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Did Republicans Pass Health Care Bill

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Did Republicans Pass Health Care Bill

If The Us Adopts The Gops Health

Despite campaign promises, Senate Republicans fail to pass new health care bill

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The fundamental thing to understand about Senate Republicans latestattempt to repeal Obamacare is that the bill under consideration wouldnot just undo the Affordable Care Actit would also end Medicaid as weknow it and our federal governments half-century commitment to closingthe countrys yawning gaps in health coverage. And it would do sowithout putting in place any credible resources or policies to replacethe system it is overturning. If our country enacts this bill, it would be an act of mass suicide.

The Republican bill currently being rushed to a vote was put forward bya group of senators led by Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and BillCassidy, of Louisiana. As has become the apparent rule for Republicanhealth-care bills, there have been no hearings or committee reviews ofthe Graham-Cassidy bill. And, this time, lawmakers and the public do noteven have a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the effects the billwould have on the budget, insurance costs, or the uninsured rate.

The Senate Rejected Five Different Obamacare Replacement Bills Not Just One

Its important to remember that the Senate did not just reject one health care bill during this process. It rejected, depending on how you count, three, four, or maybe even five.

There was the American Health Care Act, which passed the House but was considered dead on arrival in the Senate.

There was the original version of Majority Leader Mitch McConnells Better Care Reconciliation Act, which would have failed on the floor and so was yanked back for revisions.

There was the Ted Cruz-ified version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which gutted insurance regulations and was defeated in a 43-57 vote.

There was the Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act, which would have repealed Obamacare without specifying a replacement, and which failed 45-55 on the floor.

And then there was skinny repeal the Health Care Freedom Act, which would have repealed the individual mandate but left the Medicaid expansion. Last night, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John McCain, and every Senate Democrat sent the bill to a 49-51 defeat. But that likely overstates the bills support, given that many of the Republicans who voted for it only did so under the assumption that they would move to negotiations with the House and nothing like the HCFA would ever become law.

Why Did The Republicans Block The Bill

They blocked the bill for the same reasons they always do. They have had the House and Senate for some time and are yet to support our veterans with the spending really required.

Most Republicans said it was too large, too costly and would burden a Department of Veterans Affairs already struggling to keep up with promised benefits.

Sen Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee who authored the bill, argued that many provisions in the bill have won bipartisan support in other pieces of pending legislation before Congress.

Republicans complained about how to pay for it. Sanders’ legislation had more than 140 provisions costing $21 billion over 10 years.

You May Like: Did Donald Trump Really Say Republicans Are Dumb

What The Aca Means For You

The Affordable Care Act is perhaps the greatest overhaul ofthe US health-care system, and it will provide coverage for over 94% ofAmericans. In addition, one of its key reforms includes health coverage for adultswith pre-existing conditions, which generally had not been available up untilnow.

These great changes in health-care insurance can benefit you and your loved ones. However, it is still essential to find the best plans at the best price to ensure your family is properly covered.

To learn about the specific Obamacare-compliant health insurance plan options available to youplus see if you are eligible for a government subsidy to help pay for a plancompare ACA-compliant health insurance plans with eHealth today.

But Wouldnt People Still Get Help To Buy Insurance

Yes and that was one of the reasons the health plan was always going to be difficult for a broad base of Republicans to support. Giving Americans tax credits to buy health insurance looked to conservatives too much like Obamacare, while huge overhauls to Medicaid public health insurance for the poor left moderate Republicans worried about constituents who depend on those services.

Further, Republicans last-minute amendments actually increased the price tag of their bill, without insuring more Americans. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the changes still left 24 million Americans without insurance and reduced savings over the next decade, from $337bn in the first draft, to just $150bn.

Recommended Reading: What Is The Lapel Pin Democrats Are Wearing

Moving Down The Agenda

After the original bills failure, both Trump and McConnell wanted the Senate to vote on a bill to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act after a two-year delay. This gambit was essentially Republican leadership playing chicken in two ways.

First, leadership dared rank-and-file Republicans to vote against a repeal bill because most Republicans campaigned on the premise that the ACA should be repealed. However, doing so could potentially create chaos in the health care market.

Second, if Congress failed to pass a replacement health care bill within the next two years, chaos would ensue. Congress often gives itself such incentives in order to promote compromise. The major problem with this tactic is that Republican leadership would still have to find a way to placate both moderates and extreme conservatives, and potentially Democrats as well. While legislative compromise used to be a regular occurrence, it is becoming rarer in recent times due to increased polarization. Legislative productivity is near an all-time low.

In order to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans needed to strike a deal that pleased both moderates and conservatives. It seems unlikely that such a deal exists.

So Will There Definitely Be A Vote This Week On The Graham

Its looking less and less likely.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a vote would be held this week, and over the weekend White House officials said they expected one on Wednesday.

But Monday, amid dimming prospects, McConnell would not commit to a vote. He is not likely to want to endure another embarrassing failure on the Senate floor, so he may not call a vote unless hes sure he has the support. Thats unlikely with three Republicans now opposed to the bill.

Recommended Reading: What Percent Of Republicans Approve Of Trump

Gop Health Care Bill Passes In House Moves To Senate

“They’re not even doing it for the party,” he said as he stood flanked by Republican leadership and rank and file in the Rose Garden. “They’re doing it for this country because we suffered with Obamacare.”

Ryan took to the floor ahead of the vote to argue that Obamacare was failing. “We can continue with the status quo or we can put this collapsing law behind us and end this failed experiment,” he said.

Related: Trump, GOP Leaders Take Victory Lap

Still, the bill’s passage was arduous. Republicans had been working to piece together a GOP-only coalition of votes ever since their attempt to repeal and replace much of the Affordable Care Act failed nearly two months ago

The measure barely made it through, with 20 Republicans splitting with their own party to vote against the bill.

Of the dissenting Republicans, nine represent districts that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. An additional four lawmakers reside in districts that only narrowly voted for Trump, making them top targets for Democrats seeking to unseat them in next years midterms.

Republicans erupted in cheers when the measure passed, and Democrats erupted in song, singing “na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye,” alluding to their political futures after the vote.

Four Senators And A Bill One Year In The Making

House Passes GOP Health Care Bill

While Republicans had worked on various proposals to overhaul the tax code for decades, Republican senators began strategizing their latest attempt to reform the tax code not long after Trump stunned the country and won the White House. Republicans had a President ready and willing to sign a bill if they could manage to send him one.

According to a source familiar with the tax negotiations, as far back as December 2016, a small group of Republican senators all on the Senate Finance Committee and guided by Chairman Orrin Hatch and his staff began hashing out the Senates course.

