Saudi Arabia, U.S. in talks on billions in arms sales - U.S. sources

Go to Original
By Mike Stone

Washington is working to push through contracts for tens of billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, some new, others in the pipeline, ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's trip to the kingdom this month, people familiar with the talks told Reuters this week.

Saudi Arabia is Trump's first stop on his maiden international trip, a sign of his intent to reinforce ties with a top regional ally.

The United States has been the main supplier for most Saudi military needs, from F-15 fighter jets to command and control systems worth tens of billions of dollars in recent years. Trump has vowed to stimulate the U.S. economy by boosting manufacturing jobs.

Washington and Riyadh are eager to improve relations strained under President Barack Obama in part because of his championing of a nuclear deal with Saudi foe Iran.

Lockheed Martin Co (LMT.N) programs in the package include a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system with several batteries, the sources said. The THAAD system, like the one being made operational in South Korea, costs about $1 billion. Also being negotiated is a C2BMC software system for battle command and control and communications as well as a package of satellite capabilities, both provided by Lockheed.

Combat vehicles made by BAE Systems PLC (BAES.L), including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and M109 artillery vehicle, are also under consideration as part of the Saudi package, people familiar with the talks said. Both vehicles are in the Saudi inventory. British defense company BAE has 29,000 employees in the United States.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations, which also include previously reported contracts or items under discussion for years. One such deal, an $11.5 billion package of four multi-mission surface combatant ships and accompanying services and spares, was approved by the State Department in 2015. Talks followed to hammer out capabilities, configuration and design for the complex warships but the deal has never gone to final contract.

The next step for the ships is likely a letter of agreement between the two countries, the sources said.

Versions of the ship used by the U.S. Navy, the Littoral Combat Ship, are built by Bethesda, Maryland-based weapons maker Lockheed Martin and Australia's Austal Ltd (ASB.AX). If a deal goes through, it would be the first sale of a new small surface warship to a foreign power in decades. Any major foreign weapons sale is subject to oversight by Congress. Lawmakers must take into consideration a legal requirement that Israel must maintain its qualitative military edge over its neighbors.

Also, more than $1 billion worth of munitions including armor-piercing Penetrator Warheads and Paveway laser-guided bombs made by Raytheon Co (RTN.N) are in the package, the sources said. The Obama administration suspended the planned sale because of concerns over the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and civilian casualties.

A U.S. administration official said the proposed Raytheon sale was still undergoing interagency review. A Raytheon representative declined to comment on the sales. A Lockheed representative said such sales are government-to-government decisions and the status of any potential discussions can be best addressed by the U.S. government.

A representative for the Saudi embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Shares of both Raytheon and Lockheed closed up 0.9 percent. Both stocks hit session highs following the Reuters report.

FLURRY OF ACTIVITY

One of the people with knowledge of the sales said that as planning for Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia intensified in recent weeks, the arms negotiations also accelerated. Two U.S. officials said a U.S.-Saudi working group met at the White House Monday and Tuesday to negotiate the trip, as well as financing for military equipment sales and stopping terrorist financing.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir and other Saudi officials met with lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday, including Senators Bob Corker and Ben Cardin on the foreign relations committee.

The Pentagon declined to comment. White House and State Department officials said it was U.S. policy not to comment on proposed U.S. defense sales until they had been formally notified to Congress.

The Obama administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons. Most of the Obama-era offers, which are reported to Congress, became formal agreements though some were abandoned or amended.

Washington also provides maintenance and training to Saudi security forces.

Trump-Russia investigation reignites as Senate asks aides to hand over notes

Senators asked Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser, to provide a list of files on any dealings with Russian officials or business representatives

Go to Original
By Julian Borger

A Senate committee has asked Trump campaign aides to hand over notes and records from meetings with Russian officials and businesses, as congressional investigations between the president’s associates and Moscow appear to regain momentum.

In a letter to Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser, dated 28 April, the Republican and Democratic leadership of the Senate intelligence committee asked him to attend a closed hearing and provide a list of documents on any dealings with “any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests” between June 2015 and January this year.

Similar letters are reported to have gone to several other figures in Trump’s circle, including an informal adviser, Roger Stone, according to the New York Times.

