Ethics Explorer: Greg Abbott | The Texas Tribune
| March 3, 2018 | 8:20 pm | Local/State, political struggle | Comments closed

Governor Greg Abbott (R)

IndustryLawyer, State Government

EducationB.B.A., University of Texas at Austin; J.D., Vanderbilt University Law School

Spouse Cecilia

Financial Statements

20152014201320122011201020092008 (amended)200820072006 (amended)20062005200420032002200120001999199819971996199519941993

Tax Returns

201520142013201220112010

Sources of Income

  • In 1984, when he was 26, Abbott was struck by a falling tree limb while jogging and was partially paralyzed, requiring the use of a wheelchair. He sued the owner of the Houston property where the tree fell and won a tax-free settlement; a Houston plaintiff’s lawyer told the San Antonio Express-News in 2002 that it was more than $10 million.
  • He was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1995.
  • He was first elected attorney general in 2002, and was the longest-serving attorney general in state history before being elected governor in 2014.
  • His wife, Cecilia, serves on the board of directors for the University of St. Thomas, St. Gabriel’s Catholic School and Huston-Tillotson University, and is an honorary member on the board of the Capitol of Texas Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
  • Abbott has earned income from West Services, a legal publisher, as the co-author of Texas Practice Guide: Business and Commercial Litigation.
  • Abbott owns over 10,000 shares of mutual funds with Fidelity Municipal Money Market Fund.

Property

  • His private residence has been held as confidential by the Travis County Appraisal District (meaning it is not listed by the appraisal district, as is often the case with prosecutors and law enforcement). It was last valued in 2012 by the district at $895,500. The homes on either side of Abbott’s range from $1.3 million to $2 million in value.

Analysis

  • Abbott, who settled a personal injury suit after the accident that paralyzed him, has championed tort reform, something his opponents in past attorney general campaigns have argued presents a conflict. Abbott has argued that the legal remedies available to him at the time are still available to plaintiffs today.
  • Abbott has never been required to disclose how the money in his lawsuit settlement is invested. A spokeswoman told The Texas Tribune that “Abbott fully complies with all financial reporting requirements including the listing of investments on his annual personal financial statements.”
  • In 2006, the Dallas television station WFAA-TV reported that Abbott’s campaign commercials used video footage obtained by his office using taxpayer dollars. Abbott’s campaign director defended the use of the material, telling The Associated Press that anyone can obtain the footage through an open records request.
  • As Texas neared the end of a decade-long legal fight over homeowner’ insurance rates with Farmers Insurance Group in 2013, the company’s employees PAC gave $50,000 to Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign. At the time, Abbott was the top lawyer in the state’s case against the company. Abbott’s campaign told The Texas Tribune that he did not treat donors differently when it came to applying the law and that accepting the campaign money was not a conflict of interest.
  • During Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reported that Abbott, who signs off on Texas bond deals as attorney general, received more than $200,000 in campaign donations over the course of two years from the political branches of law firms serving as bond counsel. Abbott’s staff said the AG’s role in bond approval amounted to “a strictly legal review.”
  • The state’s consumer protection division, working under Abbott, started to pursue a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s Trump University in 2010 — but instead dropped the case when the university agreed to stop operating in Texas. A few years later, Abbott received $35,000 in campaign contributions from Trump. Critics claimed the decision to drop the suit was political. Abbott’s office said that was absurd, and noted that the donations came years after Texas forced Trump U out of the state.
  • After a Church of Scientology-backed group helped organize a campaign against it, Abbott vetoed legislation in 2015 that would have given Texas doctors more power to detain mentally ill and potentially dangerous patients. In his veto statement, Abbott said he objected to the bill because it raised serious constitutional concerns and that medical facilities already had options to protect the mentally ill and the public.
  • Abbott was a member of the oversight committee for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which came under investigation in 2013 for awarding a substantial grant without going through the appropriate review process. Abbott had never attended a meeting and sent a substitute in his stead.

https://www.texastribune.org/bidness/explore/greg-abbott/

Data current as of Aug. 2, 2016

  • © 2018 The Texas Tribune
Dan Patrick mental health detailed in court depositions
| March 2, 2018 | 8:14 pm | Local/State, Political Pandemonium, political struggle | Comments closed
http://abc13.com/politics/dan-patrick-mental-health-records-leaked-in-last-days-of-lt-govs-race/63863/

Dan Patrick, the front-runner in what has been a brutal GOP runoff for Texas Lieutenant Governor, spent time in psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s, according to court records released to ABC-13.

Patrick’s campaign late Thursday confirmed he “sought medical attention to help him cope with mild depression and exhaustion.” The campaign also accused Patrick’s opponent in the runoff, incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst of being behind the release of the records.

Dewhurst has hit a “new low,” Patrick said, responding in a statement released late Friday.

The information about Patrick’s medical past was unearthed in a 1989 deposition from when Patrick, a former Houston sportscaster and restaurant owner, was suing a columnist for the now-closed newspaper, the Houston Post.

Patrick told attorneys in the deposition that he started seeing a psychologist in the early 1980s because he was “tired, fatigued, stressed out.”

ABC-13 also obtained records late Friday detailing Patrick’s hospital stays that appear to indicate he suffered from “acute anxiety” had “major depression” and at one point needed “sitters around the clock.”

One of those records is from a 1984 hospital stay shows a medical official’s notes quoting Patrick as saying, “Last night I did a foolish thing. I attempted suicide.”

“As I have said, I voluntarily entered the hospital twice in the 1980’s for exhaustion and to seek treatment for depression,” Patrick said in a statement late Friday. “Some of prescribed medications exacerbated my condition and created more serious problems. Through prayer and with the help of my family and physician, like millions of other American, I was able to defeat depression. I have not seen a doctor or taken any medication to treat depression in nearly 30 years…

“I am ready to serve.”

In 1982 Patrick was admitted to a short stay in Memorial City Hospital for what he called “rest, fatigue, exhaustion,” according to the deposition. He also said it was around this time that he started taking a common antidepressant medication.

In 1984, Patrick was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen, a substance abuse and psychiatric center. He said he didn’t recall psychiatric treatment there. Instead, he testified that he “Slept, basically for two weeks.”

Notes from that stay, though say that “The patient was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen after attempting suicide by overdosing and superficially slitting his wrist.”

The Patrick camp also released late Thursday a clean bill of mental health from Dr. Stephen Kramer, the psychologist who treated Patrick.

Patrick “was a patient of mine in the mid-1980s,” Kramer wrote in a 2011 letter. “He entered the hospital on a voluntary basis for the treatment of depression. The symptoms of depression decreased within a short period of time and he was discharged.”

Patrick is a Tea-Party favorite and a current state senator. Dewhurst has been lieutenant governor since 2003. Patrick bested Dewhurst in a four-candidate GOP primary in March: Patrick captured 41 percent of the vote to Dewhurst’s 28 percent.

The court documents about Patrick’s mental health past were provided to a small group of Texas media by Jerry Patterson, Texas’ land commissioner who was an unsuccessful GOP primary candidate for lieutenant governor and who now backs Dewhurst.

The Austin-based Texas Tribune reported Friday on an email some political reporters received from Patterson that suggested Dewhurst’s campaign at least knew about Patterson’s email dump to the media. Patterson denies coordinating with the Dewhurst campaign.

