CCTV-Africa Sacked South Sudanese first vice president Riek Machar may be headed to South Africa after the country agreed to host him, a leading newspaper in Kenya reports.
Machar fled the capital Juba in July, just four months after he returned, in a peace deal that saw the formation of a transitional unity government.
Forces loyal to President Kiir and those loyal to Machar clashed in Juba in July just outside the presidential palace where the two leaders were held up in a meeting.
The 5-day clashes killed close to 300 people and forced thousands others to flee to neighbouring countries.
Having fled the country, Machar is now in Sudan’s capital Khartoum.
Kenya’s presidential spokesperson Manoah Esipisu revealed that South Africa had offered to host him, though there are still other options being looked into.
“Following the Igad meeting in Mogadishu, Somalia, last week, there are a series of follow-up sessions that His Excellency (Uhuru Kenyatta) needs to personally attend to, given that Kenya is a senior player in the region alongside Ethiopia,” Esipisu said.
“There is the delicate issue of where Riek Machar should be placed. Currently he is holed up in Khartoum but there are ongoing deliberations, and very delicate ones for that matter, on where he should be eventually resettled.
“As you know, South Africa has agreed to take him in but there is a feeling that other options be looked into. That is why it was felt that His Excellency’s involvement in these matters is very essential.
Esipisu was addressing journalists following President Kenyatta’s failure to travel to Canada and the United States for crucial international meetings
There are some parts of our knowledge base that we generally take for granted. We use them every day, and they have been very successful in allowing us to conduct our lives. The number system that includes zero is one such practice. But zero didn’t always exist. It’s a rather genius idea that humanity had to invent after it already knew how to count.
There are two ways that zeroes work. Zero is a placeholder, signifying the absence of value. Zero is also a number in its own right.
Ancient Sumerian scribes used spaces to mark absences, while Babylonians used a sign of two small wedges to differentiate between magnitudes (like our decimal-based system employs zeroes to make a difference between tenths, hundreds and so on). Mayans also had a similar type of marker in their calendars.
Watch this brief history of zero narrated by the mathematician Dr. Hannah Fry for the Royal Institute.
But in the fifth century, India’s number system was the first to utilize the concept of zero as a number. There is a circle that resembles a zero on the wall of a temple in Gwalior, India which is considered to be the world’s oldest representation of the number. In the 7th century, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta used small dots to show the zero placeholder, but also recognized it as a number, with a null value that was called “sunya”.
India’s math spread to China and the Middle East cultures, where it was instrumental and developed further. The mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi utilized zero in algebraic equations and eventually, by about 9th century, zero became part of the Arabic number system looking like the oval we write today. In Europe, however, Romans opposed zero due to the preference given to their own system based on Roman numerals. Zero was embraced gradually by Europeans, most famously championed by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
As math evolved, zero formed the cornerstone of calculus. Now it lies in the foundation of modern computing’s binary system of zeros and ones.
Of course, as much as zero has been useful, it carries within itself certain philosophical quandaries. While other numbers can be utilized to refer to existing objects, what object or anything in existence can zero point to? If “nothing” is part of our number system, then does the system itself come into question as a constructed, but not necessarily empirically-derived practice? While other numbers allow for division, you can’t divide by zero. Comedian Steven Wright famously quipped: “Black holes are where God divided by zero.” So can you really have something out of nothing?
U.S. Representatives push for legislation targeting Ethiopia after Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch document human rights abuses.
A bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives has proposed legislation targeted at the government of Ethiopia, after Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented hundreds of cases of alleged human rights abuses. House Resolution 861, titled “Supporting respect for human rights and encouraging inclusive governance in Ethiopia,” was introduced by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Al Green (D-TX), Mike Coffman (R-CO), and Eliot Engel (D-NY).
“It is an abomination when any country tortures its own citizens,” said Rep. Smith, at a September 13th press conference on Capitol Hill. The human rights abuses, waged primarily against the Oromo and Amhara populations, have come to light despite Ethiopian authorities efforts preventing independent screeners from conducting transparent investigations.
The Resolution condemns the killing of peaceful protesters, the arrest and detention of students, journalists, and political leaders, and the stifling of political dissent under the guise of “counterterrorism.”
