by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Johannesburg (South Africa) : Barack Obama has used his first high-profile speech since stepping down as US president to take swipes at “strongman politics” and politicians’ disregard for facts.
Obama on Tuesday here mounted a passionate defence of democracy and warned against the politics of the day as his successor, Donald Trump, was heavily criticised for a humiliating news conference on Monday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the BBC reported.
In his address in honour of the late Nelson Mandela ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Obama slammed populist movements toward authoritarianism around the world and ridiculed the “utter loss of shame among political leaders” who lie.
Obama, who has made an art of criticising Trump’s values without explicitly naming him, peppered his speech on Tuesday with warnings against some of his successor’s key policies, including protectionism, climate change denial and closed borders.
“The politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment is on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago,” he told the crowd of around 15,000 people in Johannesburg.
“I am not being alarmist, I’m simply stating the facts. Strongman politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretence of democracy are maintained,… those in powers seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.”
His remarks followed Trump’s news conference in Helsinki, Finland, in which the US leader sided with Putin over his own country’s intelligence agencies on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US election, the CNN reported.
Dashing expectations of him confronting Putin over the issue after the US indicted 12 Russians, accused of hacking the Democrat’s emails and computer networks to target Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Trump sort of toed the Russian line.
“You have to believe in facts. Without facts there’s no basis for cooperation. If I say this is a podium and you say this is an elephant, it’s going to be hard for us to cooperate,” he said.
“I can’t find common ground if somebody says that climate change just isn’t happening, when almost all the world’s scientists tell us it is. I don’t know where to start talking to you about this. If you say it’s an elaborate hoax, where do we start?”
He said politics today often reject the concept of objective truth. “People just make stuff up. We see it in the growth of state sponsored propaganda, internet fabrications, the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, the utter loss of shame among political leaders…,” he said, to laughter in the crowd.
Obama had opened his speech reflecting on the recent chaos of the world that gave him the opportunity to seek perspective.
“But in the strange and uncertain times that we are in — with each day’s news cycles bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines — I thought maybe it would be useful to step back for a moment and try to get some perspective,” Obama added.
He warned that the press was under attack, that censorship and state control of media is on the rise and that social media was being used to promote hate, propaganda and conspiracy theories.
“So, on Madiba’s 100 birthday, we now stand at a crossroads,” he said, using a clan name of affection for Mandela.
He said that there was a choice between two visions of humanity’s future that the world must choose between.
“Let me tell you what I believe. I believe in Nelson Mandela’s vision, I believe in a vision shared by (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Martin Luther) King (Jr), and Abraham Lincoln,” he said.
He talked about equality and justice and freedom and multi-racial democracy built on the premise that all people were created equal and were endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Obama’s speech at the 16th annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, is one of his highest-profile appearances and his first return to Africa since he left office in 2017.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump’s administration has rescinded seven Obama-era policy guidelines that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses.
In a joint letter, the Education and Justice Departments said on Tuesday that the guidelines “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution”, reports The New York Times.
“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and, in some instances, stays on the books for decades,” said Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote in a separate statement: “The Supreme Court has determined what affirmative action policies are constitutional, and the court’s written decisions are the best guide for navigating this complex issue.
“Schools should continue to offer equal opportunities for all students while abiding by the law.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the guidelines, published by former President Barack Obama’s administration between 2009 and 2016, were “unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper”, reports Efe news.
He said his decision was based on an executive order that Trump signed in February 2017 and which required the creation of committees within government agencies to identify, revoke or modify regulations they considered unnecessary.
The Supreme Court ruled in favour of affirmative action in 2016, but it has been a controversial issue in the United States for decades.
The Trump administration’s move comes a few months before a court is expected to rule in October on a highly anticipated case which is pitting the Harvard University against Asian-American students.
The students have accused Harvard of systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races.