“Dewhurst has asked me to cease distribution of this information,” said Patterson. “He also asked me not to run against him for Lt. Gov. I didn’t really give a damn what David wanted then, and I don’t give a damn now. The voters of Texas need to know.”

Dewhurst’s campaign responded late Friday with the following statement:

    “Commissioner Jerry Patterson operates completely independently of my Campaign, and over my objections he chose to release information from Mr. Paul Harasim’s files, which are all part of the public domain. My heart goes out to Dan Patrick and his family for what they’ve endured while coping with this situation.”

Patrick did not appear to believe Dewhurst’s sincerity.

“The public response has been overwhelming,” Patrick said. “Dewhurst has been roundly criticized from all corners. On the other hand, I have received a flood of new support and encouragement – much from those Texans who have suffered from depression or had it touch their families or loved ones.

“Dewhurst started the day denying any involvement in the release of my medical records. His hapless surrogate, Jerry Patterson, removed all doubt in an afternoon email misfire where he clearly stated that it was Dewhurst’s idea. Dewhurst now tries to deny any connection to Patterson while just days ago his campaign produced a video of Patterson cleaning his guns and defaming me.

The leak also comes on the cusp of early voting for the runoff. Early voting begins May 19. Runoff Election Day is May 27.

Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, said the attack on Patrick my backfire.

“If anything, it’s likely to generate sympathy for someone who generally doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy from voters,” Jones said. “Dan Patrick is seen as something of a hard, sometimes less than straightforward guy… now you’re effectively making him a sympathetic figure.”

Dr. Richard Pesikoff with the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Psychology said that while much of the stigma of mental illness and depression has been erased in recent years, it still is a confusing issue to many.

“The whole issue of mental illness is in a dark corner for some segments of the population,” he said.

Pesikoff also said that mental illness has a particular blemish for some when it comes to politics. He recalled Thomas Eagleton who, in 1972, was briefly George McGovern’s vice-presidential pick. He was asked to withdraw by the McGovern campaign after it was revealed that Eagleton was hospitalized three times for physical and nervous exhaustion.

“Eagleton got a really bad reception when he talked about his psych treatment,” Pesikoff said.

Pesikoff also pointed out that many in the U.S. and Texas have suffered from depression or mental illness.

Indeed, a 2012 National Institute of Mental Health survey shows that 18.6 percent of the country’s population has suffered from some sort of mental illness.

Political scientist Jones thinks that this latest bombshell may be a dud, like some others from the Dewhurst camp.

“David Dewhurst seems to be stuck in the eighties,” Jones said. “Every attack ad is focused on ‘Dan Patrick didn’t pay his taxes in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick hired undocumented immigrants in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick went into bankruptcy in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick had a mental health crises in the eighties.’

“Well, it’s 2014. That was like 30 years ago.”

Producer: Trent Seibert

Dan Patrick mental health detailed in court depositions

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Patrick blames opponent David Dewhurst for leak of mental health records, says Dewhurst ‘oozing sleaze.’

Dan Patrick, the front-runner in what has been a brutal GOP runoff for Texas Lieutenant Governor, spent time in psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s, according to court records released to ABC-13.

Patrick’s campaign late Thursday confirmed he “sought medical attention to help him cope with mild depression and exhaustion.” The campaign also accused Patrick’s opponent in the runoff, incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst of being behind the release of the records.

Dewhurst has hit a “new low,” Patrick said, responding in a statement released late Friday.

The information about Patrick’s medical past was unearthed in a 1989 deposition from when Patrick, a former Houston sportscaster and restaurant owner, was suing a columnist for the now-closed newspaper, the Houston Post.

Patrick told attorneys in the deposition that he started seeing a psychologist in the early 1980s because he was “tired, fatigued, stressed out.”

ABC-13 also obtained records late Friday detailing Patrick’s hospital stays that appear to indicate he suffered from “acute anxiety” had “major depression” and at one point needed “sitters around the clock.”

One of those records is from a 1984 hospital stay shows a medical official’s notes quoting Patrick as saying, “Last night I did a foolish thing. I attempted suicide.”

“As I have said, I voluntarily entered the hospital twice in the 1980’s for exhaustion and to seek treatment for depression,” Patrick said in a statement late Friday. “Some of prescribed medications exacerbated my condition and created more serious problems. Through prayer and with the help of my family and physician, like millions of other American, I was able to defeat depression. I have not seen a doctor or taken any medication to treat depression in nearly 30 years…

“I am ready to serve.”

In 1982 Patrick was admitted to a short stay in Memorial City Hospital for what he called “rest, fatigue, exhaustion,” according to the deposition. He also said it was around this time that he started taking a common antidepressant medication.

In 1984, Patrick was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen, a substance abuse and psychiatric center. He said he didn’t recall psychiatric treatment there. Instead, he testified that he “Slept, basically for two weeks.”

Notes from that stay, though say that “The patient was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen after attempting suicide by overdosing and superficially slitting his wrist.”

The Patrick camp also released late Thursday a clean bill of mental health from Dr. Stephen Kramer, the psychologist who treated Patrick.

Patrick “was a patient of mine in the mid-1980s,” Kramer wrote in a 2011 letter. “He entered the hospital on a voluntary basis for the treatment of depression. The symptoms of depression decreased within a short period of time and he was discharged.”

Patrick is a Tea-Party favorite and a current state senator. Dewhurst has been lieutenant governor since 2003. Patrick bested Dewhurst in a four-candidate GOP primary in March: Patrick captured 41 percent of the vote to Dewhurst’s 28 percent.

The court documents about Patrick’s mental health past were provided to a small group of Texas media by Jerry Patterson, Texas’ land commissioner who was an unsuccessful GOP primary candidate for lieutenant governor and who now backs Dewhurst.

The Austin-based Texas Tribune reported Friday on an email some political reporters received from Patterson that suggested Dewhurst’s campaign at least knew about Patterson’s email dump to the media. Patterson denies coordinating with the Dewhurst campaign.

“Dewhurst has asked me to cease distribution of this information,” said Patterson. “He also asked me not to run against him for Lt. Gov. I didn’t really give a damn what David wanted then, and I don’t give a damn now. The voters of Texas need to know.”

Dewhurst’s campaign responded late Friday with the following statement:

    “Commissioner Jerry Patterson operates completely independently of my Campaign, and over my objections he chose to release information from Mr. Paul Harasim’s files, which are all part of the public domain. My heart goes out to Dan Patrick and his family for what they’ve endured while coping with this situation.”

Patrick did not appear to believe Dewhurst’s sincerity.

“The public response has been overwhelming,” Patrick said. “Dewhurst has been roundly criticized from all corners. On the other hand, I have received a flood of new support and encouragement – much from those Texans who have suffered from depression or had it touch their families or loved ones.

“Dewhurst started the day denying any involvement in the release of my medical records. His hapless surrogate, Jerry Patterson, removed all doubt in an afternoon email misfire where he clearly stated that it was Dewhurst’s idea. Dewhurst now tries to deny any connection to Patterson while just days ago his campaign produced a video of Patterson cleaning his guns and defaming me.

The leak also comes on the cusp of early voting for the runoff. Early voting begins May 19. Runoff Election Day is May 27.

Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, said the attack on Patrick my backfire.

