Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert s federal lawsuit seeking to empower Vice President Mike Pence in his "discretion" to unilaterally reject certain Electoral College votes -- specifically and conveniently, the ones that went for President-elect Joe Biden from key swing states -- is dead on arrival and accomplishes nothing beyond giving false hope to the last and most reality-resistant of the election deniers.Here s the easiest way to understand why Gohmert s lawsuit is so ridiculous. If Gohmert was right -- if the vice president could, at his own whim, simply discard certain electoral votes while accepting others, then on January 6, 2017, Vice President Joe Biden could have decided to install President Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump. And on January 6, 2001, Vice President Al Gore could have named himself the winner of the 2000 election. Vice President Dan Quayle could have declared from the lectern to Congress on January 6, 1993, that President George H.W. Bush had actually defeated challenger Bill Clinton in the 1992 election. Vice President Walter Mondale could have done the same for Jimmy Carter in January 1981. You can see the absurdity here. Gohmert s lawsuit simply ignores -- defies, really -- the Constitution and federal law. The vice president s role in counting electoral votes (in his constitutional capacity as the presiding officer of the Senate) is entirely ceremonial, limited by law to "open[ing]" and "reading" the results of the states electoral ballots. The law does permit Congress -- not the vice president -- to raise "objections" to the electoral count. And while some in Congress might exploit this procedure next week to put on a show, ultimately it won t change a thing about Biden s win in the 2020 presidential election.A challenge first requires a formal objection from at least one member of the US House and one member of the US Senate. It s not certain that an objection would even get that far, particularly in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has recognized Biden s win and has urged his fellow Republicans to not contest the count. Even if at least one member of both houses of Congress does object, it ultimately takes a majority vote of both the House and Senate to throw out any electoral votes. That seems unlikely even in the narrowly Republican-controlled Senate (pending the January 5 runoffs in Georgia). And that simply will not happen in the Democratic-controlled House. In one sense, Gohmert s lawsuit is so meritless as to render itself harmless. It s performative nonsense, grounded in neither the law nor logic, even as the President urges on some kind of futile demonstration of protest on January 6. But there is a downside: It lends still more fuel to the fire of those who continue to clog our legal system with ludicrous, baseless lawsuits, in turn undermining public faith (at least in some quarters) in the legitimacy of our democratic process. Courts across the country, including judges appointed by members of both political parties, already have roundly rejected other efforts to contest the plain outcome of the 2020 election. And the Gohmert lawsuit is a fitting capper to this story. Soon enough, it ll wind up where it belongs: in the discard pile, along with dozens of other absurd lawsuits that have come before it. Now, your questions James (California): If Donald Trump pardons himself, who would have standing to challenge the pardon, and in what court would the suit be brought? If Trump does pardon himself, there likely is no outside party -- private citizen, Congress or anyone else -- who would have "standing," or legally cognizable injury, on which to base a lawsuit. The law generally does not permit somebody who has not been directly injured to bring a legal challenge, even if in the greater public interest. Here s how a self-pardon could be litigated, however. The Justice Department would first have to indict Trump, notwithstanding the hypothetical self-pardon. Trump then almost certainly would move to dismiss the indictment based on the self-pardon. At that point, the federal courts would have to decide the issue. Trump likely would argue that the Constitution contains no explicit bar on the self-pardon, while the Justice Department could argue that a self-pardon contravenes the Framers intent to bar self-dealing. And the US Supreme Court likely would make the final decision, given the obvious Constitutional stakes. But if Trump self-pardons, and then Justice Department does not indict him, we will not get a definitive answer on the legality of the self-pardon.Eric (California): Can an acting attorney general appoint a special counsel? With William Barr s recent resignation as attorney general, his former deputy, Jeffrey Rosen, is now acting attorney general. The special counsel regulations specify that only "[t]he Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General" has the power to appoint special counsel. Under any reasonable interpretation of the regulations, then, Rosen now holds the power to appoint special counsel. The bigger question is whether the President, as head of the Executive Branch, has the power to directly appoint a special counsel, or to order Rosen to do so. There is no clear answer under the law. Proponents of a "unitary executive" theory -- holding that all executive branch authority is ultimately vested in the President -- would answer in the affirmative. But those who believe the Justice Department should be independent of presidential politics and decision making likely would disagree. Tom (Florida): Can the new administration simply shut down or fire any "special counsel" appointed by the prior administration?lay out the circumstances under which an attorney general can fire a special counsel: "for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies." The regulations also require the attorney general to memorialize in writing the reasons for firing the special counsel. In some respects, the regulations give special counsel protection against being fired for purely political reasons. On the other hand, the terms "misconduct," "dereliction of duty" and "other good cause" are fairly broad and malleable, affording an attorney general some latitude to justify a firing.

Ten years will have passed next 25 January since the Egyptian people took to the streets to demand radical political change under the slogan “the people want to change the regime.” What they wanted was the departure of former president Hosni Mubarak and to substitute the political system he had presided over with a more democratic and transparent one. Their concerns and aspirations revolved around domestic politics rather than foreign policy. However, the history of Egypt’s foreign policy over the last ten years has not been uniform. In this period, Egypt has had three presidents whose rule has spanned the period from 2012 until today in addition to two years of internal political infighting and confrontation under the rule of what was called the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. After 11 February 2011, the date former president Mubarak decided, under US and internal pressures, to leave office, until the contested election of the late Mohamed Morsi as president, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt was consumed with political manoeuvering, and its foreign policy was adrift without any perceptible changes in its traditional patterns of alliances and with special attention paid to the ups and downs in Egyptian-American relations. This was because the US monitored the transitional state in a way that many Egyptians considered to be undue interference in Egyptian domestic politics until the election of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in June 2014. During these three years, Egyptian leadership in Arab affairs was almost non-existent. It is true that it was a member of what was known at the time as the Friends of Syria Group, whose purpose was to overthrow the Syrian regime and provide assistance to those wishing to do so. It is doubtful that Egypt played a prominent role in providing military assistance to the Syrian rebel groups, but the fact of the matter is that it was not in a position to call the shots within this group, which has now become extinct. Some would argue that its aims and modus operandi paved the way for the Islamic State (IS) group and Al-Qaeda to establish bases in Syria and exercise complete control over large areas of Syrian territory from 2013 to 2016. These developments had a direct and negative effect on Egyptian national security, since terrorist groups operating in northern Sinai paid allegiance to IS. On its western frontiers, Egypt hardly had any say in Libyan affairs, a situation that helped the positioning of terrorist groups close to these frontiers to wage terror inside Egypt, thus posing a serious threat to national security. Furthermore, the period from 2012 to 2015 saw Western diplomacy working with some Libyan political forces including the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya towards the establishment of the Government of National Accord and the adoption of a UN Security Council Resolution in December 2015 to set this up. Meanwhile, militias sprung up that have not been friendly towards Egyptian interests. In the south, the Ethiopians, witnessing the uprisings in Egypt with their accompanying political instability, started building their Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) without prior consultations with the Egyptian authorities. These were deeply involved in managing day-to-day affairs and an economy that was not performing well, to say the least. Until June 2012, Egypt paid lip service to Arab solidarity, but it did not object nor emit reservations during the Arab Summit in Doha that decided to give the seat of Syria in the Arab League to the Syrian opposition, as primarily recognised by some Gulf countries and the US and the member countries of the Friends of Syria Group. Egypt had not objected to the suspension of Syria’s membership of the Arab League a few months earlier. These two decisions in the presence of Egyptian delegations were not the finest moment in Egypt’s Arab diplomacy. It was an era of the ascendancy of the Gulf in Arab politics without any counterbalance led by Egypt, for the country at the time was in no position to form an Arab coalition to serve pan-Arab interests. During the year when Morsi ruled Egypt, the country was adopting the priorities of the Muslim Brotherhood in a shift of Egyptian foreign policy towards Qatar and Turkey in addition to the Palestinian group Hamas. In the meantime, relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE were almost frozen in an apparent attempt to play the Saudis off against the Iranians by giving the impression that Egyptian-Iranian relations were getting warmer. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid an official visit to Cairo, a first in more than 30 years. TROUBLED RELATIONS In June 2013, weeks before the massive demonstrations that demanded Morsi’s ouster from power, chanting “No, No, No to the rule of the Guidance Bureau,” the highest executive body in the Muslim Brotherhood, he had asked the Egyptian military to train members of the so-called Free Syrian Army. Fortunately, it rejected his demand. To make matters worse, Morsi decided to cut off diplomatic relations with Syria after an explicit diktat from Qatar relayed by a certain Youssef Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian turned Qatari and president of the so-called International Organisation for Muslim Scholars, a front organisation for the Muslim Brothers aided by the Turks and the Qataris. Breaking off diplomatic relations with Syria, regardless of one’s opinion regarding the Syrian government, was a regrettable manifestation of the absence of Egyptian leadership in Arab councils. Moreover, Egyptian foreign policy became almost isolated on the international scene. The African Union (AU) suspended Egypt’s membership, the European Union was on the brink of slapping sanctions on the country had it not been for the forceful intervention of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the US suspended the delivery of military hardware. Our only allies became three Gulf countries, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, though Jordan came forward and supported the political changes in Egypt. Russia showed its support, probably seeing an opportunity to woo Egypt towards Moscow by signalling its willingness to provide Cairo with advanced military hardware. In late 2013, Egypt hosted a meeting of the Russian ministers of defence and foreign affairs with their Egyptian counterparts, Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi being minister of defence at the time. In February 2014, he flew to Moscow with foreign minister Nabil Fahmi, and the two men met with their Russian counterparts. By June 2014, the month when Al-Sisi became the elected president of Egypt, the uneven course of Egyptian foreign policy from 2011 onwards had started witnessing corrections that did not change fundamentally its basic principles. Egypt regained its membership of the AU, and the first foreign visit of the newly-elected president was to Africa to attend an African Union Summit. The US resumed the delivery of the suspended military shipments, the European Union resorted to business as usual with Egypt, and Cairo, while cementing its traditional alliances, decided to turn eastwards towards China and the Asian tigers. President Al-Sisi was the first Egyptian president to visit Vietnam, as well as Singapore. March 2015 saw the complete reinstatement of Egyptian foreign policy. It was a moment of success and triumph at the same time. The world was present at an international conference to support the Egyptian economy in Sharm El-Sheikh. Kings, emirs, heads of state and governments and foreign ministers all participated, and many of them took to the floor to show their strong support for Egypt. The US was represented by former secretary of state John Kerry. He expressed his support for the “new Egypt” with the implicit hope that it would become economically resilient and a force for security, stability and peace in a region that had remained in turmoil since 2011. Over the last six years, Egyptian foreign policy has regained a certain degree of autonomy and effectiveness in dealing with a myriad of challenges and threats to Egypt’s national security interests. Furthermore, it has successfully repositioned the country in Africa, the Arab world, the Middle East and the Mediterranean to become an active strategic partner for the European powers and the Arab countries in a coalition of powers striving to restore a strategic balance of power among competing anti-status quo actors, namely Turkey and Iran. Last summer, Egypt, by threatening to resort to military means in order to defend its joint borders with Libya, succeeded in setting in motion a process in parallel with the Berlin Declaration of January 2020 whereby Libya could once again become a stable country at peace within and at peace with its neighbours. This success is due to the fact that Cairo began talking to all stakeholders in Libya including the National Accord Government. In Syria, Egypt is trying behind the scenes to help Damascus without alienating its strategic partners whether in the Arab world or the West. According to press reports, Egypt is working to help Syria regain its seat at the Arab League. If it succeeds, that would be a sign of the re-engagement of Egypt with its natural strategic environment, that is the Arab world and more particularly the Middle East. But the Middle East today is no longer the Middle East that failed disastrously to deal with the Arab uprisings ten years ago. It has become a different Middle East with the normalisation agreements between Israel and some Arab countries and the establishment of normal relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The challenge facing Egypt in the new strategic landscape in the Middle East and North Africa is how to work with its partners to reconcile the normalisation agreements between Israel and the Arab countries that decided to normalise with Israel with the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution of 2003 on the two-state solution. With a new administration in Washington that believes in multilateralism and with old hands that worked in previous US administrations on the peace process in the Middle East, Egypt could have a peace partner at the White House next January that is willing to work with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Israelis to consummate the reconciliation between the Arabs, the Palestinians and the Israelis away from the diktats of the Trump administration. When the reconstruction of Egypt and the modernisation of its economy and its inefficient bureaucracy is complete, Egyptian foreign policy will be in a position to have a say in the order of things in the Middle East and the rest of the Arab world. Moreover, the idea, first promoted by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, of a new coalition in the Middle East comprising Egypt, Jordan and Iraq – and hopefully Syria and Lebanon as well – in the not too-distant future is a strategic option that merits serious consideration. In the Middle East that is being reshaped dramatically these days, a certain equilibrium in the Israeli-Arab equation is needed.

