Young Filipinos urge Israel boycott as they join global student movement for Palestine 

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Updated 29 July 2024
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Young Filipinos urge Israel boycott as they join global student movement for Palestine 

  • Thousands of people on various campuses voice support for Palestine, activists say 
  • Students draw attention to the Philippines’ own struggle against modern US imperialism

MANILA: Student organizers on campuses in the Philippines are calling for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel and Zionists, as they joined the global movement to support Palestinians. 

Pro-Palestinian student leaders and activists from various Philippine universities have been mobilizing their peers for months to raise awareness about Israel’s war on Gaza and organizing rallies in solidarity with Palestine. 

Young Filipinos are drawing attention to the struggle for liberation in Palestine and its similarities with the Philippines’ history and experience of occupation and colonialism, as they hope to engage more people and inspire further collective action in their community. 

“Filipino youths and students are aware that (the Palestinians’) struggle against settler colonialism is similar to that of colonial history in the Philippines, and that we perceive a common struggle with the Palestinians today, which is US imperialism,” student organizer Raphael Jourvy Gavino told Arab News. 

Filipinos suffered more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, from 1565 to 1898, and nearly five decades of American colonization from 1898 to 1946. Despite independence, activists say that the Philippines to this day is still a “semi-colony” of the US, citing the Southeast Asian country’s dependence on the US in economy and military. 

Gavino, who goes to the state-run Polytechnic University of the Philippines, is one of the conveners of the PUP for Palestine initiative. His school is known for its student activism and is the country’s largest college in terms of population.

“Thousands of PUP students participated virtually and voiced their support for Palestinians in their struggle against Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and called for justice,” he said. 

“Showing solidarity and support for Palestinians is important as students and especially as Filipinos simply because we cannot just stand still while thousands of fellow students, children and women are slaughtered right before our eyes.” 

Israel’s ground and air attacks in the past nine months have killed more than 39,000 Palestinian citizens in Gaza, according to official estimates, although a study published in the Lancet journal this month estimated that the actual death toll could be more than 186,000 victims. 

Israeli forces have also destroyed schools, universities and hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip. 

“No educational institutions in the country should be in close contact with a state that disregards the future of children by bombing their schools and universities,” Gavino added. 

For students at Ateneo de Manila University, one of the country’s top colleges, showing support for Palestine is crucial. 

“It is important for us, especially as students, to join the global call for liberation and the immediate stop to the genocide in pursuit of just and lasting peace because this is the world we will inherit,” A4P told Arab News in a statement. 

The group said it was inspired by the courage and determination of students abroad, who have staged encampments at their respective universities and called for divestments from “agents of genocide.”

“We aim to pinpoint linkages of our own university, if there are such connections, and call for its immediate end,” A4P said. 

“We would also like to call for a cultural and academic boycott by our universities of Israel and Zionist sources and instead uphold and support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions, and advocate for just and lasting peace by unequivocal support for the cause of national liberation.” 

The Ateneo group, which has more than 5,000 followers on Facebook, also condemned the Philippine government for funneling “billions of pesos in arms deals” to Israeli companies, including Elbit Systems, Rafael Advance Defense Systems and Israel Shipyards, as well as the Israeli government. 

“These weapons of destruction are likewise used to enact violence against indigenous communities in the Philippines, and extreme acts of state repression against its own citizens,” A4P said. 

At the Far Eastern University in Manila, student leaders in June founded the Tamaraws for Palestine initiative, which has so far organized rallies, fundraisers and held educational sessions and discussions on campus. 

“As Filipinos, the terrorism that is happening in Palestine is not new to us as we also experienced being colonized and threatened by multiple nations, such as Spain, America, and Japan. Even now, by China because of their aggressive actions in the (South China Sea),” Kyla Mae Alzado, Tamaraws for Palestine vice chairperson, told Arab News. 

“We are still oppressed by other nations and are facing being threatened in our own home. Palestine is currently in this situation and as a nation that understands and is presently in this setting, we must stand in solidarity with them.”

One of their main focuses is to raise awareness for the larger Philippine society on the violence that is happening in Gaza. 

“What we are hoping to achieve with our organization is to expand and gain more collective action, which could amplify the voices of the oppressed,” Alzado said. 

“Most importantly, we hope that our calls for the rights of Palestinians can help in supporting their liberation.”


Famine looming in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: UN

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Famine looming in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: UN

  • Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning and some 2 million people are at risk of starvation, said a new report from the UN Development Programme

UNITED NATIONS: Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state is heading toward famine, the United Nations warned on Thursday, as the country’s civil war squeezes commerce and agricultural production.
“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” a new report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity are left unaddressed.
Some two million people are at risk of starvation, it said.
Amid the fighting roiling the country, international and domestic trade routes leading into the already impoverished state have been closed, leaving the entrance of aid and goods severely restricted.
In addition to intense fighting, people in Rakhine are facing “absence of incomes, hyperinflation (and) significantly reduced domestic food production,” the UNDP report warned.