Ethiopia is a strategic ally of the United States. The country headquarters the 54 nation African Union, and, critical to U.S. interests, assists in counterterrorism efforts against al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda aligned jihadi terrorist group based in Somalia. Ethiopia is also host to a staggering 750,000 refugeesfrom the war torn region.
In a press statement Rep. Ellison said, “While Ethiopia is an important ally for the United States, continuing to let the Ethiopian government oppress its own people will only further destabilize the region. We must do all we can to ensure that the human rights of all Ethiopians are respected.” Rep. Smith added, “A valuable contributor to global peacekeeping missions, growing unrest in Ethiopia in reaction to human rights violations by the government threaten to destabilize a nation counted on to continue its role on the international scene”.
Resolutions, like the one proposed, tend to be more of an opinion that often do little in themselves because they lack the political leverage to prompt much action. They often fail to hold allied nations to a standard of conduct, as countries and international organizations are hesitant to regulate how other nations behave within their own borders.
Noteworthy, is that the bill also seeks to apply financial and other pressure towards the government, by calling for the Secretary of State to “conduct a review of security assistance to Ethiopia” and “improve transparency” with respect to such assistance, and to “improve oversight and accountability of United States assistance to Ethiopia”.
OROMO AND AMHARA PROTESTERS CALL FOR EQUITABLE RIGHTS, AUGUST 6, 2016. REUTERS/TIKSA NEGERI
Despite the good intention of the bill, critics highlight that it doesn’t go far enough. Henok Gabisa, a visiting Academic Fellow and faculty member at Washington and Lee University School of Law, stated in a personal interview:
“H.RES.861 is generally a good gesture from the United States Congress. It is very specific in a sense that it points out the consistent and constant patterns of corrosion of civil and economic liberties in the country. It also seems to give scrupulous attention to the marginalized groups who remain on the receiving end of the pain. That is really great. Nonetheless, owing to the mammoth financial aid transported to Ethiopian government by the U.S. under their bilateral security partnership, H. RES. 861 failed to deploy the political leverage of the [United States Government], and as a result it is nowhere nearer to fulfilling the goal it promises. In fact, Resolutions by merit are just declaratory statements or positions of a government. They may not be considered law in a positivist school of law. Yet again, H.RES.861 has no teeth to bite those who fail to comply the soft obligations it enumerated under the last sections 3-6.”
In a country of over 86 million, Oromos and Amharas constitute the two largest ethnic groups, combining for over 61% of the population. Yet, they are the most politically marginalized andeconomically disenfranchised. In 2015 Ethiopia’s ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, won every seat in parliament despite little ethnic diversity. The EPRDF has remained in power since the overthrow of Ethiopia’s military government in 1991.
Abdulaziz Osman VOAFILE – Al-Shabab fighters sit on a truck as they patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct. 30, 2009. The U.S. military says its airstrike killed at least nine militants. However, the Somalia government says its soldiers were killed in the strike.
Somalia’s government is demanding an explanation from the United States for Wednesday’s deadly airstrike in central Somalia.
The Pentagon said in news release Thursday that its forces launched a “self-defense” strike against al-Shabab near the town of Galkayo, killing at least nine militants.
However, Galmudug state vice-president Mohamed Hashi Abdi told VOA’s Somali service that the U.S. airstrike killed 13 members of Galmudug forces.
After the weekly cabinet meeting in Mogadishu, ministers in the government said they want “a clear explanation on the airstrike carried out by U.S. against forces belonging to the Galmudug, a Somali federal member state.”
The cabinet said it will appoint a ministerial committee to investigate the airstrike.
Abdi said the Americans were “misguided” in a request that came from officials in the semi-autonomous Puntland region.
“We fight against al-Shabab, and there is no al-Shabab presence in Galmudug area,” he added.
Abdi said the Galmudug president and the U.S. deputy ambassador to Somalia met Thursday in Mogadishu to discuss the issue, and the U.S. diplomat pledged to provide clear answers.
Meanwhile, residents in Galkayo who were protesting the strike burned the U.S. flag Thursday.
The U.S. has carried out numerous airstrikes in Somalia targeting al-Shabab members, including a missile strike that killed the group’s former emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane, in 2014.
