Cesar Barrioquinto, Editor
C4
MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2017
World
PARTY. Taylor Dayne performs at the Sixth Annual Hamptons Paddle & Party For Pink To Benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation on August 5, 2017 in Bridgehampton, New York. AFP
Slammed for firing attorney general CARACAS―A new assembly loyal to President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday fired the country’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega, one of his most vociferous critics, triggering a firestorm of condemnation from the US and Latin American nations. Ortega, who was barred by dozens of soldiers from entering her offices, has been a thorn in Maduro’s side for months, breaking ranks with him over the legality of the Constituent Assembly, which was elected last week in a vote marred by violence and fraud allegations. She refused to recognize her sacking, or the assembly’s swearing in of Tarek William Saab, the national ombudsman, in her place. “I am not giving up, Venezuela is not giving up and will not give up against barbarity, illegality, hunger, darkness and death,” she said. US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert tweeted that the “United States condemns [the] illegal removal” of Ortega, adding the move was aimed at tightening the “authoritarian dictatorship of [the] Maduro regime.” Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Peru equally slammed the decision, made by the Constituent Assembly as its very first order of business. The assembly also said Ortega would face trial for “irregularities” from her time in office and was forbidden from leaving the country. One of the assembly’s most prominent members, Diosdado Cabello, said of the firing: “This is not a personal, political lynching, just carrying out the law.” Ortega’s sacking had been widely expected. But its swiftness―and the fact it was a unanimous vote―stirred wide unease. Also on Saturday opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was returned to house arrest after being detained in military prison for four days. “They just moved Leopoldo home,” his wife Lilian Tintori wrote on Twitter. “We continue with more conviction and strength for peace and freedom in Venezuela!” Lopez had been arrested along with another opposition leader Antonio Ledezma―who was released back to home detention Friday―in the aftermath of the highly contested vote to create the assembly. AFP
Palestinians facing Jerusalem eviction JERUSALEM―Fahamiya Shamasneh, a 75-year-old Palestinian woman, refuses to pack her things despite a looming deadline for evacuating the home she has lived in for more than 50 years. Israel’s supreme court has ruled the family have until Wednesday to vacate the house in annexed east Jerusalem. The family’s supporters have no doubt the house will be handed over to Jewish Israelis, as part of a wider plan to boost Jewish settlements in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. It will be the first eviction in the neighborhood since 2009, according to Israeli anti-occupation group Peace Now, and has become part of a fight over the disputed status of Jerusalem. Israel sees the city as its undivided capital, while the Palestinians want the eastern sector as their future capital. Fahamiya, her sick husband Ayoub, 84, their son and his family have until August 9 to voluntarily leave the cramped,50-square-metre (540-sq-foot) basement of their building or be forced out. “Fifty-three years here means leaving is not easy―it is a lifetime. I was a young girl when I came to this house,” said Fahamiya. “The police are threatening us. We don’t know what to do,” she said, adding they had not found anywhere else to go. Under a decades-old Israeli law, if Jews can prove their families lived in east Jerusalem homes before the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel, they can demand that Israel’s general custodian office release the property and return their “ownership rights”. During the war, thousands of
Jews fled Jerusalem as Jordanianled Arab forces seized the city, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from land that was later to become Israel. No such law exists for Palestinians who lost their land. Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community. Around 200,000 Israeli Jews now live in east Jerusalem in settlement homes considered illegal under international law. The Shamasneh family says it has paid 250 shekels ($70) a month to the general custodian since 1967, an arrangement used by the pro-settlers’ side as proof that the family recognized their status as tenants. In 2009, the original heirs along with the general custodian launched a legal process to force the family out, but the claimants later sold their rights to a USregistered company, according to Peace Now. The NGO says such companies are often used to make it unclear exactly who is behind the push to evict people, a highly-charged political act. Arye King, director at the Israel Land Fund and a de facto spokesman for much Jewish settlement growth in Jerusalem, denied any legal misconduct. “This house is not changing hands―it has belonged to Jews for about 90 years and it is returning to the owners after some people rented it,” he told AFP. In 2013, Israel’s high court rejected an appeal by the family in favour of the claimants, concluding the family were not protected tenants. AFP
Trump stirring up his base to protect his presidency B
EDMINSTER―Beset by investigations, dire approval ratings and growing party dissent, Donald Trump is stirring up his base, hoping to mobilize an army of political shock troops to protect his presidency.