On Friday, Burr and his Democratic counterpart, Mark Warner, warned Page that if he did not submit the relevant documents by next Tuesday, the committee would “consider its next steps at that time”, an apparent threat of subpoena.

In a grudging reply to the Senate seen by the Guardian, Page said he would try to comply with the committee’s “request for even more irrelevant data”.

“As previously noted, I remain committed to helping the Senate select committee on intelligence in any way that I can,” Page wrote. “But please note that any records I may have saved as a private citizen with limited technology capabilities will be miniscule in comparison to the full database of information which has already been collected under the direction of the Obama administration.”

Page said he had been the target last year of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) warrant, which are normally issued when intelligence or law enforcement agencies can show probable cause that the subject is in the service of a foreign power.

The Senate committee has asked Page to provide a “list of all meetings between you and any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests” during the campaign, or any such meetings he is aware of involving anyone linked to the Trump campaign.Page, an energy consultant named last year by Trump as a foreign policy adviser, travelled to Moscow in July 2016 to give an academic talk. He has denied reports that at the same time he met with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, and head of the state-run Rosneft oil company.

The letter also asks for “communications records, including electronic communications records, such as email or text messages, written correspondent and phone records” of contacts with Russian officials or business people, or “related in any to Russia” as well as records of his financial or real estate holdings in that country. 

In a joint statement on Friday, Burr and Warner voiced irritation at Page’s response to the committee so far, noting that he claimed in a television interview that he was cooperating with their committee.

“Today we have learned that may not be the case,” the senators said, urging Page to submit the records by the 9 May deadline they laid down.

The Senate committee letters are one of several signs that Senate and House investigations were regaining speed after concerns were raised last month that Republicans were trying to stifle them.

After it was reported in the Daily Beastthat the Senate committee investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election only had seven part-time staffers – not one of whom was a trained investigator – the committee hired two more professional staff, including the former head of intelligence law at the National Security Agency, April Doss.

A parallel House inquiry also appears to have revived after its former chair, Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally, stepped aside in early April after it was discovered he was being leaked information by the White House and had not informed other members of the committee.

The ranking Democrat on the House committee, Adam Schiff, who has emerged as a driving force behind the congressional investigations, said that he had much better cooperation with Nunes’s successor, Mike Conaway.

“We are making progress. Mike Conaway and I have worked together in the last several weeks ... in a very non-partisan, very matter of fact way,” Schiff told MSNBC. “We are back to scheduling our witnesses ... We are back to getting new documents from the intelligence community. So things are moving in a very positive direction.”

The California congressman said the committee’s revival was important because “we have very limited resources and so does the Senate, so if either one of these investigations were to gets derailed it would mean only half of the eyes on task.”

In particular, the committee has asked to hear from Sally Yates, a former acting attorney general fired by Trump, whose initial scheduled appearance was cancelled by Nunes at short notice. Yates could provide testimony damaging to the administration, as she had warned the White House in January that the national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was vulnerable to blackmail because he had not disclosed conversations with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn was forced to resign over the contacts in February.

Yates will give her first public comments on the case to the Senate on Monday, where she will be questioned by a special sub-committee of the Senate judiciary committee chaired by Lyndsey Graham, a senior Republican who has been strongly critical of Trump’s pro-Moscow comments. Yates will appear alongside the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and is expected to contradict the White House version of what it knew about the Flynn-Kislyak contacts.

Scott Horton, a lawyer specialising in anti-corruption cases with broad experience of the former Soviet Union said the Republican leadership had been unable to kill off the congressional investigations.

“The Republicans have decided that the game of stalling the investigations entirely, as Nunes had tried to do, was backfiring in a big way, and that they were taking a drubbing in opinion polls where there has been a steady shift to calling for an independent commission, which is the worst outcome for them. They want to have some control.”

Horton said the congressional inquiries still lacked sufficient staff to carry out a proper investigation. In particular, he argued, they needed experts in forensic accounting with an understanding of post-Soviet financial practices, and techniques used by oligarchs to mask asset transfers.

“There are a lot of FBI agents with this kind of expertise. They shouldn’t be hard to find,” he said.

House oversight panel to investigate Iran deal

Citing POLITICO report, Chaffetz asks for details on 21 cases in which charges or warrants were dropped.

