phased offensive since November to isolate Raqqa, with backing from the U.S.-led coalition taking territory to the north and east of the province.

FEAR OF COLLAPSE

Hundreds of families with their cattle, property, motor bikes and vans continued on Sunday to flee from villages under Islamic State control.

The U.S.-backed forces say at least 7,000 people have taken shelter in their areas since the campaign to capture Tabqa.

Many are also fleeing air strikes on civilian areas in Raqqa province that have left dozens dead according to activists and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Last month strikes believed to be conducted by the U.S.-led coalition hit a bakery and a local market in Tabqa town with dozens of civilians killed. Another raid that hit a school sheltering displaced people near Raqqa also killed scores.

SDF denies civilians are targeted.

Islamic State and the Syrian government have both said the hydroelectric dam is vulnerable to collapse after strikes by the U.S. led coalition

Syrian officials say that would lead to catastrophic flooding in the cities and towns in the Euphrates valley downstream.

The SDF and the coalition have denied the dam is in danger.

Residents, however, say an SDF attempt last week to relieve the dam's water levels by opening a canal from the Balikh River that flows into the Euphrates had flooded cultivated agricultural land in several villages.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Mumia’s Treatment Expected, But Not Yet Delivered

Delayed Hep C Treatment Leads to Death

On March 31, 2017, Mumia Abu-Jamal received a cruel mix of bad and good news from a prison doctor. The doctor shared the results of his recent lab test, which showed clear signs of cirrhosis, an irreversible scarring of the liver caused by his untreated Hep C. The doctor also informed Mumia that he would be treated with the Hep C cure within a week.

The impending victory was bittersweet. Mumia shared his feelings with those he called that morning. His rare expression of emotion was also captured in an interview that evening in which he stated: “My first reaction was really shock, anger, disbelief. If I had been treated in 2015, if I had been treated in 2012 when they say they first diagnosed it, I wouldn’t be this far advanced.…For a lot of guys and a lot of gals inside the Pennsylvania prisons, I think it is a step forward and a great day, but I assure you I don’t feel that way right now.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ apparent concession to treat Mumia with the Hep C curewas achieved through an agonizing two-year battle waged in the streets and through two court suits. However, Mumia has not yet been treated and will not be without our vigilance and continued protests.

If he is treated immediately, Mumia can expect to return to good health; but patients who have developed cirrhosis are more susceptible to developing liver cancer in the future and have to be monitored for the rest of their lives.

In the face of Mumia’s battle for humane medical treatment, the PA DOC had adopted a retaliatory posture and accelerated its efforts to silence and kill Mumia by delaying treatment. Because of the failure to treat his Hep C, over the last two years, Mumia fell into a diabetic coma, experienced severe brain swelling, and suffered a painful skin condition that disfigured his body. In the last year, he and others in the prison have been forced to bathe in and drink water that is often visibly contaminated—“black and turbid,” as Mumia put it.

Many of Mumia’s supporters around the world believed that Mumia received treatment back in early January 2017 because a federal judge ordered the DOC to provide it. But a stubborn and stonewalling PA DOC refused to comply with the ruling. The judge ordered Mumia’s immediate treatment citing the unconstitutionality of the PA DOC’s Hep C treatment protocol. The judge denounced the DOC, whose protocol “deliberately delays” treatment with the standard Hep C cure until the prisoner experiences bleeding of the throat, among other deadly symptoms. The decision cited eight amendment rights violations prohibiting cruel and usual punishment.

The ongoing foot dragging by the PA DOC was confirmed this week. On the same day that the prison doctor delivered the news to Mumia, PA DOC attorneys filed a scandalous motion in court. They asked the judge to dismiss Mumia’s legal health suit on the basis that the DOC had decided to treat Mumia under the guidelines of pre-existing HEP C treatment protocol —the same protocol that the judge previously declared “unconstitutional.”

These arguments demonstrate the DOC’s attempt to undermine the legal implications of Mumia’s legal suit and the DOC’s own misconduct. When Mumia is finally administered the cure, his treatment will establish precedent for the treatment of thousands of PA prisoners with Hep C, as well as people on the outside who can't afford the medication. Mumia’s battle has exposed the deadly crisis of medical care in the prisons and the barbarism of the U.S. for-profit health care system that charges 90K for the Hep C cure.

As history shows, a judge’s ruling does not ensure its implementation, especially when it challenges ruling interests.  For this reason, we are asking you to take action and demand immediate Hep C treatment for Mumia, for the more than 700,000 prisoners with Hep C across the country and the millions suffering with the untreated, deadly disease outside the prison walls in our neighborhoods.

