Chris Hedges's Blog, page 175

Planned Parenthood Leaves Federal Program Over Abortion Referral Rule

NEW YORK—Planned Parenthood said Monday it’s pulling out of the federal family planning program rather than abide by a new Trump administration rule prohibiting clinics from referring women for abortions.

Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s acting president and CEO, said the organization’s nationwide network of health centers would remain open and strive to make up for the loss of federal money. But she predicted that many low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood services would “delay or go without” care.

“We will not be bullied into withholding abortion information from our patients,” said McGill Johnson. “Our patients deserve to make their own health care decisions, not to be forced to have Donald Trump or Mike Pence make those decisions for them.”

Responding with its own statement, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said that Planned Parenthood affiliates knew months ago about the new restrictions and suggested that the group could have chosen at that point to exit the program.

“Some grantees are now blaming the government for their own actions — having chosen to accept the grant while failing to comply with the regulations that accompany it — and they are abandoning their obligations to serve patients under the program,” the department said.

Planned Parenthood was not the only organization dropping out. Maine Family Planning, which is unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood, also released its letter of withdrawal Monday. The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, an umbrella group for family planning clinics is suing to overturn the regulations.

About 4 million women are served nationwide under the Title X program, which distributes $260 million in grants to clinics. Planned Parenthood says it has served about 40% of patients.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco is weighing a lawsuit to overturn the rules, but so far the court has allowed the administration to go ahead with enforcement. Oral arguments are scheduled the week of Sept. 23. Several states and the American Medical Association have joined the suit as plaintiffs. Activists are also pressing Congress to overturn the rule.

Monday was the deadline set by the government for program participants to submit statements that they intended to comply with the new rules, along with a plan. Enforcement will start Sept. 18.

Along with the ban on abortion referrals by clinics, the rule’s requirements include financial separation from facilities that provide abortion, designating abortion counseling as optional instead of standard practice, and limiting which staff members can discuss abortion with patients. Clinics would have until next March to separate their office space and examination rooms from the physical facilities of providers that offer abortions.

The family planning rule is part of a series of efforts to remake government policy on reproductive health to please conservatives who are a key part of President Donald Trump’s political base. Religious conservatives see the program as providing an indirect subsidy to Planned Parenthood, which runs family planning clinics and is also a major abortion provider.

Planned Parenthood has called the ban on abortion referrals a “gag rule,” while the administration insists that’s not the case.

Maine Family Planning CEO George Hill said in a letter to HHS that his organization is withdrawing “more in sorrow than in anger” after 47 years of participating in the program.

He said the Trump administration regulation “would fundamentally compromise the relationship our patients have with us as trusted providers of this most personal and private health care. It is simply wrong to deny patients accurate information about and access to abortion care.”

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Alonso-Zaldivar reported from Washington.

New York Police Fire Officer 5 Years After Garner’s Chokehold Death

NEW YORK—After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired an officer involved in the 2014 chokehold death of the black man whose dying cries of “I can’t breathe” fueled a national debate over race and police use of force.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said he fired Daniel Pantaleo, who is white, based on a recent recommendation of a department disciplinary judge. He said it was clear Pantaleo “can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”

“None of us can take back our decisions,” O’Neill said, “especially when they lead to the death of another human being.”

Asked whether Mayor Bill de Blasio forced his hand, O’Neill said the dismissal was his choice. “This is the decision that the police commissioner makes,” he said, calling Eric Garner’s death an “irreversible tragedy” that “must have a consequence.”

The president of the police union, Patrick Lynch, accused O’Neill of choosing “politics and his own self-interest over the police officers he claims to lead.”

Lynch urged police officers to “proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed ‘reckless’ just for doing their job.”

“Now it is time for every police officer in this city to make their own choice,” he said in a statement. “We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly jeopardizing our careers or personal safety.”

Video of the confrontation led to years of protests and calls by black activists and liberal politicians for Pantaleo to lose his job. City officials had long insisted that they could not take action until criminal investigations were complete.

A state grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014. Federal authorities, however, kept a civil rights investigation open for five years before announcing last month they would not bring charges.

Pantaleo’s lawyer has insisted the officer used a reasonable amount of force and did not mean to hurt Garner.

O’Neill said Pantaleo initially placed Garner in a chokehold as the two men stumbled backward into a glass window. That, he said, was understandable, given the struggle.

But after the officers got Garner on the ground, Pantaleo did not relax his grip but “kept his hands clasped and maintained the chokehold.” That, he said, was the mistake that cost him his job.

“That exigent circumstance no longer existed when they moved to the ground,” O’Neill said.

Garner’s death came at a time of a growing public outcry over police killings of unarmed black men that sparked the national Black Lives Matter movement.

Just weeks later, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. And later in 2014, a man angry about the Garner and Brown cases shot two New York City police officers to death in their cruiser in retribution.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said Garner’s family was “relieved but not celebratory.”

“Pantaleo will go home a terminated man, but this family had to go to a funeral,” Sharpton said at a news conference.

Garner’s daughter, Emerald Snipes Garner, thanked O’Neill “for doing the right thing.” She said she is urging lawmakers to make it a state and federal crime— not just an administrative violation— for any police officer to use a chokehold.

“I should not be here standing with my brother, fatherless,” she said. “He’s fired, but the fight is not over.”

De Blasio never said whether he believed Pantaleo should lose his job but promised “justice” to the slain man’s family.

At a recent administrative trial at police headquarters, Pantaleo’s lawyers argued he used an approved “seat belt” technique to subdue Garner, who refused to be handcuffed after officers accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes.

In a bystander’s video, it appeared that Pantaleo initially tried to use two approved restraint tactics on Garner, who was much larger at 6-foot-2 (188 centimeters) and about 400 pounds (180 kilograms), but ended up wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck for about seven seconds as they struggled against a glass storefront window and fell to the sidewalk.

The footage showed Garner, who was 43 at the time, crying out, “I can’t breathe,” at least 11 times before he fell unconscious. The medical examiner’s office said a chokehold contributed to Garner’s death.

Questions about the handling of the case have dogged de Blasio during his longshot run for president, with some protesters at the recent debate in Detroit chanting, “Fire Pantaleo.”

Warren Apologizes to Native Americans for Heritage Claim

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren offered a public apology Monday to Native Americans over her past claim to tribal heritage, directly tackling an area that’s proved to be a big political liability.

“Like anyone who has been honest with themselves, I know I have made mistakes,” the Massachusetts senator said at a forum on Native American issues in the pivotal early-voting state of Iowa. “I am sorry for the harm I have caused.”