“If anything, it’s likely to generate sympathy for someone who generally doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy from voters,” Jones said. “Dan Patrick is seen as something of a hard, sometimes less than straightforward guy… now you’re effectively making him a sympathetic figure.”

Dr. Richard Pesikoff with the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Psychology said that while much of the stigma of mental illness and depression has been erased in recent years, it still is a confusing issue to many.

“The whole issue of mental illness is in a dark corner for some segments of the population,” he said.

Pesikoff also said that mental illness has a particular blemish for some when it comes to politics. He recalled Thomas Eagleton who, in 1972, was briefly George McGovern’s vice-presidential pick. He was asked to withdraw by the McGovern campaign after it was revealed that Eagleton was hospitalized three times for physical and nervous exhaustion.

“Eagleton got a really bad reception when he talked about his psych treatment,” Pesikoff said.

Pesikoff also pointed out that many in the U.S. and Texas have suffered from depression or mental illness.

Indeed, a 2012 National Institute of Mental Health survey shows that 18.6 percent of the country’s population has suffered from some sort of mental illness.

Political scientist Jones thinks that this latest bombshell may be a dud, like some others from the Dewhurst camp.

“David Dewhurst seems to be stuck in the eighties,” Jones said. “Every attack ad is focused on ‘Dan Patrick didn’t pay his taxes in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick hired undocumented immigrants in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick went into bankruptcy in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick had a mental health crises in the eighties.’

“Well, it’s 2014. That was like 30 years ago.”

Producer: Trent Seibert

Dan Patrick mental health detailed in court depositions

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Current time00:1213.24% buffered

02:19

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Patrick blames opponent David Dewhurst for leak of mental health records, says Dewhurst ‘oozing sleaze.’

Dan Patrick, the front-runner in what has been a brutal GOP runoff for Texas Lieutenant Governor, spent time in psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s, according to court records released to ABC-13.

Patrick’s campaign late Thursday confirmed he “sought medical attention to help him cope with mild depression and exhaustion.” The campaign also accused Patrick’s opponent in the runoff, incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst of being behind the release of the records.

Dewhurst has hit a “new low,” Patrick said, responding in a statement released late Friday.

The information about Patrick’s medical past was unearthed in a 1989 deposition from when Patrick, a former Houston sportscaster and restaurant owner, was suing a columnist for the now-closed newspaper, the Houston Post.

Patrick told attorneys in the deposition that he started seeing a psychologist in the early 1980s because he was “tired, fatigued, stressed out.”

ABC-13 also obtained records late Friday detailing Patrick’s hospital stays that appear to indicate he suffered from “acute anxiety” had “major depression” and at one point needed “sitters around the clock.”

One of those records is from a 1984 hospital stay shows a medical official’s notes quoting Patrick as saying, “Last night I did a foolish thing. I attempted suicide.”

“As I have said, I voluntarily entered the hospital twice in the 1980’s for exhaustion and to seek treatment for depression,” Patrick said in a statement late Friday. “Some of prescribed medications exacerbated my condition and created more serious problems. Through prayer and with the help of my family and physician, like millions of other American, I was able to defeat depression. I have not seen a doctor or taken any medication to treat depression in nearly 30 years…

“I am ready to serve.”

In 1982 Patrick was admitted to a short stay in Memorial City Hospital for what he called “rest, fatigue, exhaustion,” according to the deposition. He also said it was around this time that he started taking a common antidepressant medication.

In 1984, Patrick was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen, a substance abuse and psychiatric center. He said he didn’t recall psychiatric treatment there. Instead, he testified that he “Slept, basically for two weeks.”

Notes from that stay, though say that “The patient was admitted to Spring Shadows Glen after attempting suicide by overdosing and superficially slitting his wrist.”

The Patrick camp also released late Thursday a clean bill of mental health from Dr. Stephen Kramer, the psychologist who treated Patrick.

Patrick “was a patient of mine in the mid-1980s,” Kramer wrote in a 2011 letter. “He entered the hospital on a voluntary basis for the treatment of depression. The symptoms of depression decreased within a short period of time and he was discharged.”

Patrick is a Tea-Party favorite and a current state senator. Dewhurst has been lieutenant governor since 2003. Patrick bested Dewhurst in a four-candidate GOP primary in March: Patrick captured 41 percent of the vote to Dewhurst’s 28 percent.

The court documents about Patrick’s mental health past were provided to a small group of Texas media by Jerry Patterson, Texas’ land commissioner who was an unsuccessful GOP primary candidate for lieutenant governor and who now backs Dewhurst.

The Austin-based Texas Tribune reported Friday on an email some political reporters received from Patterson that suggested Dewhurst’s campaign at least knew about Patterson’s email dump to the media. Patterson denies coordinating with the Dewhurst campaign.

“Dewhurst has asked me to cease distribution of this information,” said Patterson. “He also asked me not to run against him for Lt. Gov. I didn’t really give a damn what David wanted then, and I don’t give a damn now. The voters of Texas need to know.”

Dewhurst’s campaign responded late Friday with the following statement:

    “Commissioner Jerry Patterson operates completely independently of my Campaign, and over my objections he chose to release information from Mr. Paul Harasim’s files, which are all part of the public domain. My heart goes out to Dan Patrick and his family for what they’ve endured while coping with this situation.”

Patrick did not appear to believe Dewhurst’s sincerity.

“The public response has been overwhelming,” Patrick said. “Dewhurst has been roundly criticized from all corners. On the other hand, I have received a flood of new support and encouragement – much from those Texans who have suffered from depression or had it touch their families or loved ones.

“Dewhurst started the day denying any involvement in the release of my medical records. His hapless surrogate, Jerry Patterson, removed all doubt in an afternoon email misfire where he clearly stated that it was Dewhurst’s idea. Dewhurst now tries to deny any connection to Patterson while just days ago his campaign produced a video of Patterson cleaning his guns and defaming me.

The leak also comes on the cusp of early voting for the runoff. Early voting begins May 19. Runoff Election Day is May 27.

Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, said the attack on Patrick my backfire.

“If anything, it’s likely to generate sympathy for someone who generally doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy from voters,” Jones said. “Dan Patrick is seen as something of a hard, sometimes less than straightforward guy… now you’re effectively making him a sympathetic figure.”

Dr. Richard Pesikoff with the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Psychology said that while much of the stigma of mental illness and depression has been erased in recent years, it still is a confusing issue to many.

“The whole issue of mental illness is in a dark corner for some segments of the population,” he said.

Pesikoff also said that mental illness has a particular blemish for some when it comes to politics. He recalled Thomas Eagleton who, in 1972, was briefly George McGovern’s vice-presidential pick. He was asked to withdraw by the McGovern campaign after it was revealed that Eagleton was hospitalized three times for physical and nervous exhaustion.

“Eagleton got a really bad reception when he talked about his psych treatment,” Pesikoff said.

Pesikoff also pointed out that many in the U.S. and Texas have suffered from depression or mental illness.

Indeed, a 2012 National Institute of Mental Health survey shows that 18.6 percent of the country’s population has suffered from some sort of mental illness.

Political scientist Jones thinks that this latest bombshell may be a dud, like some others from the Dewhurst camp.