Go to Original
By JOSH MEYER 

Citing a POLITICO investigation, Republican leaders of the House oversight committee said Friday they have launched a sweeping investigation into whether the Obama administration, in trying to win support for a nuclear deal and prisoner swap with Tehran last year, undermined an ambitious U.S. counterproliferation effort to thwart Iranian weapons trafficking networks.

Also in response to the POLITICO investigation, 13 Republican senators have demanded answers about whether the Obama administration jeopardized U.S. national security as a result of its protracted top-secret negotiations with Tehran, and then misled the American public when disclosing the terms of the two deals in January 2016.

The House and Senate lawmakers cited various portions of an April 24 report by POLITICO that found that the Obama administration, through actions in some cases and inaction in others, significantly hampered a much-touted federal law enforcement effort known as the National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s illicit weapons proliferation activities.

The POLITICO investigation also reported that during their public rollout of the two deals, Obama and other key administration officials downplayed the threat posed by the Iranian traffickers they were freeing as part of the swap that also freed five Americans held by Iran. The Obama administration officials focused their public comments only on seven Iranian-born men in the U.S. whose convictions or prosecutions were being dropped as part of the swap, and described them as civilians involved in mere sanctions-related offenses but not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses.

In reality, many of the men — and 14 other Iranian fugitives not named publicly by the top Obama officials — had been accused or convicted of charges stemming from their alleged involvement in clandestine networks supplying Iran with parts and technology for its weapons, ballistic missile and nuclear programs, POLITICO reported. The Justice Department itself had characterized many of them as threats to national security, the investigation found.

In their May 5 letter, Republican Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Ron DeSantis asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to produce an exhaustive volume of Justice Department documents that they said would “help the Committee in better understanding these issues.” They sent a nearly identical letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demanding all related documents in the State Department’s possession, and gave both officials until May 19 to provide one copy of them to committee Republicans, and another to committee Democrats.

Chaffetz and DeSantis, who were unavailable for comment, also directed Sessions and Tillerson to “please also make your staff available for a briefing on these issues no later than May 25.” They characterized the committee’s interest in following up on the POLITICO report as an investigation in its role as the “principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives.”

The two committee leaders demanded all documents relating to the January 16, 2016, prisoner exchange agreement with Iran, including the negotiations that preceded it. They also asked for any and all information about the 21 Iranian-born men for whom the U.S. dropped convictions or charges and international arrest warrants, and information about whether State and Justice department officials delayed or blocked efforts to lure Iranian suspects to U.S.-friendly countries so they could be arrested, citing details in the POLITICO report.

But the committee leaders also made it clear that their investigation would delve into much broader topics. For instance, they asked for information not only about all individuals and entities whose cases or convictions were dropped, but also any “for whom any enforcement action was modified or cancelled in connection with the [swap], and indicate the action taken and how it was modified or cancelled.”

And they asked for information about “any Iranian national or entity investigated for, charged with, or convicted of engaging in violations of export controls, terrorism, arms sales, nonproliferation, money laundering, or other financial crimes, from January 1, 2013, to the present.”

Chaffetz, (R-Utah) is chairman of the committee, formally titled the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. DeSantis, (R-Fla.) is chairman of its Subcommittee on National Security. A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment on the scope of the investigation, except to confirm that it was underway.

Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for President Obama, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Justice and State department officials also had no immediate comment in response to the letters. But they said last week in response to a separate demand for information from the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that they would comply with the request.

Late Thursday, 13 senators led by Republican David Perdue of Georgia also wrote to Sessions, Tillerson and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to say they were concerned about issues raised in the POLITICO report, and to ask for a broad array of documents.

“We write to request your assistance in providing Congress with more information regarding the Obama Administration’s decision” to drop the charges or convictions in the 21 cases, the senators wrote, quoting from the POLITICO article. “Based on new reports, we are concerned that President Obama and certain previous administration officials intentionally suppressed the seriousness of the charges against these individuals in order to garner public support for the nuclear deal with Iran, and we fear that these individuals may still pose a threat to the national security of the United States.”

The senators’ letter, released Friday, was co-signed by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), James Inhofe (R-OK), John Boozman (R-AK), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Tim Scott (R-SC) and Luther Strange (R-Ala.).

