France's 5 main contenders in the presidential race

January 29, 2017

PARIS (AP) — A look at the five main candidates competing in France's April-May presidential election, whose outcome remains highly uncertain.

FRANCOIS FILLON, 62

Fillon won the conservative nomination in November. He's campaigning on promises of drastic free-market reforms, a hard line on immigration and Islam, support for traditional family values and friendlier ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Allegations that his wife, Penelope, held a fake but handsomely paid job as a parliamentary aide disrupted Fillon's campaign during the last week. Polls suggest his biggest obstacle to advancing in the general election may be far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

BENOIT HAMON, 49

Comparatively inexperienced, Hamon was chosen as the Socialist nominee on Sunday, defeating former Prime Minister Manuel Valls in a primary runoff.

He is a former junior minister and briefly served as education minister under President Francois Hollande. Hamon then rebelled against Hollande's shift toward more business friendly policies and left the government in 2014. His signature proposal is to give a "universal income" of 750 euros ($800) gradually to all adults.

The Socialist candidate is now squeezed between far-left and centrist rivals.

MARINE LE PEN, 48

Far-right leader Le Pen, who has strong anti-migrant views, wants to strengthen France's borders and reinstate its national currency, the franc.

Since inheriting the leadership of the National Front party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011, she has ditched its long-standing anti-Semitism to focus on economic protectionism and fears of Islam. The makeover has boosted the party's fortunes among French voters before the spring presidential election.

Early polls show Le Pen may be among the two top contenders in the first round of the two-part election and advance to the runoff.

EMMANUEL MACRON, 39

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, 39, is campaigning on pro-free market, pro-European views. He suggests loosening some of France' stringent labor rules, especially the 35-hour workweek, to boost hiring.

Macron is a former investment banker. He became Hollande's economic adviser at the Elysee Palace in 2012 and two years later, economy minister. He left the government last year after he launched his own political movement, "In Motion" (En Marche). He never has held elected office.

JEAN-LUC MELENCHON, 65

Outspoken Jean-Luc Melenchon, 65, is a former Socialist who left the party in 2008 to create his own far-left movement, the Left Party.

Presenting himself as the people's candidate, he is calling for reforms to make the European Union "more democratic" and advocates environment friendly measures. He promises a 1,300-euro ($1,393) minimum wage for employees, up from 1,149-euro ($1,231) now.

Melenchon was a candidate in the 2012 presidential race, coming in fourth with 11.1 percent of the votes in the first round.

Hard work starts now for France's Socialist candidate

January 29, 2017

PARIS (AP) — Beating a politically weakened ex-prime minister proved easy for Benoit Hamon, who will represent France's ruling Socialist Party in the country's presidential election. Far harder will be convincing voters that his hard-left platform isn't the recipe for ruin his critics claim.

Hamon's comfortable victory Sunday in a Socialist primary runoff against Manuel Valls owed much to his radical proposal to give all French adults a regular monthly income to protect them in an automated future where machines will take their jobs.

Hamon's winning margin — nearly 59 percent of the votes in the three-quarters of polling stations tallied — also appeared as a resounding rejection of unpopular outgoing President Francois Hollande and Valls, his prime minister for more than two years.

But the path forward for Hamon is littered with obstacles. First, he will have to unite the Socialists behind him, which could be heavy lifting. Divisions are deep between the party's hard-left wing, which consistently criticized Hollande and Valls policies, and the advocates of more center-left views.

Another major challenge for Hamon will be negotiating with fiery far-left leader and fellow presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is trying to attract votes from disappointed Socialists. Hamon is proposing a coalition with Melenchon that might have a better chance of winning the general election.

Hamon will also face tough competition from outspoken centrist Emmanuel Macron, who has found increasing popularity with his pro-business views. Such are the left's divisions that some Valls supporters may now shift to Macron's independent run for the presidency.

The outcome of the two-round vote in April and May looks increasingly uncertain. Leading conservative candidate Francois Fillon, who also is a former prime minister, was rocked in the past week by allegations that his wife, Penelope, held a fake but handsomely paid job as a parliamentary aide. Financial prosecutors are investigating.

At a campaign rally in Paris on Sunday — where a boisterous crowd gave Penelope Fillon a standing ovation and chanted her name, Fillon said, "We have nothing to hide." "Through Penelope they are trying to break me," he said. "I will never forgive those who chose to throw us to the wolves."