We waste far too much human capital in a system that penalizes too many people for too long. About 19 million Americans are burdened with a felony record, yet fewer than half of those transgressions were serious enough to require an actual prison sentence. Those convicted of felonies -- and the millions more with misdemeanors -- face lifelong barriers to employment and labor mobility, key factors in driving long-term economic growth. An improved criminal justice environment fosters prosperity and builds a society of stronger workers and consumers. For too long, the business community has had only a peripheral role in debates about how to reform our criminal justice system, but Corporate America should recognize that it has a strong business interest in the outcomes and must take a greater leadership role. It must embrace second chance hiring, the employment of people with criminal records. This is also critical if we are to overcome the demographic hurdles our labor market faces as Baby Boomers retire and the influx of Millennials slows. We must bring those who have been marginalized back into the fold of gainful employment. Working for racial equity The ugly truth of our criminal justice system is that one in three Black men in the United States has a felony record, putting them at a severe disadvantage. Admirable commitments by companies to be more inclusive in hiring must be coupled with an intentional process for second chance hiring. My research has shown that "disposable employee" labor, in which the employer is trying to get the cheapest effective wage possible through minimum wage jobs that are subsidized by temporary tax credits (Work Opportunity Tax Credits), will not work because they do not adequately distinguish who is ready for reemployment nor do they make the sufficient investment to support rehabilitation. Neither will hiring models that fail to account for the challenges of so many with records: trauma, lack of mentorship and limited access to housing and transportation. Done right, second chance hiring that offers the needed training and support repays the required investment with loyal, productive and profitable employees (the upfront costs can even effectively be offset by tax credits). Without such an approach, our labor force cannot hope to reflect the diversity of our population. Business can lead on criminal justice reform Employment is foundational to rehabilitation for the millions of Americans with records and the more than 600,000 who exit prisons each year. When employers understand that people caught up in the criminal justice system are their future workforce, we will surely be able to put better policies in place to help. Even those businesses such as schools, defense contractors and financial institutions that have regulatory constraints on who they can hire have important roles to play. They can support education, reentry and workforce development nonprofits or advocate for policies that improve employment outcomes. Ultimately, businesses should help lead because they can -- and they must if we are to live up to the American aspiration to be a land of opportunity for all.

The European Parliament issued a resolution on the human rights situation in Egypt on 18 December 2020, which is International Migrants Day. Ironically, the resolution coincided with the presentation of The Black Book of Pushbacks, compiled by the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), which includes dozens of non-governmental organisations and associations. The 1500-page Black Book documents the horrific violence suffered by over 12,500 people at the hands of authorities on the EU s external borders, and the grave violations of migrants rights in EU countries taking place since 2017 in conjunction with the tragedy of refugees and migrants who escaped conflict zones, searching for refuge that may provide them with the minimum level of protection, only to find themselves falling prey to these violations, practiced and hidden from the eyes of media and observers by EU countries. International human rights organisations have overlooked these violations, considering migrants not worthy of the hype. Moreover, discussing the situation of migrants might bring certain questions to the limelight such as, who caused their exodus from their countries, what are their motives to seek refuge, and what is the political horizon of the crises of their countries? All these aspects of the crisis will be like destructive flames in EU countries if anyone searches for real, honest answers to them. The BVMN is an independent network of NGOs and associations, based mainly in the Balkan regions and in Greece, that monitors human rights violations at the external borders of the EU and advocates halting violence against people moving in and between EU countries. Since it was founded in 2016, BVMN became aware of the existence of violent pushbacks of asylum seekers along the Balkans and Greece and began to document such cases. The network has developed a common framework for documenting testimonies and evidence of violations which, after going through a process of fact-checking, are published on the BVMN website. These case reports include hard facts, pictures of the injuries, and medical documents that provide evidence, as well as detailed descriptions of the incidences. BVMN publishes monthly reports covering pushbacks along the Greek and Balkan route. Every report analyses in detail pushbacks in specific geographical areas, escalation of violence, excessive use of force, cases of alleged torture, and other key issues. The testimonies and reports serve as a basis for the network s advocacy effort at the European level, where BVMN has been engaging in the past years in meetings with European parliamentarians, in order to denounce the violations of human rights at borders and promote a better management of migration flows. The Black Book is not the first of its kind in this context. It was preceded by dozens of reports and testimonies on the same subject. However, its shocking title prompted members of parliament to take note of this huge number of documents and testimonies. German MEP Cornelia Ernst said the legislators had been “very shocked by the endless accounts of merciless, sadistic, and degrading violence that are reminiscent of brutal dictatorships.” She noted that the Black Book “sheds some much-needed light on this dark chapter of the EU,” adding that “our hope is that it will contribute to bringing an end to the crimes, and to holding accountable the governments that are responsible.” The report s authors, Hope Barker and Milena Zajovic, explained that the pushbacks covered by the network were just part of a much broader, systematic phenomenon that is still denied and often neglected by the European Border Monitoring Agency, FRONTEX. The report also relied on and documented about 900 audio and video testimonies of people who had been beaten, robbed, or had their personal belongings damaged, and were attacked by dogs on the EU border. It also denounces the use of tasers against migrants, the practice of forcing asylum-seekers to undress, and detaining people in structures that lack the most basic amenities, in a pattern that recalls the images of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the time of the US invasion. The Black Book was handed over by the BVMN to Ylva Johansson, the European commissioner for home affairs — on Friday, setting out accusations to EU member states such as Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Greece, and Croatia, as well as other Balkan countries not members of the European Union, such as Serbia and Bosnia. The report contains a wealth of evidence of violations. It analyses in detail the way in which atrocities have been carried out. In addition, it calls for ending impunity and renewing commitment to accountability, especially since the authorities of EU member states have long ignored such human rights violations that are inconsistent with the founding principles of the EU and related international obligations. Compiled by BVMN and printed over two volumes, and available on the BVMN website, the Black Book of Pushbacks is a collection of hundreds of testimonies of migrants that were recorded directly by BVMN. Despite the fact that the Black Book includes 892 group testimonies detailing the experiences of 12,654 people, including maps, data, photos and other key information, the BVMN believes the actual number of victims to be much higher. The Black Book also includes the types of suffering and violence perpetrated by border agents, member state police forces, soldiers – and even guard dogs. Many of the incidents documented could be clearly described as sadistic, merciless, humiliating, and degrading. The question now is how serious the European side will be regarding human rights issues of non-Europeans in tandem with all these violations and corruption.