Monday’s remarks were an effort to move past the fallout from her past claims of tribal ancestry, which culminated in a widely criticized release of a DNA analysis last year. The issue nearly derailed her campaign in the early days as President Donald Trump began derisively referring to her as “Pocahontas.”

Now that Warren is gaining in most polls, she’s trying to prove to voters that the controversy won’t doom her in a general election matchup against Trump. The detailed policy agenda to help Native Americans that she released last week helped her secure a warm reception from attendees at the tribal forum.

After drawing a standing ovation, Warren said “I have listened and I have learned a lot” from conversations with Native Americans in recent months, describing herself as “grateful” for the dialogue. She fielded questions about her proposals, which include a legislative change for a Supreme Court ruling that impedes tribal governments’ ability to prosecute crimes committed on tribal lands by those who don’t belong to a tribe.

She did not receive any questions about her own background.

Warren’s DNA analysis showed evidence of a tribal ancestor as far as 10 generations back, part of a broader pushback against Trump’s disparaging nickname, but the Cherokee Nation joined some other Native Americans in rebuking the senator for attributing tribal membership to genetics. Warren later apologized privately to the Cherokee and had addressed her regret before Monday’s appearance.

The Native American forum this week is expected to draw 10 of her White House rivals.

New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, who last year became one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, introduced Warren on Monday after endorsing her presidential campaign last month and aligning with her for new legislation aimed at helping tribal communities. Haaland lamented that Warren’s ancestry has attracted outsized attention when Trump faces his own charges of racism.

Those who “ask about Elizabeth’s family instead of issues of vital importance to Indian Country,” Haaland told the forum audience, “feed the president’s racism.”

Manny Iron Hawk, 62, who lives on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in South Dakota, said Warren “did excellent” in her Monday appearance and has done a good job of addressing her past mistakes. “I think she did. A person has to admit their mistakes and move on.”

Iron Hawk said he had hoped to talk to Warren about tribal governance issues, but she left too quickly for him to catch her.

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Schor reported from Washington.

Trump Wields Sanctions Hammer, but to What End?

WASHINGTON — Call it the diplomacy of coercion.

The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing economic sanctions as a primary foreign policy tool to an extent unseen in decades, or perhaps ever. Many are questioning the results even as officials insist the penalties are achieving their aims.

Since taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump has used an array of new and existing sanctions against Iran, North Korea and others. His Treasury Department, which oversees economic sanctions, has targeted thousands of entities with asset freezes and business bans. The State Department has been similarly enthusiastic about imposing its own penalties: travel bans on foreign government officials and others for human rights abuses and corruption in countries from the Americas to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

At the same time, the administration is trying to reduce greatly the amount of U.S. foreign assistance, notably cutting money to Latin America and the Palestinians. The White House budget office is making plans to return billions of dollars in congressionally approved but unspent dollars to the Treasury. A similar effort was rejected by Congress last year.

The combination of more sticks and fewer carrots has created a disconnection between leveraging the might of America’s economic power and effectively projecting it, according to experts who fear the administration is relying too much on coercion at the expense of cooperation.

It also has caused significant tensions with American allies, especially in Europe, where experts say a kind of sanctions fatigue may be setting in. The decision this past week by the British territory of Gibraltar to release, over U.S. objections, an Iranian oil tanker that it seized for sanctions violations could be a case in point.

It’s rare for a week to go by without the administration announcing new sanctions.

On Thursday, the administration said it would rescind the visas of any crew aboard the Iranian tanker in Gibraltar. On Wednesday, Sudan’s former intelligence chief received a travel ban. Last week, the entire Venezuelan government was hit. More than 2,600 people, companies, ships and planes have been targeted so far since Trump took office.

“The daily pace is intense,” the treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, said recently.

She and proponents of the administration’s foreign policy say sanctions are working and have denied Iran and its proxies hundreds of millions, if not billions, in dollars in revenue used for destabilizing activity in the Middle East and beyond. And, they note, the U.S. approach does not involve the vastly more expensive option of military action.

“Overuse of economic warfare is certainly a better alternative to the overuse of military warfare,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has advocated for even broader sanctions.

Mandelker, whose office is in charge of economic sanctions, says sanctions alone “rarely, if ever, comprise the entire solution to a national security threat or human rights or corruption crisis.” They must, she said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, be accompanied by other action to push U.S. national interests.

Experts say the administration has not shown great vision in adopting strategies that do not rely on sanctions or separating punitive foreign policy decisions from purely trade issues, such as the spat with the Chinese over tariffs. While Trump has been reluctant to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, his administration has not relented on sanctions for Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and human rights issues.

“President Trump has completely conflated economic sanctions and commercial policy,” said Gary Haufbauer, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics who was a senior treasury official during the Carter administration. He said that while that approach might work with countries such as Mexico and Guatemala over immigration, trade measures and sanctions against China and Russia do not.

“I don’t see that the U.S. is having any positive effect on Chinese behavior, or for that matter, Russia,” Haufbauer said. He said this was a “pivot point” in world economic relations, with the U.S. losing its leadership role and opening up the possibility for another nation to pick up the mantle. Asian countries, he said, are deferring to China’s perspective on the U.S., and American alliances with European nations are being weakened by Trump’s reliance on sanctions.

“The U.S., through its trade policy, has managed to isolate itself,” he said.

Although many administrations have relied on sanctions, Trump has used them with zeal at a cost to the U.S., said Liz Rosenberg, the director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She was a senior adviser to one of Mandelker’s predecessors at Treasury during the Obama administration.

Where the U.S. once coordinated with Europeans on issues such as counterterrorism and nuclear nonproliferation, Trump’s sanctions are often one-sided and do not prioritize partnerships, Rosenberg said.

“This is a brand new reality that has never been seen in modern times,” she said. “There are those in Europe who feel not just harmed by the United States, but also targeted by the United States.”

The result is that many countries are less eager, or in fact wary, of signing up for American initiatives, particularly when they see the U.S. retreating in areas such as foreign aid. The administration is expected to present a plan soon to cut as much as $4 billion in economic and development aid, drawing wide bipartisan rebukes from Capitol Hill. A similar effort was turned aside in 2018, but there are fears it may to come to pass this year.

“Once again, the Trump administration is hell bent on slashing programs that lift millions out of poverty, turn the tide against deadly diseases, strengthen our economy, and make America safer,” said Tom Hart, the North America executive director for The ONE Campaign, which supports development assistance. “Not only does this undermine U.S. leadership around the world, it subverts Congress’ power of the purse.”

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Associated Press writer Kali Robinson contributed to this report.

Another Country Defies Trump in Latest Blow to Iran Warmongers

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment. 