This moment has also created an opportunity to uphold Mumia’s innocence and fight for his freedom. On Monday, April 24, 2017, the day of Mumia’s birthday, his attorneys will challenge his conviction in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. We are calling on you to join us at the courthouse and in the streets.

On April 24, his conviction attorneys, Judith Ritter and Christina Swarns (NAACP Legal Defense Fund), will take advantage of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Williams v. Commonwealth to show how judicial and prosecutorial bias in all of Mumia’s state appeals have kept him behind bars. This important Supreme Court ruling determined that a judge cannot fairly adjudicate an appeal of a case for which he/she has previously had a personal role in a significant prosecutorial decision.

In Mumia’s case, Judge Ronald Castile, the same judge under scrutiny in Williams v. Commonwealth, also was the elected Philadelphia District Attorney responsible for the arguments made to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1988 to uphold Mumia’s trial conviction and death sentence. Castille had also been a high-level assistant DA during Mumia’s trial. After he was elected to the PA Supreme Court in 1994, he was involved in deliberating and denying all of Mumia’s state appeals against the decisions of “hanging judge” Albert Sabo and Pamela Dembe who upheld Mumia’s death sentence and denied him a new trial during multiple appeals between 1998-2007. These judges denied a new trial despite Mumia’s innocence, that evidence of his guilt was manufactured by the police and prosecution and that he had been denied virtually every due process right and protection owed under the U.S. constitution.

During the appellate filing, Mumia’s attorneys asked Judge Castille to recuse himself because of this bias,citing also the judge’s close relationship with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which lobbied for Mumia’s conviction. The FOP funded Castille’s bid for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and honored him as “Man of the Year.” In response to Mumia’s attorneys, Justice Castille responded stridently that he would not step aside, noting that he should not be singled out because five of the seven judges of that Pennsylvania Supreme Court were also supported by the FOP. It is no surprise that the court did not find one single error in the original court proceedings and thus upheld his death sentence and denied Mumia the right to a new trial.

We demand the immediate release of Mumia!


We are calling on you to do two things

1.     Call the DOC to demand immediate treatment for Mumia and all PA prisoners with Hep C ---
PA DOC Secretary John Wetzel, (717) 728-2573
(Email) ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov --
(Twitter) @johnewetzel * @CorrectionsPA

2.     Join us in Philadelphia on Monday, April 24, 2017 at 8:30AM, at the the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to assert Mumia’s innocence and call for his immediate release.

Center for Criminal Justice, Courtroom 1101, 1303 Filbert Street, Philadephia, PA
Signers in solidarity,

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
MOVE
Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
Abolitionist Law Center
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mundo Obrero/Workers World
Philly REAL Justice
Sankofa Community Empowerment
Millions for Mumia/International Action Center
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal/Northern California
Le Collectif Français "Libérons Mumia”
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Amig@s de Mumia de México
Saint-Denis Free Mumia Committee

Europe Keeps Its Rescue Ships Far From the Coast of Libya — Where Thousands of Refugees Have Drowned

Zach Campbell
April 1 2017, 1:10 p.m.

THE RESCUERS PREPARE for the calm days, more than the stormy ones.

On land in small towns near the Libyan coast, refugees from Africa and the Middle East are crowded into safe houses, waiting for good weather. When the sea quiets, the refugees pack onto rubber dinghies or large wooden fishing vessels and set off in the early morning toward Europe.

An average of 3,500 people have died each year while trying to make the journey to Italy from North Africa since 2014. Their vessels are overcrowded, unseaworthy, and have a near-nothing chance of making it to Europe. Most of the boats sink just 20 to 40 miles from the Libyan coast.

These are preventable deaths. Since 2014, the European Union has deliberately chosen to keep their coast guard patrol boats far from where the shipwrecks happen, a decision detailed in an internal letter obtained by The Intercept and other leaked documents. Saving more lives, the logic goes, will only encourage more refugees to come. The result is that rescue boats are kept away from where rescues are actually needed.

The Italian navy used to run patrols near the Libyan coast. Their operation, called Mare Nostrum — “our sea” in Latin — involved a large mobilization of ships, planes, and helicopters in international waters close to Libya, where boats carrying refugees regularly capsized and sank. Mare Nostrum was enormously successful — in the year it ran, it saved over 150,000 people. Still, on October 31, 2014, Italy announced it would phase out the program.