A priority for Hamon, a 49-year-old former junior minister and, briefly, education minister, will be to rally the Socialists, split ideologically and wounded by Hollande's five-year tenure as president.

"Our country needs the left, but a left that is modern and innovates," Hamon said. Early polling has suggested the Socialist candidate will struggle to advance to the presidential runoff in May, where far-right leader Marine Le Pen could be waiting, campaigning on anti-Europe, anti-immigration and anti-Islam themes.

In defeat, Valls didn't throw his support behind Hamon, but cautioned against the risk of the country shifting to the right. "We refuse that tomorrow Marine Le Pen becomes the face of France," he said.

In his speech Sunday, Hamon presented himself as an anti-populist candidate who can face the "unstable world" of U.S President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and protect the French people from the terror threat posed by extremists.

The turnout on Sunday, estimated at around 2 million voters, was more robust than in the first round of voting but still suggested a lack of enthusiasm among the French electorate of 44 million. The conservative primary attracted more than 4 million voters in November.

Hamon wasn't as tainted as Valls by Hollande's unpopularity, because he rebelled and quit the government in 2014. Valls served as Hollande's prime minister for more than two years until last December, when it became clear the president couldn't win a second term. Having to defend the government's economic policies and labor reforms against Hamon proved an uphill fight for Valls.

Hamon's signature proposal for a 750 euros ($800) "universal income" that would be gradually granted to all adults also proved a campaign masterstroke, grabbing headlines and underpinning his surprise success in the primary's two rounds of voting, first against six opponents and then against Valls in the runoff.

Sharply criticized by Valls as unrealistic and ruinous, Hamon says the no-strings-attached payments would cushion the French in an increasingly automated future, as machines take their jobs. He proposes a tax on robots to help finance the measure's huge costs — by Hamon's reckoning, at least 300 billion euros ($320 billion) if applied to more than 50 million adults.

Hamon also proposes legalizing cannabis and allowing medically assisted deaths. First-time voter Maayane Pralus said Hamon "has a lot of the youth vote with him, which is sick of the old politics." "People call him utopian, but that's the politics we've been waiting for," the 18-year-old student said.

France, Germany unite in face of Trump refugee ban

January 28, 2017

PARIS (AP) — France and Germany formed a united front Saturday in the face of President Donald Trump's halt in the U.S. refugee program, with the German foreign minister noting that loving thy neighbor forms part of America's Christian traditions.

After meeting Saturday, the foreign ministers of both nations, Jean-Marc Ayrault and Germany's Sigmar Gabriel, said they want to meet with Rex Tillerson, Trump's nominee for secretary of state who is still awaiting confirmation.

Ayrault said Trump's order on Friday that bars all refugees from entering the United States for four months — and those from war-ravaged Syria indefinitely — "can only worry us." "We have signed international obligations, so welcoming refugees fleeing war and oppression forms part of our duties," the French minister said.

"There are many other issues that worry us," he added. "That is why Sigmar and I also discussed what we are going to do. When our colleague, Tillerson, is officially appointed, we will both contact him."

Gabriel — on his first trip abroad since his appointment Friday — said offering refuge to the persecuted and those fleeing death are western values that Europe and the United States share. "Love thy neighbor is part of this tradition, the act of helping others," he said. "This unites us, we Westerners. And I think that this remains a common foundation that we share with the United States, one we aim to promote."

Trump declared the ban necessary to prevent "radical Islamic terrorists" from entering the United States. The order immediately suspended a program that last year resettled to the U.S. roughly 85,000 people displaced by war, political oppression, hunger and religious prejudice.

France's hard left faces off against center left in primary

January 28, 2017

PARIS (AP) — Hard-left Socialist rebel Benoit Hamon heads into France's left-wing presidential primary runoff as a surprising favorite to beat pro-business pragmatist Manuel Valls, in a vote that will realign France's unpredictable presidential campaign.

Hamon is the favorite in Sunday's vote after arriving in pole position in the first round with 36 percent of the votes. He proposes a "determined and optimistic leftist alternative." His most talked-about proposal is a 750 euros ($800) "universal income" that would be gradually granted to all adults.