The senators, in their letter, included a list of questions they wanted answered, including whether the 21 men whose cases were dropped were “still engaging in illicit activities on behalf of the Iranian government.”

The senators also asked the top Trump officials if they could provide Congress with more information about whether any investigations and prosecutions were derailed by the Obama administration. Also, they asked, “What counter-proliferation activities are we currently pursuing in order to combat Iran’s attempts to illicitly procure sanctioned goods?”

“Given that much of this information was previously kept from the American public, we respectfully request a report or an in-person briefing to Congress on this investigation at your earliest convenience,” the senators wrote.

Bangladesh is now the single biggest country of origin for refugees on boats as new route to Europe emerges

Exclusive: 'They're sold a dream, and the dream often turns sour'

Go to Original
By Lizzie Dearden

As the refugee crisis enters its fourth year, the demographics of the men, women and children arriving on Europe’s shores are undergoing an unprecedented shift.

Syrians have so far made up the largest group of migrants attempting treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans and sub-Saharan Africans. 

But as smugglers in Libya continue to expand their ruthless human trade, their counterparts in Asia are seeing an opportunity.

In the first three months of last year just one Bangladeshi arrived in Italy, but the number for 2017 stands at more than 2,800, making the country the largest single origin of migrants currently arriving on European shores.

Those rescued in the Mediterranean Sea have told aid workers they paid more than $10,000 (£7,750) each to be taken from Dhaka to Dubai or Turkey and onwards to Libya, where the violence and chaos engulfing the fractured country is fuelling powerful smuggling networks.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the emerging route had dramatically changed the demographics of asylum seekers arriving in Italy, who until now have largely hailed from sub-Saharan Africa.

“The thing that’s really changing is the main nationality of the migrants, and the number coming from Bangladesh,” IOM’s Flavio di Giacomo told The Independent.

“By the end of March last year only one Bangladeshi had arrived in Italy – and this year the number is more than 2,831 for the same period.”

Some migrants taken ashore in Sicily and Apulia said their trip to Libya was organised by an “agency” that provided them with a working visa for between $3,000 (£2,300) and $4,000 (£3,100). 

“From Bangladesh, they first travelled to Dubai and Turkey, and finally reached Libya by plane,” an IOM spokesperson said.

“At the airport, an ‘employer’ met them and took their documents.”

The practice is common in forced labour seen in both the Gulf and Libya, where smugglers frequently detain migrants before extorting their loved ones for money, or forcing them into labour or prostitution.

Some Bangladeshis crossing the Mediterranean have lived in the country for up to four years, while others stay there for just months while attempting to travel directly to Europe. 

According to information gathered by IOM, Bangladeshi migrants pay up to $10,000 (£7,750) to reach Libya, then another $700 (£550) to board a boat.

The crossing from North Africa to Italy is now the deadliest sea passage in the world, with a record of almost 1,100 people drowning, suffocating or dying of hypothermia on overcrowded boats so far this year.

Hanan Salah, a senior Libya researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the country was a destination for Bangladeshi migrants looking for work before civil war broke out in 2011.

“As for the current situation, to my knowledge there are no direct flights from Dubai to Tripoli, or anywhere else in Libya,” she told The Independent. 

“Most foreigners flying in would be entering through Mitiga airport in Tripoli after transiting in Tunis [the capital of neighbouring Tunisia].

“We have reports that in some cases, documents of foreign nationals are confiscated and they are given a ‘slip’ – it can be a way to extort money from them.”

Chaos following the British-backed removal of Muammar Gaddafi has seen countless armed factions, including Isis, wage bloody battles for territory as widespread lawlessness allows smugglers to work unchecked along the coast.

They coordinate with gangs inland to detain migrants in squalid detention centres, where Ms Salah has met imprisoned Bangladeshis, while others continue to work in restaurants, services and construction.

Nicholas McGeehan, a Gulf researcher at HRW, said the route from Dhaka to Dubai was well-trodden by “unscrupulous recruitment agents”.

“What the agents sell is a route out of destitution and poverty,” he added.

“It’s typically the young men that go, either of their own volition or as the main earner for the family.

“They’re sold a dream and the dream all too often turns very sour, whether it’s in the Gulf States or this, which sounds even worse.”