The following day, Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, took over with an operation called Triton. In a press release at the time, Frontex said its operation followed in the wake of Mare Nostrum and was intended to support the Italian authorities. There was one key difference from Mare Nostrum, however: Frontex would limit its patrols to just 30 miles off Italy’s coast, which was about 130 miles from Libya — at least a 12-hour sail. Frontex was deliberately not patrolling the area where most of the shipwrecks occurred.

What’s more, according to an internal letter obtained by The Intercept, the director of operations at Frontex privately told Italian authorities that his ships should not be called on to immediately respond to distress calls from outside their 30-mile patrol area.

“Frontex is concerned about the engagement of Frontex deployed assets in the activities happening significantly outside the operational area,” Frontex’s director, Klaus Roesler, wrote to the head of Italy’s Immigration and Border Police, Giovanni Pinto, on November 25, 2014. The letter has been referenced in Italian newspapers and released with redactions that covered detailed descriptions of how Frontex coordinated its assistance with rescue efforts. The Intercept is publishing the letter in full for the first time.

Like any other vessels at sea, Frontex ships are obligated under maritime law to respond to distress calls when ordered by the relevant national authorities. For the Italians, an overloaded boat with an untrained captain was a distress situation by default. Typically, someone calls the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome by satellite phone from a boat or from the Libyan coast, and Italy initiates search and rescue.

But for Frontex, at the time, that was not enough proof.

“Frontex is of the opinion that a satellite phone call is not per se a SAR [search and rescue] event and strongly recommends that actions should be taken to investigate and verify and only afterwards, and in case of distress, activate other maritime assets,” Roesler wrote, referring to a distress call via satellite phone. “Frontex doesn’t consider the [Operational Patrol Vessel] for such initial investigations outside the operational area as necessarily operational and cost effective activities.”

He continued: “General instructions to move to an area outside [European Patrol Network] Triton operational area are not coherent with the operational plan and unfortunately will not be considered for the future.”

In other words, Frontex knew it had to respond to emergency calls. But it was deliberately patrolling in the wrong area and quibbling with definitions of distress, meaning that its ships would almost certainly arrive late, if at all.

Frontex’s press office did not answer repeated requests for comment on Roesler’s 2014 letter. The agency would not clarify if the letter still represented Frontex policy, nor if the agency still believed a distress call via satellite phone was not necessarily a search and rescue event. In mid-2015, the EU tripled Frontex’s budget for Triton, matching what had once been spent on Mare Nostrum, and Frontex moved patrols another 30 nautical miles to the south, extending farther from the Italian coast. A Frontex press release at the time hailed an “enlarged Triton helping rescue migrants.” But in reality, Frontex was still six to 10 hours away from where most shipwrecks take place.

The withdrawal is consistent with the European Union’s overall approach to dealing with refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, marked by a change in emphasis from search and rescue to border security. The shift has created a tension between official EU policy and the efforts of nonprofits still doing rescue work off of Libya.

The argument against proactive rescue operations is that they create a “pull factor” for migrants. With patrols running closer to the coast, smugglers can use cheaper boats, less fuel, and little food, because migrants only have to make it as far as the patrol boats, and not the Italian coast. In turn, this could cause prices to go down and create a perception that the route is safer.

Frontex’s director, Fabrice Leggeri, echoed this position in a recent interview with the German newspaper Die Welt. “We must prevent supporting the business of criminal networks and traffickers in Libya by picking up the migrants ever closer to the Libyan coast by European boats,” Leggeri said. Frontex’s press office would not explicitly state that the agency considers rescue operations a pull factor, but a spokesperson did link NGO presence to increased migration flows.

The pull factor thesis was one reason many European governments were reluctant to fund efforts like Mare Nostrum. “We do not support planned search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” a British foreign minister told parliament in 2014. “We believe that they create an unintended ‘pull factor,’ encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.”

If proactive patrolling creates a pull factor for migration by making the route safer, then by the same logic, removing those patrols makes the route more deadly. Even Frontex’s own internal assessments predicted that when the patrol areas moved north, more people would drown. A Triton concept document from August 2014 states bluntly that it “has to be stressed that the withdrawal of naval assets from the area, if not properly planned and announced well in advance, would likely result in a higher number of fatalities.”

WORKING TO STOP these deaths are rescue operations run by nonprofits, which are now the front line of response to the refugee crisis. They arrive first to the site of capsizing boats near the Libyan coast and call for backup from the Italians, who then call on Frontex if necessary. The European authorities, which patrol hours away, usually come later, transferring the refugees to their ships and bringing them to refugee camps in Sicily.