Fatuma Hussein, feeds her child Yasin Ahmed at the Megenta Kebele clinic in a rural village Dubti Woreda, in Afar, Ethiopia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
The Heritage Foundation has taken its message of economic freedom to Africa. Today’s stop is Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia—source of the Blue Nileriver and one of the oldest countries in the world that traces its history back to Biblical times 1,000 years before Christ. Remember the Queen of Sheba, in the time of King Solomon? She was from Axum, in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is also the second most populous country in Africa, with 95 million people.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Index of Economic Freedom reports that economic expansion has averaged about 10 percent over the past five years, facilitated by improved infrastructure and more effective mining and farming techniques. Unfortunately, that economic growth has not been enjoyed evenly by all of the roughly 80 ethnic groups in the country.
As the BBC reports, Ethiopia has had civil unrest for the last year “in the Oromia region which has been unprecedented in its longevity and geographical spread.” The Oromo people account for one-third of Ethiopia’s population. As the BBC notes, however, the issues go far deeper than ethnicity: “frustrations over land ownership, corruption, political, and economic marginalization.”
That is consistent with the findings in the Heritage index, which reports that the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and its allies in the Tigray ethnic group claimed all 547 seats in the May 2015 parliamentary elections. Today, little remains of democracy in Ethiopia after the passage of laws that repress political opposition, tighten control of civil society, and suppress independent media.
The mastermind behind the rise of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front was the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a staunch ally of the United States in the war on terror but also an authoritarian African strongman who rose to power in the early 1990s and ruled until his early death in 2012 at the age of 57.
As The Huffington Post reported, Meles was a highly skilled political tactician who could weave together coalitions among the many Ethiopian factions. His successors have not been so skilled, or so creative, and have asserted the one-party rule of Ethiopia’s ascendant political party more brutishly in the years since Meles’ death. They also have suffered from the global decline of commodity prices.
In his early years in power, Meles advanced economic growth by dismantling the Soviet-style, five-year plans that had been put in place by the brutal military Derg government that had ruled since the mid-1970s, when it overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie.
Later, Meles was hailed for the strong economic growth his statist, “neoliberal” economic policies generated during the boom years for commodity prices.
As the index reports, economic growth beginning in the Meles years reduced the percentage of the population living in poverty by 33 percent, but per capita income remains among the world’s lowest, and many young people leave to seek opportunity elsewhere. The economy is based largely on agriculture—85 percent of workers are on millions of small and inefficient farms that are vulnerable to droughts.
Unfortunately, as faithful readers of the index know all too well, such neoliberal industrial policies—whereby the government picks winners and losers and subsidizes favored sectors—do not form a sustainable model for the long term. And, increasingly, the long term is now here for the current Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front leadership—who are increasingly dividing the economic pie mostly among their own Tigray brethren.
To turn things around, Ethiopia must return to the more inclusive governance structures that Meles pioneered and share political power. But it must also abandon the Meles neoliberal model, and address the deficiencies noted by the Index of Economic Freedom, especially with regard to stronger rule of law, more transparency in the investment regime, and more competition in the banking sector.
Ethiopia remains a fascinating country, as it was in biblical times, with numerous attractions for tourism that could be developed with better infrastructure and greater political stability. Ethiopians deserve a better government than the one they currently have.
James M. Roberts is the Research Fellow in Freedom and Growth at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for International Trade and Economics. Roberts’ primary responsibility is to produce the Index of Economic Freedom, an influential annual analysis of the economic climate of countries throughout the world.
CAIRO — The Egyptian government is determined to build a new capital in the desert 28 miles southeast of this iconic city — and it’s no longer a mirage now that China is bankrolling most of the $45 billion project.
Work has already begun on a 270-square-mile tract of army-owned land that would house as many as 5 million people when completed in 2021. PresidentAbdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is pushing the project, has his skeptics, who wonder how cash-strapped Egypt can afford such an ambitious development.
Enter the Chinese. On Sunday, China Fortune Land Development announced it would invest $20 billion in the still-unnamed capital. That comes on top of a $15 billion agreement by China’s state-owned construction company to finance 14 government buildings, a zone for trade fairs and a 5,000-seat conference center that would be the largest in Africa.
This week, the Egyptian government also announced it was speaking with the Chinese about building a university in the new city. China’s role is the latest example of using its new-found wealth to expand its influence in global affairs.