Mr McGeehan said “ignorance and deceit” combined to convince migrants that the more they pay, the safer they will be – drawing them into debts that make them increasingly vulnerable to exploitation.

“South Asian states are all too happy to get people off their hands if there are remittances going back,” he added.

“The scale of corruption of officials being involved in recruitment is huge – it’s rife.”

Bangladeshis are frequently employed for semi-skilled or unskilled labour in north Africa or the Gulf, receiving worse pay and treatment than migrants from richer countries.

Dr Gareth Price, a senior research fellow in the Asia programme at Chatham House, said that although poverty was the main driving factor, persecuted Rohingya Muslims from Burma had also been fleeing Bangladesh.

Members of the country’s opposition Jamaat-e-Islami Islamist party have also been hanged for war crimes and claim they are being persecuted, with several members seeking asylum abroad.

“Europe is a high value destination,” Dr Price added. “If someone discovers a route, then the supply of people, whether trafficked or willingly trying to get into Europe for work, creates its own market.”

He said the migrants resorting to smugglers would not meet requirements for a legal working visa in Europe, where bank accounts are frequently checked for a minimum amount of funds as a condition of entry.

“They might be working for very little but they think they are,” he added. “There’s a lot of people who would take the risk.”

A controversial agreement struck between the EU and Turkey last year has reduced comparatively shorter and safer crossings over the Aegean Sea to a trickle, leaving Libya the main launching point for refugee boats.

Italy signed a deal with the fragile Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli in February that also promised training, equipment and money to fight smugglers – an agreement initially endorsed by EU states at a summit in Malta.

But moves to support Libyan detention camps have been criticised by humanitarian groups and the UN, which warned that refugees suffer arbitrary detention, rape and torture, and that pushing them back into a warzone could violate international law.

The dire situation has so far scuppered prospects of replicating the controversial EU-Turkey deal, while talks between the GNA and a rival Russia-backed warlord in the east ended without agreement this week.

Making his first visit to Libya, Boris Johnson urged warring leaders to “get together and work out a plan for the common benefit of the Libyan people”.

“Establishing effective governance is the key to defeating terrorism in Libya and countering illegal migration,” the Foreign Secretary said.

But with no solution in sight, carnage continues in the central Mediterranean. One rescue ship recovered the body of a man friends said was shot by smugglers for his baseball cap, while another vessel pulled six bodies out of the sea.

World leaders from May to Trump to Erdogan are all promising to unite their countries while doing the exact opposite

Encouraging a sense of nationalism in countries with an imperial past is not just offensive but also counter-productive

Go to Original
By Patrick Cockburn

Suddenly the world is full of leaders from Theresa May to President Erdogan of Turkey claiming to unite their countries while visibly deepening their divisions. Denunciations of supposed threats at home and abroad are a common feature of this new political style, whether they are tweeted from the White House or spoken at the podium outside 10 Downing Street.  

“Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials,” said May this week, accusing them of deliberately trying to influence the results of the general election on 8 June. All this sounded very like Hillary Clinton convinced that Russia helped lose her the presidential election, though in the case of Britain any such calculation is highly unlikely given the common European assumption that Mrs May is going to win a landslide victory.

Defending the motherland against the evil schemes of foreigners is a political gambit that has been played out countless times since the age of Pericles, but its impact depends on the political context in which it is used. At the moment, it is peculiarly destructive as ethnic nationalism reasserts itself as a vehicle for grievances and rivalry between different nation states is reaching new heights. Populist nationalist leaders from Manilla to Warsaw to Washington are promising more than they can deliver and looking for scapegoats at home and abroad to blame when things go wrong. Nationalism has always needed real or invented threats to super-charge communal solidarity. 

In an age of reinvigorated nation states, English nationalism is more dangerous than it looks. It displaces a vaguer and more inclusive British nationalism, dislocating England’s relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland. It may well be that Scotland will not become independent or Northern Ireland unite with the Irish Republic, but these options are already feasible enough to preoccupy the British state. 

One destructive element in English nationalism is seldom identified. People in England understandably resent the way that their nationalism, which they see as merely sticking up for their own interests, is condemned as racist and jingoistic when Scottish and Irish nationalism (or for that matter Algerian and Vietnamese nationalism) are given a free pass as the laudable pursuit of liberty and self-determination. 