On a recent mission, it was clear that nonprofits are scrambling to fill the gaps left by reduced European Union patrols.

The rescue started with a phone call. It was 10 in the morning and the Golfo Azzurro, a 120-foot fishing trawler repurposed for sea rescue by the Spanish nonprofit Proactiva Open Arms, was in international waters some 30 miles north of Tripoli. Gerard Canals, the coordinator of the mission, received notice from the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center of three rubber boats in distress near our position, each with over 100 people aboard, including young children.

The Golfo Azzurro lurched to the right as the captain changed course. Lifeguards clipped fins to their belts and donned helmets and life jackets. Others prepared the Golfo’s two RHIBs — small rigid-hulled inflatable boats with powerful engines. Crew threw large bags of bright orange life vests into the RHIBs and took off with a wave from the captains. As they planed across the sea toward the refugees’ reported position, the Golfo Azzurro faded off into the horizon.

After about an hour, the captains of the two RHIBs stopped to take their bearings. We were in the exact position given by the Italian authorities and there was nothing in sight: no rubber boats, no Libyan fisherman, no birds. Just 360 degrees of horizon.

“We’re all alone out here,” said Ani Montes, one of the RHIB captains. The waves had picked up slightly. The other RHIB captain suggested we go south, in case the distressed boats drifted. We took off again, jumping across small waves and landing each time with a heavy thud. A few minutes later, Montes spotted a dot on the horizon. “There,” she shouted. “There they are.”

As we neared the rubber boat, the lifeguards looked surprised: There were supposed to be three boats, but we could see only one. The rubber dinghy was about 30 feet long and overflowing with people. Men sat around the edge of the boat, and women and children huddled in the center. The people aboard looked agitated, crowded, and cold. As we approached in the RHIB, a few waved, but most just shivered and stared. The crew was handing out lifejackets to the refugees, who were mostly from West Africa, when a call came in by radio from the Golfo Azzurro — they had found the other two boats, each carrying another 120 people. The Italian coast guard was on its way to help, the captain said, but it would be some hours before its ship arrived.

One of the RHIBs stayed with the first boat, while we made our way back to the Golfo Azzurro. Floating aside the ship, the refugees aboard one of the rubber boats waited calmly. The other boat, however, had partially deflated and people were standing and nervous. They repeatedly called us over to point out the deflated parts of the boat, which sagged under the weight of the people aboard, barely above water. Too many people standing can cause the dinghy to tip, so one by one, the lifeguards pulled women and children from the deflated boat and transferred them to the Golfo Azzurro, hoping to take some weight off while waiting for the coast guard.

The lifeguards traded stories of past rescues. Faustino Marta, a lifeguard from Argentina, was struck by the sheer number of lives at stake. “Three boats — that’s over 300 people,” Marta said. “If we hadn’t come, that’d be like a full commercial jet crashing in the sea out here.”

LAST SUMMER, THERE were more than a dozen different nonprofits patrolling near Libya, but over the winter, it was just Proactiva Open Arms and a joint operation between Médecins Sans Frontières and SOS Méditerranée. Refugees keep risking the journey, hoping to be rescued, like a potentially deadly trust fall at sea. Canals and the other crew aboard the Golfo Azzurro said this is why they must patrol closer to Libyan waters.

“Independently of what happens afterwards, we’re here to make sure no one drowns,” Canals said.

Technically, each country in the Mediterranean has responsibility for coordinating its own search and rescue zone, or SAR Zone, but Libya’s coast guard is tiny and as decentralized as the rest of its wartime government, and unable to handle the numbers of boats departing its shores. What’s more, there have been reports that members of the Libyan coast guard are involved in trafficking migrants.

Canals said he sees an additional role for Proactiva in putting pressure on European authorities to do more to rescue refugees. While patrolling these waters, Proactiva and other NGOs often come across refugee boats in need of assistance for which no distress call has been made, as not all boats have satellite phones. By reporting the distress cases themselves, NGOs force the Italian and European authorities to initiate a rescue they would otherwise never have undertaken.

“After the Italians left the SAR area, it took the NGOs to get them to come back,” said Joey Timmerman, an engineer aboard the Golfo Azzurro who has worked with three different NGOs in the area. “Once it’s reported, it’s an emergency.”

Yet the pull factor thesis has strong adherents. A senior European border official with close knowledge of Frontex operations and decision-making in the upper ranks of the European Union confirmed that pull factors were the reason Frontex’s patrol zone was limited in 2014, and why Frontex and Italian ships still tend to stay far from Libya. (The official requested anonymity because he is unauthorized to speak to the press. Frontex did not respond to requests for comment on why it pulled back patrols.)