The President of the United States has the power to grant a pardon to anyone he believes deserves one. This is an incredible power when used for good. There are cases where the US justice system gets it wrong and cases where the defendants had served their time and were now doing good things. However, none of those fact patterns are present in President Donald Trump s pardon of four Blackwater security guards serving time for their involvement in the killing of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad on September 16, 2007. I know that these men were undeserving of pardons because I was a member of The FBI Evidence Response Team that traveled to Iraq and investigated the site of these killings. I am not a writer, an academic or one who has frequently spoken out publicly on political issues. I am a 35-year law enforcement professional. I retired on September 11, 2019, after 23 years as FBI special agent. I was a team leader on the FBI s Washington Field Office, Evidence Response Team for more than 20 years. I have investigated many violent crimes and acts of terrorism around the world, including the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, war crimes in Kosovo in 1999, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the attack at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The most important rule for me during these deployments to major crime scenes: Don t look at the crime and fit the forensic evidence to match a perceived narrative; instead, look at the forensic evidence that will show the story of the event. By letting the evidence lead the direction of the investigation, the FBI Evidence Response Teams and the FBI Laboratory have an important role of speaking for the victims who cannot tell their story. On September 16, 2007, Baghdad, Iraq, was a dangerous place. No one will dispute that fact. On that day, a bombing took place a few miles from a busy traffic circle called Al Nisour Square, which is used by Iraqis to access major roadways across Baghdad. A security detail from the private government contractor Blackwater was protecting a US official attending a meeting at a government building when the bomb was detonated. When bad things happen, it is the security team s job to get the protectee "off the X" and away from danger. The security detail called the command center in the US Green Zone and advised that they were leaving with the US official. At a place called "Man Camp," Blackwater Team Raven 23 sounded the alarm that they might be needed to assist the exfiltration of the protectee from the scene and back into the US Green Zone. The team leader of Raven 23 called the command center and requested permission to leave the protected US Green Zone and go to assist the incoming Blackwater team. This request was denied. The team leader then chose to violate the orders and left the US Green Zone anyway. The four Blackwater armored trucks were captured on video leaving the green zone. They drove out to Nisour Square, turned left and entered the traffic circle, blocking the northbound traffic, the southbound traffic and the traffic entering the circle from the west. Two Iraqi traffic officers stopped the traffic going toward the four armored vehicles. One of the first cars in that stopped traffic was a white KIA occupied by a woman and her son. The woman was a local doctor and the son, who was driving the car, was going to medical school to follow in his mother s footsteps. What happened next began the Nisour Square shootings. A sniper on the Raven 23 team placed his rifle out a porthole of the Bearcat armored vehicle and fired at the driver of the white KIA. The man was struck and killed by the bullet. The car began to roll forward slowly, bumping into a red vehicle. The two Iraqi traffic officers physically tried to stop the movement of the car. The defendants said they feared the white KIA was a car bomb as it moved ahead. The car rolled forward after the sniper, a security guard, shot the driver and his foot came off the brake. This is why the sniper was charged with, and convicted of, first-degree murder. At that point gunfire erupted from a small number of the Raven 23 Blackwater operators. The gunfire was directed into the white KIA, killing the women seated in the front passenger seat. These rounds were from a rifle and a large turret gun. A grenade was fired from the turret gunners rifle mounted launcher. The grenade skipped off the ground under the driver s door exploding and causing the gas line to rupture and set the car ablaze. How do I know this? During the forensic evidence recovery later conducted by the FBI team, the bumper of the white KIA was removed and paint transfer was matched to the red vehicle, which was also processed. The blast fragment under the door showed a pattern, which was determined by FBI explosives experts to be from an M203 grenade. In examining the white KIA, I was able to count 38 bullet entry points, and that does not account for the numerous rounds that entered through the windshield that no longer existed. We recovered a black steel tip rifle round from the steering wheel of the white KIA. This type of ammunition is against the rules of engagement in a US sanctioned war zone and in violation of US Military and Blackwater regulations. A few cars back in the traffic was a blue Suzuki Trooper and inside were two families. The driver was Mohammed and his 9-year-old son Ali sat in the rear seat behind his father. In the front passenger seat was Mohammed s sister. Ali s two young female cousins sat next to him in the back seat. Gunfire erupted and everyone in the car laid down in his or her seats as bullets hit the front of the trooper. At a break in the gunfire, likely during reloading, one of the little girls in the back seat yelled that "Ali has no hair." When the shooting stopped and the Blackwater team began to move, Mohammed exited the driver door and opened a rear passenger door. Ali, who had been slumped against the door, fell into his father s arms. Ali had been struck with a Blackwater round, which entered the rear driver side door and hit the boy in the head. As his father reached for his 9-year-old son, Ali s brains fell out onto the street and onto his father s feet. How do I know this? I spoke with Mohammed while I was procuring his car from him for forensic evaluation. When a grieving father tells you the story of his son being shot, you don t forget. Mohammed asked me one thing, bring justice for his son, tell the story. I responded to him with "Inshallah" (God willing). While witnesses are not always 100% accurate, the bullet holes in the rear driver s door which entered into the seat where Ali sat don t lie. What was indisputable is the brain matter, which we had to clear to complete the trajectory analysis and recovery of fragmented rounds. A white VW Caddy used to transport ice was also stopped in that traffic. Two men sat in the driver s area of the truck. When the shooting began numerous rounds entered the driver s compartment. The man in the driver s seat was struck by gunfire. He tried to crawl out the passenger s door to safety. A grenade then struck the driver s door, blowing a 10-inch by 10-inch hole in the outer metal of the door and sending fragmentation into the vehicle. A second explosion hit the roof over the driver s compartment. The blast also sent fragmentation raining into the truck. These two victims were not terrorists; they were businessmen trying to sell ice in a place where electricity frequently went out. One man was killed, the other injured. How do I know the grenade was the cause of that explosion? I processed this vehicle and took hundreds of photographs of the damage and the bloodstains left in the driver s compartment of the vehicle. FBI Explosives experts analyzed the damage and confirmed the M203 grenade fragmentation pattern. While this shooting was taking place on the roadways of the traffic circle, a boy was seated on a bench on the other side of a wall at a nearby children s school next to a makeshift playground. A grenade fired from a Blackwater rifle came over the wall and landed next to the bench. The grenade exploded, injuring the boy. The fragmentation in the metal bench was documented photographically. I could go on with each of the 17 victims killed and 20 seriously injured in this incident. Same story, sitting in traffic waiting to get somewhere, anywhere but Nisour Square. In each case the vehicles were processed methodically and forensic evidence was recovered. The Blackwater Raven 23 defendants claimed that they responded to gunfire aimed at them while stopping traffic in Nisour Square that day. I believed this to be the case before we deployed to Iraq for this crime scene investigation. I had worked with Blackwater operators on previous deployments to Iraq and they were good people doing a difficult job in a dangerous environment. That said, I would let the evidence lead the investigation and assist the agents in finding the truth. One of the first things we did once we were in Baghdad was to ask to see the Blackwater vehicles, which, we had been told, sustained firearms damage. This would be very important evidence of a reason for the shooting incident. I know that as a career law enforcement professional, if I had been involved in a shooting, I would do everything in my power to protect the evidence of bullet impacts coming toward me and show that I was defending myself. If you know the FBI Evidence Response Team is on their way to review the vehicles in the shooting, lock them up, protect the evidence. It is not rocket science. What happened next gave me more than pause. The four armored vehicles involved in the Nisour Square shooting were silver in color when they were observed on tape leaving the US Green zone against orders. The vehicles in front of us at the "Man Camp" were now desert sand color. The reported impact points -- we were told they the impacts were from bullet rounds -- on the side of the vehicle were no long there. In their place were traces of a sanding wheel, which had been used to sand off any potential marks. In the up gun turret of the Bearcat was a rifle cartridge. Only half of the cartridge was spray-painted desert sand brown. The vehicles were painted so quickly that they did not even clean up the debris. We had been told that the radiator of one of the Blackwater vehicles had been punctured from a bullet round coming in from the traffic at Nisour Square. During the review and documentation of the vehicle, we found that the damaged radiator had been repaired. We were also told that the front driver s tire of the vehicle had been punctured, likely from a bullet. We then found the tire had been replaced and the damaged tire discarded. Luckily we located the discarded tire, which had been removed and placed in an adjacent room. We took both the radiator and the tire back to the FBI Laboratory for expert forensic review. One of the top explosives examiners in the FBI X-rayed the tire. Inside the tire he located a metal fragment. The fragment was not a bullet; it was a starlet (a piece of fragmentation made to cause damage) from an M203 grenade fired by the Blackwater security guards, which likely ricocheted off the white KIA and struck the tire. Now, when you paint a vehicle, you don t paint the undercarriage, right? Of course you don t. A review of the undercarriage near where the radiator was damaged showed a small impact point. A basic trajectory was taken from the impact point to the radiator damage. This showed it was possible for a bullet or fragment to travel from that impact point to the radiator. Photographs and measurements were taken of the impact point. It was later displayed in court proceedings and was clear evidence that the same class of item, which caused the damage to the bench at the children s school, caused the damage to the undercarriage of the Bearcat. Another example of ricochet evidence from the M203 grenade fired at the white KIA. The FBI team made four trips to Iraq to investigate this shooting. The agency spared no expense to gather as much evidence from the scene and the vehicles as possible. Countless interviews were conducted and over a thousand photographs were taken of the scene. The evidence was collected professionally, and the best examiners in the world did the analysis. All of this evidence was introduced into several US court hearings. The prosecution team was fair, professional and extremely competent. The defendants in this case had some of the most knowledgeable and professional defense teams possible. The judge was one of the most fair and objective jurists on the bench. A jury heard the evidence and found four Blackwater guards guilty of murder, manslaughter and weapons charges. The system worked and justice was brought to the deceased, the injured victims and their families. The families of those killed and wounded at Nisour Square will now watch those responsible for this tragedy go free thanks to a pardon by the President of the United States. This simply makes me sad and angry. I spoke to Mohammed this morning. He told me he could no longer tell his family and the people of Baghdad that the system worked and justice was found for Ali. Mohammed asked me one more question. Could this pardon be changed? I told him "no." I could not say Inshallah. The purpose of my writing this piece is to introduce you to these victims. There is no forensic evidence of anyone shooting at the Blackwater team. How do I know? The evidence told me that.