He is now backed by another left-wing candidate, Arnaud Montebourg, eliminated from the race with 17.5 percent of the votes. Valls, who arrived second with 31.4 percent, criticized Hamon's "unrealistic" promises.

A former junior minister and briefly education minister, Hamon left the government in 2014. He then led a group of rebel Socialist lawmakers who opposed the government's economic policies. "Yesterday's failed solutions have no reason to become successes tomorrow," he said at a rally near Paris Thursday.

Nassera Mohammad, living in Trappes, the suburban city west of Paris where Hamon was elected, said he believes the hard-left candidate proposes "real innovation" in French politics. "That's where we have to go, toward a renewal ... and not to be pleased with the old programs or with very small reforms," Mohammad said.

Ten French economists, including Thomas Piketty —author of the best-seller "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"— this week published an article to argue that the universal income can be "relevant and innovative".

"Properly conceived and detailed, the universal living income can be a key element for reshaping our social model," they wrote. Valls has tried to make an asset from his experience as prime minister from 2014 to 2016 —despite his association with unpopular President Francois Hollande.

Valls promotes "authority and security" values as the country is still under threat from potential terror attacks. He says he represents a "credible left" seeking a balance between France's social model and reforms adapting the country to globalization.

"I don't want to be the candidate of the taxes; I leave it to my adversary," Valls said in a rally near Paris Thursday. "I want to be the candidate of work value, of jobs, with a clear and serious roadmap offering a future to the French people."

Vivien Chauffaille, a Parisian attending Valls' rally, said "he is the only one able to be a statesman and implement his proposals." The French Socialist party has been torn for years between advocates of a radical left, including Hamon and Montebourg, and others sharing center-left views, like Valls and Hollande.

Divisions are so deep that if Hamon wins Sunday, some supporters of Valls are expected to back centrist figure Emmanuel Macron, who is campaigning for president as an independent. Early polls showed the Socialist nominee, whichever is chosen, is currently ranking at the fifth position in the race for president. Not only far-right leader marine Le Pen and conservative leader Francois Fillon appear to be far ahead, followed by Macron and far-left figure Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Another sign of the Socialist party's uphill struggle for survival is that the first round was marred by irregularities in the vote count. Results were not in dispute, but the number of voters was. Observers suspected organizers of trying to increase it artificially in order to give their future nominee more legitimacy.

In the end, the party announced 1.6 million voters last week. More than 4 million people cast ballots at the conservative primary in November. The primary is open to all voters who pay 1 euro ($1.04) and sign a document saying they share the left's values.

Nadine Achoui-Lesage and Oleg Cetinic contributed to the story

UK's House of Commons passes bill authorizing Brexit

February 08, 2017

LONDON (AP) — Britain's House of Commons gave its final approval Wednesday to a bill authorizing the government to start exit talks with the European Union, despite fears by opposition lawmakers that the U.K. is setting out on the rocky path to Brexit with a sketchy roadmap.

As the votes were being tallied, a few pro-EU legislators whistled Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the bloc's anthem. But the decisive 494-122 result was another big step on Britain's road to the EU exit door.

The bill now goes to the House of Lords, which has the power to delay — but not to derail — the legislation; it should become law within weeks. Lawmakers had backed the bill by a 498-114 margin during an earlier vote last week, so Wednesday's result by a similar margin was not a surprise.

It came after three days of debate in which opposition lawmakers tried to pass amendments guaranteeing Parliament a bigger role in the divorce process and setting rules for the government's negotiations with the 27 other EU nations.

Pro-Brexit Conservative Iain Duncan Smith said that "tonight we have started the process of delivering on ... what the people wanted." But Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who opposed the bill, vowed to fight on.

"In a democracy, you respect the result but you do not wave the white flag and give up," he said. Pro-EU lawmakers had hoped to prevent an economy-shocking "hard Brexit," in which Britain loses full access to the EU's single market and faces restrictions or tariffs on trade. One amendment would have committed the government to continuing tariff-free trade with the EU; another sought to guarantee the residency rights of EU citizens already living in Britain; another called for a new referendum on the eventual divorce terms.

All were defeated, as pro-EU lawmakers from Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party backed the government despite their reservations. But the government appeared to bow to opposition pressure by promising lawmakers they will get to vote on an exit deal before it is finalized by the bloc.