The official told The Intercept that, by his reading of the situation, Mare Nostrum created a pull factor for migration in 2013 and nonprofits have continued to act as a pull factor since the Italian operation was phased out. The border official is also critical of the practice of Frontex and European coast guards taking refugees from NGO ships, saying it turns them into a “ferry service” for migrants. He defends Frontex’s decision to keep its patrol zone farther north, even if it means more drownings. Roesler’s 2014 letter, he says, “was the correct policy.”

“In order to not create a pull factor, we are patrolling up to the SAR area of Malta. We don’t cover Libya,” said the border official, arguing that if the journey seems longer and more dangerous, refugees won’t “put their lives in risk, especially in winter, to travel all this distance to the south of Malta.”

But that argument is belied by recent statistics. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 16,000 people have attempted this route since the beginning of this year, and there have been 477 recorded drownings. Beyond that, according to the nonprofit crews, it’s common knowledge that many refugee boats still go without rescue, floating off into the darkness. Their deaths are not always noticed.

THERE IS ONE European operation that does patrol near Libya, where the nonprofits work: a joint European military force known by the hefty acronym EUNAVFOR Med. Its work, a spokesperson told The Intercept, is to “disrupt the business models of the smugglers” by identifying potential human traffickers and, after refugees are rescued, destroying their boats so they can’t be reused. In a leaked status report on the force from last year, EUNAVFOR Med says that its relatively small number of rescues — some 30,000 people since the operation began in 2015, according to the spokesperson — “has not contributed to increasing the flow of migrants” and “cannot be regarded as decisive in terms of a ‘pull factor.’” Implied is that the operation saves some lives at sea, but not too many.

The force does not appear to be coordinating actively with nonprofits, even though it maintains extensive surveillance capacity over the area between the Libyan cities of Zuwara and Misrata, where many refugee boats depart from, and its own reports bluntly state the lethal reality for refugees leaving Libya.

According to a similar December 2015 status report, originally published by WikiLeaks, the operation uses a combination of war ships, submarines, and air assets, including a drone, to maintain a “near persistent presence” over the departure points. The report from late 2016, originally leaked to the British privacy organization Statewatch, said that this surveillance provides “real time queuing for the surface elements that were tactically deployed to spot escorts or jackals, particularly during dawn hours when most launches from Libya take place.” (Escorts or jackals can refer to boats that load and tow the rafts of migrants at launch or serve as lookouts.)

The strategy of destroying wooden boats has worked, EUNAVFOR Med says in its 2016 report. But it adds that the use of less safe rubber boats has gone up, at least partially as a result. (The senior border official attributed the rise in rubber boats to rescue operations, saying that smugglers know the boats don’t need to go far before they’ll be picked up.)

The 2015 report acknowledges that these rubber boats have little if any chance of making it to Europe on their own. “Reaching European mainland, Malta or even Lampedusa [an island off of Italy] is very difficult for these boats,” it states. “Effectively, with the limited supply and degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch.”

“The majority of migrants,” concludes the 2016 report, “still die inside or very close to Libyan territorial waters.”

Both reports explain that EUNAVFOR Med has close information-sharing relationships with Frontex and Italian authorities. The agency even “provides early maritime situational awareness to NGOs,” according to the 2016 report, though none of the four NGOs interviewed for this article said they have received such information.

European agencies know where and when refugee boats depart from, and acknowledge that the boats are incapable of making it to Europe. But with a calculated decision to withdraw the EU’s rescue resources from the Libyan coast, Italian authorities and nonprofits seemingly aren’t getting access to that information, and are left reliant on phone calls from distress cases to search for refugees at sea.

The results, I saw, can be deadly.

WHEN THE ITALIAN coast guard finally arrived to assist the Gulfo Azzurro, the transfer of refugees between the boats went on late into the night. As the work proceeded, the coast guard ship lit up the last rubber dinghy with a single spotlight — over 100 people sat for hours, waiting, with their fluorescent orange life vests glowing against the dark. After the last of them were brought on board, I watched the Italian crew collect the two empty rubber boats, douse them in flammable fluid, and light them on fire. As the coast guard ship steamed off into the horizon, the two boats were left burning, and a thick black smoke floated off into the starry night sky.

The captain of the Italian ship had decided that Proactiva should take the majority of the refugees to Sicily aboard the Golfo — a trip that would take us 30 hours. En route, we hit a storm, with waves some 20 feet high that rocked the large fishing ship back and forth like a skateboard with loose trucks. Over 200 refugees crowded into a makeshift shelter in the center of the boat, shielding themselves against the crashing waves under thermal blankets and tarps.