President Donald Trump has refused to say what he will be doing on Inauguration Day. But while the possibility of his shunning President-elect Joe Biden s swearing-in ceremony -- as well as no sign of an invitation for Biden and his wife, Jill, to the White House before Biden s swearing-in -- may earn Trump headlines, it will do nothing to stop one sacred tradition: The White House s dedicated residence staff will be moving the Bidens into the White House and the Trumps out on January 20, whether Trump likes it or not. The President is making the job of the dedicated residence staff harder than necessary. We know that at least four residence staffers tested positive for the coronavirus as the President and many of his aides refused to follow Covid-19 protocols, including mask-wearing. I grew to know many people who worked on the residence when I was researching my book, "The Residence," and it was difficult to watch them be made so vulnerable to one President s irresponsible whims. There are nearly one hundred people who make the White House run every day, including butlers, florists, housekeepers, cooks, ushers and engineers. They deserve a president who will help them -- or at least not stand in their way -- when they do what they do best and help facilitate the peaceful transfer of power happening in a few weeks. Every piece of what happens on Inauguration Day is the result of months of careful advance planning and is part of a long-held tradition that has either been willfully discarded or seemingly forgotten during the Trump years. For residence workers, who stay in their jobs for decades and are not loyal to any one president but to the presidency itself, the transition to the next administration typically begins about eighteen months before inauguration. This is when the chief usher prepares books for the incoming president and first lady (with the added challenge of not knowing who they will be) that include a detailed White House layout, a list of staff, and an overview of allowable changes to the Oval Office. Gary Walters, who served as chief usher from 1986 until 2007, started gathering information on the candidates during the primaries, well before a general election candidate was selected. It was particularly difficult when President Ford, President Carter, and President George H.W. Bush lost their bids for a second term. "The ownership is of the family that s there, but you have to be watching out for what s going to occur," Walters told me. Trump is the first one-term president since Bush. That in itself presents a similar challenge that Trump is only making more difficult. The current chief usher, Timothy Harleth, worked at the Trump International Hotel in Washington before he got the job. He is in an unenviable position: If he is doing his job and planning the Bidens move in -- and the Trumps move out -- of the White House, he is contradicting his boss who has, so far, refused to concede. In a normal world, the chief usher coordinates the complex move with the Operations Department, usually handles receptions, dinners, rearranging furniture for the tapings of TV interviews, and outdoor events. But former Operations Supervisor Tony Savoy told me that Inauguration Day was always the most important day of his career: They are the team that "moves em in and moves em out," Savoy said. Laura Bush says the "transfer of families" is a "choreographic masterpiece, done with exceptional speed," and its successful execution depends on the institutional knowledge and the flexibility of the residence staff. It is up to residence staffers to make the intricate move happen because it is considered too dangerous to clear professional movers into the White House. It is an all hands on deck situation. One usher told me he threw his back out moving a sofa when he moved the Bushes out and the Clintons in. Some residence staffers even sleep at the White House the night before so they can get an early start. In the six hours between the departure of the first family and the arrival of the newly elected president and his family, the staff has to put in fresh rugs and brand-new mattresses and headboards, remove paintings, and redecorate to match the incoming family s preferred style. They unpack the boxes, fold clothes perfectly, and place them in their drawers. They even put toothpaste and toothbrushes on bathroom counters. No detail is overlooked. Usually at around 9:30 a.m., the new president and first lady arrive at the White House for a coffee in the Blue Room with the departing president and first lady. Once they leave the White House for the Capitol, the residence staff moves into high gear and begins to move items in from the moving trucks parked at the entrance of the Diplomatic Reception Room outside the South Portico. One family s things are put in one truck and another s are moved in. Walters, who oversaw many moves in his 21 years at the White House, calls the process "organized chaos." But before the first family departs, a little-known scene occurs when the staff crams into the opulent State Dining Room, where they have served so many state dinners, to say goodbye to the family they served. They are often overcome by the range of emotions -- trading one boss, and in some cases a friend, for another in the span of just six hours. In many cases they have had eight years to grow close to the departing family. There is rarely a dry eye in the room -- even though many may be excited about the future. "When the Clintons came down and Chelsea came with them, they didn t say a word," Head Housekeeper Christine Limerick recalled when we talked about Inauguration Day 2001. "I ll get emotional about this now -- (President Clinton) looked at every person dead on in the face and said, Thank you. The whole room just broke up." During the farewell, residence workers present the family with a gift -- sometimes the flag that flew over the White House on the day that the president was inaugurated -- placed in a beautiful hand-carved box designed by White House carpenters. In 2001, Limerick, Chief Florist Nancy Clarke, and Chief Curator Betty Monkman gave Hillary Clinton a large pillow made from swatches of fabrics that she had selected to decorate different rooms in the house. We don t even know where Trump will be on Inauguration Day or whether he will say goodbye to the staff as his predecessors have done. With the devastating spread of the coronavirus this winter, the inauguration ceremony and parade will already be scaled back. Even if Trump does attend Biden s inauguration, no one would expect them to ride in the same limousine, for instance, on the way to the Capitol. The General Services Administration will be doing a deep cleaning of every surface in the 55,000 square foot mansion. During a normal transition -- and this has obviously been far from normal -- in December, after the election and before the inauguration, Walters would arrange for the incoming family to get a guided tour of the White House from the current first lady. It s then that the incoming first lady would be presented with a book containing the names and photographs of the people who work in the residence. The book helps the first family learn the names of everyone who works in the house. It is partly a security measure, so that if they see anyone unfamiliar, they can alert the Secret Service. The smoothest transitions take cooperation between the sitting president and his successor. The Obama family s advisers started meeting with residence staff soon after the election, and by the week before the inauguration, much of the Obamas furniture had already been shipped to the White House, where it was stored in the China Room on the Ground Floor so that it could be moved quickly upstairs. The Bushes had told Chief Usher Stephen Rochon that they wanted to make the move as easy as possible for everyone, but Rochon told me, "We want to keep it out of the sight of the existing family." He added, "Not that they didn t know it was there, but we didn t want them to feel that we were trying to move them out." No detail is overlooked. Weeks before the inauguration, the Obamas social secretary Desiree Rogers met with the florists and discussed what kind of flowers would sit on the cabaret tables, and which kind of candelabras and candlelight they would use for those few moments the first family has to enjoy their new, heady surroundings before they change for the balls. The Bidens know the house well, having served as vice president and second lady for eight years. But so far, it is unclear how their move into their new home will be handled under such unprecedented circumstances with a deadly virus raging. Walters told me his favorite moment of a new administration comes when the president calls him by his first name. For other residence staffers it s when they walk into a room when the president is in mid-conversation and the conversation doesn t stop. "There s a collective sigh," he said. "We know we have proven that we can be trusted. With Joe Biden, who will already recognize a lot of these faces, that will probably happen sooner than later.

This week, I received the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. As a frontline health care worker, I was one of the fortunate few in the first wave of eligibility. I was so excited -- it was as if Christmas had come early. Right before I got the shot, I had a very sick patient come in to the emergency department severely dehydrated and with confusion caused by the virus. The day before, I put another patient with Covid-19 on a ventilator as she gasped for breath. When the pandemic started, I faced it with nervous trepidation. Now, I view it with unfortunate familiarity. I lost count of how many patients I have seen with the disease. But one thing I recall is that most of them have been Black. There has been a lot of discussion within my own African American community about the vaccine. Relatives, colleagues and friends have all weighed in with different opinions. Some say they will never get it. Others want to wait, and have texted me asking for my thoughts and reactions to the initial dose. A few more have received it through their own work in the medical field. The mixed response is understandable. It is not only fueled by our current political environment, but also rooted in a dark past.Communities of color have repeatedly been the subject of experimental treatments -- either unwillingly or to their own detriment. The birth control pill was first tested in poor women in a housing project in Puerto Rico. The most famous example is the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, in which the US Public Health Service studied the natural history of syphilis in 399 Black men infected with the disease over a 40 year period, where they suffered complications and deaths, and infected their wives and children. In the general public, there is also a great deal of mistrust. President Donald Trump declared the existence of a "Medical Deep State" after Pfizer released early vaccine results shortly after the election. Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, the anti-vaccine movement promoted an unsubstantiated link between vaccines and autism. These examples are all based on incredibly bad science. The foundation of the anti-vaccine argument was a study with only 12 patients. It was so poorly done that the findings were later retracted by the medical journal which published them, and the author subsequently lost his medical license. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment unethically withheld information about and treatment for a curable disease, causing unjust harm.The result is that there are now extensive safeguards in place to prevent similar atrocities. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are different. Phase 3 trials for these drugs had over 43,000 and 30,000 participants, respectively, and included individuals from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds, all of whom volunteered and underwent a careful informed consent process. This does not mean that the medical community is off the hook. There continues to be numerous examples of discrimination in health care, ranging from racial disparities in the receipt of pain medications to therapies for cardiovascular care. However, we should not view the Covid vaccine as an attempt to add to this discrimination. Instead, it can be our opportunity to level the playing field. We have been hit hard by Covid, and we must use every tool in our power to end this terrible pandemic. In a Pew poll released earlier this month, only 42% percent of Black Americans said that they would get the vaccine. The mistrust from communities of color at times seems insurmountable. However, I do not believe this is the case. Culturally competent messaging is key. It was no coincidence that the first person immunized against Covid in this country was a Black woman, or that former President Barack Obama has volunteered to get his vaccine in public. However, it is as important to see public figures get the vaccine, as it is to see individuals you know personally get it -- cousins, neighbors, your family doctor. We also must make sure that there is equitable access to the vaccine for vulnerable populations. Increasing outreach for the vaccine is useless if it cannot be obtained once available.I posted a photo documenting the receipt of my vaccine on Facebook. That post received some of the most likes and comments I have had since joining the social media platform many years ago. However, the comment that touched me the most was that of a classmate from my elementary school, which is located on the Southside of Chicago, an area with some of the worst health outcomes of the city. Even though I have not seen my classmate in over 40 years, she remarked that because she trusted me, she too was planning to get the vaccine. We may not be able to reverse community mistrust in the vaccine overnight, but we can spread the word to one person at a time. And for me, that is a great start. When you get your vaccine, please be sure to tell a friend.

Donald Trump probably could not have been a worse person to lead Americans through the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a man who "fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic," as PolitiFact recently documented in its annual "Lie of the Year" designation. The nonpartisan group gave its 2020 "award" to "coronavirus downplay and denial"— in which it said Trump had been the conductor of the "symphony of counter narrative" about the virus.During the course of the year, Trump mocked Joe Biden and a reporter for wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus, despite experts recommending face coverings as one of the most effective ways to save lives while treatments and vaccines were developed. In the fall, as virus cases jumped, Trump held numerous campaign rallies with his mostly maskless supporters jammed together in spite of reports tracing these events to spreading the virus. Now, as unbelievable as it may seem, Trump has checked out on even paying attention to a virus that is taking the life of an American every 40 seconds. As the Washington Post reported Saturday after speaking to numerous Trump advisers, the President has given up on dealing with Covid-19 since Election Day. Instead, Trump is almost solely focused on spewing lies to overturn his defeat by Vice President-elect Joe Biden. At this point Trump should resign and allow Vice President Mike Pence to serve as President through January 20. Despite Pence s numerous faults, at least he appears to be engaged in attempting to combat Covid, as evidenced by his effort to bolster public confidence in the new vaccine by getting his shot on live television Friday.While nothing at this point Trump does should come as a surprise, The Washington Post reporting is jaw dropping in documenting that Trump, since about the time he was declared the loser of the presidential election, abdicated his responsibility for managing the public health crisis. The Post quotes one of Trump s closest advisers as saying, "I think he s just done with Covid." "Done" despite the alarming spike in Covid cases and deaths since Election Day. To give some perspective, on Election Day (November 3), the United States was averaging 847 daily deaths over a one-week period. Where are we now? More than three times that rate, with an average of 2,630 Americans dying every day during last seven days. In fact, our nation saw a gruesome new record set Wednesday with over 3,600 Americans dying from Covid—the most lost in a day from the virus so far. Heartbreakingly, that was just one of several days in the past week where more Americans died from Covid in 24 hours than in the attacks of 9/11. Meanwhile, Trump is laser focused on one thing: Serving up lies about the election. And while Trump is no longer attending Covid briefings, he did find time on Friday to hold a meeting in the White House where he reportedly discussed imposing martial law as a possible way to remain in power. (He denied that he was considering martial law in a Sunday morning tweet.)For the most part, Trump s only Covid-related comments over the past month have been to pat himself on the back for scientists developing a vaccine. Trump also claimed that the vaccine s announcement was delayed to after Election Day to hurt him politically—yet another lie. While it s true that the virus would have caused infections and deaths in America regardless of what any President would have done, many experts believe that Trump s failed leadership played a key role in the virus causing proportionately more infections and deaths in the United States than in most other developed nations.Trump s conduct surrounding the virus, especially his lies that misled the public about the actual dangers posed by Covid, is morally reprehensible. There must be an in-depth investigation into the administration and Trump s personal actions surrounding the virus when he leaves office to learn from their failures to protect us. For now, if Trump has truly surrendered to Covid despite the record breaking number of hospitalizations and deaths, he should resign effective immediately. While we can t be certain how many lives would be saved with Pence as president for the final month of this administration, even one life saved by a change in leadership would be worth it.