Aljazeera reports that its correspondent in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, Andrew Simmons, confirms that a tanker carrying $140 million worth of Iranian petroleum has now left the island at the mouth of the Mediterranean. The tanker was seized by Gibraltar authorities on July 4 on the grounds that it was bearing petroleum to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions on that country.

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Some have argued that the seizure of the vessel was illegal inasmuch as the European Union rule only applies to countries of the union and is about importing oil from Syria to Europe. Only individuals in Syria are under an EU resource sanction, not the whole country. Moreover, the ship’s captain denies that it was heading for Syria in any case. The seizure was encouraged by Warhawks in the Trump administration seeking to drum up a conflict with Iran such as national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

There is nothing in international or EU law that prevents Iran from freely selling its petroleum. The British move was ill-advised, and led to Iran seizing British-flagged vessels in the Gulf. Britain, in the midst of major political turmoil as a result of the Brexit issue, was wholly unprepared for military conflict with Iran and so in the end was forced to back down.

This retreat is a major defeat for the American war hawks who attempted to impose on Europe Washington DC’s campaign of maximum pressure against Iran. Europe remains committed to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and does not agree that new aggressive sanctions should be placed on Tehran. Europe has rejected maximum pressure, and the Bolton/Pompeo attempt to draw Britain into hostilities with Iran has failed.

Gibraltar has its own elected government and institutions, including a Supreme Court. It is under the authority of Britain for issues in foreign policy, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to have been uninterested in pressuring Gibraltar to halt the release of the tanker. On the day of the release, a court in Washington DC issued an order that the tanker should continue to be held, on the grounds that the petroleum it carried came from sources in which the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has a financial interest. The Gibraltar Supreme Court rejected this order on the grounds that the US sanctions regime differs radically from that of the European Union and only the EU regime may be applied under Gibraltar law.

Incredibly, the European press is speculating whether the US Navy will intervene, without any warrant of international law.

Trump and his warmongers have not only failed to increase US prestige among key allies in Europe, but have actually so diminished the US superpower that now small European courts are defying it.

 

What Do the Hong Kong Protesters Want?

What follows is a conversation between “Rose,” a demonstrator in Hong Kong, and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner.

On Sunday, March 31st, the people of Hong Kong began marching. Initially it was to protest an extradition bill proposed by the Hong Kong government that would allow mainland China to extradite anyone for trial including foreigners. Now Hong Kong, since it was repatriated back to the People’s Republic of China by its colonial ruler, Great Britain, 22 years ago in July of 1997, it has been considered a special zone. It was known as “one country, two systems.” Tensions existed from the very beginning in that kind of system. Protests began in 2012 when mainland China tried to impose their school system on Hong Kong. Leap forward to this moment that we face at this moment. Protests have involved millions of people in the streets. It has gone beyond fighting the extradition treaty, which Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, said is now put to the side. In recent days we have seen protesters taking over the airport, Chinese troops massing at the border, and Hollywood stars like Jackie Chan and the star of Mulan backing the Chinese government, and protests intensifying.

Our guest today joins us, she lives in Hong Kong. She has been part of the protest. We’re not using her real name or her real image for her own safety as she joins us. We are referring to her as “Rose” today. So Rose, welcome. Good to have you with us.

ROSE: You’re welcome.

MARC STEINER: So, let me start with kind of a personal question. Talk about why you and your friends first began hitting the streets, and what that meant. What drove you, other young people, professionals, workers, older people, lawyers to take to the streets?

ROSE: This time is very different from previous protests we have had in Hong Kong. We all say it is the endgame for Hong Kong people. If we don’t come out this time, probably in the future we cannot come out again. So people from all walks of life in Hong Kong, they join together this time. And for me, for myself, the identity of Hong Kongers is much stronger compared to the Umbrella Movement back in 2014.

MARC STEINER: What do you mean?

ROSE: I feel like I am fighting for Hong Kong this time, defending the bottom line for Hong Kong, the freedom that we deserve, the high autonomy that the basic Hong Kongers ask.

MARC STEINER: Rose, it seems to me from what I’ve been reading in the press from all across the globe that these protests, involving millions of people in Hong Kong, span the class spectrum from wealthy people, students, workers, lawyers, to poor working-class people in the Hong Kong streets. It also seems from what I’ve been reading— and you can describe this better than I— that it also spans the political spectrum in Hong Kong, from left-people who might like socialism to people who are involved deeply in the corporate, capitalist system, to everybody in the middle. Now, is that true or are we misreading something here?

ROSE: I think you are completely true. For my personal experience, I see people from different backgrounds, from all walks of the society joined together in the protests. In my opinion, one of the bigger factor, contributors, is the police brutality. I think a lot of people come out and protest because they are so dissatisfied and disappointed about what the police have been doing to the protestors, and even passersby, those people who are not even in the protest. They use tear gas when there are no people on the streets, they beat civilians, they do not rescue people. When more than 2,000 people called the emergency call, after 40 minutes, the police came to the empty house station of Yuen Long in 21st of July, so I think all these things have already crossed the bottom line of a lot of Hong Kong people, and we think that the police are racing to the bottom.

We always think that the Hong Kong Police is very professional compared to other countries and they should behave themselves. They should control their emotion, but in these protests of the anti-extradition bill, we see the police is totally out of control. They cannot control their temper. They actually do not follow the rules of using this kind of force against protestors. I think that most people come out because we are really angry and mad about what the police do, especially to the young people.

MARC STEINER: Where do you think this goes? You said earlier in this conversation that this is a critical series of demonstrations. And if you lose this, you might lose everything, is what you were alluding to. This has been going on now for four months, two weeks, and two days as of our taping. Chinese troops apparently are massing right across the border from Hong Kong itself, with the threat of moving in if things don’t change. Talk a bit about that, what you meant by the critical nature of this demonstration. What would happen if Chinese troops came across the line into Hong Kong, and kind of analyze that for us for a moment.

ROSE: I think the Beijing government can witness how determined Hong Kong people are this time, and they also know what are the tactics, what are the strategies the Hong Kong Protestors are using. They are looking at the Hong Kong protestors, they know what we are doing, and they are thinking how to handle this situation right now, so I think they are just preparing the next steps. I am not very sure what they will do to Hong Kong Protestors, but for us, we have been, I have never seen how determined Hong Kong people are. They are so creative and very innovative. We use different kinds of tactics, strategies, deeper movements, more big scales to try to have our demands being heard and fulfilled by the government.