But the weather on the Libyan coast was still calm, and that night another refugee boat left Misrata, Libya. The ships belonging to Proactiva and Médecins Sans Frontières were halfway to Sicily. The Italian coast guard vessel was already in port there. When the distress call came in, the rescue coordination center alerted Frontex, which sent a ship toward the endangered refugees. But the Frontex ship was far away, near the island of Lampedusa. By the time it arrived the following morning, the refugee boat had sunk, and there were only four survivors. Over 100 people were presumed drowned.

Trump’s Washington Means Civil War — for Both Parties 

Washington Post
April 1 at 6:11 PM

On Saturday, an aide to President Trump took to Twitter to denounce a renegade House Republican and encouraged other Republicans to defeat the wayward lawmaker in a GOP primary next year.

On Monday, liberal advocacy groups plan to deliver a petition to the political arm of Senate Democrats denouncing a pair of Democratic incumbents who intend to break ranks to support Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. The groups plan to demand that Democrats refrain from spending any funds to reelect Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), more conservative Democrats whose presence in their seats are the best defense against ceding them to Republicans.

A little over two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, Washington is experiencing fierce civil wars on either end of the ideological spectrum — an extraordinary development that has created a political climate unlike any in recent memory.

Republicans and Democrats, reeling from different forms of defeat, have turned on their own in an attempt to punish those members of their party who don’t conform to the prevailing orthodoxy on the biggest issues of the day. Outside political groups and President Trump himself have issued threats to these transgressors — and, in at least one case, a conservative group has withdrawn advertising and resources aiding a GOP lawmaker.

The casualty of the nonstop infighting is a lack of focus on the political middle ground, where elections are won and where legislation must be forged to win enough votes to be enacted.

Normally, the losing party spends many months after a presidential election in a soul-searching mission aimed at figuring out what went wrong, usually prompting a debate about whether to try to appeal more to centrists or seek further ideological purity aimed at turning out more base voters in the next election.

Yet the 2016 election and its aftermath have increased tensions across the political spectrum, heightening the establishment vs. anti-establishment feud in Republican circles and sparking a new wave of fury within Democratic ranks.

The House’s implosion on the health-care debate in late March and the Senate’s debate over Gorsuch’s nomination crystallize those internal wars.

The president, according to Dan Scavino Jr.’s tweet, “is bringing auto plants & jobs back to Michigan. @justinamash is a liability.”

Scavino is the director of White House social media and a senior adviser to Trump, a role that would usually mean keeping a low profile and not issuing threats against a fellow Republican such as Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.). Amash was part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus that helped take down the legislation that would have repealed some of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and replaced it with a complex system of tax credits, which was supported by Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

Scavino issued a final edict to his 385,000 followers on Twitter on Saturday, about how to handle Amash: “Defeat him in primary.”

This followed several days of angry tweets from Trump, warning Freedom Caucus members to “get on the team” or else he would “fight” them, a seeming reference to primary challenges next year. The president singled out Amash and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho) by name for their recalcitrant ways.

Trump is getting his first experience with GOP infighting that has vexed Ryan and his predecessor, former speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), since Republicans won the House majority in the 2010 midterms.

But it’s not just far-right Republicans under political fire. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC run by allies of Ryan, pulled its ad campaign in support of Rep. David Young (R-Iowa) when he announced that the health legislation tilted too far to the right and would leave too many constituents without insurance in his middle-of-the-road district.

The PAC had already placed a staffer in Des Moines to begin collecting data to help Young in his reelection race. The staffer was called home.

The feuding has left Trump’s entire agenda up in the air, as the issues ahead, particularly a restructuring of the tax code, are just as complex as overhauling the health-care industry. In normal times, one option would be to turn to Democrats for support, but, as Gorsuch’s confirmation battle demonstrates, these are not normal times and almost no Democrat is willing to work with the president out of fear that liberal anti-Trump activists will take out their anger on them.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has declared that he will round up enough votes to keep Gorsuch under the 60-vote threshold needed to choke off a filibuster. He told The Washington Post that it was “virtually impossible” for any senators to broker a last-minute deal to avoid that result, which will then prompt Republicans to change Senate rules on a party-line vote to end supermajority requirements for Supreme Court justices.