Graphic on internally displaced persons in Myanmar, including those in Rakhine province, according to data collected by UNHCR. (AFP)

Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the ruling junta ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.
Clashes have rocked western Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked security forces in November 2023, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the junta’s 2021 coup.
With the farming economy in crisis, the UNDP predicted local food production would only cover 20 percent of the state’s needs by March or April.
Internal rice production is “plummeting,” it said, due to “a lack of seeds, fertilizers (and) severe weather conditions.”
Some 97,000 tons of rice are set to be cultivated in Rakhine this year, compared to 282,000 tons last year, according to the UNDP.
A “steep rise” in internally displaced people, meanwhile, means many fields are unable to be worked.
According to UN figures, Rakhine state recorded more than 500,000 displaced people in August, compared to just under 200,000 in October 2023.
Facing particular risk are populations including members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority and displaced people.
 


Biden to attend South America summits, in Trump’s shadow

Updated 08 November 2024
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Biden to attend South America summits, in Trump’s shadow

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will attend two key summits and visit the Amazon rainforest in South America this month, the White House said Thursday, in a trip totally overshadowed by Donald Trump’s election win.
Biden’s swansong at the G20 summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and the APEC meeting in Lima, Peru will come as world leaders are more focused on how to deal with Trump’s stunning comeback.
“He is planning to attend both conferences,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing.
The return of Trump’s “America First” agenda to the global stage threatens to upend Biden’s embrace of international alliances on issues ranging from Ukraine and the Middle East to climate change and trade.
Jean-Pierre said in a statement that Biden will travel to Lima from November 14-16 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) regional forum.
Last year he met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California, although there is no word on whether a similar meeting is possible this time.
Biden will then make what the White House said was the first visit by a sitting US president to Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest to meet indigenous leaders and others working to “protect this critical ecosystem.”
Finally, Biden will attend his last G20 group of nations summit in Rio on November 18 and 19, where the subjects will include climate change, it said.
Biden has spent his four years in office trying to reshape US leadership on the world stage, after the disruption of Trump’s first term as he criticized US allies and courted dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Uncertainty now reigns about what Trump 2.0 will mean for the world.
Trump’s plans for huge tariffs could trigger a trade war with China and badly affect Canada, Mexico, Europe and other trading partners.
Trump is also mooting talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, amid speculation that he will try to push through a peace deal with Ukraine.
Putin has said he will not attend this G20 because it would “wreck” the conference.


Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

Updated 08 November 2024
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Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

  • Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers
  • Altogether, his approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.
The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America’s international role.
Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.
A look at what Trump has proposed:
Immigration
“Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the US illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said he’d reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.
Abortion
Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the GOP platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level. Trump said last month on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a federal abortion ban if legislation reached his desk — a statement he made only after avoiding a firm position in his September debate against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
But it’s unclear if his administration would aggressively defend against legal challenges seeking to restrict access to abortion pills, including mifepristone, as the Biden administration has. Anti-abortion advocates continue to wage legal battles over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug as well as the agency’s relaxed prescribing restrictions. Trump is also unlikely to enforce Biden’s guidance that hospitals must provide abortions for women who are in medical emergencies, even in states with bans.
Taxes
Trump’s tax policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That’s mostly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from the current 21 percent. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.
Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working- and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime wages from income taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip income — a prospect that at its most extreme could see hedge-fund managers or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.
Tariffs and trade
Trump’s posture on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent on foreign goods — and in some speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the federal government buy “essential” medications only from US companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the US by Chinese buyers.
DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights
Trump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.
On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.
Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential power
The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in US households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration — even though US energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations — though most construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”
The approach would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly from the White House.
He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.
Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.
As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the US economic and monetary systems work.
Education
The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.
As in other policy areas, Trump isn’t actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed— none of that’s going to be allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tip and overtime wages might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid during this campaign, but his first administration reshaped the program by allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients.
Affordable Care Act and Health Care
As he has since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in US agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again.”
Climate and energy
Trump, who claims falsely that climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce US reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy – and transportation infrastructure spending – anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.
Workers’ rights
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America’s workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you shouldn’t pay those dues.”
National defense and America’s role in the world
Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the US has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield — an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top US military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “see on television.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
 


President-elect Trump names Susie Wiles as chief of staff

Updated 08 November 2024
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President-elect Trump names Susie Wiles as chief of staff

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has named Susie Wiles, the manager of his victorious campaign, as his White House chief of staff.
Wiles is widely credited within and outside Trump’s inner circle for running what was, by far, his most disciplined and well-executed campaign. She largely avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Trump celebrated his victory early Wednesday morning.
“Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” Trump said in a statement. “It is a well deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Wiles is a longtime Florida-based Republican strategist who ran Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and 2020. Before that, she ran Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as the manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign.


Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

Updated 08 November 2024
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Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.