The determination of the Hong Kong people indicated that if—Many people are saying something: “it’s now or never.” A lot of people using endgame to describe the protests, to describe the movement because we have so many people come out already. And if we fail, what will be the next thing? Will there still be many people willing to come out if we all get suppressed after these movements? So it is really the biggest battle that we are going to fight, and if we fail, probably the society has to sacrifice a lot. Honestly, I myself worry that I don’t know when [inaudible] people are able to come out if we fail in this movement. I think that the central government, or the Hong Kong government, they will even have more surveillance or other restrictive or limitations in terms of freedom and autonomy that people are able to enjoy. Maybe we can’t even march in the future.

Recently a lot of people applying for the letter of no objection in different demonstrations, and they all failed. So you can imagine a year later or two years later if a normal citizen, they want to organize a march in front of the government headquarters, I think the difficulty will be not more compared to before. The freedom will be declining if we fail in these movements.

MARC STEINER: A couple of quick questions here. When you talk about all of the people arrested, A, how many people do you know have been arrested in Hong Kong in these demonstrations? Are they still in jail? Have they been released? What do we know about that?

ROSE: I don’t know the exact figures right now, but so far from what I have heard and saw in the news, more than 400 people have been arrested, and some are still in the police station, but I think most of them are released and on bail right now. So more than a thousand are actually injured according to the local news reports

MARC STEINER: Tell all the viewers and the folks who are watching this across the globe, what is it exactly the protestors, in the largest sense, want? What is the endgame here? What is it you’re expecting, if you could win this, if you do win this, what is it you’re exactly winning? What are you looking to do?

ROSE: We need to reform the government because the government is not accountable to Hong Kong people. Because the government is just responding to the central government in Beijing, so whenever there are one million, two million, three million people marching on the street, the government still ignores the general demands of Hong Kong people, general and reasonable demands of Hong Kong people. So, one of the important demands of this movement is general universal suffrage. We need to vote for the chief executive and the legislative council in a democratic way that everyone is able to participate in the political system in a fair manner. I think the endgame is saying that the government has to be reformed so that it is democratic, transparent, and accountable to the Hong Kong people, but not to the central government.

MARC STEINER: I think, there’s something as you were speaking, it made me think about this, Carrie Lam, who is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. The way it runs in Hong Kong now, is that she is not elected by all the people, is that correct?

ROSE: Yes.

MARC STEINER: So the people of Hong Kong have a narrow group, a smaller group of people that they can vote for who can sit on the council, but the rest of them are appointed by the people in Beijing? Or am I wrong? Explain how that works.

ROSE: She was elected by a small group of people. About 1,200 people is the election committee, and they were representing different sectors, but most of them are from the business corporations and in the professional field, so a lot of Hong Kong people are not included and not represented by this group of election committees. She got 777 votes in last election and then she became our chief executive, representing nearly 7 million Hong Kong people, so you see how democratic our government is because she is responding to the 777 people instead of the real 7 million people in Hong Kong.

MARC STEINER: So, if the 7 million people of Hong Kong, the ones who have the right could vote, if they voted, you’re saying that somebody like most people don’t know, let’s say Claudia Mo, who is one of the leaders of the Civic Party who sits on the council. In essence you’re saying, you’d like to see a free and fair election so that people like Claudia Mo or anybody else who is running has a chance to become the leader of Hong Kong, and not somebody who is appointed by corporate and party leaders?

ROSE: Yes, I think according to international human rights law and our basic law, and our bill of rights ordinance in Hong Kong, every citizen deserves the right to vote and the rights to running for candidate, so I think everyone who can fulfill the criteria to run for chief executive, they can, they can. I think that everyone can, not just Claudia Mo, but maybe everyone, if they want to be chief executive and they fulfill their requirement, they should be able to be elected and run for the election.

MARC STEINER: Finally, before we end, this is not really a funny note, but it is interesting. For people in the West especially watching this, when you have two major Hollywood stars, Jackie Chan and Liu Yifei— is it Liu Yifei who played Mulan— both came out in support of the police. It is kind of a strange note to end on, but I’m very curious about what your reaction is to that, what the people of Hong Kong’s reaction is to that, and what you make of that?

ROSE: Well, I think a lot of people are disgusted about what Jackie Chan doing, and whether they are a star, a Hollywood star, or they are celebrities, a lot of Hong Kong people, especially young Hong Kong women and men, we don’t think Jackie Chan represents Hong Kong anymore. Jackie Chan lives in the dreams of Western people, but not Hong Kong people. We feel, of course we feel disappointed, but honestly speaking, we don’t care. We don’t care about how they post to their own social media because they just not representing Hong Kong, especially Jackie Chan. For young people like us, how many people will see him as an idol anymore? I think he is not in our generation. He is the history.

MARC STEINER: Well, let’s hope your future generation really takes hold. And Rose, as we’re calling you for this day, I deeply appreciate you taking the time with us. We look forward, with any luck, to talk with you again. Please stay safe and we’ll see what happens in the next few days.

ROSE: Thank you.

MARC STEINER: Thank you very much. And as I’ve said, we’ve been talking to Rose. We did not use her real name, nor her clear image because we do not want to take a chance that she or any of the other people we may be interviewing will be arrested or be seen doing this. I want to thank all of the people watching. Please let us know what you think, and then we can work with that in terms of our next broadcast about Hong Kong. We want to know what you think. Let us know.

I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us, take care.

Chinese K-Pop Stars Publicly Back Beijing on Hong Kong

HONG KONG — At least eight pop stars from mainland China and one each from Taiwan and Hong Kong are publicly stating their support for Beijing’s one-China policy, eliciting a mixture of disappointment and understanding from fans.

Many of the statements came after protesters opposed to Beijing’s growing influence over semi-autonomous Hong Kong removed a Chinese flag and tossed it into Victoria Harbour earlier this month.

Lay Zhang, Jackson Wang, Lai Kuan-lin and Victoria Song were among the K-pop singers who recently uploaded a Chinese flag and declared themselves as “one of 1.4 billion guardians of the Chinese flag” on their official Weibo social media accounts. Wang is from Hong Kong and Lai is from Taiwan.

Some see the public pronouncements as the latest examples of how celebrities and companies feel pressured to toe the line politically in the important Chinese market. Yet they also coincide with a surge in patriotism among young Chinese raised on a steady diet of pro-Communist Party messaging.

Song and Zhang, a member of popular group EXO, have shown their Chinese pride on Instagram, in Song’s case by uploading an image of the Chinese flag last week with the caption “Hong Kong is part of China forever.” Such posts would only be seen by their international fans because Instagram, like most Western social media sites, is blocked by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s censors.