So far, Manchin and Heitkamp — from states that Trump won last year by more than 35 percentage points — have joined all 52 Republicans in supporting Gorsuch. The result is that a dozen liberal groups are rounding up signatures to try to prevent the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from supporting the senators. It could be a self-defeating move for Democrats: Manchin and Heitkamp are widely considered the only possible members of their party who might be able to win in those deeply conservative states.

One member of this coalition, We Will Replace You, is a new super PAC with a central goal of funding primary opponents against Democrats who make any positive overtures toward Trump. “The next crucial step is escalating our demands, and demonstrating that we won’t accept anything less than full opposition,” its mission statement says.

Schumer has repeatedly said he would work with Trump if the president moved to the middle.

Yet the Democratic leader told The Post that, in a meeting with Trump earlier this year, Schumer told the president that his party would oppose all 21 names on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Schumer said, however, that he has not offered the president a single name of a candidate who would not be the victim of Democratic obstruction.

One Democrat, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (Del.), made a slight effort to try to find a compromise on Gorsuch. But the effort was immediately pilloried by liberal groups demanding a filibuster.

The talks collapsed, in a fashion that sums up much of the current state of Washington.

“There is not a lot of common ground and trust to work on, but I’m open to anyone who’s got a reasonable suggestion,” Coons said.

Ex-North Carolina Governor Who Signed Bathroom Bill, LGBT Advocates Agree: The State Didn’t Really Repeal the Law

By Mark Berman
Washington Post
April 1 at 8:00 AM

In the face of economic pressure, North Carolina lawmakers voted March 30 to repeal and replace the state's controversial bathroom law. Here's what you need to know. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, who signed the state’s so-called “bathroom bill” into law last year, found little common ground with LGBT rights groups during the protracted fight over the legislation. But both sides now agree about the compromise struck over the law this week: It was not a full repeal.

Lawmakers in North Carolina on Thursday scrapped the costly and controversial bathroom measure and replaced it with a law that, among other things, banned local governments from passing their own measures to protect LGBT people. While Gov. Roy Cooper (D) acknowledged the compromise was “not a perfect deal or my preferred solution,” he defended it as a positive step forward and signed it into law despite opposition from LGBT groups.

His Republican predecessor, though, said that the LGBT groups “lost the battle” and agreed with them that the measure did not eradicate the law known as House Bill 2, or H.B. 2. While that law was largely known for its provisions governing which bathrooms transgender people could use, it also included language reversing local ordinances that expanded protections for LGBT people.

The law prompted economic boycotts and spurred companies such as Deutsche Bank and PayPal to call off planned expansions into North Carolina, entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen to reschedule concerts and sports leagues to relocate games. The potential impact was sizable: According to an Associated Press analysis released before the new law was signed, H.B. 2 could have cost North Carolina at least $3.7 billion over a 12-year period.

After signing the bill, Cooper vowed that sports would return to North Carolina, but it remains unknown whether the bill he signed will indeed prompt businesses and organizations like the NCAA, which withdrew some events to protest the law, to return to the state.

The compromise bill was announced just hours before a deadline imposed by the NCAA, which had already removed some scheduled games from the state and was threatening to withhold years’ worth of other events if the law were not changed. The NCAA said in response to the compromise that it would review the new law and decide next week whether to return events to North Carolina. The Atlantic Coast Conference, which had moved games from the state, said Friday it would again consider North Carolina to host future events due to the new law.

Cooper said Thursday that “in a perfect world,” lawmakers would have fully repealed H.B. 2 and given LGBT residents full protections; he blamed the Republican-dominated legislature for not allowing such an agreement. In addition to a three-year ban on local nondiscrimination ordinances, the new law says only state lawmakers — and not local school boards or government agencies — can regulate “multiple occupancy bathrooms, showers or changing facilities.” House Speaker Tim Moore (R), in a statement after the bill passed the legislature, praised the agreement and said it “strengthens privacy protections statewide by providing a complete preemption of local governments regulating bathrooms, changing rooms and showers so that women and children are protected across the state.”

The measure quickly drew intense criticism from the same groups that long sought to repeal H.B. 2. The Human Rights Campaign, in an email after the compromise was passed, said Cooper and lawmakers chose to “sell out” the LGBT community.

“After more than a year of inaction, Gov. Cooper and North Carolina lawmakers doubled-down on discrimination,” Chad Griffin, president of the HRC, said in a statement. “This new law does not repeal H.B. 2. Instead, it institutes a statewide prohibition on equality by banning non-discrimination protections across North Carolina and fuels the flames of anti-transgender hate. Gov. Cooper and each and every lawmaker who supported this bill has betrayed the LGBTQ community.”