The move was prompted by the chaos and congestion of this ancient city of nearly 30 million people, a third of Egypt’s population.
“I can say with total honesty that this project is 20 years overdue,” said Mohsen Salah El Din, chief executive of the state-owned Arab Contractors, which is involved in the project.
“We had to find an alternative location to suck this congestion out of Cairo and relocate where the government would be and where the civil servants working in these agencies would live so that they don’t have to commute long distances between home and work,” he said.
Supporters of the move say Egypt is following a proven model: Turkey, India and Brazil all moved their capitals in the 20th century.
“Egypt’s administrative capital is not different from Ankara, New Delhi or Brasilia,” said Zeyad Elkelani, a political science professor at Cairo University. He said the new city would help the president reduce unemployment and streamline the country’s massive bureaucracy — an estimated 7 million public workers.
Many government workers won’t want to leave Cairo and move to the new capital, Elkelani said. Their families pass down their Cairo apartments from generation to generation. And there is no culture of commuting on a highway to work in the country. The result will be a welcome attrition in government employment.
“The new capital is an important step to make room for the private sector,” Elkelani said. “The bureaucracy has been choking business in Egypt and the residents of Cairo.”
Several hundred apartment buildings already have gone up in the new city, and construction crews are building roads and laying sewage lines.
In a sign of how determined the government is to move, the Interior Ministry announced it would phase out operations by July 2017 at the Mogamma building, where 30,000 state employees handle everything from new business registrations to issuing passports. The ministry plans to convert the landmark building into a hotel.
Mogamma dominates downtown’s Tahrir Square, where anti-government demonstrations in 2011 led to the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.
“Nobody likes coming here,” said Razan Bishara, a biology student who recently accompanied a visiting French friend to the building to renew her tourist visa. “But at least I can take the Metro to Tahrir Square. I don’t know how we are going to get bureaucratic stuff like this done when they move this place to the middle of the desert.”
Khaled Abbas, an assistant minister at the Ministry of Housing, said his agency will be the first to move. “And we’ve already designated the area for a new presidential palace and a nearby presidential district with 25,000 housing units in the works there,” he said.
Still to be determined: what to name the new city.
Officials now refer to it as the “New Administrative Capital,” but that doesn’t generate excitement for an audacious plan that will include green areas comparable to New York’s Central Park, soaring skyscrapers rivaling Dubai’s unique towers, an airport bigger than London’s Heathrow and an amusement park that outdoes Disneyland.
“The name is an issue,” Abbas said. “We are working on branding now.”
If anyone thinks the project is diverting needed funds to improve Cairo’s crumbling infrastructure and other pressing needs, they aren’t saying so publicly for fear of retribution from a military-run government that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2013 after renewed popular unrest.
Nezar Al Sayyad, an Egyptian-born professor of architecture at the University of California-Berkeley who is now a U.S. citizen, was detained briefly last year at Cairo International Airport and questioned about humorous jabs he made on his Facebook page about the new city.
“The whole thing reflects the top-down thinking of the government,” Al Sayyad said. “It is a military-style operation on land that is owned and being sold by the army.”
“I called the new city Sisi-land,” Al Sayyad said, “and that upset them.”
Most do not associate Africa with the high-tech sphere of “space”. However, in recent years, many countries on the continent have woken up to the potential and usefulness of space technology. In sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and South Africa are leading the charge.
What have South Africa and Nigeria have achieved?
Both countries have recognised the usefulness of satellites for earth observation, telecommunications and advancing space science. They have funded and overseen a number of launches.
Nigeria’s space agency, the National Space Research and Development Agency, flies several multimillion-dollar satellites. South Africa launched its first satellite,SUNSAT, in 1999. A second, SumbandilaSat, was launched from Kazakhstan in 2009. A year later, South Africa formed its National Space Agency, SANSA. In 2013, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology launched South Africa’s first CubeSat – a type of nano-satellite, known as ZACUBE-1.
And in early 2015, the Kondor-E satellite built for South Africa in Russia was launched into orbit. It provides all-weather, day-and-night radar imagery for the South African military.
Earth observation satellites can collect data on areas of importance to a country’s economy and well-being such as agriculture, natural disasters and elections. Nigeria has used its satellites to monitor the oil-rich Niger Delta . Its satellites have also been used in election monitoring, providing crucial information about voters who may otherwise have been overlooked by poll workers.