“David Dewhurst seems to be stuck in the eighties,” Jones said. “Every attack ad is focused on ‘Dan Patrick didn’t pay his taxes in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick hired undocumented immigrants in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick went into bankruptcy in the eighties,’ ‘Dan Patrick had a mental health crises in the eighties.’

“Well, it’s 2014. That was like 30 years ago.”

Producer: Trent Seibert

Scandalize my Name…

Scandalize my Name

– from Greg Godels is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

For the owners, publishers, and editors of the The New York Review of Books anti-Communism is still alive. The periodical occupies a unique, indispensable role in fostering and sustaining Cold War myths and legends.

The New York Review of Books has embraced rabid anti-Communism since its opportunistic birth in the midst of a newspaper strike. Founded by a cabal of virulent anti-Communists with identifiable links to the CIA through The Paris Review and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, NYRB maintains the posture of the popular intellectual journal for academics, high-brow book clubbers, and coffee shop leftists for over half a century. Seldom would an issue go by without an earnest petition signed by intellectual celebrities pointing to human rights concerns in some far-off land that was coincidentally (perhaps?) also in the crosshairs of the US State Department. To be sure, the NYRB would muster a measure of indignation over the most egregious US adventures, particularly when they threatened to blemish the US image as the New Jerusalem.

Even with the Cold War behind us, the NYRB maintains an active stable of virulent anti-Soviet writers, partly to hustle its back list of Cold War classics and obscure dissident scribblers, partly to pre-empt any serious anti-capitalist thought that might emerge shorn of Red-dread.

Paul Robeson on Trial

In a recent essay/book review (The Emperor Robeson, 2-08-18), the NYRB brought its Red-chopping hatchet to the legacy of Paul Robeson in a piece transparently ill-motivated and poisonous.

Paul Robeson was nothing if not an exceptional, courageous political figure who galvanized US racial and political affairs in mid-century. Yet NYRB assigned Simon Callow, a UK theater personality, to the writing task despite the fact that he reveals in an interview cited in Wikipedia that I’m not really an activist, although I am aware that there are some political acts one can do that actually make a difference. And his essay bears out this confession along with his embarrassing ignorance of US history and the dynamics of US politics.

Callow begins his essay seemingly determined to prove his inadequacy to the task: When I was growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, Paul Robeson was much in evidence. His name was haloed with the sort of respect accorded to few performers. He then goes on at some length, heaping praise on Robeson. Then suddenly at some point in the 1960s, he faded from our view.

Whether Callow’s impressions are reflective of the UK experience is irrelevant. Surely, the important truth, the relevant fact, is that in Robeson’s country– the US– he was, throughout that time, a veritable non-person, the victim of a merciless witch hunt. To fail to acknowledge the fact that Robeson and his work were virtually unknown, were erased by the thought police, underscores Callow’s unfitness to discuss Robeson’s career. Indeed, members of the crowd that sought, at that time, to put lipstick on the ugly pig of racism and anti-Communism were soon to found the NYRB.

To say, as Callow does, that before the Cold War Robeson was …lionized on both sides of the Atlantic… is to display an unbelievable ignorance of the racial divide in the US. Robeson’s unequalled command of and success at multiple disciplines failed to spare him the indignities and inequalities that befell all African Americans in that era of US apartheid.

As for the post-World War II Red-scare, Callow simply ignores it as if it never occurred. Never mind the harassment, the surveillance, the denied careers, the confiscated passports, and the HUAC subpoenas that Robeson, like thousands of others, suffered from a hysterical, vicious anti-Communist witch hunt. For Callow, Robeson’s problems spring from a meeting granted by then President Truman in which Robeson had the audacity to make demands on his government. From that moment on Callow tells us, …the government moved to discredit Robeson at every turn.

What a deft, nimble way to skirt the suffocating, life-denying effects of an entire era of unbridled racism and anti-Communism.

And, from Callow’s myopic perspective, Robeson’s campaign for peace and Cold War sanity resulted in …universal approbation turned overnight into nearly universal condemnation. For Callow, standing for peace against the tide of mindless conformity and mass panic is not the mark of courage and integrity, but a tragic career move.

In contrast to Paul Robeson’s life-long defiance of unjust power, Callow attributes a different approach to Robeson’s father, William: But the lesson was clear: the only way out of poverty and humiliation was hard, hard work– working harder than any white man would have to, to achieve a comparable result. One waits futilely to read that this reality is precisely what son, Paul, was trying to correct.

Like so many of today’s belated, measured admirers of Paul Robeson, Callow cannot resist delving into Robeson’s sexual proclivities, an interest which bears relevance that frankly escapes me. Similarly, Callow raises the matter of Robeson’s mental health and his withdrawal from public life.

Rather than considering the toll that decades of selfless struggle and tenacious resistance might have taken on Robeson’s body and mind, as it did countless other victims of the Red Scare, Callow contrives different explanations. Robeson, it is clear, knew that his dream was just that: that the reality was otherwise. But he had to maintain his faith, otherwise what else was there? So, for Callow, Robeson’s bad faith was responsible for mental issues and ill health. It was not a medical condition, the emotional stress of racism, or the repression of his political views that explain his decline. Instead, it was the consequences of bad politics.

Paraphrasing the author of a book on Robeson that Callow favors, he speculates that Robeson’s physical and mental decline may have directly stemmed from the desperate requests from Robeson’s Russian friends to help them get out of the nightmarish world they found themselves in. We are asked to believe that a man who resisted every temptation of success, defied the racial insults of his time, and steadfastly defended his commitment to socialism was brought to his knees by anti-Soviet media rumors? Certainly, there is no evidence for this outlandish claim.

Again, using author Jeff Sparrow (No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson) as his mouthpiece, Callow reveals his problem with Robeson: …Robeson’s endorsement of Stalin and Stalin’s successors, his refusal to acknowledge what had been done in Stalin’s name, is the tragedy of his life. In other words, like Budd Schulberg’s fictional snitch in On the Waterfront, if Robeson had only denounced his class, ratted on his friends, and bent to authority, he could have been a contender for the respect of liberals and the blessings of bourgeois success. But since he didn’t, his life was a pitiful spectacle.

Thankfully, there are still many who draw inspiration from the pitiful spectacle of Paul Robeson’s extraordinary life.

One Who Does

As if misunderstanding Robeson were not enough, Callow attacks a prominent scholar who does understand Robeson’s legacy. In contrast with his fawning review of the Sparrow book (as different as chalk and cheese), Callow demeans the contribution of one of the most gifted and thorough chroniclers of the page in history that included the life of Robeson. As a historian, Gerald Horn’s prodigious work stretches across books on such politically engaged Robeson contemporaries as WEB DuBois, Ben Davis, Ferdinand Smith, William Patterson, Shirley Graham DuBois, and John Howard Lawson. His writings explore the blacklist and The Civil Rights Congress, both keys to understanding Robeson and his time. In most cases, they represent the definitive histories of the subject.

But Callow prefers the shallow Sparrow account that substitutes the overused literary devices of in search of../searching for… to mask its limited scholarly ambition.

Callow is baffled by Horne’s Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Horne’s insistence that Robeson was a ˜revolutionary makes Callow apoplectic (…page after page). But if Robeson was not an authentic, modern US revolutionary, then who was?