AWARDING. Collider’s Allison Keene, left, and TCA Treasurer/Salon’s Melanie McFarland present the award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Comedy’ onstage at the 33rd Annual Television Critics Association Awards during the 2017 Summer TCA Tour at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 5, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. AFP
72 years since bombing of Hiroshima TOKYO―Japan on Sunday marked 72 years since the world’s first nuclear attack on Hiroshima, with the nation’s traditional contradictions over atomic weapons again coming into focus. The anniversary came after Japan sided last month with nuclear powers Britain, France and the US to dismiss a UN treaty banning atomic weapons, which was rejected by critics for ignoring the reality of security threats such as North Korea. Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic attacks, in 1945. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaking at the annual ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park near the ground zero, said Japan hoped to push for a world without nuclear weapons in a way that all countries can agree. “For us to truly pursue a world without
nuclear weapons, we need participation from both nuclear-weapons and nonnuclear weapons states,” Abe said in his speech at the annual ceremony. “Our country is committed to leading the international community by encouraging both sides” to make progress toward abolishing nuclear arms, Abe added without directly referring to the UN treaty. Japanese officials have criticized the UN Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty as deepening a divide between countries with and without nuclear arms. None of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons took part in the negotiations or vote on the treaty. Japanese officials routinely argue that they abhor nuclear weapons, but the nation’s defense is firmly set under the US nuclear umbrella.
Japan suffered two nuclear attacks at the end of the World War II by the United States―in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and in Nagasaki three days later. The bombings claimed the lives of 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Some died immediately while others succumbed to injuries or radiation-related illnesses weeks, months and years later. Japan announced its surrender in World War II on August 15, 1945. Many in Japan feel the attacks amount to war crimes and atrocities because they targeted civilians and due to the unprecedented destructive nature of the weapons. But many Americans believe they hastened the end of a bloody conflict, and ultimately saved lives, thus justifying the bombings. AFP
Revelations that a grand jury has been impaneled to investigate his finances and his campaign’s ties to Russia raises the specter of indictments and subpoenas that would shake any administration. But for Trump, who is just six months into his presidency, it represents more turmoil after an exodus of top White House officials and humiliating recent reverses in Congress. Despite a healthy economy, a new poll by the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University shows his approval rating at 33 percent―the same level endured by Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal or George W. Bush after the grind of the Iraq war. Facing the prospect of limping through another three and a half years, Trump is settling on a strategy of shoring up the support of voters who propelled him to the White House with a series of right-wing policy announcements and red-blooded speeches. In little more than a week, Trump has encouraged police to dole out rough justice, summarily threatened to kick transgender personnel out of the military and played up the threat of Hispanic gangs. After warning that neighborhoods are “becoming blood-stained killing fields” he appeared in the Roosevelt Room of the White House last week to champion a massive curb on legal immigration. The next day, Trump addressed thousands of supporters at a rally where many of the themes that served him so well in the presidential campaign were dusted off again―including blistering attacks on his defeated rival Hillary Clinton. Hitting his notes on immigration and law and order, Trump painted the grand jury investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia as a personal threat to him and his supporters. “The Russia story is total fabrication,” he said, a “fake story that is demeaning to all of us and most of all demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution.” Given that the thrice-wed New Yorker married an immigrant and once lectured Republicans on the need to defend gay rights, many critics have said his recent announcements smack of hypocrisy. There is still little clarity on how the ban on transgenders can be implemented while White House sources admit that the immigration proposal has scant hope of passing through Congress. Emily Ekins, polling director at the CATO Institute, believes it is too simplistic to think of Trump voters as a homogenous group, but rather a loose coalition of conservatives, free marketers, cultural preservationists, anti-elites and the politically disengaged. AFP