The group included Sens. Rob Portman, formally the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sen. John Thune, a member of the GOP leadership, Pat Toomey, a fiscal conservative and a member of the Senates Budget Committee and Sen. Tim Scott, a rising conservative star in the party. Over the next several months, the senators held what the source said must have been hundreds of meetings as they sought to find a way forward not only among fellow senators but in cooperation with the House of Representatives and Trump who lawmakers widely acknowledge was more engaged and interested in tax reform than he had been on health care.

Theres been an enormous amount of work done. The reason you see everybody looking so tired is because we are, said Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican. They did a great job of keeping us apprised so we wouldnt be surprised.

Also Check: How Many Republicans Need To Vote For Impeachment

If Dynamic Scoring Is Good For Tax Cuts Why Not For Our Veterans

Republicans do not generally mind using clever accounting methods like dynamic scoring to justify ‘budget friendly’ tax cuts. However, to support the veteran, they refuse to accept plausible funding.

Most of that money was to come from billions of dollars the government projected it would be allowed to spend on wars overseas in the fight against al-Qaeda.But Republicans argued that this is “phony” budgeting because U.S. participation in the Iraq War is over and operations in Afghanistan are winding down.

Attempts To Change Or Repeal

Read Ballotpedia’s fact check »

The Affordable Care Act was subject to a number of lawsuits challenging some of its provisions, such as the individual mandate and the requirement to cover contraception. Four of these lawsuits were heard by the United States Supreme Court, resulting in changes to the law and how it was enforced. In addition, since the law’s enactment, lawmakers in Congress have introduced and considered legislation to modify or repeal parts or all of the Affordable Care Act. Finally, between 2010 and 2012, voters in eight states considered ballot measures related to the law. This section summarizes the lawsuits, legislation, and state ballot measures that attempted to change, repeal, or impact enforcement of parts of the law.

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Gop Health Care Bill Collapses

Senate Republicans will shelve their bill to replace Obamacare, dealing a major blow to Trump’s agenda.

By BURGESS EVERETT and JENNIFER HABERKORN

07/17/2017 07:53 PM EDT

07/18/2017 12:12 AM EDT

President Donald Trump’s top legislative priority was dealt a potentially fatal blow Monday night as two more Republican senators announced their opposition to the party’s health care overhaul.

Trump quickly called on Republicans to simply repeal Obamacare and begin work on a new health care plan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would try to do so.

Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” McConnell said.

The Kentucky Republican said he planned to hold a vote in the coming days to take up the House-passed bill to replace the 2010 health care law and then call up an amendment to eliminate major parts of Obamacare, such as the Medicaid expansion, insurance subsidies and fines for the employer and individual mandates.

Republicans passed a similar bill to effectively repeal Obamacare in 2015 under reconciliation the fast-track budget procedure the GOP is using to thwart a Democratic filibuster but it was vetoed by President Barack Obama.

“Republicans should just ‘REPEAL’ failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!” Trump tweeted shortly before McConnell’s statement came out.

House Republicans Pass Healthcare Bill In First Step Toward Replacing Obamacare

Partisan approval with one vote to spare sends American Health Care Act to uncertain fate in Senate, after negotiations reveal cracks in Republican party

First published on Thu 4 May 2017 19.20 BST

House Republicans narrowly approved a controversial plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, taking a significant first step toward fulfilling a seven-year promise to repeal and replace the 2010 law that served as a landmark overhaul of the US healthcare system.

Republicans passed the American Health Care Act with one vote to spare, following a dramatic series of negotiations that exposed deep fissures between the partys moderate and conservative wings over how to replace Barack Obamas signature legislative accomplishment.

The bill passed 217 to 213, with 20 Republicans voting against and no Democrats voting in favor. Republicans burst into applause when the bill passed the 216-vote threshold, a feat that had seemed insurmountable just days before.

Democrats too saw a reason for celebrating. After it passed, they sang the 60s hit Na Na Hey Hey appearing to suggest Republicans would lose their seats if the repeal proved unpopular.

The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to face serious difficulties.

What a great group of people, Trump said, referring to the Republican congressmen, and theyre not even doing it for the party, theyre doing it for this country because we suffered with Obamacare.

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans Won In Tuesday’s Election

They Underestimated How Ideologically Varied Their Party Has Become

Republican leaders have been grappling for years with a growing bloc of principled conservatives who are politically rewarded in their conservative districts for not compromising.

But it feels as if they;were caught off guard by an equally influential, somewhat larger and just as intransigent faction of moderates.

Those moderates campaigned on repealing Obamacare, but when it came;time to pull the lever that would take away health care for hundreds of thousands of their constituents, they just couldn’t;politically do it.

As for Thursday’s late-night vote in the Senate, conservatives had made peace with just getting rid of Obamacare’s individual mandate, but two moderates, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski , along with Sen. John McCain , sunk that proposal early Friday morning.)

Now, this group seems to be suggesting it would be better to work within the existing structures of Obamacare than take its benefits away.

In a no-holds-barred speech on the Senate floor earlier this week, McCain ripped apart Republicans’ repeal strategy: “Weve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them its better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition. I dont think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldnt.”

Why The Health Care Bill Passed The House This Time

The House passed a new version of a health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act after the first one failed to get enough Republican support in March. The bill still needs to pass the Senate before becoming law.

By Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear

May 4, 2017

WASHINGTON The House on Thursday narrowly approved legislation to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, as Republicans recovered from their earlier failures and moved a step closer to delivering on their promise to reshape American health care without mandated insurance coverage.

The vote, 217 to 213, held on President Trumps 105th day in office, is a significant step on what could be a long legislative road. Twenty Republicans bolted from their leadership to vote no. But the win keeps alive the partys dream of unwinding President Barack Obamas signature domestic achievement.

The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where a handful of Republican senators immediately rejected it, signaling that they would start work on a new version of the bill virtually from scratch.

To the extent that the House solves problems, we might borrow ideas, said Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate health committee. We can go to conference with the House, or they can pass our bill.