There is something in this, but there is a difference between the nationalism of weak countries, whose history is one of foreign conquest and occupation, and the nationalism of larger and stronger ones who did the conquering and the occupying. Smaller countries or embattled communities always play with a weaker hand of political cards than their opponents and cannot do what they like, but this has the advantage of giving them a good grasp of the realities of power.

But states like the US, Britain, France and Russia who have an imperial past or present, have a much less accurate sense of what is feasible and what is not. Their nationalism is coloured by self-justifying myths about their own superiority and the inferiority of others. This is not just distasteful but carries the seeds of frustration and defeat. The British empire fatally underestimating the resistance of Afghans and Boers in the 19th century and the Irish, Indians and Greek Cypriots, among others, in the 20th century. 

One could see the same self-destructive arrogance at work more recently in Iraq after 2003 and in Afghanistan after 2006. Public opinion at home never took on board the extent of British failure there was more complete than that of the Americans. In Iraq, the British force ended up signing a humiliating agreement with a Shia militia. No lessons were learned from defeat, as witness Boris Johnson’s glib promise to join the US in attacking President Assad.

Much of this sabre-rattling over the last week is simply part of Britain’s long-standing effort since 1940 to demonstrate its continuing usefulness as the main foreign ally of the US. But here again the political landscape is changing in a way not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. US international leadership under Donald Trump is “mercurial and unpredictable” and Britain needs to rethink its policies in the Middle East according to a report by the House of Lord’s international relations select committee this week. Its chairman, the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howell, says that “in a world less automatically dominated by the US underpinning security in the region, it is no longer right to have a stance at every stage of “if we just get on with the US everything will be alright”.

This is all very true, but does not answer questions about whether or not Britain, if it does not piggy-back on US military power, has the inclination and resources to play a more independent role.

There are other doubts about how far British power and influence will survive post-Brexit. Not many Leave voters will have truly believed in Shakespearean rhapsodies about England as “a precious stone set in the silver sea”. But the proponents of Brexit were always cavalier about where Britain outside the EU would stand in a world which is getting more unstable. Appeals of varying degrees of sophistication to the spirit of 1940 forget that British victory in the Napoleonic wars and both World Wars depended on the Royal Navy and on building up a network of alliances with other powers. Having spurned the EU, this latter strategy is going to be very difficult to pursue. Already May, Johnson and assorted royals have been scurrying off to see unsavoury allies in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and among the kleptocratic monarchs of the Gulf. 

One aspect of British decline is underrated: people favouring or opposing Brexit both speak in the future tense about the benefits or disasters that will ensue as Britain negotiates its departure. But one of the worst consequences of the decision is already with us and is simply that the British Government is wholly focused on Brexit to the exclusion of everything else. 

Mrs May’s explanation that she called the general election to strengthen her hand in negotiating with Brussels is an admission of the dominance of the issue. There is not going to be much time to consider new policies for a changing Middle East or for anything else. 

How did all this happen? In many respects, globalisation has turned out to be more destructive to the status quo than communism ever was. In its name, nationalism was discarded and derided  by ruling elites who had an economically respectable reason to distance themselves from the rest of society and did not see that they were cutting through the branch on which they were sitting. The left never much liked nationalism, suspecting it of being a mask for racism and a diversion from more important social and economic issues. Populist nationalists came to power in country after country as others retreated from nationalism and they filled the vacuum.  

The enhanced rivalry of nation states will be more destructive and violent than what went before. It is not just because of Donald Trump that the whole the world is becoming more “mercurial and unstable”. Everywhere divisive leaders are proposing radical changes that will exacerbate divisions.

Trumpcare Will Make the Opioid Crisis Worse

Millions of Americans could see disruptions to their addiction treatment coverage.

Go to Original
By JULIA LURIE

There are plenty of reasons why the Obamacare repeal bill that House Republicans passed Thursday afternoon is so controversial. It slashes funding for Medicaid, threatens to raise health insurance premiums for older Americans, and allows states to roll back protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.

But there's another, less publicized, way in which the GOP's American Health Care Act could disrupt health care throughout the country. In the midst of the most devastating drug epidemic in US history, the legislation could disrupt addiction coverage for millions of Americans. And thanks to a provision added to the bill last week, insurance companies in some states might no longer include mental health and substance abuse coverage in their health plans.