Callow cannot find a “clear picture of Robeson’s personality in the Horne account, a conclusion that probably should not trouble Horne who seems more interested in history rather than psychology.

Callow’s sensibilities are especially offended by Horne’s depiction of the odious Winston Churchill, the man many believe to share responsibility for the WWI blood bath at Gallipoli and the two million deaths in the Bengal famine of 1943. It seems that Horne’s words for the short, chubby, Champagne and Cognac-loving prima donna– ‘pudgy, cigar-chomping, alcohol-guzzling Tory — struck Callow’s ears as vulgar.

But Callow spews his own venomous insults: Horne’s book lacks …articulate analysis, his account is numbing and bewildering in equal measure, like being addressed from a dysfunctional megaphone.

Horne’s concluding endorsement of the relevance of Marx and Engels famous slogan– Workers of the World, Unite! –really brings Callow’s rancor to a boil: I’m sorry to break it to Mr. Horne, but he doesn’t. And it isn’t.

We surely know which side of the barricades Simon Callow has chosen.

The Legacy

The legacy of Paul Robeson has been maintained for the four decades since his death by his comrades and allies of the left, principally the Communist left. Most of those who worked and fought alongside of him have also passed away. Yet a small, but dedicated group of a few academics and more political activists have continued to tell his story and defend his values against a torrent of hostility or a wall of silence. Through the decades, he has been forced out of the mainstream– the history books and popular culture.

Of course, he was not alone in suffering anonymity for his Communist politics. Another giant who was brought down by Cold War Lilliputians, denigrated by hollow mediocrities, was African American Communist, Claudia Jones. Until recently, her powerful thinking on race, women’s rights, and socialism could only be found by those willing to search dusty corners of used book stores.

Perhaps no one promised to live and further Robeson’s legacy than the young writer Lorraine Hansberry, celebrated before her tragic death for her popular play, A Raisin in the Sun. Her work with Robeson and WEB DuBois on the paper, Freedom, brought her politics further in line with theirs: militant anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist, Communist.

Forgotten by those who wish to portray her as a mere cultural critic, she famously called out Robert Kennedy’s elitist, patronizing posture in a meeting with Black civil rights leaders as enthusiastically recalled by James Baldwin.

Ignored by those who would like to see her as simply another civil rights reformer, her speech at a Monthly Review fundraiser, shortly before her death, resounds with revolutionary fervor:

If the present Negro revolt is to turn into a revolution, become sophisticated in the most advanced ideas abroad in the world, a leadership which will have had exposure to the great ideas and movements of our time, a Negro leadership which can throw off the blindness of parochialism and bathe the aspirations of the Negro people in the realism of the twentieth century, a leadership which has no illusion about the nature of our oppression and will no longer hesitate to condemn, not only the results of that oppression, but also the true and inescapable cause of it—which of course is the present organization of American society.

Today, there is a renewed interest in Robeson, Claudia Jones, and Lorraine Hansberry. Articles, books, and documentaries are appearing or are in the works. Some are offering new perspectives on the lives of these extraordinary people, exploring aspects of their lives that show that their humanity perhaps reached further than previously thought. Yes, they were Communists, but they were not just Communists. Indeed, they belong to the world.

However, it would be a great tragedy if they were denied their conviction that capitalism– the present organization of American society, in Hansberry’s words– represented the foundation of other oppressions. It would be criminally dishonest if there were no acknowledgement that they were made enemies of the state precisely because they embraced socialism. For an African American, in racist, Cold War mid-century USA, the decision to embrace Communism was not taken lightly or frivolously. Robeson, Jones, and Hansberry knew exactly what that commitment meant to the forces of repression. And they risked it. They should be looked upon as people’s champions for their courage.

New researchers are welcome to explore other dimensions of the lives of these unbending fighters for social justice. But their authentic legacies are needed now more than ever.

Greg Godels
Africa/Global: Humanitarian Attention Deficits
| January 29, 2018 | 9:22 pm | Africa | Comments closed

Africa/Global: Humanitarian Attention Deficits

AfricaFocus Bulletin January 29, 2018 (180129) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

The international system of response to humanitarian crises is flawed. And the often-repeated call to focus on addressing causes of crises and structural flaws in the system, instead of only providing short-term relief, is undeniably justified. But current trends, paralleling austerity programs and cuts in services at domestic levels in the United States and around the world, are not moving in the direction of fundamental reform. Instead, they are further diminishing the already inadequate resources devoted to saving lives.

These cutbacks, as is often noted, have disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable regions of the world, notably Africa. This effect is multiplied not only by racial and other stereotypes but by the structural flaw that funding depends not on reliably budgeted funds for timely responses, but on after-the-fact fundraising, itself reliant on media attention, with all its built-in biases and focus on sensational images.

Despite this reality, notes one of the foremost investigators of famine, Alex de Waal, the international humanitarian system developed in recent decades has in fact led to hundreds of thousands lives saved, in comparison with the record of the 20th century.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (http://www.unocha.org/) is the lead inter-governmental agency coordinating such efforts. And the news agency IRIN News (https://www.irinnews.org/content/about-us), recently spun off from the United Nations as an independent non-governmental organization, provides regular first-hand coverage and analysis with priorities that prioritize understanding complex realities. This and other sources on-line mean that those who wish to do so do not have to rely only on the most visible “mainstream media” outlets for their news.

Despite such advances, the threat from U.S. attacks on multilateral institutions (though not only) leads de Waal to warn that the limited progress is both fragile and reversible.

This AfricaFocus contains several different sections related to this overaraching theme: (1) a set of key reliable links for updates on humanitarian crises and international responses, (2) brief excerpts from and links to reflections that go beyond noting the obvious racism in President Trump’s “shithole” remarks, (3) excerpts from an interview with Alex de Waal, author of the new book “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” and (4) excerpts from IRIN’s look ahead to 10 humanitarian crises in 2018, including 5 in Africa.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on humanitarian assistance and related topics, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-peace.php and http://www.africafocus.org/aidexp.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Key Links

UNOCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview. 2018. http://interactive.unocha.org/publication/globalhumanitarianoverview/

Includes humanitarian response plans for the following 21 countries, of which 13 are in Africa: * Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, oPt, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen * Burundi, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan

This report also had a revealing chart of the proportion of funding raised for humanitarian appeals in 2017. http://www.africafocus.org/images/funding-2017.pdf At the end of November, only 52% of the $24.0 billion needed for the year 2017 had been committed.

https://www.irinnews.org/africa – IRIN Africa page – formerly UN, now independent non-profit news service. Coverage that goes beyond stereotypes from on-the-spot reporting and careful analysis.

https://reliefweb.int/ – Detailed reports collated by OCHA https://www.unocha.org/ UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Racism Beyond Trump: Not Just Attitudes but Also Structures

The links below include several recent short commentaries in direct response to Trump’s remarks, but also two longer essays written more than a decade ago, one on the legal case for reparations for Africa as well as those of African descent, and the other on the structural persistence of race in the global world order as well as within nations. A common theme is the relevance of historical perspective and deeper analysis as well as acknowledging the racism in Trump’s attitudes and policies.