Read Also: How Many Times Did Republicans Vote To Repeal Aca

House Republicans Narrowly Pass Gop Health Care Bill

The Republican-sponsored American Health Care Act passed the House 217-213 Thursday, with one vote to spare, although it will face an uncertain path in the Senate.;

No Democrats voted for the bill, and 20 Republicans voted against it. The bill largely repeals and replaces Obamacare.;

Speaking to reporters after the vote, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, said he knew they had the votes on Wednesday and he said if they hadn’t passed it, it would have impeded “the rest of our agenda.”;

“We proved that we could accomplish something this big,” he said. “I can’t thank the president enough. President Trump and Vice President Pence have been directly engaged,” adding that Pence called him twice on Thursday to check in about individual members.;

House Republicans left the Capitol after the vote, headed to the White House on buses. Scalise said they were invited to the Oval Office or the Rose Garden.;

As soon as Republicans cleared the threshold to pass the bill, House Democrats began singing in unison, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, goodbye” toward the Republicans.;

Rep. Chris Collins, R-New York, said he’s not worried about Republicans’ prospects for the 2018 midterm elections.;

“If we weren’t able to repeal and replace Obamacare, it would have been a bad midterm for us. I think we will hold our own, if not pick up seats,” he told reporters.;

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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If you’re looking for the patron saint of institutional racism in the United States, Roger B. Taney is your man.

That a bust of Chief Justice Taney in the U.S. Capitol should be removed, as the House voted last week to do, is beyond reasonable debate. It is the lowest hanging fruit in our nation’s efforts to reckon more honestly with its past.

The only wonder is that 120 House Republicans voted against the measure. The question is not what’s to be done about Taney, but what’s to be done about them. And what’s to be done about the Republicans in the Senate who are sure to vote against the measure, too.

They have declared where they stand: Against any reconsideration of our nation’s past that might annoy their most racist supporters in the next Republican primary. And in favor of — the perfect metaphor — continued white washing.

Chicago knows institutional racism

If you live in Chicago and know the worst of our city’s own history, you can only marvel at such willful blindness.

To argue that institutional racism is a fiction — or that removing the bust of somebody like Taney is an “erasing” of history — looks like a farce to those of us who grew up and live in a city where whole neighborhoods once were red-lined by mortgage companies so Black folks couldn’t live there, where mobile classrooms called “Willis wagons” were installed to keep Black children from having to be bused to white schools, and where an expressway, the Dan Ryan, was strategically located to create a wall between Black and white neighborhoods.

Listen, we know. There’s also a lot of over-the-top “wokeness” going around. There are calls for corrective actions, such as taking down statues of Abe Lincoln, that ignore historical context and go too far. There is plenty of room all around, that is to say, for a more nuanced debate about our nation’s history and how its failings play out to this day.

But Justice Taney? To oppose the removal of his bust from a place of honor in the Capitol, on any grounds, is to declare you really don’t give a damn about truth, racial healing and reconciliation.

Taney was the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, often called the worst legal decision in the Supreme Court’s history. The court held in 1857 that Scott, as a Black man, was not an American citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The court also ruled that legislation restricting slavery in certain territories was unconstitutional.

Taney reviled in his own time

To those who argue that Taney was simply a man of his times and should not be judged by the standards of today, we would point out that he was reviled by many in his own day. Even this business of the bust is nothing new.

When a senator from Illinois in 1865, shortly after Taney’s death, proposed that a bust of the chief justice be put on display in the Capitol, he was mocked.

A senator from New Hampshire said Taney was nothing but a “traitor” who sought to place the nation “forever by judicial authority under the iron rule of the slave-masters.”

A senator from Massachusetts warned that “the name of Taney is to be hooted down the page of history. Judgment is beginning now.”

It would not be until 1874 that Congress passed a bill to honor Taney with a bust, creating a new monument to white supremacy just as Reconstruction was being dismantled in the South and Jim Crow was kicking in.

Removing the bust of Taney now is not about “erasing history.” It’s about getting history right.

A willful blindness

A willful blindness to the obvious, largely on the part of those who have made a cult of Donald Trump and those who fear that cult, threatens to destroy our country.

It has people believing, or pretending to believe, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, that former Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to hand the election to Trump, that COVID-19 vaccines are a threat to freedom, and that left-wing activists were behind the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

It has people believing that the threat of global warming is not real, that Dr. Anthony Fauci conspired to cover up the actual origins of the coronavirus, that wind turbines cause cancer, and that Biden is senile and Vice President Kamala Harris is secretly pulling the strings.

And it has people believing a brush-stroked children’s version of our nation’s complicated history, one in which the Founding Fathers were beyond reproach, slavery was unfortunate but its legacy dead and gone, and racism is largely a matter of individual prejudices, not something woven into laws and institutions.

As a person, Taney was a racist. As a jurist, he was a chief architect of institutional racism. His bust should be removed.

That there is a willful blindness to this obvious fact, as to so many others, should distress us all.

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digdag88 · 4 years

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years

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The Training Commission

After the end of a second ultraviolent American civil war, after we’ve placed the state under the guidance of automated systems—well, there’s inevitably going to be a Smithsonian exhibit. Ingrid Burrington and Brendan Byrne’s brilliant new speculative fiction newsletter—which received support from the Mozilla Foundation, and which we’re thrilled to share the first installment here today—collects the dispatches of an architecture critic with personal ties to the bloody conflict who is assigned to review the museum’s new Reconciliation Wing.

The authors explain: “The Training Commission is a speculative fiction newsletter about the compromises and consequences of applying technological solutionism to collective trauma. The USA, still reeling from a civil war colloquially referred to as the Shitstorm, has adopted an algorithmic society to free the nation from the pain of governing itself.” It’s also a hell of a story. There will be six installments in all, arriving weekly—subscribe here to receive the next five direct, as they say, to your inbox. Enjoy. -the ed

From: Aoife T <[email protected]> Subject: re: This is a bad idea Date: May 11, 2038 3:49 PM EDT To: Ellen Leavitt <[email protected]>

I understand why you think that would work, Ellen, but aside from generally having no interest in putting my personal life on display like that, I really don’t think me writing a tearjerker op-ed about a traumatizing exhibition display is going to get the Smithsonian to change their minds so much as convince them that the controversy will draw crowds. I’d rather deal with them through backchannels with my mom and sister on board, try to make this all go away quietly before the museum opens.

Thanks for the Kilfe token, I just saw it come through on the ledger. I’ll be running the runnable parts of the draft in my newsletter, I guess. Sorry again to let you down on this. I might have a beat on something interesting soon–too early to say but it means I think I’ll be down in DC for at least another week.

From: Aoife T <[email protected]> Subject: Some Things Don’t Belong In A Museum Date: May 12, 2038 4:30:58 PM EDT To: [email protected]

Apologies that it’s been a while since the last one of these. I’ve been busy, not successful busy, mostly pitching pieces in my new/old specialty. You’d think a contemporary moment so focused on rebuilding America would give some kind of shit about architecture, but uhm, nope.