The current exceptional stage in Egyptian-French relations offers an opportunity to advance ties between the two countries to the level of a new "qualitative alliance". The objective is entrenching stability and security in the Mediterranean in the face of common regional challenges and similar internal battles the two countries are involved in vis-a-vis opposing parties in the region. Thus, this alliance is characterised with a special nature, reflected in President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi s visit to France 6 December, which was unprecedented in timing, form and content. Egyptian-French relations have great significance due to the two countries regional, political and civilisational weight, and the nature of interests shared by both in the light of challenges regarding terrorism and other Mediterranean matters, especially Turkish intervention in the Eastern Mediterranean and crises facing countries such as Libya, Syria and Lebanon, as well as immigration, organised crime and the Palestinian cause. Continuous compatibility Regarding the terrorism issue, Egypt kept suffering for decades from extremist groups terrorism and kept alerting countries providing a safe haven to extremism about its dangers. Such Egyptian alarms increased after 2013. When terrorism struck badly and heavily in France s heart in 2020, Paris adopted a security standpoint more in tune with the Egyptian stance on the terrorism issue, distinguishing it from human rights issues, which had dominated French discourse towards Arab countries and the Mediterranean frame. France became one of the European countries most interested in the Egyptian point of view. A new bill discussed recently by the French cabinet — including “enhancing the supervision of religious societies and their funding and criminalising hatred via internet” as well as measures to combat extremism by closing 400 societies, mosque and sports halls and different sites — is but an indicator of the impact of terrorism on French national security. Hence, the two countries views have converged regarding the characteristics and essence of the battle in the heart of the Arab world and Europe; namely, the confrontation between “nationalism” and “fundamentalisms”. All this points to the necessity of cooperation between the two countries on this issue, which won t reverberate only in the security sphere, but will also contribute to deepening military cooperation and bringing intellectual and strategic visions more closely into line. In this specific context, Egyptian-French relations constitute a regional centre of gravity, anticipating changes that might take place on the international arena towards this issue. Egypt needs to widen the distinction between necessities of combating terrorism and human rights principles, within in the European frame and the Western frame as a whole, and France can help Egypt in this regard. France needs Egypt with regard to its security expertise in combating terrorism, to help the French interior and in kareas that France dedicates more attention to in Africa. Refusing intervention No indicator on the compatibility in the two countries policies during the last two years has been more clear than their stance towards the Turkish issue represented in Turkish antagonistic policies in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean. Cairo and Paris both hold a similar vision towards Ankara as the prime supporter of extremist forces through vision, facilities, financial and media backing and illegal intervention from the highest level, represented in the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself. All this has reinforced compatible Egyptian and French policies and convergent interests, and has even transcended them, reaching the “red lines” delineated by both countries towards Turkey. These “red lines” are connected to challenges and dangers originating from Turkey on the national security of both countries. All this has led, as presidential spokesman Bassam Rady pointed out, during the visit of El-Sisi to France, to “big spheres of mutual understanding between the two countries that amount to having identical stances regarding the refusal of foreign intervention and refusal of dealing with militias and the transfer of foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria to Libya, as well as the equitable and transparent division of all wealth [in Libya]”. Mutual interests Concerning the Mediterranean and Libyan issues, France needs Egypt as much as Egypt needs France, especially in light of changes in the Italian and German positions towards Turkey, or Turkish unclear stances towards some Southern Mediterranean countries, with probabilities of developments in Turkish military intervention in Libya or probabilities of a military clash – even by mistake – with Ankara in the Eastern Mediterranean. In this context, the significance of the Egyptian-French alliance is boosted by probabilities of a Russian retreat from confronting Turkey within the frame of regional disputes, as it has been witnessed in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. There remains one main issue for both countries; namely, the Palestinian cause. Each has historical commitments towards the Palestinian people in spite of transformations occurring in the Arab region. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that ongoing efforts are being made in order to develop an alternative to what is called the “Deal of the Century”. He reiterated his refusal of Israel s annexation plans, and his support for the two-state solution, which was welcomed by the Palestinian Authority who considered it a “perception from the world that the deal aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause”. If US President Donald Trump s administration has gone to great lengths to ignore Palestinians rights, both Egypt and France — driven by new Arab stances and supported by an announced stance of the Biden administration towards the Palestinian cause — can correct the course through searching for a joint vision that combines the main historical logics of Palestinian rights, and efforts exerted in order to reach a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, the current exceptional stage in Egyptian-French relations remains in need of a strategic vision based on intellectual, cultural and historical commonalities reflected in their noticeable compatibility on regional issues of mutual concern.

Better late than never, I guess.On Tuesday, six weeks after Joe Biden bested Donald Trump in the election and a day after electors cast their ballots and, again, proclaimed Biden the winner, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally recognized him as the incoming president of the United States. It s sad that "leader of the Senate recognizes reality" is even newsworthy, but here we are after four years of Donald Trump. Let s be clear: McConnell doesn t get applause for foot-dragging, for belatedly doing the normal thing. It s not even the right thing -- "doing the right thing" implies some sort of moral courage. He simply, finally acknowledged the real outcome -- plain for all to see for weeks now -- of the American democratic process. For one of the most powerful people in the country, that should be the baseline. It is time for other delinquent members of his party to do the same. The sitting President has used his final weeks in office to falsely claim that the election was rigged and that he was the real winner, claims that have failed spectacularly in dozens of court cases brought by his team and his sympathizers. Nevertheless, a stunning (and embarrassing) number of elected officials on the right have backed him up, with more than half of House Republicans signing on to an amicus brief requesting that the Supreme Court hear a case demanding to overturn the election -- a brazen attack on American democracy -- coming, literally, from inside the house.Now, with the Electoral College votes cast and the transition in full swing, for this benighted group of insurgents there is little hope left to cling to that the courts might subvert the will of the American people and do Trump s bidding. Which doesn t mean Republicans have stopped doing Trump s bidding. In the same speech in which he finally recognized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President-elect and vice president-elect, McConnell also lavished praise on the notoriously narcissistic President, speaking for several minutes about "the outsider who swore he would shake up Washington and lead our country to new accomplishments, both at home and abroad" doing "exactly that." Trump was such a great President, McConnell said, "It would take far more than one speech to catalog all the major wins the Trump administration has helped deliver for the American people." It was a humiliating display from a grown man, the kind of fawning obsequiousness that is uncomfortable to watch. Only after this bout of bootlicking did McConnell -- ostensibly the leader of his party now, but somehow still servile to a President in the twilight of his power -- turn to the matter at hand: a new president he had spent weeks refusing to recognize. Some other Congressional Republicans seem to be grudgingly following suit. The President did not. He continues to tweet his blatant lies about widespread voter fraud and a stolen election.His behavior, and that of his Republican toadies in Congress, stands in sharp contrast to remarks Joe Biden delivered to the nation just a few hours earlier, after his victory was decisively affirmed. He said "this is the time to heal America," and called on all of us to "Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now." It was the right request, and the right tone. But this grim era hasn t just been about discord, division or even demonization. It s been about who is willing to flat-out lie to citizens, who fuels the spread of misinformation and falsehoods and who is willing to exploit hyper-partisanship, ignorance or both -- all for political advantage and power. Both sides are guilty of divisive rhetoric. But only one has consistently lied to the American people, enabled a dangerous wannabe autocrat, refused to recognize reality when it s inconvenient and attempted to steal an election that came off just the way it was supposed to, and against some steep odds during a pandemic: free and fair. Biden is right that we need healing. But it s not both sides who have equally done damage -- only one of them has a lot of compensating to do. The Senate majority leader and the rest of his GOP have a new opportunity to do better. They can push to return to the reality-based community. They can reject partisan lies and attempts by the outgoing President -- or any member of their party -- to foment distrust in the electoral process and doubt that Biden and Harris will soon take their seats as the duly elected President and vice president.These are not outrageous expectations. And yet, if recent history is any guide, McConnell and his party will fail to meet them. Democrats need to call this out loudly and consistently. Media outlets need to point at the bad actors, and avoid "both sides-ing." And voters need to hold them accountable -- starting just days from now in Georgia.

On Wednesday, I will testify before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Though I am no longer a public servant, it remains an honor to serve the public, and I am proud to heed the call of our Senate leaders to tell the public about the methodology of the agency I led, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), to secure the 2020 presidential election. I joined the Department of Homeland Security in March of 2017. I believe, then and now, that the Russian Federation attempted to interfere in our 2016 election to disparage Hillary Clinton to the advantage of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, as laid out in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Russia attempted to advance its candidate of choice and to corrode public faith in American democracy through cyberattacks and a coordinated disinformation campaign. Our democratic institutions are facing targeted, calculated threats from without, and from within. This is why we prioritized election security as the primary focus of CISA. I made that mission clear at my confirmation hearing when I took an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. Our task was to work with state and local election officials to secure from hacking their election infrastructure, including the machines, equipment and information systems. It was also central to our mission, and is still central to my own values, to protect the American public from disinformation warfare. This is why on November 12, CISA joined an election security community statement assuring people that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Today, this statement remains true, and I will continue to clarify and correct this onslaught of false information alleging systems interference where none has occurred. Our initial strategy to secure the 2020 election centered on defensive measures against the kind of three-pronged Russian attack that was activated in 2016, targeting systems supporting elections, political candidates and public perception. Across the nation s security agencies, there was unanimous agreement that we could not let it happen again. Our planning was not just focused on preventing a repeat of the Russian 2016 efforts. We worked with partners in the intelligence community to anticipate diverse tactics that Russia, Iran, China and non-state cyber criminals could attempt to disrupt the election. We prepared for efforts that included a disinformation component, or what is known as a "perception hack," in which the malicious actor either falsely claims a cyberattack that never happened or claims that an insignificant incident wreaked much more damage than it actually did. In these scenarios, which include the current false claims of voter fraud, those on defense are caught playing catch-up, trying to disprove a negative. Disinformation targeting elections is one of the hardest problems that remains before the US government. While there are multiple ways to tackle disinformation, we viewed it as a "supply and demand" problem. Some government agencies sought to disrupt the supply of disinformation, but we worked to minimize demand by making the American people more critical of information they encountered in social and news media, and therefore more resilient to it. Ours was an effort to inoculate people from false information. One innovation in our efforts to counter perception hacks was a program called "Rumor Control." The idea was simple. We would share our scenario planning efforts with American voters in a straightforward, digestible way. In doing so, we could preempt disinformation campaigns and perception hacks by providing facts to help American voters make their own decisions. We were looking to protect the public from misleading disinformation before it took root and became perceived as true. This, and other measures to counter disinformation were successful in maintaining voter confidence and squelching false information before it spread. But these efforts must be fortified and properly funded to defend our information ecosystems from more aggressive, coordinated attacks in the future. As Election Day came and went, we continued to monitor networks across the country and work with our partners, with them reporting any suspicious activity to us. As I said in a news briefing, Election Day was "just another Tuesday on the internet." Normal sorts of scanning and probing were happening, but we did not see any successful attacks or damaging disruptions. Unfortunately, as we moved on from November 3, we began to see wild and baseless claims of domestic origin, about hackers and malicious algorithms that flipped the vote in states across the country, singling out election equipment vendors for having ties to deceased foreign dictators. None of these claims matched up with the intelligence we had, based on reporting from election officials or how elections actually work in this country. To address this scenario, we once again took to Rumor Control, to correct public perception by highlighting facts about security controls and checks in place that would prevent such attacks. Before, during and after the election, our team held regular briefings with congressional staff, political campaigns, and state and local election officials. I personally led member-level, unclassified phone briefings for both chambers of Congress. This was a continuation of our commitment to transparent, non-partisan work. All authorities and elected representatives have a duty to inform themselves of these facts, and to reinforce them to the American people, as our team did, in the face of false allegations that election machines have been used to change millions of votes across the country. These claims are not only inaccurate and "technically incoherent" according to 59 election security experts, but they are also dangerous and only serve to confuse, scare and ultimately undermine confidence in the election. To understand CISA s relationship to the issue of fraud, it is important to define a key distinction between two issues that are often conflated, sometimes intentionally: the security of elections and election-related fraud. My team at CISA had lead responsibility for working with state and local election officials to secure from hacking the election infrastructure, including the machines, equipment and systems supporting elections. We also led a centralized, interagency effort among the National Security Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI and others at the federal level to combat the pernicious effects of disinformation campaigns on our elections. The FBI, state and local law enforcement are responsible for investigating voter fraud and other criminal election activity. In order to maintain American resiliency, Congress and the incoming administration must continue to reinvent, fortify and fund the American defense on the battlefield of disinformation through both centralized and regionalized interagency cooperation. Rumor Control was part of CISA s collaboration with the FBI, and I urge the transition team and the FBI leadership to expand this program in order to remain resilient against increasingly aggressive threats from foreign state actors and private domestic interests. It is also critical going forward for CISA to designate and embed field personnel in each FBI field office. CISA is currently piloting that concept in a Southeastern US field office. I urge Congress to support and fund expansion of these critical FBI-CISA programs. Moving forward, CISA should also augment its partnerships with the NSA Cybersecurity Directorate leadership by assigning a senior representative to Fort Meade to advise and consult. Elections in this country are, and should continue to be, run by state and local officials as prescribed by state legislatures in accordance with congressional oversight. But they cannot do their jobs if they do not have adequate support, including a stable stream of funding from Congress so that election officials can work with state legislatures to craft budgets they can depend on to complete the critical transition to paper ballot systems, institute post-election audits, and to implement other appropriate infrastructure and personnel investments. As foreign and domestic interests attack our democracy for political and financial gain, attempting to infiltrate American public opinion and confidence in our most sacred institutions, our elected representatives must now show true leadership in defending the people by defending the truth. PAID CONTENT