Paul Tinyambe Zeleza, “On Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Africa – the Homogenization and Dehumanization of a Continent,” Nyasa Times, January 15, 2017 http://allafrica.com/stories/201801150449.html

Trump’s derogatory dismissal of shithole Haiti and Africa reflects enduring tendencies in the American social imaginary about Africa and its Diasporas. This is to suggest, as outraged as we might be about Trump’s provocative and pusillanimous pronouncements, the Trump phenomenon transcends Trump. The specter of racism, whose pernicious and persistent potency Trump has brazenly exposed to the world, has haunted America from its inception with the original sin of slavery, through a century of Jim Crow segregation, and the past half century of post-civil rights redress and backlash.

The disdain expressed for Haiti and Africa in the President’s latest vicious verbal assault is a projection of an angry racist project to rollback the limited gains of the civil rights struggle and settlement of the 1960s that has animated the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy and politics ever since. … The intersection of domestic and foreign affairs tend to reflect, reproduce, and reinforce national and global racial hierarchies.   more

Letter to President Trump from Former U.S. Ambassadors to Africa http://allafrica.com/stories/201801170032.html From 78 ambassadors who served in 48 African countries

As former U.S. Ambassadors to 48 African countries, we write to express our deep concern regarding reports of your recent remarks about African countries and to attest to the importance of our partnerships with most of the fifty-four African nations. Africa is a continent of great human talent and rich diversity, as well as extraordinary beauty and almost unparalleled natural resources. It is also a continent with deep historical ties with the United States.

We hope that you will reassess your views on Africa and its citizens, and recognize the important contributions Africans and African Americans have made and continue to make to our country, our history, and the enduring bonds that will always link Africa and the United States.   more

Howard W. French, “Trump’s profane description disregards Africa’s crucial role in making America a world power,” Washington Post, January 14, 2018 http://tinyurl.com/y9pakctu

President Trump’s comments disparaging immigrants from Haiti and the African continent have stunned many in the United States and other parts of the world. I see this as an opportunity to challenge the American public to confront this reality: More than any other factor, it is the wealth derived from Africa, especially the labor of people taken in chains from that continent, that accounts for the rise of the West and its centuries of predominance in world affairs.

The facts of this history hide in plain sight, and yet Americans and others in the West have averted their eyes for 500 years. The West’s ascension over other parts of the world has been attributed, instead, to innate Western qualities, including rationality and a talent for invention and innovation, or Western institutions. It is this distortion of reality — a delusion, really — that fuels attitudes of white superiority, whether subtle and pervasive, or as crude as those exhibited by someone like Trump.   more

M Neelika Jayawardane,” The very American myth of ‘exceptional immigrants,'” Al Jazeera, 20 Jan 2018 http://tinyurl.com/yafxzqke

… Part of why Americans are susceptible to this violent, xenophobic, and nativist rhetoric is not because they are exceptionally thick, but because of how the national mythology of the US – one constructed on Puritan ideals of egalitarianism, “hard work” and perseverance against adversity – is constructed.

Americans are told, since childhood, that hard work and perseverance not only build character, but allow them to overcome obstacles, and achieve their goals and dreams. Because this powerful myth is repetitively drummed into their heads – be it through apocryphal narratives of kids who came from impoverished backgrounds who went on to become multimillion-dollar earning athletes, or women who beat the odds and attained positions of leadership in fields dominated by men – they learn to believe that their country is a meritocracy.

It is obvious that (white) Americans need to be disabused of the notion that the US’s white population is special, and deserving, somehow, of privilege; it is time to get over the belief that they only received their privileges from having worked for it.

But just as importantly, those immigrants of more privileged backgrounds – those who are currently touting the percentage of people from their national group who have college and post-graduate degrees, as if waving these statistics and their material possessions are ways of proving that they are not, in fact, deserving of Trump’s racism – also need an antidote for their misplaced smugness.   more

Lord Anthony Gifford, “The Legal Basis of the Case for Reparations: A paper Presented to the First Pan-African Congress on Reparations, Abuja, Federal Republic of Nigeria, April 27-29, 1993” http://www.shaka.mistral.co.uk/legalbasis.htm

Once you accept, as I do, the truth of three propositions a. That the mass kidnap and enslavement of Africans was the most wicked criminal enterprise in recorded human history, b. that no compensation was ever paid by any of the perpetrators to any of the sufferers, and c. that the consequences of the crime continue to be massive, both in terms of the enrichment of the descendants of the perpetrators, and in terms of the impoverishment of Africa and the descendants of Africans, then the justice of the claim for Reparations is proved beyond reasonable doubt.

To those who may say that that is all very true in theory, but that in practice there is no mechanism to enforce the claim, or no willingness of the white world to recognise it, I would answer with a Latin legal maxim: ubi jus, ibi remedium: where there is a right, there must be a remedy.   more

William Minter, “Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World Order,” Science & Society, July 2005 http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africa-race-world-2005.pdf

21st Century Color Lines

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) and other analysts, focusing on the current U. S. racial order, have posited an ideology of “color-blind racism,” which allows for continuation of racial inequality while firmly rejecting overt racial distinctions or discrimination. One of the key components of this ideology is to deny the link between past and present, so that people regardless of their background are seen as starting on a level playing field. This assumption fits well with the companion ideology stressing the virtues of the neutral market, which all are presumed to approach with similar possibilities of success.

Such an ideology gains credibility from the visible success of individuals from the subordinate group, which does in the case of race mark a break with earlier ideologies of rigid discrimination. With successful individuals in the foreground, and even celebrated as illustrating diversity, it becomes easier to view continuing structural inequality as relatively unimportant, or even to dismiss it altogether. Persistent poverty or other disadvantages can conveniently be attributed entirely to individual defects, and seen as unrelated to past or present discrimination. The dominant ideology thus diverts attention from the structural bases of persistent and rising inequality.   more

Mass starvation as a political weapon

http://phys.org, January 19, 2018

by Heather Stephenson, Tufts University

http://tinyurl.com/yd38bo84

Mass starvation killed more than three million people in Stalin-era Ukraine in the 1930s and more than 18 million in China during Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet by the start of this century, famines like those were all but eliminated, Alex de Waal says in his new book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (http://amzn.to/2DuxUW4). The number of people dying in famines around the world has dropped precipitously, particularly over the last thirty to fifty years.

Those gains, though, are fragile, and could be starting to be reversed, says de Waal, who is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at the Fletcher School. For his book, he compiled the best available estimates of global famine deaths from 1870 to 2010, and used that data to analyze trends. Tufts Now sat down with him recently to find out what he learned.

Tufts Now: In the popular imagination, famine is often connected with too many people and too little food–that is, with overpopulation and low agricultural production due to natural disasters such as drought. How does that line up with reality?

Alex de Waal: That is nonsense. Famine is a very specific political product of the way in which societies are run, wars are fought, governments are managed. The single overwhelming element in causation–in three-quarters of the famines and threequarters of the famine deaths–is political agency. Yet we still tend to be gripped by this idea that famine is a natural calamity.

You can actually show that the population theory of famine is wrong. Not just wrong at a global scale–because famine mortality has gone down precipitously while world population has gone up–but also at a country level. In the countries that have historically been very prone to famine, like Ethiopia or India, famine mortality has gone down and continues to do so even while population goes up. This is not to say that there isn’t a problem of resource consumption in the world. It’s just to say famine is not part of that.