What follows began as a review of the new Reconciliation Wing of the Smithsonian which a Very Kind Editor cherry-picked me for. It’s good to get paid to visit my hometown because, as my regular readers know, I will otherwise avoid the District like the sweaty American bog it is. I was apparently desperate enough for work to imagine the Reconciliation Wing might not feature an intersection with my own personal history, which, of course, was deeply delusional, and I took myself out of the game in a semi-dramatic fashion. Suffice to say, currently I’m fine but couldn’t really file something this incomplete so I’m sharing what parts of it could be salvaged here.

As seen from the National Mall ferry, the finally-completed Reconciliation Wing of the Smithsonian American History Museum is a major architectural interruption in the capitol’s low-lying landscape of retrofitted and elevated 20th-century buildings–which is ironic, considering how much attention went to making it seamlessly connect to the natural systems of the Anacostia canals. The first new construction project on the Mall since the creation of the DC canal system, the Reconciliation Wing has been subject of curiosity not only as an opening move in historicizing the National Shitstorm (ahem, The Interstate Conflict) but also as a formal progression in post-Capitol architecture. (Unless, of course, you believe that the bare-chested, perpetually shouting hologram of Alex Jones in the rear sculpture garden of the Newseum cannot be topped.)

The wing’s designer, Kay Mangakāhia, was a controversial selection from the Smithsonian and Ashburn Institute’s open call for submissions. An intern at Bjarke Ingels Group at the time, Mangakāhia was notable not only for her age (at twenty-two, she was barely ten at the time the Ashburn Accords were even signed) but her permaculture-infused proposal. The mycelium buttresses and living fungal structures of the Reconciliation Wing are now in high demand, but it took Mangakāhia’s persistence and the algorithm’s faith in her design to reach this plateau. The thriving structure’s delicate complexity and environmental pragmatism reflect the oft-quoted line from Mangakāhia’s original proposal: “survival without poetics is a carceral existence.”

One can’t say such an attitude pervades the exhibits in the Reconciliation Wing. Upon entry, a flickering series of Extremely Relatable Human Faces projected on black plinths greet visitors. The visages display a fairly narrow scale of emotions between Makes You Think and Slight but Telling Emotional Pain but somehow they manage to be all very specific. No context is provided. Given the purpose of the wing, one might suspect that these are some of the IRL victims of what the museum seems to have decided we’re calling “The First Algorithmic Society.”

Only upon arriving at a small, dim aperture is context provided: the portraits are all visuals generated by AIs developed pre-Shitstorm, let loose to slither upstream into visitors’ phones. They cull contact info, pictures, bank account etc. and put together a monstermash of the type of person you’re most likely to have an empathetic reaction to, then plugged said persona into the the loop, along with the last fifty or so visitors’.

This led to the other journalists in attendance performing variations on the exhausted sigh, since recent years have seen around half a dozen gallery shows in NYC using some version of this shock tactic (though, to be fair, rarely with the technical success of the Reconciliation Wing). While this installation is no doubt supposed to primarily remind visitors of the prevailing ease with which corporations accessed our pocket technological unconsciousnesses pre-Ashburn, it also serves the dual purpose of showing how vulnerable Palantir’s National Firewall is to even ridiculously outdated tech. Hence why the feds keeps running that Don’t Bring Your Phone to China/Don’t Actually Go to China Ever awareness campaign. (It shouldn’t surprise you that Vera’s written about this. Read her shit!)

Next is a long, narrow room skirted on the left by an unbroken screen which features a 1990s techno-thriller code waterfall with, again, no context. On the right runs a series of pictures, videos and artifacts designed to shock viewers into clubsterbomb memories–the remnants of a Google bus retrofitted and weaponized into a battering ram, that famous photo of the National Guard standing down at one of the many early BLM standoffs (everyone remembers the photo, never the standoff), a yellowing final print edition of the Washington Post.

To be fair, the Smithsonian’s only getting a fraction of the archival materials collected by the Ashburn Institute as part of the truth and reconciliation process. (This controversy–the splintering of the archive and intra-federal agency squabbles over it–does not get a mention in the exhibition.) Of course they went with the most bombastic acquisitions. But for all the attempted sensory overload, the wall text and captions are jarringly milquetoast, acquiescing to the kind of both-sides-ism that heavily aided the collapse of consensus truths in the first place. I wondered what kind of exhibit might have emerged had the Smithsonian received the full archives of the Training Commission–side note, has anyone ever actually referred to it as the Ashburn Truth and Reconciliation Council For A New American Consensus outside of official documents? Even Darcy Lawson called it the TC in her fucking victory lap TED Talk last year. When the director of the Ashburn Institute has embraced a term originally coined and deployed by critics of the project it seems like it might be time to drop the formalities.

Presumably, the TC is at least acknowledged in the exhibition. Considering that it enabled UBI, closed (almost) every prison in the country, and effectively automated the office of the Presidency out of existence, it would have to be. But I didn’t get that far.

(Here endeth the non-article.)

As longtime readers already know, I write about architecture and design here, not my brother. In fact, I don’t write about him at all. I have no interest in following in Ciarnán Whelan’s investigative reporter footsteps or reflecting on what happened to him in any public setting. I’m hoping that by the time the Reconciliation Wing opens to the public, a particularly distasteful section of the exhibition will be revised or altogether removed. But to include something so graphic with so little warning, with such a manipulative experience design, and with the gall to strategically place tissue boxes around the space as though that’s an act of mercy? It’s cheap and insulting. It doesn’t deserve to be written about. So I didn’t write about it.

Thanks for subscribing (and reading). Depending on whether a piece an editor’s been sitting on for months ever lands I might have something old-new for you next week.

From: Aoife T <[email protected]> Subject: Deadtech from a Dead Guy Date: May 13, 2038 2:31:58 AM EDT To: Avi Huerta <[email protected]>

Avi,

Did you read my last stringr newsletter? I mean, probably not by now since it just went out like under twelve hours ago and you have a small excellent child. But I can’t sleep, and you’re the kind of person who might be able to help but you also probably should read that first for context. (And, as context for the context, most of what’s below is what I wrote in a fugue state before realizing that I couldn’t send it to my editor.)

So I knew the real reason I got a press pass to the Reconciliation Wing preview wasn’t my bylines so much as my real last name. The press tour minders were practically levitating with morbid curiosity when I arrived. I managed to ditch them, lingering and checking photo credits (nerd) by about halfway through the exhibit. This meant, thankfully, that there was no one around when I turned the corner into the section I had secretly hoped wouldn’t be included: the tragic death of renowned journalist Ciarnán Whelan while embedded with the Last Luddite Revolutionary Guard, declared here by the museum to be a “turning point” in the Interstate Conflict.