For over a decade, South Korean entertainment agencies have been grooming Chinese singers to be part of their Korean pop, or K-pop, bands in an attempt to win over the massive mainland Chinese market. Only a few made it to a much-coveted debut. But a number of Chinese K-pop stars — citing unfair treatment — left their K-pop groups to pursue lucrative solo careers in mainland China.

K-pop fans reacted swiftly to the avowals of allegiance to China. Some called it shameful, while others were more understanding.

Erika Ng, a 26-year-old Hong Kong fan of Jackson Wang, was not surprised by his statement. She said he “values the China market more than the Hong Kong market” because of his large presence in the mainland.

Wang, a member of the group Got7, used to carry a Hong Kong flag and wear a hat with the city’s symbol, a bauhinia flower. Lately, he has been carrying a Chinese flag on his concert tour and was wearing a China flag hoodie in his music video.

Ellyn Bukvich, a 26-year-old American who has been an EXO fan for five years, said many young fans will probably support Zhang and his message because of his status as a K-pop idol.

“It’s spreading propaganda and it’s very effective,” Bukvich said.

The one-China policy maintains that there is only one Chinese government, and it is a key diplomatic point accepted by most nations in the world, including the U.S. It is mostly aimed at the democratic island of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary.

In the case of Hong Kong, a former British colony handed back to Chinese control in 1997, Beijing maintains a “one country, two systems” policy in which the city is guaranteed greater freedoms than those on the mainland until 2047.

China’s government and entirely state-controlled media have consistently portrayed the Hong Kong protest movement as an effort by criminals trying to split the territory from China, backed by hostile foreigners.

International brands — from fashion companies to airlines — have been compelled to make public apologies for perceived breaches of that policy, such as listing Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries on their websites or on T-shirts.

Zhang terminated his partnership with Samsung Electronics last week, accusing the South Korean mobile giant of damaging China’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The statement in a Weibo post was prompted by Samsung having separate language options for users in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan on its global website. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified ones used in mainland China, and Hong Kong also has English as an official language. Samsung declined to comment on whether it will continue to provide different language options for Taiwan and Hong Kong.

It can be difficult to know whether loyalty vows to Beijing are heartfelt or for commercial reasons. The past is littered with examples of celebrities, both Chinese and foreign, who saw their business in China destroyed after the party objected to a statement or an action.

In 2016, Taiwanese K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu made a public apology for waving the Taiwanese flag while appearing on a South Korean television show. A Chinese vilification campaign against her led to a backlash among some Taiwanese, who at the time were in the midst of a presidential election eventually won by Tsai Ing-wen, who is despised by Beijing for her pro-independence stance.

Public support for Beijing hasn’t been limited to pop stars.

Liu Yifei, the Chinese-born star of Disney’s upcoming live-action version of the film “Mulan,” weighed in on the situation in Hong Kong, where protesters have accused police of abuses.

“I support the Hong Kong police,” Liu, a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote on her Weibo account. “You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong.”

Some questioned her motives, wondering if the post was calculated to ensure her film is released widely in China — the world’s largest film market. Among Hong Kong protesters, there were swift calls for a boycott of the film when it is released next year.

The Stunning Revival of America’s ‘Christian Left’

Holding pictures of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody and forming a cross with their bodies on the floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, 70 Catholics were arrested in July for obstructing a public place, which is considered a misdemeanor.

The protesters hoped that images of 90-year-old nuns and priests in clerical collars being led away in handcuffs would draw attention to their moral horror at the United States’ treatment of undocumented immigrant families.

American Catholics, like any religious group, do not fit neatly into left-right political categories.

But ever more they are visibly joining the growing ranks of progressive Christians who oppose President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and federal agencies’ negligent, occasionally deadly treatment of immigrants on his orders.

Religious activism

American Christianity is more often associated with right-wing politics.

Conservative Christian groups advocating for public policies that reflect their religious beliefs have conducted extremely visible campaigns to outlaw abortion, keep gay marriage illegal and encourage study of the Bible in schools. Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, an Apostolic Christian, was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

But there’s always been progressive Christian activism in the United States.

I have studied religious thought and action around migrants and refugees for some time – including analyzing the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of churches that offers refuge to undocumented immigrants and advocates for immigration reform.

Black churches were central in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and have continued to engage in advocacy and civil disobedience around poverty, inequality and police violence. Latinos and Native Americans, too, have for centuries fought for “progressive” causes like labor rights, environmental protection and human rights.

So it’s not quite right to herald the “rise” of a religious left, as several think pieces have done since Christians began openly resisting Trump’s immigration enforcement and other policies. That erases the historic resistance of religious communities of color.

Why immigration

Still, Trump’s hardline immigration policies seem to have spurred a broader population of Christians into action. And their civil disobedience crosses racial, ethnic and even party lines in new ways.

One reason for this is simple: Migration has become increasingly visible in recent years, especially under Trump.

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama approached this issue by using relatively pro-immigrant language while deporting hundreds of thousands each year.

Though immigration at the United States’ southern border has actually been decreasing since 2000, the number of Central American asylum-seekers has grown. In 2014, an unprecedented surge in Central American children seeking asylum protections got significant media attention.

Donald Trump began his presidential campaign the next year with a speech maligning migrants. During his administration, his rhetoric has slowly become policy.

But the primary reason Christian groups are now focusing on immigration, I’d argue, is simply that the notion of welcoming strangers and caring for the vulnerable are embedded in the Christian tradition.

In the Biblical text Matthew 25, the “Son of Man” – a figure understood to be Jesus – blesses people who gave food to the hungry, cared for the sick and welcomed strangers. And in Leviticus 19:34, God commands: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you.”

These texts help explain why support for immigrants crosses traditional left-right religious boundaries.

Denominations that are generally considered left-leaning, like the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly oppose Trump’s harsh treatment of immigrants. So do the Catholic bishops and Southern Baptists, which are typically more socially and politically conservative.

Welcoming the stranger

Beyond directly assisting migrants at the U.S. border by offering food, shelter, translation and legal services, many of these Christian groups also believe that in democratic societies they should pursue laws founded on Christian moral teachings.

After all, they point out, God’s command in Leviticus was to the nation of Israel – not just individual Israelites. And Jesus often told religious and political officials how to act and criticized the oppression of foreigners, widows and orphans by those in authority.

Faith-based support for immigrants is not limited to Christian groups.

Jewish and Muslim organizations have both provided humanitarian aid to Central American asylum seekers and protested a federal ban on travel from Muslim countries.

And 40 Jewish leaders were arrested in New York City on Aug. 12 for protesting the Trump administration’s detention policies.