Because of the speed with which Republicans rushed the bill through the House, the Congressional Budget Office hasn't yet had time to estimate the number of Americans who would lose their health insurance or how premiums would be affected. But according to a CBO report from March, an earlier version of legislation would have resulted in 24 million fewer people having coverage than under Obamacare. The current legislation will likely result in a similar number of uninsured Americans, says Richard Frank, a professor of health economics at Harvard University. Frank and his colleague, Sherry Glied of New York University, estimate that if Obamacare is repealed, 3 million Americans with addiction disorders would lose some or all of their coverage.

Many of the states that voted Trump into office are among the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic—and are the most dependent on Obamacare for substance abuse treatment. The maps below, produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services in the last days of the Obama administration, show this overlap: Red states on the left have the highest overdose rates per capita; red states on the right have the highest rate of residents who would lose coverage if Obamacare is repealed.

Obamacare was particularly important for those seeking addiction treatment, according to Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor who advised the Obama administration on drug policy. "It was designed to be very broad, but at the same time we knew that if there was anything that this would help a lot for, it's addiction," he told me in February.

That's largely because of two big changes that Obamacare made to insurance markets—changes that the GOP legislation would roll back or undo completely.

First, Obamacare required insurance companies to cover certain "essential benefits," including substance abuse and mental health treatment. In order to sell insurance in the individual marketplaces, companies would have to cover addiction treatment, as well as other care such as contraception, emergency services, and pediatric services. (Here's the full list of essential benefits.) This was a significant change. In 2011, before Obamacare went into effect, "somewhere close to 40 percent of individual and small group market plans didn't offer substance abuse and mental health coverage," says Frank. "And when they did, it was quite limited."

The bill passed by the House would allow states to opt out of the essential benefits requirements, which means that insurers might once again refuse to cover treatment for mental health and addiction.

The second big Obamacare change for substance abuse treatment was the expansion of Medicaid coverage to millions of additional poor Americans. As I wrote earlier this year:

Under the Affordable Care Act, those who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for this government-funded insurance program. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states could choose whether or not they wanted to participate in the program, and 31 states have done so—resulting in health coverage for an additional 11 million Americans through Medicaid expansion. Of those, an estimated 1.3 million used their newly acquired insurance for substance abuse or mental health services, according to an analysis by researchers Richard Frank of Harvard Medical School and Sherry Glied of New York University. In states that expanded Medicaid, 20 percent of hospital admissions for substance abuse and mental health disorders were uninsured in 2013, before the bulk of the expansion provisions kicked in. By the middle of 2015, the uninsured rate had fallen to five percent.

The Republicans' health care plan would freeze Medicaid expansion, cutting off funds for states adding new enrollees starting in 2020. Those already enrolled in Medicaid expansion plans by 2020 would continue to receive the benefits, but they would be at constant risk of losing that insurance. Anyone who has a gap in insurance coverage of more a month—say because they miss a deadline or their income temporarily changes—would lose eligibility. (A lack of private health insurance would be penalized too: Going more than 63 days without coverage would increase premiums by 30 percent for a year.) These provisions have a lot of public health advocates worried. It's not uncommon for people, particularly those with serious mental health and addiction problems, to drift in and out of insurance coverage.

Without Obamacare, said Humphreys, "We're back where we were before: bad access, low quality of care, and a lot of patients being turned away."

Republicans' Vicious and Immoral Health Care Bill Is Just Part of a Sinister Long Game

The GOP is employing a strategy developed by Machiavelli and perfected by Goebbels.

Go to Original
By Thom Hartmann

While Democrats are jubilant that the GOP passed a terrible healthcare/tax-cut bill through the House, which they think will cause voters to reject the GOP in 2018, it’s a very, very premature celebration.  

The Republicans are playing a longer game here, one based on a time-tested strategy first explicated by Machiavelli and fully put into place by Goebbels in the early 1930s, then fine-tuned by Reagan through the 1980s.  