Democrats and civil rights organisations denounced the administration’s decisions.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said the “rollback of vital affirmative action guidance offends our nation’s values” and called it “yet another clear Trump administration attack on communities of colour”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Former US President Barack Obama was in advanced negotiations with Netflix to produce a series of high-profile shows that will provide him a global platform after his departure from the White House, a media report said.
Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service, which has nearly 118 million subscribers worldwide, The New York Times quoted informed sources as saying on Thursday.
The number of episodes and the formats for the shows have not been decided.
Obama does not intend to use his Netflix shows to directly respond to President Donald Trump or conservative critics, according to the sources.
They said the Obamas had talked about producing shows that highlight inspirational stories.
But the Netflix deal, while not a direct answer to Fox News or Breitbart.com, would give Obama an unfiltered method of communication with the public similar to the audiences he already reaches through social media, with 101 million Twitter followers and 55 million people who have liked his Facebook page.
“President and Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire,” Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to the former president, said on Thursday.
“Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”
Executives from Apple and Amazon, which have their own streaming services, have also expressed interest in talking with Obama about content deals, The New York Times quoted the sources as saying.
The deal between Netflix and Obama would be a modern media twist on an approach that former politicians have tried in the past.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Barack Obama
Washington : Two more Republican-led congressional committees have launched investigations into a deal on selling part of US uranium production capability to a Russian state-run energy company by the then Barack Obama administration.
Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday that he would be linking up with the House Oversight panel in the probe of the deal, Xinhua news agency reported.
The news came days after reports suggesting that under the Obama era, there was a broader bribery plot around the deal in Russia’s bid to gain a foothold in the US energy industry.
The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee has already said it would look into the case.
In response, Democrats widely dismissed the issue as a GOP attempt to distract from the ongoing investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the US 2016 presidential campaign.
On Monday, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, called the reports questioning the sale of US uranium mines to Russia “baloney”.
The deal was reached during her time as secretary of state.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Scott Pruitt, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said he will on Tuesday formally announce a repeal of the Clean Power Plan, a signature effort by former US President Barack Obama to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“The war on coal is over,” Pruitt said in a televised speech at an event in the US coal state of Kentucky on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Tomorrow in Washington D.C., I’ll be signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule.”
Pruitt claimed that the Obama administration was “using every bit of power, every bit of authority to use the EPA to pick winners and losers in how we generate electricity in this country. And that’s wrong.”
A copy of the leaked proposal obtained by US media showed that Pruitt will scrap the plan citing reasons that it “exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority.”
“The EPA welcomes comment on the legal interpretation addressed in this proposed rulemaking,” wrote the leaked proposal.
Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator under Obama who released the Clean Power Plan, said in a statement that a proposal to repeal it “without any timeline or even a commitment to propose a rule to reduce carbon pollution, isn’t a step forward.”
“It’s a wholesale retreat from EPA’s legal, scientific and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change,” McCarthy said.
“The (current) administration is using contrived problems with our energy system to take money out of consumers’ pockets and giving it to fossil fuel companies, so they can force a shift away from clean energy and back to dirty fossil fuel,” she said.
The Obama administration issued the plan in October 2015, requiring coal-fired power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. However, the US Supreme Court voted five to four later to put it on hold.
In March this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, directing the EPA to “suspend, revise, or rescind” the Obama-era rule.
Trump, who once called climate change a “hoax,” also announced in June that his country will leave the Paris Agreement on curbing global warming.
His position on climate change was met with widespread criticism both at home and abroad.
A US environmental organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, tweeted that the Clean Power Plan is the most important step the US has ever taken to curb dangerous impacts from climate change and that if the plan is repealed, it will take the EPA to court.
Myron Ebell, head of the non-profit libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, however, cheered the repeal as a step “designed to get the economy moving again.”
“If it had gone into effect, the ‘Clean Power’ Plan rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas power plants would have been one of the most expensive regulations ever imposed, causing electric rates for consumers to go up and threatening the reliability of the electric grid,” he said in a statement.
—IANS