The two of us, as emergency physicians, will be among the earliest recipients of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19. We have both been asked how and why we made the choice to get our shot. We, like many fellow health care providers, were initially concerned about political pressure being put on the US Food and Drug Administration. Ultimately, though, four reasons, based on our years of experience in emergency medicine, public health and clinical trials, informed our decision to trust the vaccine -- and get vaccinated.The terms "Operation Warp Speed" and "Emergency Use Authorization" convey a haste that could be interpreted as in conflict with safety. History provides examples of vaccines and pharmaceuticals that had negative consequences, so this concern is not unreasonable.However, these vaccines development did not cut corners. Moderna s and Pfizer s compressed timeline reflects unique partnerships between industry, government, and academia, high levels of funding, and decades of previous research on mRNA vaccines, as well as countless individuals working day and night given the nature of the crisis. Authorization may be expedited, but both organizations followed the requisite orderly progression from Phase 1 to Phase 3 trials. The careful scientific design and rigor has given us a great deal of confidence in the final product. Despite prior political pressure applied to the process, two federal advisory boards (the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) as well as a separate advisory board in New York have evaluated Pfizer s results, and approved the vaccine through the Emergency Use Authorization process. They will follow the same process for the Moderna vaccine.Pfizer s Phase 3 results have additionally undergone external peer review and been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Each of these independent reviews was incentivized to identify problems, not to gloss them over. It s also tremendously unlikely that all of them missed a problem related to safety and efficacy. They work! It would not be appropriate to expend massive political, financial, and public goodwill to provide an ineffective vaccine across the population. Reassuringly, the ample publicly available data supports that these vaccines are highly effective in preventing Covid-19 disease. We love to see consistency of results in science: The fact that the two mRNA vaccines -- Pfizer s and Moderna s -- have such similar success rates (over 90% protection against symptomatic Covid-19) is very reassuring and allays concerns that one or the other study was spurious or mistaken. Individual scientists or study groups can certainly make mistakes and be subject to bias, especially when under pressure, but each of these studies was done independently, on slightly different populations, and came to the same conclusions. We still don t know the long-term efficacy of the vaccine. Will we need to be vaccinated again in the following year? Perhaps, but right now, we need whatever protection the vaccine can afford us to get on top of the pandemic. And even if the vaccines effectiveness falls short of the current estimates, the new Covid-19 vaccines promise to be far more effective than most years flu vaccines. Side effects are real, but minor, and certainly not as bad as the disease We are the first to admit that there will be temporary, minor side effects, such as low-grade fevers, muscle aches and fatigue, especially after the second dose of the vaccine. In fact, we have purposefully scheduled our own vaccines for days when we do not have to work clinically. These side effects are, however, neither dangerous nor long-lasting. Even the worst possible reaction -- anaphylactic allergic reactions -- are both rare and treatable. Administration sites will be on the watch for such events. As ER docs, we are much less worried about vaccine side effects than from the known harm from getting Covid-19. There is no evidence (or biological plausibility) behind some of the wilder claims that we ve heard and seen online about the vaccine causing long-term, hidden harm. These allegations mirror the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement. More importantly, they simply are not based in scientific reality.The mRNA just serves as a blueprint for a little piece of protein that stimulates the immune system, is quickly broken down by the body, and it is physically impossible for it to be incorporated into our underlying genetic material. People with autoimmune disorders were included in the trials, and no increased flares were observed; there is also no potential for their increasing autoimmune disorders, long-term. (If anything, the risk of catching SARS-CoV-2, which causes massive interferon release, should be more concerning to those at risk of autoimmune disease.) We are disheartened by these allegations, but also committed to overturning them with scientific truth. Most side effects of vaccines show up within days, or at most a few weeks. Trial participants have been monitored for two months or longer. These products are safe, both for us and for our families and patients. From our perspective, the likelihood of harm from Covid-19, in both the short and long term, far outweighs the small potential risks from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. It is not a magic bullet -- but it s better than getting Covid It is critical that no one overpromises on the vaccine. It does not cure -- it prevents, and even then, it only reliably prevents infection after the second dose has been received. We don t currently know how effective it is in preventing asymptomatic transmission. Infection transmission prevention measures (such as masks) must continue for months to come. It is also not fully clear how the logistics of vaccine deployment will play out from state to state. But at the end of the day, in a year in which we have lost on many fronts, the consistent reported efficacy of these first Covid-19 vaccines is an incredible good fortune. Vaccines are, perhaps, the greatest miracle of modern medicine. Over the past century, they have had a major role in transforming the life expectancy of the global population, thanks to the acceptance, rather than skepticism, of the general public. And they will continue to help us if we let them.As ER doctors, we have been firsthand witnesses to the horrible effects of this virus. Getting to herd immunity via a devastating down payment of mass illness and deaths is not an option our society can or should bear. Vaccines -- and these vaccines, in particular -- provide a much safer route, with more consistent and long-lasting immunity. All of this is why we are eager to take our place in line to get our shots -- to protect ourselves, our patients and our families. It is important to acknowledge the privilege that we have of being able to trust science without the backdrop of sustained experiences of discrimination and systemic harms. The abuses of big pharma and the corporatization of medicine in the United States have driven a wedge between the general population and medical advances, and all the more so for groups who are marginalized or discriminated against.People who have been guinea pigs for science, whose past contacts with health care have been deeply embedded with racism and bigotry, cannot be expected to trust the medical research complex overnight. "Trust us; it s safe" is a thin promise in the context of people s life experiences. Simply because some health care professionals see the vaccine as a beneficial preventive measure doesn t mean that everyone can see it that way. We believe that the vaccines should be distributed with full consciousness at every level of the inequities embedded in health care and in the pandemic itself. We must commit to fighting for equitable access to other Covid resources for vulnerable communities, concurrent with vaccine recommendation, to mitigate pandemic impact on all possible fronts.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal had the audacity to publish an op-ed arguing that incoming First Lady Jill Biden should not use the title "Dr." in the White House. The piece, written by Joseph Epstein, a man who has not earned an advanced degree (though he was given an honorary one), argues that it would be "fraudulent" and "comic" for Dr. Biden to use the Doctor of Education, or Ed.D., title that she has earned. As a woman who holds a Ph.D., I was seething before I finished his first paragraph. But I wasn t surprised. It s commonplace for women with expertise in this country to be expected to deny it -- which is exactly why it s so important that Dr. Biden use her "Dr." title in the White House, prominently and with pride. Epstein gives away his sexism immediately by opening his op-ed with the advice that "no one should call himself Dr. unless he has delivered a child." In other words, part of his problem appears to be that Dr. Biden is not a man. Epstein also argues that it has become easy to get a doctorate degree these days. He makes this inaccurate and offensive claim despite never having managed to earn one himself. Yet he devotes the most paragraphs to making the claim that honorary degrees are given out to undeserving celebrities -- even though Dr. Biden is not using her title because she has received an honorary degree. She earned an actual one. I can only guess, therefore, that his nonsensical argument is intended to generally cast aspersions on the incoming first lady. It is the sort of attack which is depressingly familiar to many female academics -- including me. In 2018, when Dr. Julia Baird earned her Ph.D. and changed her title on Twitter, she ignited a firestorm of complaints -- mostly from men. The discussion that ensued among academics revealed that women are routinely ridiculed for using the titles they earn, while the expertise of men doesn t seem to meet with the same level of skepticism and censure. One man who holds a Ph.D. responded, "I had no idea doctorate-shaming was even a thing!"Further evidence of the phenomenon of minimizing female expertise comes from the medical community for which Epstein seems to reserve his respect. A 2017 study found that when men introduced female medical doctors at a professional event, they used their titles 50 percent of the time -- but when men introduced fellow male doctors, they used their titles over 70 percent of the time. This is all part of a broader phenomenon, of course, that denies women the respect and authority we have earned. As Cornell philosopher Kate Manne writes in her 2020 book "Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women," when women make claims, their credibility is questioned much more than that of men. In fact, Rebecca Solnit wrote an entire book entitled "Men Explain Things to Me" after suffering through a man explaining one of her other books to her at a party. Scores of female academics have taken to Twitter to describe similar experiences of men explaining their own publications to them. I had this experience at an academic conference in 2016, when I sat next to one of the most senior practitioners in my field at a lunch, who proceeded to tell me about a New York Times piece I had written about my work the previous weekend. America needs to stop lecturing and start learning from women who have expertise. By using her "Dr." title in the White House, Dr. Biden would show by example that women shouldn t deny their rightful authority. She would also show other women and girls what s possible for them. Indeed, I don t recall ever meeting a woman with a Ph.D. until I went to college.In 2017, Dr. Biden spoke at the commencement ceremony at Hofstra University, where I teach. The president of our university told her that one of my colleagues, a university administrator, had just earned her graduate degree but was not planning to walk in the ceremony. Dr. Biden insisted that my colleague put on a robe and go up to the stage with her classmates because it was important to recognize all the work that had gotten her there. Given the misogyny we re up against, this is a message that other women clearly need to hear. And Dr. Biden is uniquely positioned to send it from one of the most powerful places on earth, simply by using her rightful title.