Sound like hyperbole (or a violation of Godwin’s Law)?  Check out this short clip of FDR’s famous “Fala” speech in September of 1944:

That strategy is not only one the GOP has successfully used many times in the more recent past, from Nixon’s “secret plan to end the Vietnam war” to Reagan’s “reforms” of tax law, but one that they’re clearly betting will continue to work for them (particularly with the help of Fox and right-wing hate radio).

Step one is to use the classic Goebbels “Big Lie” technique.  That was on full display in the White House PR stunt after the House vote – lie about lowering premiums, lie about expanding availability, lie about preexisting conditions, lie about how Obamacare is “failing.”   (Think Bush with Iraq, or the “Clear Skies Initiative,” etc.)

And, to make sure it sticks, Trump had Republican after Republican step up to the microphone and explicitly and clearly repeat the Big Lies. 

Step two then becomes clear.  The bill goes to the Senate and no matter what happens there, complain that it’s being “watered down.” 

This sets up the perfect next part of the Goebbels/Machiavelli strategy – claim victimhood, and place blame on those awful (and often racially different from all those white people at the White House ceremony) Democrats. 

Because the Senate prevents some of the true horrors of the House GOP’s plan from going into law, GOP voters don’t realize (and Fox will never tell them) that it was really all just a hustle to satisfy the GOP billionaire donor class.  

And, because of the Big Lie, every good thing that’s still in Obamacare is thought, by Republican voters, to be the result of GOP efforts, as they now “own” health care.  At the same time, they’ll claim that Democratic obstruction is why whatever “bad” things happen happened.  (And Drudge, et al, will be sure to find some horror stories in the fall of 2018.)

Step three happens in 2018 – go after every Democrat running for the House or Senate for “obstructing Republican improvements and progress” on healthcare.  It’s another Big Lie, but, like Reagan’s Big Lies about the evils of unions, the benefits of trickle-down economics, the urgency of exploding privatization of the military, not raising the SS retirement age, etc., it’ll be believed by enough people to hold onto the House and Senate.

The proof that this strategy could work in this case is that it’s already being used – with success – to obscure the true reason Republicans are trying so hard to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. 

Here’s what’s really driving the GOP: The subsidies for middle class workers in Obamacare are largely funded by an almost 3 percent tax increase on capital gains income (and a small increase on the ordinary incomes of people in the top 1 percent).  

This special 20 percent maximum capital gains tax rate is available only to people who “earn” their money with money/investments (rather than working and drawing a paycheck), and, thus, is almost exclusively paid at the full 20 percent rate only by the very, very, very rich.  And that 3.8 percent top-end rate addition was a functional almost-15 percent tax increase on most billionaires.  

They are not happy and they fund the GOP and its various corporate media propaganda arms.

But because the corporate media won’t explain this (“it would seem partisan to point out facts inconvenient to Republicans,” they whine), most Americans don’t realize that the whole “health care debate” has little to do with health care – it’s really about cutting that 15 percent increased Obamacare tax on top-end capital gains income.  

But because Republicans keep repeating the Big Lie that they’re trying to get “more and better and cheaper” health care to Americans, most Americans don’t realize it’s really about a tax cut for the GOP donor class.

The success so far of this first half of the Big Lie technique should warn us loudly about the potential for GOP success with phase two, which begins now.  Fox News is enthusiastically repeating the Republican lies from the Rose Garden Thursday, and right-wing hate radio is falling into line. Republican voters who live in the right-wing media bubble will absolutely believe these lies. 

The only hope for Democrats to disrupt this process is to challenge the Big Lie and call it exactly that.  The message needs to be simple (“It’s a Big Lie – it’s really about cutting taxes on billionaires!”), repeated over and over again, and amplified by every media available, as most of the corporate TV media won’t report on this in any honest way. 

The entire agenda of the GOP has been, since the Reagan revolution (and, arguably, since the election of Harding, with the exception of Eisenhower), to exclusively serve the interests of the top 1 percent, while bringing along the rubes with “god, gays, and guns.”  And Democrats, while tacking toward the interest of the working class, need to point that out at every opportunity. 

“Trumpcare – The Big Lie” could be turned into the political equivalent of a bumper sticker and put everywhere.  And the lies from the Rose Garden need to be challenged now, tomorrow, and every single day for the next 2 years by every elected Democrat in America by pointing out the reality of what’s happening.  

Otherwise, get ready for another 3 years of GOP rule.