I mean, I was expecting some triggering bullshit, but I wasn’t expecting the audacity of how it was delivered. Instead of taking the larger-than-life screen approach with that portrait everyone loves to use of him or a slo-mo attempt to make a snuff film elegiac, I got a fucking push notification on my phone from the museum AI.

“Please be advised that the following content may be disturbing to some,” it read. It turned out that wasn’t a notice to give you a fucking choice, just a preamble before the video started to play and I was fucking thirteen years old again, staring at my palm and a video of my big dumb reporter brother using his “serious correspondent voice” I always made fun of, just outside a New Mexico Facebook data center embedded with the Ludds. People forget how long the broadcast ran before the too-good-for-a-minor-militia “DIY” quadcopter IED actually hit. (This was, of course, the video that was broadcast on Facebook Live, the one that people said Facebook tweaked the algo to downrank when their role in the attack became clear. It didn’t work. As the wall text accurately notes, most people, like me, saw it live.)

The wall displays telegraphed the rest of it, though mostly I’m just guessing from what I vaguely remember seeing spinning on the walls in front of me right before I blacked out mid-panic attack. 90% sure they have a shot of Faraday Fields under construction, which should amuse you; also seemed like they get into the conspiracy theory/ies, which probably won’t.

I woke up in a basement office of the old Smithsonian, somewhere far below the canals. A slouchy middle-aged guy with no hair on his head and a throwback 2010s beard was sitting by the door, scrolling through his phone. “Welcome back,” he said, gesturing toward an ancient percolator with the elan of a long-suffering mid-level bureaucrat. The coffee smelled about as appealing as Anacostia scumwater, but I was too tired to turn it down.

I asked if I’d been out long, a little thrown that the Smithsonian’s idea of first aid was depositing me in an office with some rando who I definitely hadn’t seen on the press tour.

“A little more than an hour. The tour’s over. If you want to see the rest of it I can take you around in a bit.” Eyes a little too steady on me, he took the smallest sip of coffee from a mug which read No Taxation Without Input/Output. “You’re a good writer. I subscribe to your Stringr.”

“No shit, thanks man. What’s your name?”

“I was surprised to hear you took this gig,” he added, “Considering.” My face must have done something because he ducked his head slightly and said, “Sorry. Just came out.”

“Nothing new. Half my subscribers are legacy leftovers. Pity’s a driving force in my economic security, if you wanna call it that.”

His face compressed into a porpoise’s little O. “That can’t be true.”

(It’s true, shut up Avi, it’s true.)

I sipped some of the coffee, letting him know via performative sigh that it was shit. “So what’s your deal, guy? You volunteer to babysit me while I’m unconscious to fanboi out here or is this like your actual job?”

Said guy did some seriously inscrutable facial muscle constrictions, which I studied as an example of how not to behave towards formerly unconscious people. Then he smiled suddenly and said, “I have to get back to work.” He raised his eyebrows, actually raised his eyebrows, and gestured at the door.

“Well,” I said, standing a little unsteadily, blowing on and sipping the rough coffee one last time. “Thanks for the hospitality, I guess.” I watched him watch my right hand replace the coffee cup. I was pissed at myself that it couldn’t stop trembling, and I was pissed at him for noticing it. “You know whoever designed that section on my brother?”

“No.”

“You know who approved it?”

He thought about that a second. “Yes.”

“Do me a favor and tell them it’s manipulative and crass? That no one fucking needs to relive that?”

He nodded once, looking down at his coffee. I left before he could put his foot in his mouth again. Outside, in a arcing, narrow corridor I turned to see the name on the door: John Temblaine Paulson.

Shockingly, my phone had already synched up with the Smithsonian’s wayfinding platform, which guided me up two separate elevators then shunted me out a service exit onto Mangakāhia’s rhizomatic terrace. I took about three steps before palming my juul out of my bag and putting it to my lips, automatically clicking the button and drawing in hard before realizing that I had clicked no button and was drawing around an object which was definitely not providing me with a long-overdue nicotine hit.

It was a USB stick. The kind you might use in, like, 2008. Dead tech, and it looked it: scarred light purple shell and a connector skewed so hard I doubted its operability.

Avi, you are well aware that I have a fairly disordered work/home/personal life, but you’ve known me long enough to know my bag is always ordered. And never have I put a USB stick in my bag. Never have I, as an adult, even used a USB stick, much less carried one on my person. So John Temblaine Paulson had, quite obviously, stuck it in there.

Recalling his idle phone-scrolling when I came to and the inscrutable creepy expressions, I concluded the guy probably filmed me passed out in his office chair as some weird sex thing, then put that video on the USB somehow and left in my bag to taunt me.

Which, as I type this, sounds kind of insane but I was also coming off a blackout induced by re-watching my brother’s livestreamed murder, so logical conclusions weren’t exactly in reach. Plus the only thing in my stomach at that point was that shit museum coffee.

As I returned to the museum entrance the elderly docent who’d processed my credentials two hours ago welcomed me with a smile that demonstrated she’d completely forgotten who I was. “Lemme tell you about the kind of people you got working here,” I spat. “John Temblaine Paulson, that weird old pervert, how could you just let him–”

“John?” said the docent.

“–scoop me up like I was a puppy or something like small and stupid and throw me over his shoulder like a sack of onions or whatever he did, maybe he used a handtruck–”

“Paulson?”

“–and just spirit me down to his little serial killer sanctum and video me while I was passed out in his shitty little Federal-ass stiff-ass chair–”

“Temblaine?”

“Yeah, don’t even try to tell me you don’t know him.”

“Of course I know him, dear. He’s in Iceland for the month.”

That set me back, my jaw going while my brain stopped, and, luckily, nothing more coming out of my mouth. The docent smiled at me like she was worried I might be about to stroke out. “There’s no one in his office then?” I mumbled.

“Oh, that should be locked,” said the docent, but she was catching up and looking all concerned. “Were you there? In Mr. Tembaline Paulson’s office? Did someone take you there?”

And here, embarrassed and out of it yet suddenly aware of my own behavior, I was saying things like I’m confused, I think, apologies, you don’t remember who I am do you? and backing out of the lobby. With the docent oozing concerned utterances in my general direction, I fled through Mangakāhia’s rhizomes and caught a ferry back to the sliver of shipping container I’d reserved on the Marion Barry Inlet (of course I didn’t tell my mom I was in town, fuck’s sake). Wrote the article, cut off the part marked HAZARD PERSONAL SHIT, sent the other chunk to Ellen, fell asleep for three hours, woke up, wrote Ellen an email saying the article was shit, and then she said no it wasn’t but yeah she couldn’t run it, and then spent the rest of the night listening to the arrhythmic thud of water against the container hull and hating myself.