Satellites have also proved useful in the fight against extremist groups such as Boko Haram. In 2014, Nigeria used its SatX and Sat 2 to monitor the group’s movements and to help find the 273 girls it had abducted.
There are limits to how useful satellites can be in these situations. Finding those kidnapped proved difficult because the satellites only have a 2.5 metre resolution. This means that you cannot trace individuals’ movement – you can only get maps of some locations at some particular times.
Also, because satellites move from one location to another, it means that it can take up to four days for one to get into position to take a particular photograph.
Amnesty International has pioneered the use of satellite images for human rights research and advocacy over the past six years using imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. It has also used satellite imagery to collect information about Boko Haram’s activities. Satellite photos taken in January showed the scale of the group’s atrocities after they attacked the towns of Baga and Doron Baga.
Satellite image of housing in Doro Baga taken in January after a Boko Haram attack. Amnesty International
South Africa has harnessed earth observation satellite capability to do human settlement mapping. This has enabled it to monitor urbanisation by examining the growth of settlements and the transformation of housing. It provides useful data for service delivery projects and town planning.
As the largest space agency in southern Africa, SANSA frequently provides disaster monitoring and post-disaster assessment for South Africa and the region. Fires and floods are the most common natural disaster. It also monitors space weather effects and forecasts, which are crucial for aviation.
Other African nations are getting involved
Other growing sub-Saharan African countries have recently begun space programmes. Ghana launched its Space Science and Technology Centre in 2012. Kenya started its space programme in 2012. Kenya’s geographic position on the equator makes it ideal to launch satellites into geostationary and other orbits.
Oil- and mineral-rich Angola plans on launching its first satellite, AngoSat-1, into orbit by 2016. It is being built by a Russian consortium.
North African nations are no strangers to space and satellites. Algeria, which established its space agency in 2002, launched five disaster monitoring microsatellites in the 2000s, and an earth observation satellite in 2010. The latter was launched from Chennai, India.
Egypt, like South Africa, now has its own military satellite thanks to Russian assistance. Egypt launched its first satellite in 2007 for scientific research, but has run into recent concerns over human and financial resources.
Along with Sudan, Egypt has been at the forefront to establish a African space agency to combat some of the monetary and skills issues. The African Union Working Group on Space recently approved a draft African space policy and is currently developing a comprehensive space strategy.
However, even if African resources and skillsets are combined, an operational African Space Agency appears to be at least five to ten years away. Countries are focused on growing their own space agencies first. The project will also undoubtedly depend upon political relations between continental powerhouses Nigeria and South Africa, which are at a low.
Its effectiveness will depend on an African country developing domestic satellite launch capability, which is a huge necessary step forward in space exploration. Nevertheless, continued collaboration – such as SANSA working with the Zambia Remote Sensing Centre in a research project using satellite earth observation data for drought, soil and vegetation monitoring – will assist in speeding up the process towards a true continental space alliance.
Government space agencies aside, satellites over rural Africa can help provide Internet connectivity to hundreds of millions of African citizens. In June 2014, only 44% of the 410 million people who live in sub-Saharan Africa were living within 25km of an operational fibre optic network node. Facebook has reportedly been talking to satellite operator Avanti – which owns two broadband satellites over Africa – to help in this endeavour.
There is no question satellites and space exploration have socioeconomic benefits. Satellites can help find mineral resources. Satellites helped uncover an underground aquifer in Kenya’s driest region. The plethora of possible benefits is combined with other crucial hard to quantify advantages. These projects inspire youth, increase national pride and advance education.
But, space endeavours require capital. And for most African countries, capital is a limited commodity.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Shimon Peres, a former Israeli president and prime minister, whose life story mirrored that of the Jewish state and who was celebrated around the world as a Nobel prize-winning visionary who pushed his country toward peace, has died, the Israeli news website YNet reported early Wednesday. He was 93.
Peres’ condition worsened following a major stroke two weeks ago.
In an unprecedented seven-decade political career, Peres filled nearly every position in Israeli public life and was credited with leading the country through some of its most defining moments, from creating its nuclear arsenal in the 1950s, to disentangling its troops from Lebanon and rescuing its economy from triple-digit inflation in the 1980s, to guiding a skeptical nation into peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.