"We do expect and intend that that will happen before the European Parliament debates and votes on the final agreement," May said Wednesday. Some pro-EU lawmakers say the promise does not go far enough. They say the vote would be meaningless unless Parliament is given the power to send the government back to the EU negotiating table. Otherwise, rejecting the deal could mean chaotically forcing Britain out of the bloc without any new arrangements in place.

Labor Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said opponents of Brexit "haven't got everything we wanted" but are "chipping away" at the government's position. The government didn't want to let Parliament debate the bill that passed Wednesday at all. It was forced to introduce the legislation after a Supreme Court ruling torpedoed May's effort to start the process of leaving the 28-nation bloc without a parliamentary vote.

Most British lawmakers backed the losing "remain" side in last year's EU membership referendum, but voted to trigger Brexit out of respect for voters' wishes. The debate has caused ructions in the largely pro-Europe Labour Party, the largest opposition group in Parliament. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn ordered Labour lawmakers to back the bill, but more than 50 rebelled, including business spokesman Clive Lewis. Lewis resigned from Labor's senior Commons team after denying his leader, whose job many party members believe he covets.

The bill is likely to face further challenges in the House of Lords. Pro-EU peers there — who are appointed for life and don't have to worry about re-election — are likely to seek new amendments. But any changes they pass would have to be approved by the Commons.

The government wants to pass the bill through Parliament by early March and trigger Article 50 of the EU's key treaty — starting a two-year divorce process — by March 31.

Estonians join paramilitary forces to face Russia fears

By Anne Kauranen
Narva, Estonia (AFP)
Jan 18, 2017

A machine guns rattles as pale and exhausted teams of Estonian weekend warriors struggle to climb a final obstacle: the wall of Narva Castle facing their country's powerful neighbor Russia.

The bullets fired on the snowy banks of the Narva river separating Estonia from Russia are blanks, but the steely determination of volunteers participating in Utria Assault, the NATO member's biggest annual military competition, is palpable.

Ruth Maadla, a waitress who spends her weekends as a paramilitary volunteer, told AFP she would give her all to help defend the small Baltic nation of 1.3 million people "if anything ever happened".

Sporting white winter camouflage gear, a headlamp and a huge backpack, the 29-year-old who has just finished a brutal 90-kilometer (56-mile) marching race in bone-chilling subzero temperatures is in high-spirits, despite being caked in mud and nursing painful blisters on her heels.

Like other east Europeans, Estonians were deeply disturbed by Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its subsequent support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

US President-elect Donald Trump then raised more concerns with his campaign threat to think twice about defending NATO's eastern allies.

These factors coupled with Kremlin sabre rattling in the Baltic region -- especially in its heavily militarized Kaliningrad exclave -- have triggered a paramilitary revival in eastern European states that were under Moscow's thumb during the Soviet era.

Part of the USSR until 1991, Estonia has seen its Kaitseliit volunteer paramilitary force expand by 10 percent over the last two years.

- 'Citizens with strong will' -

With 16,000 members -- up to 25,600 including units for women and children -- the organisation is seen as a crucial extension of the EU member's modest military force comprising 6,500 peacetime personnel, half of them conscripts.

While some paramilitary volunteers play war games to hone skills like shooting or orienteering, others prefer more peaceful duty like wielding knitting needles to make socks for war victims in eastern Ukraine.

The Kaitseliit force has even attracted some volunteers who are ethnic Russian, part of Estonia's largest minority accounting for about a quarter of its population.

Kaitseliit commander, Brigadier General Meelis Kiili, describes the force he leads as "a very important element in deterrence" when facing Russia.

The role of "ordinary citizens with a strong will to defend" must not be underestimated, Kiili told AFP, as he congratulated a troupe of volunteers exhausted after the two sleepless nights they spent marching through snowy forests in the race.

Many are former military conscripts, but more and more ordinary Estonians and women, like Maadla or Sille Laks, are joining.

A 30-year-old cyber security expert from Tallinn, Laks told AFP that she has spent around 400 hours in Kaitseliit basic training over three months.

"It's about doing something for my country," said the athletic public servant as she braved the freezing cold before dawn to supervise one of the checkpoints in the competition.

While NATO's collective defense clause is the bottom-line guarantee of Estonia's security, analysts acknowledge that paramilitaries do have a role to play.