Connecting to politicians and interfaith cooperation

The 2020 election season has brought Christian faith-based activism into the political fore. Several Democratic presidential candidates have spoken openly about the faith-based roots of their progressivism.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has referenced the biblical text of Matthew 25 as a touchstone for her critique of wealth inequality and insistence on universal health care.

In pushing for criminal justice reform, Sen. Cory Booker speaks about the Christian tradition of “grace.” He’s also been known to quote the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha and the Hindu god Shiva.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a devout churchgoer who is also gay. He says that his sexual orientation is God-given and that his marriage, in the Episcopal church, to another man, has brought him closer to God.

Talk of an emerging “religious left” is ahistoric. American Christianity has always had its liberal strains, with pastors and parishioners protesting state-sponsored injustices like slavery, segregation, the Vietnam War and mass deportation.

But the high profile, religiously based moral outrage at Trump’s immigration policies does seem to be spurring some long-overdue rethinking of what it means to be Christian in America.

Laura E. Alexander is an assistant professor of religious studies and Goldstein Family Community Chair in Human Rights at University of Nebraska Omaha.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The World According to George Galloway

This article’s (lightly edited) interview with George Galloway may be seen on video by clicking here.

LONDON—There are few politicians in Britain who are attacked by the courtiers in the press and the mandarins in power more ferociously than George Galloway, a former member of Parliament and an icon of the left. They routinely shower him with insults and accusations. This is because there are few politicians willing to as ferociously name and condemn the crimes and injustices carried out by the American and British governments. He has for many years unequivocally stood up to defend the human rights of Palestinians, thundered against Israeli war crimes and demanded justice, leading him to be attacked as an anti-Semite. He has long opposed the Western sanctions and the endless wars in the Middle East, generating charges that he is a defender of terrorists. He has steadfastly raised his voice on behalf of those persecuted by the American government, including WikiLeaks Publisher Julian Assange.

The Economist once described Galloway, who spent more than 25 years in Parliament, as “the hate figure for the British establishment,” which, given who constitutes the establishment, is the highest of compliments.

I interviewed Galloway in London.

Chris Hedges: Let’s begin with this strange political moment—the rise of figures like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, a very Trump-like figure, perhaps a smarter version of Trump. How did we get here? From the start of your political career, you spoke out on behalf of the working class, how it was being attacked through neoliberalism, which corrupted the Labour Party the same way it did the Democratic Party in the United States.

George Galloway: Ontology is important. We need to define what is right-wing and what is populist. Some of the appeal of Trump, of Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party in Britain, is the very non-right-wingness. The apparent standing up for the little man, standing up for the worker against big business, against the bankers and the establishment—Trump played that card very well in the Rust Belt of the United States. Nigel Farage played it very cannily in similar places in the Brexit referendum in Britain. The support they garnered was not in fact right-wing, but left-wing. It was an anti-capitalist critique of the kind of finance capitalist model that has beggared millions of people and whole areas of your country and mine. When they say populist, I wonder if they really mean popular. I am attacked as a left-wing populist. But what does that actually mean?

My politics have not changed—perhaps this is a condemnation of me—not a single inch from my teenage years. I stand at exactly the same place. It’s everyone else that moved around me. Insofar as the kind of politics and approach and style that I’m employing are popular, that’s what drives the prevailing orthodoxy crazy. Dr. Johnson, a great Englishman of letters, said, ‘The grimmest dictatorship of them all was the dictatorship of the prevailing orthodoxy.’ I stand up against that from my political standpoint. So does Farage. So, to an extent, does Trump.

Now we come to the ontology of what you call the resistance. The pussy hats and the achingly liberal resistance to Donald Trump leaves me entirely cold. I know they would not be out there protesting worst crimes that the Clinton crime family and the crooner Obama would and did commit. It’s the vulgarness, the brashness, the ugliness of Trump they oppose. But Trump is just American imperialism without the lipstick. Hillary would have had the lipstick. But the crimes would have been the same—arguably much worse.

CH: Figures like Trump and Boris Johnson are con artists. They are using the issues you spent your political career actually fighting for. …

GG: Certainly Boris Johnson. Beyond the mop of blond hair and the rancid morals, I don’t think there’s that much to compare between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Boris Johnson is unequivocally a character of the 1%. He was educated at Eton and Oxford. He has spent his whole life in the milieu of the ultra-rich. The real upper class. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is to some extent on the outside. He was fabulously rich, although six times bankrupt. Perhaps not as rich as he claims. He has some identification with those on the outside. Con artist, definitely. But not the same kind of con artist as Boris Johnson. I was not happy that Donald Trump became the president of the United States. But I was very happy that Hillary Clinton did not.

CH: The Clintons, like Tony Blair, betrayed their base. Obama [did so] as well. He was quite conscious of what he was doing, unlike George W. Bush.

GG: Trump is failing the people he conned. Whereas Boris Johnson won’t even try to con them. He will not pretend to the British working class that he’s in it for them. Not really.

CH: What is the attraction of figures like Johnson and Trump who turbocharge the looting and pillage by the 1% and the consolidation of power by the global oligarchic elite?

GG: The way they win power is by correctly identifying real, material, objective realities amongst the masses of the people. Trump said to the people in the so-called Rust Belt [that] it’s the Clintons, NAFTA and super-nationalism, and the finance capital model that these people represent, that have done this to you. That was a correct identification and correct analysis. The fact that he’s a creature of the same swamp, and far from draining it is filling it, only comes later. But the existence of these grievances is what the left ought to have been doing. The British Labour [Party] movement, not just in Parliament, but in a broader movement, even in trade unions, in political parties of the left, bought into neoliberalism. The failure of the Labour government of the 1970s, the rise of Thatcher Reaganomics, knocked the stuffing out of the left. They began to follow the line “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

CH: [Margaret] Thatcher reportedly said, “My greatest creation was Tony Blair.”

GG: New Labour was her greatest creation. The left went along with that. And then the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a further oceanic loss of confidence. Instead of consistently standing up for working-class interests—against corporate capitalism, against globalized capitalism, standing up for the people of your own country—they liquidated their previous existence. The working people, quite correctly, thought, “You’re no longer for me. You’re no longer part of me. You’re no longer with me.” That’s a correct identification.

Jeremy Corbyn has rowed back from that into more familiar waters. Insufficiently well, hampered massively by the Blair-ite rump. It’s not really a rump, it’s a ramp actually because it’s quite a lot of MPs whose main purpose is to sabotage him. I know these are not things that can compare across the Atlantic all that easily. But that’s what’s happened here. The working class was abandoned by social democrats. Of course, people to the right of them, these populist figures can move in and steal some of their former clothes.