A protege of Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion, he led the Defense Ministry in his 20s and spearheaded the development of Israel’s nuclear program. He was first elected to parliament in 1959 and later held every major Cabinet post — including defense, finance and foreign affairs — and served three brief stints as prime minister. His key role in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord earned him a Nobel Peace Prize and revered status as Israel’s then most recognizable figure abroad.
And yet, for much of his political career he could not parlay his international prestige into success in Israeli politics, where he was branded by many as both a utopian dreamer and political schemer. His well-tailored, necktied appearance and swept-back gray hair seemed to separate him from his more informal countrymen. He suffered a string of electoral defeats: competing in five general elections seeking the prime minister’s spot, he lost four and tied one.
He finally secured the public adoration that had long eluded him when he has chosen by parliament to a seven-year term as Israel’s ceremonial president in 2007, taking the role of elder statesman.
Peres was celebrated by doves and vilified by hawks for advocating far-reaching Israeli compromises for peace even before he negotiated the first interim accord with the Palestinians in 1993 that set into motion a partition plan that gave them limited self-rule. That was followed by a peace accord with neighboring Jordan. But after a fateful six-month period in 1995-96 that included Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, a spate of Palestinian suicide bombings and Peres’ own election loss to the more conservative Benjamin Netanyahu, the prospects for peace began to evaporate.
Relegated to the political wilderness, he created his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace that raised funds for cooperation and development projects involving Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations. He returned to it at age 91 when he completed his term as president.
Shimon Perski was born on Aug. 2, 1923, in Vishneva, then part of Poland. He moved to pre-state Palestine in 1934 with his immediate family. Her grandfather and other relatives stayed behind and perished in the Holocaust. Rising quickly through Labor Party ranks, he became a top aide to Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and a man Peres once called “the greatest Jew of our time.”
At 29, he was the youngest person to serve as director of Israel’s Defense Ministry, and is credited with arming Israel’s military almost from scratch. Yet throughout his political career, he suffered from the fact that he never wore an army uniform or fought in a war.
Of his 10 books, several amplified his vision of a “new Middle East” where there was peaceful economic and cultural cooperation among all the nations of the region.
Despite continued waves of violence that pushed the Israeli political map to the right, the concept of a Palestinian state next to Israel became mainstream Israeli policy many years after Peres advocated it.
Shunted aside during the 1999 election campaign, won by party colleague Ehud Barak, Peres rejected advice to retire, assuming the newly created and loosely defined Cabinet post of Minister for Regional Cooperation.
In 2000, Peres absorbed another resounding political slap, losing an election in the parliament for the largely ceremonial post of president to Likud Party backbencher Moshe Katsav, who was later convicted and imprisoned for rape.
Even so, Peres refused to quit. In 2001, at age 77, he took the post of foreign minister in the government of national unity set up by Ariel Sharon, serving for 20 months before Labor withdrew from the coalition.
Then he followed Sharon into a new party, Kadima, serving as vice-premier under Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, before assuming the presidency.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Shimon Peres, a former Israeli president and prime minister, whose life story mirrored that of the Jewish state and who was celebrated around the world as a Nobel prize-winning visionary who pushed his country toward peace, has died, the Israeli news website YNet reported early Wednesday. He was 93.
Peres’ condition worsened following a major stroke two weeks ago.
In an unprecedented seven-decade political career, Peres filled nearly every position in Israeli public life and was credited with leading the country through some of its most defining moments, from creating its nuclear arsenal in the 1950s, to disentangling its troops from Lebanon and rescuing its economy from triple-digit inflation in the 1980s, to guiding a skeptical nation into peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.
A protege of Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion, he led the Defense Ministry in his 20s and spearheaded the development of Israel’s nuclear program. He was first elected to parliament in 1959 and later held every major Cabinet post — including defense, finance and foreign affairs — and served three brief stints as prime minister. His key role in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord earned him a Nobel Peace Prize and revered status as Israel’s then most recognizable figure abroad.
And yet, for much of his political career he could not parlay his international prestige into success in Israeli politics, where he was branded by many as both a utopian dreamer and political schemer. His well-tailored, necktied appearance and swept-back gray hair seemed to separate him from his more informal countrymen. He suffered a string of electoral defeats: competing in five general elections seeking the prime minister’s spot, he lost four and tied one.
