Trump's worldwide war on abortion

Al Jazeera English

"Population control", as defined by the Collins English Dictionary, is "a policy of attempting to limit the growth in numbers of a population, esp[ecially] in poor or densely populated parts of the world, by programmes of contraception or sterilisation".

The current "pro-life" regime of United States President Donald Trump, of course, is no fan of such programmes. But it is all about controlling human populations and behaviour worldwide in accordance with unhinged religio-imperialist visions - many of them especially damaging to the poor. 

In 2017, for example, the Trump administratiodramatically discontinuedfinancial support for that diabolically radical outfit known as the United Nations Population Fund, which is allegedly attempting to overthrow civilisation by promoting abortion and other evils.

That same year hosted the unveiling of the "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance" policy, which cuts US government funding to foreign NGOs considered to be involved in abortion work. 

A vastly more punishing version of the so-called "global gag rule" that has been regularly implemented by Republican presidents since 1984, the policy now also applies to organisations that work across a range of health issues. In short, this means that an NGO dealing with HIV/Aids, cancer, malaria, tuberculosis, gender-based violence, and so on cannot receive US funds for these activities if it also chooses to inform patients about the existence of abortion as a possible method of family planning.

So much for "protecting life" - not that such a noble concept would ever really be expected of a government that specialises in slaughtering people around the world. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Please Don’t Embarrass Our Apartheid State

Jacobin

This month, Israel’s new education minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz came out as a fan of “gay conversion therapy,” a technique that “tries to change someone’s sexual orientation through psychological and spiritual means and even electroshocks.”

In an Israeli television interview, Peretz stressed his faith in the abominable practice, and even suggested that he had personally done his part to push potential converts in that direction.

Peretz, a former helicopter pilot in the Israeli air force and head of a yeshiva in the Gaza Strip prior to the so-called Israeli disengagement of 2005, served as the army’s chief rabbi from 2010 to 2016 and has twelve children. This year, he became leader of the Jewish Home party as well as the Union of Right-Wing Parties (if ever there was a more endearing union!). In the run-up to Israel’s general election this April, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu enthusiastically nurtured the bond between Jewish Home and other even more whack-job circles, seeking to boost his own chances of forming a majority government.

In the aftermath of the gay conversion therapy spectacle, however, Netanyahu has felt the need to reprimand Peretz for “unacceptable” comments that don’t reflect the government’s position. Of course, it is still entirely acceptable for Israel to shoot Palestinian children in the head and bomb hospitals. Indeed, while the torrent of criticism presently directed at Peretz is certainly well-deserved, the credentials of many of his critics are — as with Netanyahu — less than impeccable.

The Times of Israel catalogues some key soundbites from the uproar, such as Labor leader Amir Peretz’s contention that the education minister’s remarks were “neither humane nor Jewish” — a sentiment that is, on its own terms, entirely accurate, yet tragically silly within the context of Israeli brutality and Amir Peretz’s own history.

This particular Peretz served as Israeli defense minister during the 2006 war on Lebanon that killed some 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, in thirty-four days. Following Israel’s attack on the south Lebanese village of Qana — which even the New York Times described as an event “the survivors will remember . . .  as the day their children died” — Amir Peretz appeared before the Knesset to express his “regret [at] the outcome”: “We will not hesitate to investigate this incident [that] claimed so many lives, in order to learn how to prevent loss of life in the future. We are not doing this to make a good impression on anyone. We are doing it for ourselves, for our own moral conscience.”

Clearly, the Israeli moral conscience hadn’t evolved much since Israel’s military attack on the very same village in 1996, which obliterated 106 refugees sheltering at a United Nations compound — half of them children. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.

The UAE’s latest soap opera - and what was that about women’s rights?

Middle East Eye

Earlier this summer, Palestinian-Dutch-American supermodel Bella Hadid posted an Instagram Story featuring her shoe against a backdrop of an airport runway on which an Emirati and Saudi airplane were parked.

This led to calamity as Twitter erupted in accusations of Hadid’s “racism”. Of course, if photographing footwear is racist, one can only surmise as to what the proper descriptor might be for the manic Saudi-Emirati bombardment and starvation of Yemen.

Meanwhile, in other Gulf-related news of the rich and famous, the United Arab Emirates was recently dealt another underhanded blow by its very own Princess Haya, the sixth-or-so wife of Dubai ruler and prolific poet Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

The princess, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, is currently reportedly “in hiding” in an £85m ($106m) townhouse in London, where, according to a source cited by the New York Times, she is seeking political asylum as well as a divorce.

There are varying hypotheses as to the motives behind Princess Haya’s flight, many involving the idea that she had “discovered disturbing facts” (BBC) about last year’s failed escape attempt by Sheikha Latifa, one of Sheikh al-Maktoum’s numerous offspring, who was intercepted off the coast of India and forcibly returned to the UAE.

As the New York Times notes, Princess Haya is “at least the third woman to flee Sheikh Mohammed’s palaces in Dubai”. Granted, given the present context of Europe’s lethal war on refugees, one might find it difficult to muster much empathy on behalf of someone pursuing political asylum from within an £85m property in the UK.

But the defection of Princess Haya - not to mention less-high-profile escapes from the UAE of females claiming domestic abuse - is at least as good an occasion as any to contemplate the Emirates’ self-portrayal as an island of women’s rights in the midst of a gulf of oppression. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

The Mainstream Media Is Aiding Trump’s Saber-Rattling

Jacobin

On July 7, the New York Times produced an alarming headline: “Iran Announces New Breach of Nuclear Deal Limits and Threatens Further Violations.” The “breach,” we were told — which would enable the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium above the 3.67 percent limit set by the 2015 deal — “inches Iran closer to where it was before the accord: on the path to being able to produce an atomic bomb.” To hell, then, with the assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had been on no such path.

Other media outlets blared similar alerts. CBS News went with the headline “Iran ignores Trump’s warning, breaks another nuclear deal limit on uranium enrichment,” while the Associated Press opted for “Iran breaches key uranium enrichment limit in nuclear deal.” Politico spotlighted Iran’s “brazen move” in a dispatch titled “Trump will have to settle on a strategy after Iran violates 2015 nuclear deal,” and the New York Post editorial board charmingly contended that, because Iran is “asking for more pain by violating” the accord, “the correct response is to hit Tehran even harder.” A July 11 Newsweek op-ed fretted that “Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking once again” and advised the United States to prepare “military exercises for neutralizing Iran’s nuclear facilities and missiles.”

But wait a minute. How do you breach, violate, or break an accord that the United States already destroyed by unilaterally withdrawing from it last year? And why is the character that spearheaded the withdrawal allowed to issue warnings on the subject?

Granted, most of the articles on the “breach” do manage to mention Donald Trump’s abandonment of the accord. But this rather crucial factoid is apparently deemed not overly relevant to the overall story — which seems to be whatever the Trump administration says it is.

So much for speaking truth to power. And while Trump can foam at the mouth all he wants about the US media’s alleged hostility, they’re clearly not doing a very good job of it. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.