REDEYE 9/30/15

Migrants in Nazi-style camps
NYT, 9/5 —In the Czech Republic, the police hustled more than 200 migrants off a train and wrote identification numbers on their hands with indelible markers…like the tattoos the Nazis put on concentration camp inmates….
“It was horrible when I saw those images of police putting numbers on people’s arms,” said…the chief rabbi of Hungary. “It reminded me of Auschwitz. And then putting them on a train with armed guards to take them to a camp where they are closed in?....There are echoes of the Holocaust….”
…Not since the Jews were rounded up by Nazi Germany have their been as many images coming out of Europe of people locked into trains, babies handed over barbed wire, men in military gear herding large crowds of bedraggled men, women and children….Rabbi Frolich was especially struck by the lies used to manipulate the migrants.
“They tell then that the train was going to Austria and then take them to a camp instead….It is very similar to what happened to the Jews in the 1940s….”
“I cannot call them anything other than concentration camps,” said… [the] coordinator for the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights….”These refugees arrive, in horrible condition, and then you put them in this concentration camp?”
Clinton doubled $2-a-day poverty
NYT Book Review, 9/6 — President Clinton signed the bill, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), on August 22, 1996….
…Studies revealed that the number of “disconnected” single mothers — neither working nor on welfare — had grown substantially since the passage of TANF, rising to one in five single mothers during the mid-2000s….
…A University of Michigan expert on the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation….analyzed the census data,…based on annual interviews with tens of thousands of American households, to determine the growth of the virtually cashless poor since welfare reform. His results were shocking. Since the passage of TANF in 1996, the number of families living in $2-a-day poverty had more than doubled, reaching 1.5 million households in early 2011.
U.S. makes killer cluster bombs
NYT, 9/4 — Cluster bombs, the widely outlawed munitions that kill and maim indiscriminately, were used this year in five countries, none of which have…signed the treaty banning the weapons….
…117 countries…have joined the treaty….
The treaty prohibits all use of cluster munitions and sets deadlines for the destruction of stockpiles and the clearance of areas contaminated by unexploded cluster bomblets, which can be deadly if disturbed.
The United States, which has not signed the treaty, still produces and exports cluster munitions.
U.S. general still runs Afghan war
NYT, 9/11 — Gen. John Campbell holds several titles: top NATO commander in Afghanistan [but]….
Lately Afghans…describe…yet another: minister of defense of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan….No other American commander…has had as much power within the Afghan military establishment and top government echelons….
…At a time when Afghan forces…are supposed to be running the war, and eight months after the official end of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan, General Campbell’s prominent role is…being widely taken as a sign that the fight against the Taliban is not going well…One Western diplomat…[said “The American combat role may be over, but you still have an American general running the war….”
Afghan officials said…the Americans [have] greatly increased airstrikes…in crisis spots. “He is bossy and he doesn’t even try to hide it,” said an Afghan security official of General Campbell….
That role…has extended to taking part in day-to-day Afghan military decisions….
…He has advocated a long-term American presence and even an expanded one….
In recent weeks General Campbell has presided over one of the biggest American military interventions:…the heavy aerial bombardment of Musa Oala, after the Taliban took it from Afghan forces.
Officials…said that…bombs dropped there were so large that they obliterated entire buildings. “It was a big building…which…completely vanished from the earth, and buried everyone in it,” said…a member of parliament….
Western and Afghan officials have described an aggressive pattern of American strikes under General Campbell that has…seemed to outstrip the terms set in the security agreement between the United States and Afghanistan.
Georgia: ‘pay up or go to jail’
…In a small-town Georgia court…the…judge threaten[ed] to jail traffic violators who could not come up with an immediate payment toward their fines….
Judge…Diment…said to one defendant… “until you get $300 here tonight, you won’t be able to leave….”
To another defendant,…who…had been unemployed for two years…Judge Diment said. “You’re going to have to figure out how to get this paid….Or you’re going to go to jail….Neither defendant had a lawyer….
…A lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights…has been fighting what it calls “debtor’s prison” cases throughout Georgia….Judge Diment demanded immediate payments ranging from $20 to more than $1,000. One woman…has already spent a month in jail but was ordered to remain incarcerated until she made a $500 payment….
In July, a man who…worked only a few days every other week asked to convert his court debt to community service. Judge Dement refused….
Iraq: ‘demolish what U.S. set up’
NYT, 9/1 — For five Fridays…thousands of mostly, but not entirely, youthful and secular Iraqis have gathered in central Baghdad…to demand change….
…The protests have evolved into a broader rebuke of the political establishment….
“The people are tired. Lack of services. Corruption. Electricity….The demonstrations represent a popular reckoning with the American legacy here, with the corrupt and dysfunctional political system that has been in place since United States forces invaded in 2003….
…When the American bombs began falling, Mr. Abdulrahman said, “It was terrifying….They knocked out Saddam and brought a hundred Saddams.”
His friend…said emphatically, “This protest was established to demolish what the Americans set up….”
…”The politicians…,” Abdulsadr Aboud, 65, said….”stole our money….They didn’t give a share of the oil to the people.”