He finally secured the public adoration that had long eluded him when he has chosen by parliament to a seven-year term as Israel’s ceremonial president in 2007, taking the role of elder statesman.
Peres was celebrated by doves and vilified by hawks for advocating far-reaching Israeli compromises for peace even before he negotiated the first interim accord with the Palestinians in 1993 that set into motion a partition plan that gave them limited self-rule. That was followed by a peace accord with neighboring Jordan. But after a fateful six-month period in 1995-96 that included Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, a spate of Palestinian suicide bombings and Peres’ own election loss to the more conservative Benjamin Netanyahu, the prospects for peace began to evaporate.
Relegated to the political wilderness, he created his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace that raised funds for cooperation and development projects involving Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations. He returned to it at age 91 when he completed his term as president.
Shimon Perski was born on Aug. 2, 1923, in Vishneva, then part of Poland. He moved to pre-state Palestine in 1934 with his immediate family. Her grandfather and other relatives stayed behind and perished in the Holocaust. Rising quickly through Labor Party ranks, he became a top aide to Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and a man Peres once called “the greatest Jew of our time.”
At 29, he was the youngest person to serve as director of Israel’s Defense Ministry, and is credited with arming Israel’s military almost from scratch. Yet throughout his political career, he suffered from the fact that he never wore an army uniform or fought in a war.
Of his 10 books, several amplified his vision of a “new Middle East” where there was peaceful economic and cultural cooperation among all the nations of the region.
Despite continued waves of violence that pushed the Israeli political map to the right, the concept of a Palestinian state next to Israel became mainstream Israeli policy many years after Peres advocated it.
Shunted aside during the 1999 election campaign, won by party colleague Ehud Barak, Peres rejected advice to retire, assuming the newly created and loosely defined Cabinet post of Minister for Regional Cooperation.
In 2000, Peres absorbed another resounding political slap, losing an election in the parliament for the largely ceremonial post of president to Likud Party backbencher Moshe Katsav, who was later convicted and imprisoned for rape.
Even so, Peres refused to quit. In 2001, at age 77, he took the post of foreign minister in the government of national unity set up by Ariel Sharon, serving for 20 months before Labor withdrew from the coalition.
Then he followed Sharon into a new party, Kadima, serving as vice-premier under Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, before assuming the presidency.
Slave shackles on display at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, argues a recent report by a U.N.-affiliated group based in Geneva.This conclusion was part of a study by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body that reports to the international organization’s High Commissioner on Human Rights. The group of experts, which includes leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, pointing to the continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.
“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”
Citing the past year’s spate of police officers killing unarmed African American men, the panel warned against “impunity for state violence,” which has created, in its words, a “human rights crisis” that “must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
The panel drew its recommendations, which are nonbinding and unlikely to influence Washington, after a fact-finding mission in the United States in January. At the time, it hailed the strides taken to make the American criminal justice system more equitable but pointed to the corrosive legacy of the past.
“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today,” it said ina statement. “The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.”
In its report, it specifically dwells on the extrajudicial murders that were a product of an era of white supremacy:
Lynching was a form of racial terrorism that has contributed to a legacy of racial inequality that the United States must address. Thousands of people of African descent were killed in violent public acts of racial control and domination and the perpetrators were never held accountable.
The reparations could come in a variety of forms, according to the panel, including “a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities … psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation.”
Separately, a coalition of Caribbean nations is calling for reparations from their former European imperial powers for the impact of slavery, colonial genocide and the toxic racial laws that shaped life for the past two centuries in these countries. Their efforts are fitful, and so far not so fruitful.
When asked by reporters to comment on the tone of the American presidential election campaign on Monday, the working group’s chairman, Ricardo A. Sunga of the Philippines, expressed concernabout “hate speech … xenophobia [and] Afrophobia” that he felt was prevalent in the campaign, although he didn’t specifically call out Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“We are very troubled that these are on the rise,” said Sunga.
FILE – Al-Shabab fighters sit on a truck as they patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct. 30, 2009. The U.S. military says its airstrike killed at least nine militants. However, the Somalia government says its soldiers were killed in the strike.