I tried to clear my head this morning by heading up to Air and Space. I know, I know you fucking hate that place, but my childhood nostalgia still beats out my discomfort at imperialist propaganda. It’s one of the last places in this city where I can actually space out.

You’ll be shocked to hear this is directly related to Ciarnán taking me there routinely as a key part of Big Brother Babysitting. Specifically, the museum’s second floor, where an exposed platform lets you look down on various high points of colonialist engineering. There’s a glass partition that I’d press against, as if there was nothing between me and the immense sun-drenched lacuna beneath us, Ciarnán at the ready just in case the glass shattered under the stress of my little form.

For just a minute, fingers dragging the smudging glass, now knee-height, looking down at the overlit off-season emptiness, I felt like I just might fall, like I just might be pulled back.

When I returned to the world somewhere around the Drone Wing, my phone buzzed insistently with one of FBUS’ all-hands alerts. Automatically I obeyed and was rewarded with not-John Temblain Paulson’s face enclosed in a little blue box. “Ashburn Institute staffer found dead in Potomac.” As my eyes blurred the images and my upper back instinctively scrunched into a defensive hunch, my hand curled around the USB stick still shoved in my pocket, fingernail scouring it again and again as if that might reveal whatever was stored inside.

So: can I come visit? Whatever this guy wanted me to see was apparently important enough to fake his way into the Smithsonian, and if I hand the USB to the case workers I’ll probably never find out what’s on it. You, on the other hand, have an oracular way with the dead tech, and who knows, maybe it’ll have some fun dirt on our New Algorithmic Society we can send to a real journalist or whatever. I mean, it’s probably not real spooky ops shit. But if it is, it’ll at least be interesting, right?

The Training Commission syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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tendance-news · 6 years

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JERUSALEM — Palestinians burned photos of President Trump in Gaza, and the walls of the Old City were illuminated with the American and Israeli flags on Wednesday, as Mr. Trump made good on his campaign pledge to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In a much-anticipated speech from the White House, Mr. Trump argued that it was “the right thing to do” to acknowledge the reality that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government. Decades of avoiding that fact, he said, has done little to resolve the protracted feud between Israelis and Palestinians.

“It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result,” Mr. Trump declared. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he said, is “a long overdue step to advance the peace process.”

Mr. Trump said that the United States still wanted a negotiated peace agreement — and “would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides” — and that he was not seeking to dictate the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the fiercely contested Holy City.

“There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement,” the president said. He appealed for “calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate.”

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem isolates the United States on one of the world’s most sensitive diplomatic issues. It drew a storm of criticism from Arab and European leaders, including some of America’s closest allies.

Many said that Mr. Trump’s move was destabilizing, that it risked setting off violence and that it would make achieving peace even more difficult. It also threw into doubt his ability to maintain the United States’ longstanding role as a mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mr. Trump’s break with policy and international consensus included setting into motion a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Although that will not happen right away, Palestinians saw it as a deep affront.

Photo

Israeli border police patrolling the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Credit

Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, a veteran of the peace process, said bitterly that the United States had effectively scrapped it. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called for the abandonment of a two-state solution altogether.

Among Israelis, however, Mr. Trump’s announcement drew praise, not only from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government but also from liberal opposition leaders. “The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video, calling Mr. Trump’s decision “courageous and just” and “an important step towards peace.”

Yair Lapid, the leader of Yesh Atid, a center-left opposition party, said: “Policies should not be dictated by threats and intimidation. If violence is the only argument against moving the embassy to Jerusalem, then it only proves it is the right thing to do.”

Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, said American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “shows that Israel’s strategic patience has paid off.”

“We have been told again and again that if we want more acceptance, we have to cut off parts of Israel and hand them over to our enemies,” he said. “What we are learning is the contrary: The world respects strong countries who believe in themselves and looks down on countries willing to give up their homeland.”

Yet Israelis also braced for violence, as some Palestinian leaders urged a third intifada, or armed uprising.

Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions called a general strike for Thursday, urging residents of the West Bank and Gaza to join marches in every city, and officials said the Palestinian schools would be closed. Hamas, an Islamic militant group, said Mr. Trump’s decision would “open the gates of hell,” and Islamic Jihad called it a “declaration of war.”

By late Wednesday night, there were only scattered, unconfirmed reports of gunfire and clashes with security forces in several West Bank cities.

Video

Why Jerusalem Is So Contested

President Trump declared recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Here’s why that’s so fraught.

By CAMILLA SCHICK on

Publish Date

December 5, 2017. Photo by Oded Balilty/Associated Press. Watch in Times Video »

Embed

But the United States Consulate General in Jerusalem barred American government employees and their families from visiting Jerusalem’s Old City and the West Bank, including Bethlehem, already decorated for Christmas. Government workers were permitted to conduct essential travel only. American citizens were advised to avoid crowds.

In Jordan, the United States Embassy said it had suspended routine public services, limited the public movements of employees and their families and instructed them not to send their children to school on Thursday.

But even as Arab and Muslim leaders across the Middle East condemned Mr. Trump’s announcement, doubts were raised about the stamina of the anger. The Palestinian issue, long a binding force in Arab politics, has slipped in importance in recent years, overshadowed by other conflicts. Still, the American decision risked a backlash with unpredictable consequences.

Palestinians across the political spectrum said Mr. Trump’s decision was so biased toward Israel that he had irrevocably harmed his administration’s ability to be seen as a fair broker.

Analysts noted that Mr. Trump had said nothing about Palestinian aspirations to make East Jerusalem the capital of a state side-by-side with Israel.

Mr. Trump made no distinction between the western portions of the city and East Jerusalem. The Old City landmarks he invoked — the Western Wall holy to Jews, the stations of the cross sacred to Christians, and Al-Aqsa mosque, which is cherished by Muslims — are all east of the 1967 line, in what the rest of the world still considers occupied territory, said Nathan Thrall, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Trump’s formulation that the United States “would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides,” too, amounted to a rolling back of United States policy flatly supporting a two-state solution, said Daniel Kurtzer, a Princeton professor and former ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.

“There’s really not much for Abbas to hang onto if he wanted to stay in the game with the U.S.,” Mr. Kurtzer said.