"In the worst case scenario, Russia could advance very swiftly to take all of Estonia, but with its own resistance, Estonia could buy more time" for help to arrive, said Kristi Raik, a senior Baltic security researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, stressing that any such attack was unlikely at the moment.

- Under NATO's wing -

Moscow upped the ante in the Baltic region late last year by deploying nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into its Kaliningrad outpost bordering NATO member Lithuania and Poland and sending two ships capable of launching warheads to the Baltic Sea.

The move came on the heels of NATO's decision to deploy four multinational battalions to eastern Europe, including a 1,100-strong rotational unit that will be stationed as of April at the Tapa military base, an hour's drive from the Estonian capital Tallinn.

Over the next few months, the United States will also deploy part of a 3,500-troop armored brigade to Estonia and Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania.

They have all eyed Trump's pro-Moscow rhetoric with mounting unease.

Ordered by the outgoing Obama administration to reinforce NATO's vulnerable eastern flank, the US brigade arrived in Poland last week as part of one of the largest deployment of US forces in Europe since the Cold War, an operation that Moscow angrily branded a security threat.

While the advent of a Trump presidency adds an element of uncertainty to future US commitment to defend vulnerable eastern European allies, Estonia's paramilitary chief remains confident about NATO's resolve.

"It's not only Trump we are talking about, NATO has 28 members," Kiili told AFP.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Estonians_join_paramilitary_forces_to_face_Russia_fears_999.html.

World's biggest refugee camp in Kenya to stay open

09 February 2017 Thursday

Kenya's High Court on Thursday blocked the government's decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp -- the world's largest -- and force Somali refugees to return home.

Judge John Mativo ruled that the plan to shut down the camp was unconstitutional, violated Kenya's international obligations and amounted to the persecution of refugees.

Dadaab is home to some 256,000 people, the vast majority of them Somalis who fled across the border following the outbreak of civil war in 1991. Many have lived there ever since.

The government unilaterally decided to close the camp in May last year, saying it was a terrorist training ground for Shabaab Islamist militants based in Somalia.

But Mativo ruled that a "decision specifically targeting Somali refugees is an act of group persecution, illegal, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional".

The shutdown was ordered without proper consultation of people affected by the decision, in violation of the constitutional right to fair legal proceedings, he said in his ruling.

"Hence the said decision is null and void," he said.

He also blocked a government decision to disband Kenya's Department for Refugee Affairs.

But the government later cautioned that it aimed to "strongly" appeal the ruling.

"We as a government have the cardinal responsibility of providing security for all Kenyans," a statement said. "The camp had lost its humanitarian nature, and had become a haven for terrorism and other illegal activities.".

Mativo also said the forced repatriation violated the 1951 United Nations Convention on refugees.

He was ruling on a challenge to the shutdown filed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and rights group Kituo Cha Sheria.

Amnesty International's East Africa chief Muthoni Wanyeki hailed Thursday's outcome as "historic".

"Today is a historic day for more than a quarter of a million refugees who were at risk of being forcefully returned to Somalia, where they would have been at serious risk of human rights abuses," Wanyeki said.

"This ruling reaffirms Kenya's constitutional and international legal obligation to protect people who seek safety from harm and persecution."

Security threat?

The government caught refugees, aid groups, the United Nations and Kenya's Western partners offguard last May when it announced plans to shut down the huge camp near the border, citing security concerns.

Since sending troops into neighboring Somalia in 2011, Kenya has come under repeated attack from Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab militants.

The government has presented Dadaab as a security risk, saying Somali rebels inside the camp planned the Shabaab attacks at Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in 2013 and the Garissa university attack in 2015, though it has not provided evidence.

Authorities initially planned to close Dadaab at the end of November, but delayed the shutdown until May 2017 at the request of the UN refugee agency and against a backdrop of growing accusations of forced refugee returns to Somalia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says the numbers have dwindled thanks to voluntary repatriations as well as resettlement in the Kakuma camp in northwest Kenya.

In September, Human Rights Watch warned in a report that the repatriation of Somalis violated international standards and that refugees were returning home involuntarily to face persecution and hunger.

Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) on Thursday welcomed the ruling as "a very positive step".

It urged the government to consider "alternative solutions to long-term encampment on such a large scale," including resettlement to third countries or to smaller camps in Kenya, or integration in Kenya.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=184517.