It may be easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find justice anywhere on the globe. Flaunted throughout history as a virtue and a pillar for a stable and secure society, it has never been given its due. Moreover, it has receded to the realm of rarities, to be another dream of humanity. Like Democracy, it has become a flimsy concept — inaccessible, unattainable, an impossible dream. Corruption constantly elbows justice and it has always been so. Both are controlled by humans. We watch with dismay the spread of corruption as the US presidential voting process unfolds. Who would have imagined all the deception, the cheating, the lies, manoeuvres and dirty tricks by the mighty, the powerful, the wealthy, the strong over the weak? What say you when a billionaire distributes $1 million in one voting centre among a staff of 50-60 personnel. Why? In order to alter or discard names of legitimate candidates. What it means and how it can be allowed and accepted causes us to lose hope that justice, the bulwark of the remarkable American constitution, has become murky with the passing of the years. Where then do we find justice? If not on this earth, then we have to look up to the heavens. It has been said that justice favours the weak. That is utter nonsense. Prisons are filled with the poor, the minorities, the migrants, the helpless. Up to five per cent of prisoners in the US have been wrongly convicted. The situation is not very different in other countries and a lot worse in many. The wealthy have access to power and influence and the best possible legal representation. Do they experience better treatment and consideration than the poor, powerless and without influence? You can bet on it. Every courthouse has a statue or a plaque of Lady Justice. Since ancient times she has been portrayed as an elegant lady holding a set of scales in one hand and a sword in another. It is an allegorical personification, partly deification, of the impartial and moral force in the judicial system. Its origin goes back to the ancient Egyptian goddess Maat, the Greek goddess Themis, also known as Justitia by the Romans. We are all familiar with that noble image of a proud lady holding a set of scales in one hand and a sword in another. The scales are typically suspended from one hand upon which is measured the evidence of support and opposition. The sword represents authority and conveys the idea that justice can be swift and final. A snake under her foot symbolises evil and lies. The book is the law, from which justice is administered. All great symbols, but the most telling of all is the blindfold. Yes, Lady Justice is blind. Objective and impartial, she is ready to act without fear or bias, regardless of power or wealth, race, gender, religion, politics, etc. It’s a catchall for all things that differentiate people. Lady Justice does not care who comes to her. She cares about the relation to the law, and the law only. Here is the rub. Is justice really blind? Well, not really, not at all. It is dispensed by humans, not gods. Humans are influenced by wealth, social standing, class and ideology. Regardless of all the oaths, promises, strength and dedication, humans possess emotions that should be but are not always controlled. Errors in judgement favour the wealthy, with the best possible legal representation. The poor, the powerless, become invisible to justice. There are generally five legal systems practised worldwide: civil law, common law, customary law, religious law, and mixed law. Civil law originated in the Roman legal system. France and Germany are such examples. Common law relies more on precedent judicial decisions with a judge or jury moderating between two opposing parties. This is the US legal system. Customary law is based on patterns of behaviour that have come to be accepted as rules of conduct, usually unwritten, passed down through generations. Religious law emanates from texts written in holy books such as Sharia in Islam. Mixed legal systems use two or more of the above systems. Unfair treatment before the law is a major contributor to instability and violent extremism. Up to four billion of the world’s population do not benefit from the proper rule of law or equal access to justice. The number could be higher when the Lady’s blindfold is removed, which is at most times. Is there any place in this world, whether rich or poor, where you can be protected by the fair administration of the rule of law? For the past 10 years Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden have headed the list of a fairly equal form of justice, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. The UK ranked 12th, the US 20th. The Lady needs some brushing up in the US. A newly released report finds 2.4 million individuals incarcerated in the US. Australia, Canada, Wales, and Germany, for example, provide a policy of options such as fines, community service, probation or treatment. However, for the second year in a row the 2019 index scores have found more countries declined rather than advanced the rule of law. Lady Justice is neither blind nor objective. Temptation has no mercy. God alone has no partiality or bias. Only God can deliver justice. “This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr (1841-1945)

Chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas paid a visit to Cairo 30 November where he had a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. The day before he met Jordan s King Abdullah in Amman. The two summit meetings came after the PA agreed to resume security cooperation with Israel earlier halted by the Palestinians. The main objective of the tour by Abbas was to discuss with the two Arab leaders the way forward in light of the election victory of President-elect Joe Biden and how Egypt and Jordan could help the Palestinians in reengaging with both the new US administration and the present Israeli government with the aim of resuming peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis that ended in April 2014 during the second Obama administration. The main obstacle and reason for the cessation of negotiations was Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank. On the other hand, how the three parties — Egypt, Jordan and the PA — could approach the future Biden administration on reviving the two-state solution and the best means to encourage the next US administration to readopt this solution. The two summits were all the more necessary as well as significant in light of the normalisation of relations between Israel and other Arab countries without corresponding Israeli concessions as far as the Palestinian question is concerned. In both Amman and Cairo, Abbas found listening ears and support for the PA. Moreover, the question of inter-Palestinian reconciliation was brought up. In the last two months Fatah, the main force within the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Hamas had agreed on a roadmap to achieve such reconciliation with an agreement that Abbas, in his capacity as chairman of the PA, would call for presidential and legislative elections in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in East Jerusalem as soon as conditions in the occupied territories and Gaza would allow. The four years of President Trump in the White House have not advanced the cause of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Although the White House announced last January a peace plan to solve the Palestinian-Israeli question, the Palestinians and most Arabs have not been convinced that this was the best and only alternative to peace and security in the Middle East. The best bet is that the Biden administration would not push hard for the implementation of the Trump peace plan. Given the national security team that President-elect Biden announced 10 days ago, the likelihood is that the United States will push for the resumption of peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis with the help of the International Quartet that includes the US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. Working with the Quartet is a promising proposition inasmuch as all the parties that comprise it believe in the two-state solution, save the US during the Trump years at the White House. Arab countries and leading European powers, which have traditionally played a significant role in promoting peace in the Middle East, whether in the southern tier of Europe or in the north, including Germany, could work together to advance the cause of peace in the region aided by the Biden administration. An example of such coordination took place in Amman on Thursday, 24 September. Jordan hosted a meeting that was attended by France and Germany, on the one hand, and Egypt and Jordan on the other. A representative of the European Union was also present. The meeting stressed the importance of the two-state solution as a means to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moreover, it called for the resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that should be “serious and effective”. Furthermore, the meeting rejected the idea of annexation as referred to in the Trump peace plan. In addition, the four countries and the European Union emphasised that settlements and the expropriation of Palestinian land and possessions are in violation of international law and undermine the two-state solution. The interesting elements above could be a blueprint for a joint Arab-European Declaration or a joint declaration by the Arab League and the European Union to coincide with the official inauguration of the Biden administration next month. It goes without saying that the Israeli government and political parties of the extreme right would do everything possible to undermine any genuine and serious moves by the Biden administration to push the two-state solution through direct negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Accordingly, I was not surprised by the move in Israel to dissolve the Knesset in a first reading. If the Knesset finally adopts a law for its dissolution, then Israel will see its fourth general elections in less than two years. If dissolved, and the Israelis are called to elect a new Knesset, the odds are that the extreme right in Israel would gain more seats than it presently has. If this comes to pass and the present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is chosen for the sixth time to be premier, then we should expect a lot Israeli manoeuvring to forestall any serious American plan to advance the cause of peace in accordance with UN resolutions. Also, we should expect the Israeli government, whether the present one or any future one headed by Netanyahu, to overdramatise the “existential threat” that Iran of the Ayatollahs poses for Israel. With normalisation agreements between Israel and some Gulf countries, this time around the pressure on the new US administration would be greater than when Israel had acted alone in Washington circles during the Obama administration to block the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed in July 2015 between the P5+1 and Iran concerning Iranian nuclear activities. As a matter of fact, President-elect Biden said last week that some Arab countries should join any new negotiations with Iran to revise the JCPOA. The overall situation in the Middle East is quite complicated but a determined Biden administration with clear objectives and political determination could move things forward in order to stabilise the region. It will be a question of priorities and the hierarchy of interests that Washington will want to stress. The Palestinian-Israeli question should be on the American list of priorities in the Middle East. Positive American engagement in this regard could have an important impact on other issues related to peace and security in the Middle East.

Egypt has experienced some extremely critical and challenging times since the overthrow of a regime that had set out to monopolise power and render society hostage to theocratically oriented Islamist organisations. The interim government and then the government that came to power following the presidential elections in 2014 had the arduous task of rebuilding the state while contending with the war against terrorism, severe economic hardship and declining resources, and concerted propaganda campaigns orchestrated by foreign powers and political forces determined to turn the clock back to conditions that the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people adamantly opposed, as they still do today. In the tumult that prevailed after the January 2011 Revolution, political party life and the activities of civil society organisations, whether involved in development work or rights advocacy, were thrown into such anarchy that the government had to intervene to regulate the sector, as other countries do. Only then could civil society play an effective role in the development process and broader segments of the public could contribute through civil society organisations. Political forces in the post-January Revolution period wanted to see more transparency in the operations of civil society organisations when it became clear that political money was involved in turning their activities towards the realisation of spurious agendas. Indeed, it was such factors that had enabled reactionary forces to rise to power in 2012. Reorganisation was clearly necessary and the new NGO law was introduced to serve this purpose. Since Law 149 of 2019, more commonly known as the NGO law, was first drafted, the government has responded to many of the observations registered by civil society representatives and incorporated them into the recently ratified bylaws to this law. “The law and its bylaws reflect the faith of the state in the vital role of NGOs in the realisation of development in diverse fields by building a strong and sustainable partnership between the state and civil society that will enable them to achieve their goals in a framework of transparency and respect for the values of human rights,” a government spokesman said. The bylaws have abolished penalties depriving NGO workers of their right to freedom of movement, restricting penalties to fines in the event of violations. They uphold the constitutionally stipulated right to establish an NGO through the submission of a notification to the relevant authority, by which act the applicant establishes the legal identity of the organisation. On the other hand, the law prohibits NGOs from engaging in political, party political or syndicate activities, or making their premises available for such purposes. A week after the new bylaws were ratified, a court ruling lifted the assets freezes and travel bans on the staffs of 20 NGOs involved in the foreign funding case that has been ongoing since July 2011. This, too, is an important step in reaffirming the government’s intent to facilitate the operations of NGOs. Now that the investigations into them have been concluded, the NGOs will be able to resume work as long as they remain in conformity with the new law. The Ministry of Social Solidarity reported that, by October 2017, the number civil society associations and NGOs in Egypt had risen to more than 48,000, of which some 30,000 were active. The majority are based in Greater Cairo and Alexandria although plenty are to be found in all parts of the country, including the more remote peripheries. Also, according to the ministry, 12,000 NGOs spend in the neighbourhood of LE 10 billion a year on social work. There are 96 international NGOs currently operating in Egypt. In the Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), or Egypt 2030, civil society organisations and NGOs have a major part to play in the realisation of sustainable development goals. The SDS sees them as indispensable in the fight to eliminate poverty, to totally eliminate hunger, to upgrade and develop healthcare and educational services, to promote gender equality and other such areas that are crucial to improving the quality of life of the Egyptian people.