U.S. Embassy Relocation

President Trump said he would begin preparations to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

25 Miles

LEBANON

GOLAN

HEIGHTS

Mediterranean

Sea

Proposed move

of U.S. Embassy

WEST

BANK

Tel Aviv

Jerusalem

JORDAN

GAZA

STRIP

Dead

Sea

ISRAEL

EGYPT

By The New York Times

Mr. Trump’s decision was driven by a campaign pledge. He appealed to evangelicals and ardently pro-Israel American Jews when running for president in 2016 by vowing to move the embassy. Advisers said he was determined to make good on his word.

But the president still plans to sign a national security waiver to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for an additional six months, even as the relocation plan moves ahead.

White House officials argued that Mr. Trump’s decision would bolster his credibility as a peacemaker by showing he can be trusted to deliver on promises. They also argued that by taking the contentious issue of Jerusalem off the table, Mr. Trump had removed a recurring source of ambiguity.

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Those arguments were rejected by Mr. Abbas, who said in a televised speech Wednesday night that Mr. Trump’s actions “constitute a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts” and amounted to a “withdrawal” from America’s role.

The decisions on the embassy and recognition of Jerusalem “also reward Israel for denying agreements and defying international resolutions, and encourage Israel to pursue the policy of occupation, settlement, apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” Mr. Abbas said, speaking in Arabic that was translated by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.

Yet the Palestinians, weak and divided, did not appear to have many good options or any clear, ready response.

Some raised the idea of severing security cooperation with Israel, but that cooperation also helps preserve Mr. Abbas’s authority. And breaking more forcefully with the United States could jeopardize the vast sums of aid the Palestinian Authority receives from Washington.

Mr. Abbas said he would focus on reconciliation efforts with Hamas to face the new challenge. But the American declaration could actually hurt those efforts.

Photo

Protesters burning Israeli and American flags in Gaza City on Wednesday.

Credit

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

“This development will push Hamas to become more hard-line,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank. “Abbas will not change his political line, so the gap will grow.”

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer-activist and former aide to Mr. Abbas, said the peace process had failed him. “He has to switch tactics,” she said, pointing to international measures like the boycott-divestment-sanctions campaign and pressing charges against Israelis in the International Criminal Court.

“Doing nothing is no longer an option,” she said.

Mr. Thrall, the analyst, said the two-state strategy had been losing credibility among Palestinians for some time, particularly among the young. And Mr. Trump’s actions, he said, would push more Palestinians toward what he called “a rights-based struggle for equality,” and “a one-state, South African model for Palestinians.”

“Nothing better symbolizes for Palestinians the idiocy of the strategy that their leaders have been pursuing and the absolute fruitlessness of it than what just happened at the White House today,” he said.

Israel’s standing in the world generally suffers when there is no prospect of peace negotiations. But Israelis on both the right and left dismissed the notion that Mr. Trump’s declaration was a death knell.

The right described it as more of a reality check. “It doesn’t matter what Trump says,” said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, a conservative think tank. “It matters if the Palestinians are ready to compromise on this issue or not.”

Still, Mr. Netanyahu could now face a new set of political problems from Mr. Trump’s announcement, including increased pressure from key allies to press Israel’s advantage over the Palestinians.

Already, there is a push to redraw the boundaries of Jerusalem to eject much of its Arab population and add tens of thousands of residents to Israeli settlements.

“The problem he’s going to have is, will he now be able to control the appetites of those in his coalition who want to do even more?” Mr. Kurtzer said.

Others warned that Israel might have to pay a price down the road if Mr. Trump — assuming he is serious about peacemaking — offers a concession to the Palestinians.

“The next time Trump wants something from Israel,” said Nachman Shai, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, “I’d like to see who will say no.”

#IFTTT #Blogger

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rightsinexile · 7 years

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Central African Republic waiting for peace: On the issues with Fiona Mangan and Igor Acko

This Q&A with Fiona Mangan and Igor Acko was published by staff at the United States Institute of Peace, and originally appeared on the United States Institute of Peace website on 6 December 2016. This piece is reprinted here in full with permission.

Nine months after the Central African Republic (CAR) held free, peaceful and democratic elections for president and parliament, the country continues to struggle for stability and progress. Half of the country remains in need of humanitarian aid, and an increase in violent incidents since September threatens to destabilise any progress made to date. At the end of November, clashes between factions of the ex-Séléka, a formerly united alliance of primarily Muslim armed groups, left 85 dead, 76 injured, and 11,000 newly displaced. The targeting of a specific ethnic group in the fighting, the Muslim Fulani/Peuhl community, raises concerns of a descent into ethnic cleansing such as occurred in early 2014. United States Institute of Peace (USIP) experts Fiona Mangan and Igor Acko discuss the current status of armed groups, the barriers to disarmament, and continued international engagement in CAR.

Mangan recently returned from nine months in CAR, where she served as USIP’s country representative. Acko, a sociologist and analyst, coordinates the institute’s programming and research in CAR in an effort to curb the violence that has long plagued the country.

It has been four years since the then-united Séléka began an insurgency that seized power for a time, provoking prolonged retaliatory fighting with primarily Christian and animist self-defense groups known since then as the Anti-Balaka. Despite disarmament talks with the government, armed factions control much of the countryside, and deadly sectarian tensions persist. The Ugandan and French troops that had provided much-needed security and stability are pulling out.

Can you provide us an overview of the situation today in the Central African Republic?

Mangan: The Central African Republic is trying to rebuild after having experienced repeated waves of violent conflict over the past 20 years. President Faustin Archange Touadéra took office in March 2016 following peaceful elections, and he set as his top priority getting the country’s array of armed groups to drop their weapons. He has made some effort to engage armed group leaders in negotiating a process for disarming, demobilising and reintegrating their fighters, but has been unwilling to engage on key demands of the armed groups. As a result, certain crucial factions refuse to go along with the proposal and the reality is that they continue to control large parts of the country.

In addition, ongoing violence and insecurity prevent the return of the nearly one million people displaced by the conflict either internally in CAR or as refugees in neighbouring countries. Under these conditions, it’s very hard to work toward state-building and national reconciliation.

What makes disarmament so challenging in CAR?

Acko: Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) is a challenging process in any post-conflict context, but CAR's history makes it even more so. There were two previous agreements for DDR of armed groups in CAR that were never carried out. There was a lot of talk, a lot of planning, but the fighting continued. The government promised the fighters a DDR process but it never arrived, and many simply took up arms again. Now with a third agreement signed in 2015, there is still no clear plan to put it into effect. We have a new president who says a lot of the right things, but we need to see those words turned into action.