CH: How do we effectively build a political movement that stymies the rise of these very frightening alt-right entities and these political figures? We’re not doing a very good job of it in the United States.

GG: Not that good here either. First, we have to correctly critique what is wrong with the approach of the alt-right populists. That is to say, not critique what is right about what they’re saying, but to say it better and more convincingly. To say to the workers in the Rust Belt in our countries, “We stand for you. We’re going to fight for you and everything that is in your interests we will support. Everything that is against your interests we will oppose. Whoever else is saying the same thing, you can believe us because we are a part of you. We are your party. We are the people who represent you on a daily basis.” Secondly, to develop an iconography, a vocabulary, that can appeal to people. If you’re waving the flag of the European Union, you will leave the working class in the north and the south, in the west, and south Wales, cold.

The people of this country identify with this country. So, you have to. If you sneer at patriotism, if you sneer at people who actually, warts and all, love their country. … John Lennon once said, “If you want a revolution, don’t go waving pictures of Chairman Mao.” He was right. Chairman Mao leaves them cold on the streets of England. You have to find the iconography, the vocabulary, that fits.

The most impressive figure of my political lifetime was Georges Marchais. He was the leader of the Communist Party of France. He talked of socialism in the colors of France. He talked of France keeping its nuclear weapons but pointing them both ways. He was a figure of the French working class. It’s no accident that as an individual he was the most popular political figure in France, left or right.

CH: Are xenophobia and Islamophobia the driving forces behind support for Brexit?

GG: If you fill the atmosphere with hatred of the Muslims as an other, to further your foreign policy abroad, you’re going to get blowback at home. If you tell everyone that one new Hitler after another—from Nasser, through Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Gadhafi, Bashar al-Assad … I’ve probably forgotten a few Hitlers on the Nile and the Euphrates—if you fill people, the atmosphere, with that kind of mentality, then how do you expect some people not to blame Abdul, who owns the news agent, or the 7-Eleven, on the corner? It’s inevitable. We predicted it. It’s come to pass.

CH: Is the resurgence of white nationalism an effective mechanism in the hands of figures like Trump and Boris Johnson? Does this divide the country and disempower socialists such as yourself?

GG: There is racism in Britain, of course; how can it be otherwise? We were the senior partner in empire for a very long time. You can’t have an empire without notions of racial superiority. How else can you justify occupying and ruling other people and their countries? You’re the father figure holding their hand until they are able to govern themselves. There is racism in Britain. But if you think Britain’s racist, you’ve never lived in France.

It is not as bad in Britain as it is elsewhere in the European Union. Similarly, there are real material reasons for racial antagonism on the part of the majority here. The British government moved a group of Islamist fanatics to Manchester who were known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. The clue was in the name. That Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were cosseted there by the British state for the day they could be sent back to fight in Libya.

One of their sons blew up a lot of our children in the Manchester Arena not that long ago at an Ariana Grande pop concert. It’s legitimate to hate the people who did that. It’s not racist to hate the people who murdered people on this very bridge. [He motioned toward London Bridge.] [Who] cut their throats, drove cars into them. It’s not racist to hate them. If you claim it is, you are actually helping the racists. The existence of an element of Islamist fanaticism on the edges of the Muslim community here in Britain or anywhere in the world should be attacked as ruthlessly by the left as it is for opportunistic reasons by the right.

This is a mistake the left has made. I always say to people, “Never confuse me with a liberal.” I’m not a liberal. I’m actually quite ill-liberal in many regards. I’m a socialist, not a liberal; that’s a different thing. Never get caught seeming to support extremism amongst sections of the community. Be as ruthless. If I was the mayor of London, I’d be hunting down al-Qaida. I’d be out there in a high-vis vest with the police in the mornings, raiding their houses. Whereas quite often, the so-called left looks like they care more about the criminal than the victim. They care more about the human rights of the terrorists than the victim of the terrorist. So, we have to be much smarter.

CH: I have interviewed members of al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad. These figures do not come out of religious households. They came out of petty crime, sometimes more than petty crime, drug addiction.

GG: Sri Lanka is the first time one of these suicide mass murderers came from families that were actually religious and not petty criminals. So, that’s undoubtedly true. But it’s not to say they don’t exist. They exist. They are a Siren on the rocks, seeking to lure young Muslims onto those rocks of extremism and a cult of death. We have to call them out. We have to struggle against it. It can’t only be solved by the military, the police and legal action. It’s necessary but not sufficient.

CH: The North African immigrants that live in banlieues outside of Paris have no jobs. They live in appalling conditions. The racism, as you pointed out, in France runs very deep. They are segregated from most French people. They are not considered—although they may have lived in France since they were 2—to be French by the French. They go back to Tunisia and they’re not considered Tunisian. There’s a loss of identity, a loss of work. These are the contributing factors, which gets back to the reconfigurations of these economies by neoliberalism, which cast aside not just immigrants but huge sections of the working class and working poor as human refuse.

GG: Exactly. I’ve just been writing for my website about the BBC series “The Looming Tower.” We contributed to the rise of this fanaticism in three ways. The first one you just mentioned. The second is by endlessly supporting by all means corrupt dictators, medieval kingdoms, leaving the people of these Muslim countries bereft of any other path out of their misery. Thirdly, by directly assisting al-Qaida and ISIS in Iraq, in Syria. We provided funding, weapons, propaganda and other material on the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. So, if an Islamist fanatic is blowing himself up in the Caucasus, in Chechnya, that’s fine. We’ll help him. We’ll talk about his human rights. But if he’s running on the bridge in London cutting people’s throats, we’ll describe him in quite different terms. Thrice we have assisted the development of this fanaticism.

CH: Those of us who stand up for Palestinian rights are immediately attacked as anti-Semites. The press is an echo chamber, amplifying those attacks. Does Israel have a lock on Britain as they do in the United States?

GG: It doesn’t. But it has a bigger lock than I imagined. The last four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, the success by which they have done that, the scale of which they have done that, shows they do have a bigger lock than I thought. Not even in Israel does this Zionist movement have a bigger lock than it does in the United States. Nothing compares to that.

It’s a trick. An Israeli Cabinet minister, Shulamit Aloni, giving me dinner in her house in Tel Aviv, literally told me it was. “It’s a trick,” she said. “We always do it.” They do it because it works. If someone stands up for Palestinian rights, the first default position is to call them an anti-Semite. The fact that someone like me [is attacked as an anti-Semite], with my politics, and the basis of my politics is so heavily Jewish, from Marx, through Trotsky and Chomsky. Half of the Bolshevik Party’s central committee was Jewish. According to the right wing, I am involved in a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. The idea that I can be described as an anti-Semite is pitifully absurd. Ditto Jeremy Corbyn, who comes out of the same stable as me more or less. I’d like to think it doesn’t work. But to some extent it does. My wife, who is a person of color, an Indonesian woman, was abused in the street the other day as the wife of an anti-Semite, the wife of a racist. It’s absurd and effective, but less effective than it was before. If you call everybody an anti-Semite, then eventually nobody is an anti-Semite. The boy who cried wolf is a parable of note for a reason.