Tufts Now: You say that mass starvation was almost eliminated, with famines becoming less frequent and less lethal. How did that happen?

de Waal: There are multiple reasons: the background economics, the improvements in transport systems, information systems, massive improvements in public health. The big historic killers in famines used to be infectious diseases. Those are now much less likely to kill large numbers of people.

One big factor is the international humanitarian industry. The humanitarians are much better at addressing the symptoms than the causes. But nonetheless if you can reduce the lethality of famines to a small fraction of what they used to be twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, even if you’re not addressing the causes, you’re still doing something substantially positive.

The last reason for the decline in famines is undoubtedly the decline in wars, the decline in totalitarian rule, and the spread of democracy and liberal values. There’s something very tangibly precious to be held onto about democracy, liberalism, and humanitarianism. You can demonstrate that this has saved tens of millions of lives. It shouldn’t be treated lightly.

Tufts Now: In addition to sending humanitarian aid, outsiders have sometimes argued for intervening with military force to protect civilians who are suffering during famines in conflict zones. What do you think of that?

de Waal: I think it’s a terribly bad idea–it’s very likely to go wrong. Twenty-five years ago, when President Bush the elder sent his troops to Somalia, I resigned from Human Rights Watch over it. I was asked to support it, and I refused. I still think it’s a bad idea. Almost every instance where you see troops sent in, it has not worked out well. These are not problems that can be solved by the military.

Tufts Now: You say that the success in combating famine is now stalling and that world leaders should help by making the act of starving people a war crime or a crime against humanity. Isn’t it already against international law?

de Waal: Lawyers will argue about this. Some will say there is no law that outlaws faminogenic acts–acts that create famines–and there are so many loopholes in international law that you can fly fighter jets through it, as the Saudis are doing now in Yemen. Others will say the law is there if interpreted correctly.

What can’t be denied is that it’s an issue that we collectively don’t care enough about to make the criminalization work.

Let me give a parallel, which is sexual and gender crimes. Rape has always been unlawful, but it was only relatively recently that the international community– global public opinion–cared enough about criminalizing rape to actually make it into an issue that could be stopped. In the same way, I think we need to care enough about starvation, in places like Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, and South Sudan, to make it an issue that is so toxic that it is stopped.

Tufts Now: You mention Yemen, where an ongoing armed conflict and blockade imposed by a Saudi-led coalition have left millions in need of humanitarian assistance. What should be done about the people starving there?

de Waal: Yemen is the greatest famine atrocity of our lifetimes. The Saudis are deliberately destroying the country’s food-producing infrastructure.

The United States and the European countries, if they cared about it enough, have enough leverage to get the Saudis and the Emeratis to stop bombing agricultural, health, and market infrastructure, open the ports, and have a much less restrictive definition about what food is allowed in. They also need to start a peace process. This is not a war that is going to be won in any meaningful sense. It’s a political, created famine and it will have to be solved by political, created means. One can ameliorate the impact by enabling a humanitarian response, which would save many lives, and allowing the economy to regenerate a bit, but a proper solution has to be a political one.

Tufts Now: How hopeful are you about the possibility of ending famine?

de Waal: At any time up to a couple of years ago, I would have been extremely hopeful. The default mode of the national and global governance systems was in favor of humanitarian systems and against faminogenic actions. That was the way history was going. That was the direction of global politics.

Now I’m much less certain about that, as we are seeing some of this introverted, xenophobic, transactional, zero-sum politics. It’s not just here in the U.S. You also see it in Europe, with Britain as a particularly sad example.

Humanitarianism cannot cope with the political causes of famine. Humanitarians know that. But there’s still an assumption by political leaders, who are somewhat culpable, that if we put the humanitarians on the case, we don’t need to deal with the politics. That is wrong.

Ten humanitarian crises to look out for in 2018

IRIN’s editors sketch out the gloomy-looking horizon for next year

Geneva, 31 December 2017

http://www.irinnews.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8vem7ps

From the Rohingya to South Sudan, hurricanes to famine, 2017 was full of disasters and crises. But 2018 is shaping up to be even worse. Here’s why.

The UN has appealed for record levels of funding to help those whose lives have been torn apart, but the gap between the funding needs and the funding available continues to grow.

And what makes the outlook especially bad for 2018 is that the political will needed to resolve conflicts, welcome refugees, and address climate change also appears to be waning. What a difference a year, a new US president, and a German election make.

Here’s our insider take on 10 crises that will shape the humanitarian agenda in 2018 (See 2017’s list here):

Syria’s sieges and displacement

As Syria heads towards seven years of war and Western governments quietly drop their demands for political transition, it has become increasingly clear that President Bashar al-Assad will stay in power, at least in some capacity.

more in original article

Congo unravels

Democratic Republic of Congo. Sylvain Liechti/UN Photo.

You know the situation is bad when people start fleeing their homes, and it doesn’t get much worse than the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Here, violence in its eastern provinces has triggered the world’s worst displacement crisis – for a second year in a row. More than 1.7 million people abandoned their farms and villages this year, on top of 922,000 in 2016. The provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Kasai, and Tanganyika are the worst affected and the epicentres of unrest in the country.

New alliances of armed groups have emerged to take on a demoralised government army and challenge President Joseph Kabila in distant Kinshasa. He refused to step down and hold elections in 2016 when his constitutionally mandated two-term limit expired – and the political ambition of some of these groups is to topple him. These rebellions are a new addition to the regular lawlessness of armed groups and conflict entrepreneurs that have stalked the region for years. It is a confusing cast of characters, in which the army also plays a freelance role and, as IRIN reported this month, as an instigator of some of the rights abuses that are forcing civilians to flee.

As we enter 2018, more than 13 million people require humanitarian assistance and protection – that’s close to six million more people than at the start of 2017. Over three million people are severely food insecure in the Kasai region alone, their villages and fields looted. Aid is only slowly trickling in. The $812 million appeal for Congo is less than 50 percent funded. That lack of international commitment represents the single largest impediment to the humanitarian response.

Yemen slips further towards famine

If we repeat the words “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” so often that they starting to lose gravity, here are a few numbers that might help hammer home just how grim life has become after more than two and a half years of war in Yemen, a country of more than 29 million: 8.4 million people are on the verge of starvation; 400,000 children have severe acute malnutrition (that’s as bad as it gets), and more than 5,500 civilians have been killed.

more in original article

South Sudan – it could get even worse

South Sudan. Diana Diaz/UNHCR.

A much-anticipated ceasefire in South Sudan didn’t last long.

It came into effect at midnight on Christmas Eve, and a few hours later government and rebel forces were fighting around the northern town of Koch in Unity State. The violence hasn’t derailed the peace talks underway in Addis Ababa, but it does point to how difficult it will be for the internationally-backed diplomatic process to shape events on the ground.

The ceasefire is between President Salva Kiir and several rebel groups, but confidence is low that negotiations can bring a quick and decisive end to a war entering its fifth year.

South Sudan has fragmented, with a host of ethnic militias emerging with shifting loyalties. The various members of this so- called “gun class” all want a seat at the table, in the belief that any future agreement will be based on a power-sharing deal and a division of the country’s resources along the lines of the last failed settlement.

The international community lacks leverage and neighbouring countries don’t have the unity of purpose necessary to achieve a broad-based and sustainable peace agreement.

What that means is that more refugees – on top of an existing two million – will continue to pour across the country’s borders as the fighting season resumes.