Do you see any hopeful signs for a more peaceful future and more effective government?

Mangan: The successful presidential election was a key event. The country is more stable. Some violent incidents that previously might have spiraled into broader conflict have been managed and controlled a bit better. But recent attacks are a concerning sign of more instability to come. It remains concerning that incidents like assassinations, kidnappings, and reprisal attacks continue among armed groups.

There is a dangerous cycle of violence in CAR. Each time an incident occurs—whether conflict-related or not—rival armed groups respond with disproportionate force, fueling periodic upsurges in violence. Most citizens are exhausted by war, impatient for progress and frustrated by lack of action. The honeymoon is definitely over for the new government.

What is the focus of USIP’s work in CAR and what are the results so far?

Mangan: USIP is encouraging the government to actively consult citizens as it shapes policy. This work was inspired by what we saw at the Bangui Forum—a big, national dialogue convened in May 2015 by transitional President Catherine Samba-Panza. In the run-up to the forum, citizens were asked, for the first time in CAR’s history, what they wanted, and their responses fed into the peace process.

This kind of citizen engagement shouldn’t only happen every ten years when there’s a crisis. Governance is a conversation. So we set up a national-level group of senior civil servants and civil society and had them travel outside the capital to connect with local-level activities to foster consultation that we were carrying out in four towns.

Acko: We explored a number of different methodologies for building effective citizen consultation in CAR. One focused on facilitated dialogue, where citizens had the opportunity to discuss community security issues, talk through local solutions and pass key messages, needs and desires to the central government. We also used participatory art, music, theatre and documentary filmmaking as a form of research and consultation. Our final project component involved more classic research—interviews with the population, the authorities, the international community and the armed groups—to analyse the conflict and the security situation.

Can you talk a bit more about the process of “demobilising, disarming, and reintegrating” the armed groups into society—“DDR,” as it's known?

Mangan: In the Central African Republic, they've added a second “R” to their DDR plan, covering the believed need for repatriation of "foreigners" involved in armed groups. Mercenaries from neighboring countries were involved in the coup that brought the Séléka to power in 2013 and in previous coups, too. Many CAR officials and citizens believe that getting them out of the current conflict is key to the DDR process, but it is very complex. Neighbouring countries may not take them back as many of them were involved in rebel movements at home.

The issue has also provoked a crisis over identity and the question of who is a Central African. Many of the mercenaries came to fight with the predominantly Muslim Séléka, provoking a backlash against the Muslim community in general, which make up approximately 15% of the population. Even before this latest conflict, there has long been discrimination against the Muslim community, with many being labeled foreigners, even when families have been in the country for generations. Additionally, some mercenaries associated with former coups were integrated into the armed forces and thus gained some legitimacy. It will be very complicated to manage, and there is real sensitivity around that repatriation issue.

What are some obstacles to DDR and what incentives can be offered to armed groups to quit the conflict?

Acko: Incentives are hard to figure out because they are tied to the obstacles, which include the conflict’s economic drivers. The armed groups’ leaders are accumulating wealth from the conflict through control of the cattle market, extortion, road taxes and mining of gold and diamonds. Neighbouring states such as Chad, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon have links to different factions reaping some benefit, too. The last two attempts at disarmament involved basically a programme of cash for guns, so the armed groups mistakenly expect that again. This time, the idea is to provide economic opportunities for demobilised fighters to really get them out of the conflict. The United Nations stabilisation force is helping the government implement DDR.

Mangan: For the armed group commanders, who would have to order demobilisation, we’re going to need something more substantial. Someone exacting USD 10,000 a day by taxing the cattle market and mounting tolls on key roads isn’t going to be enticed by offers to help set up a farm or small shop. There will need to be greater incentives for such individuals, deal-making or steps taken to put the conflict economy beyond play, preventing armed groups from controlling key marketplaces and the diamond fields.

A central demand of the armed groups is for integration into the security sector, in part to better balance its regional, ethnic and religious composition. This is a vital incentive but it is difficult—the army is a damaged organisation, as are the police and the gendarmerie, which will struggle to integrate former combatants. Finally, greater political integration and inclusion of traditionally excluded Muslim communities, especially in the northeast, also is a longstanding grievance of armed groups that needs attention.

Are you concerned the international community will lose interest in CAR and feel the job is done after the election?

Mangan: Yes. We've seen this elsewhere. After a successful election, the international community seems to decide a country is fixed, and realistically CAR is not of wide strategic interest. CAR is one of those countries that unfortunately receives attention at crisis points but not much support in between, support that might move it ahead. In recent history, there have been two DDR failures there. We need to support this process on the ground and not lose interest at a critical juncture.

What’s happening with the Ugandan troops who, with help from US special operations forces, deployed to CAR to stamp out the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)?

Mangan: Only an estimated 120 LRA fighters are left in CAR, but they’re bush people and hard to track. Despite LRA activity, the southeast has been the most stable part of CAR in the past few years because Séléka never moved into the area, in part because of the US and Ugandan forces’ presence. Now the Ugandans are talking about pulling out. They don’t see it as an important part of their foreign policy anymore.

Acko: The concern is that if they withdraw quickly, it will create a security vacuum in the southeast of CAR that neither the United Nations peacekeepers nor the barely operational army could fill. This could allow the LRA to regain its strength, and potentially we could see ex-Séléka armed group factions move into those areas.

What advice would you offer the CAR government, the United Nations and international partners moving forward from the European Union-led CAR donors’ conference that took place on 17 November 2016?

Mangan: I worry the international community is replicating some of the failures of the CAR government regarding where to target aid. To deal with fallout from the most recent crisis and the hardening Muslim-Christian sectarian divide, understandably we need to focus energy on the western part of the country, where currently most international aid efforts are centered. But the historic neglect of the east and northeast is where the root grievances of this conflict lie and must be resolved. And the international community is barely there. Government and international assistance focusing attention on those areas would start to send a message that “Our government cares about us.” In time, that may help to pull citizen support away from the ex-Séléka.

Acko: I also think we need international assistance in reorganising the diamond trade. Part of what generated the most recent crisis was the decision by former President François Bozizé to close down diamond buying offices, seeking to exert personal control over the diamond economy. Many of the small miners in towns where diamonds were 80% of income suffered and opted to join the Séléka. We need to negotiate ways to develop a more well-functioning diamond trade, which will be key to bringing these fighters back into civilian society.

#Central African Republic waiting for peace: On the issues with Fiona Mangan and Igor Acko #car #refugees #february #2017

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