Griffin signed a statement calling on the NCAA to oppose the new law, which was also assailed by other groups and prominent voices. Equality NC’s executive director said lawmakers “enshrined discrimination into North Carolina law,” while the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina said lawmakers “should be ashamed” of the measure. The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board said the new bill “does not do one thing to protect the LGBT community and locks in H.B. 2’s most basic and offensive provision,” while the New York Times editorial board weighed in by calling Cooper’s decision to sign the law “mystifying.”

McCrory had endorsed the compromise bill late Wednesday when the state’s top Republican lawmakers and Cooper announced that they had reached a deal. In an interview Thursday after the bill was passed, McCrory both agreed with and mocked the groups that had assailed him last year.

“The fact of the matter is, they did not get a full repeal of H.B. 2,” McCrory said during an interview Thursday with Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council. The interview was first reported by the Charlotte Observer.

“They do not have the power at the local level to change the definition of gender, which is really what it comes down to, are we going to change the definition of gender or not?” McCrory said. “And that shouldn’t be a decision made by a mayor or a governor or the NCAA. That’s not their right to make that decision. This is going to end up going to the Supreme Court.”

McCrory had forcefully defended the bill after signing it, even as the legislation came to define North Carolina in the public eye and cost the state jobs and tourism revenue. He also continued to argue for the law after Cooper ousted him from office last year following a campaign in which the bathroom bill played a major role, a fact McCrory acknowledged during his interview with Perkins.

Cooper “got elected on this issue, many say, and raised millions of dollars on this issue,” McCrory said. But, noting that the groups opposing H.B. 2 were also opposing the new law signed by Cooper, he added: “The same protesters that protested me are now protesting the current governor.”

In response, a spokeswoman for Cooper rejected McCrory’s commentary on the issue and argued that the governor would continue to work toward strengthening protections for North Carolina’s LGBT communities.

“Pat McCrory doesn’t have any credibility on the issue as the person who signed the law that got North Carolina into this mess,” Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for Cooper, said in a statement. “Governor Cooper signed the new law that repealed H.B. 2 saying it is a step forward but not the only step. He supports statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians and will keep working for them.”

Cooper’s office also provided a fact sheet noting that in addition to revoking the bathroom provisions, the new law allows local governments to set wages and nondiscrimination policies for employees as well as city contractors. The fact sheet also noted that the prohibition on local nondiscrimination ordinances is temporary and is set to expire in December 2020, a month after North Carolina’s next gubernatorial election.

Since leaving office, McCrory had said that he was unable to find work due to H.B. 2, saying in a podcast interview, “People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘Oh my God, he’s a bigot’ — which is the last thing I am.” He told the Raleigh News & Observer earlier this month that he had been working as a consultant and taken advisory board positions.

The State of the Flint Water Crisis, By the Numbers

Brianna Provenzano
Business Insider

According to court documents released on Tuesday, the state of Michigan will set aside $97 million over the next three years to replace the lead-ridden water lines that currently service at least 18,000 homes in beleaguered Flint.

The settlement, approved by U.S. District Judge David Lawson in Detroit, seeks to rectify the ongoing nightmare that has plagued Flint since 2015, when it was discovered that a state-appointed emergency manager's decision to switch the city's water source to the corrosive Flint River had caused lead to leach into residential tap water.

"For the first time, there will be an enforceable commitment to get the lead pipes out of the ground," Dimple Chaudhary, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement obtained by Reuters. "The people of Flint are owed at least this much."

Below are the statistics on the horrors the city has faced since the ordeal began in 2015 — and what plans to move forward will look like.

100,000
Approximate population of Flint, a majority black city in Michigan about 70 miles northeast of Detroit.

41.2%
The percentage of Flint residents that live below the federal poverty line.

13,000
Highest levels of lead, in parts per billion (ppb) found in samples of Flint's water. The EPA's limit is 15 ppb.

flint
Mari Copeny, 8, of Flint, Michigan, waits in line to enter a hearing room on Capitol Hill in Washington March 17, 2016. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

19
Times more corrosive the Flint River is than Lake Huron, which previously supplied Flint's water.

514
Number of Flint residents to sign a class action complaint against the EPA for negligence in April 2016.

539
The number of days Flint's water was considered "toxic and highly corrosive," according to that complaint.

18
Months that Flint city officials went knowing about the potentially toxic water residents were using, but not acting on it.

9,000
The number of Flint children ages six and under who were exposed to toxic lead levels.

$97 million
The amount of money the state of Michigan will set aside over the next several years to finally replace Flint's water lines.