CH: The real anti-Semites, the Christian right of the United States, have become a political ally of Israel. It’s the equation of anti-Semitism with opposition to the government of Israel. One of the biggest racists in the Middle East is [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu.

GG: There’s worse than him waiting in the wings.

CH: Where are we going? It’s a frightening direction if things don’t go right. What are the forces that frighten you? What does the left have to do?

GG: I’ll be honest, I’m not as pessimistic as you. I have faith in the people. I always have. I can only speak for my own people here. We hate fascism. We stood alone against fascism. Anyone who presents in the form of fascism will be rejected here. There’s not a single fascist counselor in Britain, not a single fascist MP in Britain. There never will be. Fascists are counted in the hundreds, not in the millions, like they are in many European countries. They are in almost every parliament in Europe. They’re in many governments in Europe. But they never will be here.

I believe in the chaos of the British political scene at the moment. It’s perfectly possible that the Labour Party could be the next government. Maybe soon. Parliament is in complete chaos over the Brexit issue. It’s one of the reasons I supported Brexit. But not the main reason. Out of that chaos, it may welcome a Jeremy Corbyn-led government. As someone who has known Corbyn well for 40 years, I can hardly believe I’m saying those words.

Islamic State Claims Bombing at Kabul Wedding That Killed 63

KABUL, Afghanistan—The suicide bomber stood in the middle of the dancing, clapping crowd as hundreds of Afghan children and adults celebrated a wedding in a joyous release from Kabul’s strain of war. Then, in a flash, he detonated his explosives-filled vest, killing dozens — and Afghanistan grieved again.

The local Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack in the capital this year, with 63 killed and 182 wounded, while outraged Afghans questioned just how safe they will be under an approaching deal between the United States and the Taliban to end America’s longest war.

Stunned families buried the dead, some digging with their bare hands. One wounded survivor, Mohammad Aslim, still wore his bloodied clothes the day after the blast late Saturday. He and his friends had already buried 16 bodies, among them several close relatives, including a 7-year-old boy.

Aslim looked exhausted, and said he was waiting to bury more. Nearby, a man named Amanullah, who lost his 14-year-old son, said in anguish that the explosion had mangled the boy’s face so badly he could no longer recognize it.

“I wish I could find the pieces of my son’s body and put them as one piece into the grave,” he cried.

The emergence of the Islamic State affiliate in recent years might be the greatest threat to Afghan civilians as the U.S. and Taliban seek an agreement to end nearly 18 years of fighting. While the U.S. wants Taliban assurances that Afghanistan will no longer be used as a launch pad for global terror attacks, there appear to be no guarantees of protection for Afghan civilians.

The Taliban, which the U.S. hopes will help curb the IS affiliate’s rise, condemned Saturday’s attack as “forbidden and unjustifiable.”

The blast took place in a western Kabul neighborhood that is home to many in the country’s minority Shiite Hazara community. IS, which declared war on Afghanistan’s Shiites nearly two years ago and has claimed responsibility for many attacks targeting them in the past, said in a statement that a Pakistani IS fighter seeking martyrdom targeted a large Shiite gathering.

The wedding, at which more than 1,200 people had been invited, was in fact a mixed crowd of Shiites and Sunnis, said the event hall’s owner, Hussain Ali.

Ali’s workers were still finding body parts, including hands, in the shattered wedding hall, its floor strewn with broken glass, pieces of furniture and victims’ shoes.

“We have informed the police to come and collect them,” he said.

The bomber detonated his explosives near the stage where musicians were playing and “all the youths, children and all the people who were there were killed,” said Gul Mohammad, another witness.

Survivors described a panicked scene in the suddenly darkened hall as people screamed and scrambled to find loved ones.

“I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast and then I couldn’t find anyone,” said Ahmad Omid, who said the groom was his father’s cousin. “Everyone was lying all around the hall.”

The blast at the wedding hall, known as Dubai City, shattered a period of relative calm in Kabul.

On Aug. 7, a Taliban car bomber aimed at Afghan security forces detonated his explosives on the same road, a short drive from the hall, killing 14 people and wounding 145 — most of them women, children and other civilians.

Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centers of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars often spent on a single evening.

Messages of shock poured in on Sunday. “Such acts are beyond condemnation,” the European Union mission to Afghanistan said. “An act of extreme depravity,” U.S. Ambassador John Bass said. A deliberate attack on civilians “can only be described as a cowardly act of terror,” U.N. envoy to Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto said.

The explosion came just ahead of Afghanistan’s 100th Independence Day on Monday. The city, long familiar with checkpoints and razor wire, has been under heavier security. A planned event in Kabul marking the anniversary was postponed because of the attack, the president’s office said.

The attack also comes at a greatly uncertain time in Afghanistan as the U.S. and the Taliban appear to be within days of a deal on ending the war after several rounds of talks this year. Afghanistan’s government has been sidelined in those talks as the Taliban refuse to negotiate with what it calls a U.S. puppet.

The U.S. envoy in the talks, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Twitter Sunday that the peace process needs to be accelerated, including holding talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and other Afghans. He said that will put Afghanistan in a “much stronger position” to defeat the IS affiliate. President Donald Trump was briefed on the talks on Friday but few details have emerged.

Top issues in the talks have included a U.S. troop withdrawal and Taliban guarantees they would not allow Afghanistan to become a launching pad for global terror attacks. In that, the Islamic State affiliate’s increasingly threatening presence is the top U.S. concern. Other issues include a cease-fire and intra-Afghan negotiations on the country’s future.

Many Afghans fear that terror attacks inside the country will continue, and their pleas for peace — and for details on the talks — have increased in recent days. Few appear to believe that the Taliban will step in to protect civilians from IS or anyone else after years of killing civilians themselves.

“Taliban cannot absolve themselves of blame, for they provide platform for terrorists,” President Ashraf Ghani said on Twitter, declaring a day of mourning and calling the attack “inhumane.”

Frustration at the authorities was evident as well, amid a fresh wave of grief.

“We want the government to stop arguing about power and act like a human being to bring peace to this country,” one worker at the wedding hall, Hajji Reza, said. Several of his colleagues remained missing.

___

Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.