It also means some seven million people inside the country – almost two thirds of the remaining population – will still need humanitarian assistance; hunger will also continue to threaten millions as a result of the war, displacement, and collapse of the rural economy. And yes, there will be the threat of renewed famine.

One final ingredient in the brew of despair is that the humanitarian community’s access to those in need will be constrained by both the prevailing insecurity and the government’s cynical taxation of aid operations.

CAR – where humanitarians fear to tread

Central African Republic. Philip Kleinfeld/IRIN.

There are many reasons why Central African Republic was officially the unhappiest country in the world in 2017.

You can start with the 50 percent increase in the number of displaced, bringing the total to 633,000 people. Then there are the more than two million hungry people, and the half a million who have figured it’s just too hard to stay and have left for neighbouring countries.

It’s not much fun being an aid worker either. In November another humanitarian worker was killed in the north of the country, bringing to 14 the number to have died this year. The level of violence has forced aid agencies to repeatedly suspend operations as their personnel, convoys, and bases are deliberately targeted.

Behind the insecurity is a four-year conflict between competing armed groups that neither a weak government nor an under-staffed UN peacekeeping mission can contain. It pits mainly Muslim ex-Séléka rebels against Christian anti-Balaka, but some of the worst fighting has its roots in the splintering of the Séléka coalition and a feud between former allies.

The violence across the country boils down to the lucrative control of natural resources and the taxes the groups raise from checkpoints. Such is the insecurity that the government’s writ doesn’t even cover all of the capital, Bangui.

Rohingya refugees in limbo; forgotten conflicts simmer elsewhere in Myanmar

more in original article

Afghans return to flaring conflict

more in original article

Venezuelan exodus to strain neighbours

more in original article

Libya: Africa’s giant holding cell

Libya. Alessio Romenzi/UNICEF.

An AU-EU summit at the end of 2017 seemed to offer a glimmer of hope for the 700,000 to one million migrants stuck in the nightmare that is Libya.

It produced a plan to repatriate those who want it, and to move others from squalid detention centres into better conditions.

Some flights home did subsequently take off, and a first group (of 162 refugees and migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen) was even evacuated by the UN on 22 December from Libya to Italy. But we’ve yet to see how this scheme will play out, and there are some serious obstacles. Many migrants have nowhere safe to return to, and it’s not clear how a UN-backed government that controls little in the way of territory or popular support will manage to move and protect migrants in a country with multiple governments, militias, and tribes.

That the meeting even got press (in large part thanks to a CNN film of what appeared to be a slave auctions) in an oft-ignored country is a sign of how little the world cares about the mostly sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya, for whom kidnapping, extortion, and rape have become the norm.

European policy has largely focused on keeping migrants from boarding boats in the Mediterranean or reaching their shores – creating a situation that is bad enough for Libyans and shockingly worse for Africans. At the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron mooted a military and police initiative inside Libya, plus UN sanctions for people-smugglers. How this could actually work is anyone’s guess, and it seems unlikely to get at the source of many migrants’ woes: the lack of legal avenues to get out of the desperate situations that brought them to Libya’s hell in the first place.

A year of turmoil in Cameroon

It’s taken just over a year for political agitation in Cameroon’s anglophone region to turn into armed opposition against the government of President Paul Biya.

Separatism was only a fringe idea until the government cracked down hard on protesters demanding greater representation for the neglected minority region. Now, government soldiers are being killed, Biya is promising all-out war, and thousands of refugees are fleeing into neighbouring Nigeria.

Anglophone Cameroon is becoming radicalised. Refugees recounting experiences of killings by the security forces talk of revenge, and commentators worry that the opportunity for negotiations with more moderate anglophone leaders – those pursuing a policy of civil disobedience and diplomatic pressure on Yaoundé – may be rapidly shrinking.

If the government believes there is a military solution to the activists’ demands for an independent “Ambazonia”, made up of the two anglophone regions of western Cameroon, they may well be mistaken. Where the separatists’ training camps are being established, next to the Nigerian border, is a remote and heavily forested zone – ideal for guerrilla warfare.

Biya, 85 in February and in power for the past 35 years, is standing in elections once again in 2018. The “anglophone crisis” and the potential of an even larger refugee exodus will not only leave him politically damaged but could be regionally destabalising, especially as Nigeria faces its own separatist challenge.

il-oa-as/ag

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6/08/71 US COMMUNIST PARTY RUNS GUS HALL FOR PRESIDENT
| January 28, 2018 | 8:18 pm | About the CPUSA, Gus Hall, Party Voices | 1 Comment

The Marxist Theory of the State
| January 28, 2018 | 11:05 am | A. Shaw, Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin | Comments closed

KKE statement on Tsipras-Zaev meeting: “The combat against irredentism requires FYROM’s constitution to be amended”
| January 25, 2018 | 8:00 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Syriza | Comments closed

Thursday, January 25, 2018

KKE statement on Tsipras-Zaev meeting: “The combat against irredentism requires FYROM’s constitution to be amended”

http://www.idcommunism.com/2018/01/kke-statement-on-tsipras-zaev-meeting.html
“The meeting between Tsipras- Zaev and the statements that followed confirm that the general established set, focusing on the accession of the neighboring country in NATO and the EU, the so-called Euroatlantic integration in western Balkans and the bankrupted practice of nomenclature, cannot guarantee a solution for the benefit of our people, for the people of the neighboring country (FYROM) and the people of the region” writes a statement of the Communist Party of Greece regarding yesterday’s meeting between the Prime Ministers of Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in Davos.
According to the statement issued by the Press Office of the CC of the KKE, “the truth that both Mr. Tsipras and Mr.Zaev hid from the people during yesterday’s meeting” is that “within this process, nationalism meets cosmopolitanism, the same problems afficting the people are recycled, the plans of large monopoly interests are promoted and competitions between the USA, NATO, EU and Russia are fueled, sharpening the situation in the Balkans and the broader region”.
 
The KKE statement also underlines that “mr.Tsipras hid that nationalisms which afficted and continue afficting the people of the Balkans were incited by the USA, NATO and the EU, the plans of which the SYRIZA-ANEL government, like a flag-bearer, has assumed to promote”.
 
The KKE “calls the Greek people and the people of the region to strengthen their struggle against the imperialist plans, against NATO and the EU, against foreign military bases in the region”, underlining that “the combat against irredentism is important and requires the change of FYROM’s constitution, the explicit preservation of the borders and the prevention of agitation of any nationalist aspirations”.
 
Regarding the discussion regarding the name, the KKE stands firm in its position for a compound name that will include the term “Macedonia” or its derivatives, with a strictly geographical determination, for all uses. Such as solution, writes the KKE statement, “requires the settlement of all the above issues”.
 
Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.
Αναφορικά με τη συζήτηση για το όνομα, το ΚΚΕ, πιστεύει ότι «το όνομα με σύνθετη ονομασία που θα περιέχει το όνομα Μακεδονία ή παράγωγά του, με αυστηρό γεωγραφικό προσδιορισμό, προϋποθέτει την επίλυση όλων των παραπάνω προβλημάτων και βεβαίως ξεκαθάρισμα πως πρόκειται για ένα όνομα για όλες τις χρήσεις, χωρίς “ήξεις- αφήξεις”».
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