President-elect Joe Biden inherits a deeply divided America. But he also inherits a Democratic Party that is divided on how to tackle a wide array of issues, from immigration to health care, criminal justice to defense. Can they come together to confront a possible Republican Senate? Can they deliver on their mandate without further alienating the voters they lost? In this week s "What Comes Next," David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, and Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist, tackle those questions in our discussion. But first, here s Axelrod s op-ed on what comes next for the Democratic Party. --SE Cupp If you re a Democrat, this is a time of great relief but not necessarily much joy. Sure, you captured the big prize, defeating a president with autocratic tendencies whose continuation in office many feared -- with good reason -- posed an existential threat to the institutions, norms and rule of law that form the foundation of our democracy. Joe Biden won the support of more than 80 million Americans, marking the seventh time in eight elections that Democrats have claimed the national popular vote. He added five states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, including two -- Arizona and Georgia -- where Democrats had not won at the presidential level since the 1990s. All good news. But beneath that glittering top line, Republicans had an unexpectedly good Election Day. Encouraged by polling that proved too rosy, Democrats had high hopes of seizing a US Senate majority, enlarging their edge in the US House of Representatives and taking control of a half dozen or more legislatures across the country -- critical in a year when the states will be redrawing legislative and congressional maps for the next decade. None of that happened. While Biden won the presidency, it was Donald Trump who had the coattails. Mired in scandal, controversy and an epic pandemic, Trump, nevertheless, won over 74 million votes -- over 10 million more votes then he received in 2016. While it wasn t enough to save the embattled president, Republicans swept along in his wake narrowed the Democratic advantage in the US House by at least 12 seats so far, captured control of two more state legislative chambers in New Hampshire and are favored to maintain the majority in the US Senate, pending two critical runoff elections in Georgia on January 5. Unless Democrats can pull off two upsets in Georgia, many of Biden s appointments and much of his agenda will be at the mercy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans, quickly testing the incoming president s oft-stated hope for a new era of bipartisan cooperation. Trump soon will be gone, but he has turbocharged a realignment, decades in the making, that leaves us a more deeply divided country and raises challenges for both parties. Buoyed by significant gains among suburban voters, and strong showings in cities, Biden won many of the most populous and prosperous metropolitan areas by even larger margins than Hillary Clinton. But Trump commanded more than 80% of the nation s counties, dominating rural areas and small towns across large swaths of the country. Those divisions, and the constitutionally-mandated system by which we elect presidents and apportion senators and members of Congress, means that Democrats may have the most voters, but Republicans, by activating their base, can maintain legislative power and remain competitive in future Electoral College races for the White House. For Democrats, the sobering reality is that, despite his seven million vote-lead nationally, Biden captured the presidency by a combined 43,692 votes across three battleground states. Without his narrow wins in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, the race for electoral votes would have been tied. And, looking back, Biden was likely the only Democrat running in 2020 who could have pulled it off. White-haired, White and male; steeped in the working-class culture of his native Scranton, Pennsylvania; moderate in tone and politics and enormously empathetic because of his own horrific life struggles, Biden was a difficult target for the race-baiting, reactionary president. While Trump may have wounded Democratic candidates down ballot with his caricature of the party as a hotbed of "the radical left, "socialists," and mob-coddling advocates of "defunding police," he failed to brand Biden, who exit polls say carried moderate voters by 30 points, nearly three times Clinton s margin over Trump four years ago. That shift was reflected in the suburbs, where burgeoning turnout and shifting allegiances made the difference in the battleground states. Weary of chaos, and comfortable with Biden, White men with a college degree, who heavily favored Trump over Clinton in 2016, were nearly tied this year. White women with a college degree favored Biden by nearly double digits, according to CNN exit polls. These gains more than offset losses among some groups on whom Democrats were counting. African-Americans still supported Biden in overwhelmingly numbers, but Trump made small but measurable gains with Black men. Moreover, Democrats, who counted Latinx voters among their base, learned that Hispanic-American communities can t be treated as a monolithic or an automatic vote. They are rich and varied in their perspectives and experiences, and bucked the Democratic Party in places like Miami-Dade County in Florida and parts of South Texas. The decline among Asian-Americans was also noticeable. But the biggest concern Democrats should have is over the hardening of opposition in large swaths of America that may send us into perpetual gridlock. It s too easy and self-defeating for Democrats in this big, diverse country to write off these Republican-won voters or regions, and too facile to explain their loss solely in terms of the issue of race, despite Trump s relentless and unabashed race-baiting and nativism. Many of the small towns and rural communities between the coasts where Republicans have built their fortress have been battered and depleted by the same economic change that has benefited burgeoning metropolitan areas, where Democrats have prospered electorally. Trump s anti-trade, anti-immigrant, anti-environmental, law-and-order jeremiads have found an audience in these communities, exploiting and inflaming a sense that Democrats are disdainful of their values and alien to their economic interests. If Democrats are seen only as a coalition of economic and cultural elites and minorities -- with little connection to the rest of the country -- the party may still win narrow national victories, as they did in 2020, but will struggle to win and maintain governing majorities. Democrats need an expansive, authentic economic message for these changing times that speaks to the experience of tens of millions of Americans, rural and urban, who feel that the system devised over time by experts from Wall Street to Washington DC is rigged against them. Biden s emphasis on boosting jobs and wages, reducing inequality and undergirding the middle class is a step in the right direction. Yet in pursuing other bedrock commitments, Democrats need to pay some attention to how their words and plans are heard and how their actions are read across the whole country. Take climate change, which is an existential crisis that demands urgent action. But if you work on an oil field, extract natural gas or coal from the ground or lay pipeline for living, the moral argument about the next generation comes hard up against anxiety about the next paycheck. In pursuing climate action, those concerns should be honored and addressed, not dismissed. Systemic racism is a brutal reality that millions of our fellow Americans confront in different ways on a daily basis. Black Americans have faced uniquely unconscionable hardships, brutality and withering economic barriers from the beginning of the republic to this day. It is a legacy we, as a country, must confront and redress. But people in struggling rural communities and aging industrial towns who aren t subject to racial discrimination but have been caught in the switches of a changing economy need to know Democrats are fighting for them, too. And then there is immigration, an issue Trump has relentlessly exploited to divide and inflame. This is a nation of hard-working immigrants whose arrival on our shores, generation after generation, has enriched our country. Now, as they seek to fix a broken and shamefully inhumane system, Democrats should also assure there are rules and accountability to address concerns of blue-collar workers who fear that a surge of immigrants will undercut their jobs and wages. As Trump has proven again, presidents define their parties. For Democrats, that task now falls to Biden, who will take over amid a raging pandemic that has wreaked havoc on our economy in a country whose trust in institutions has been shaken to the core. With divided government, Biden will have to deal not only with implacable Republicans but his own fractious coalition, mediating between a left averse to compromise, minorities demanding their rightful place at the table and suburban moderates who are an increasingly important element of the Democratic base. Gone but not forgotten, Trump will likely launch the resistance from Day One, and will be abetted by a right-wing media ecosystem long on conspiracy theories and short on facts, stoking the red-blue divide. Biden may have been the only Democrat in the race who could have defeated Trump in 2020. But now the oldest president in history faces a Herculean task, not only in leading the country, but growing his party for the future

President Donald Trump went down to Georgia on Saturday to pretend to care about democracy. Only hours earlier he had pressured the state s governor, Brian Kemp, in a phone call, to ignore the democratic outcome of the presidential election and find a way to turn the state s Electoral College vote in his favor, democracy be damned.It s not surprising, then, that his speech started with a lie -- "We won Georgia" -- followed by a relentless assault on the truth, in keeping with his destructive disinformation campaign against America and its democracy.Crowd members holding up "Save America" signs, gathered side by side, most without face masks, even though Covid-19 cases are out of control. Like previous Trump campaign gatherings, this one is likely to result in more infections, more hospitalizations, and very likely, more deaths. But if that was on anyone s mind in the crowd, it was quickly pushed aside. The Saturday night event in South Georgia, officially an effort to drum up support for Republican senators in the January run-off elections, looked and sounded much like the campaign rallies that preceded the November election. The big difference is that the national election is over now, everywhere except in the minds of Trump s most devoted backers, who are listening to the mind-boggling concoctions about a large scale international conspiracy, perhaps including North Korea and a long-dead Venezuelan president, to deprive Trump of a second term. The conspiracy, to be real, would have had to enlist Attorney General Bill Barr, Republican governors and election officials across the country and a plan so complex that it denied victory to Trump while allowing Republicans to gain seats in the House and deprive Democrats of a majority in the Senate.The Senate, as it happens, could still end up being controlled by Democrats, even if a true majority is out of reach. But that would require that Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both win their races next month -- coincidentally scheduled for the day before Congress formally counts the vote of the Electoral College -- which would create a 50-50 tie in the Senate. With Biden as president, Vice President Kamala Harris would become the tie breaker, so Democrats would be in control of the agenda. Current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would no longer run the show. That s why Republicans desperately wanted Trump to focus his remarks on the Senate run-off. It was not to be. Trump, not surprisingly, used the overwhelming majority of the speech to tout his accomplishments, promote unfounded claims that the election was stolen, and utter outlandish predictions about what Democrats will do once they run the country. "They want to go into a communistic form of government," Trump absurdly remarked. Ahead of his speech, the first since the election he lost by more than seven million votes, Republicans in Georgia and across the country were anxious about what exactly the President might say. The outcome of the runoff election will go a long way in determining how successful the Biden administration is in enacting its agenda at home and abroad. Republicans feared that Trump would all but forget to urge voters to go to the polls, and double down on his campaign of intimidation against Republican officials in Georgia. Their fears, as it turns out, were well founded. Trump did tell the crowd to vote for Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, but he also fulminated against Gov. Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, strongly suggesting that elections in Georgia cannot be trusted. "For whatever reason," he mocked, "your secretary of state and your governor are afraid of Stacey Abrams."The spectacle of Trump disparaging Kemp is barely believable for anyone who has watched Kemp over the past few years desperately trying to ingratiate himself to Trump. The President has called him a "moron," and on Saturday he told the cheering crowds, "Your governor should be ashamed of himself." It was a cringeworthy line for the Republican establishment, because it could be interpreted as supporting the argument of some of Trump s most fervent backers in the state, people like attorney Lin Wood, who have been telling Republicans to boycott the "fraudulent election." Trump has sparked a Republican civil war in Georgia. In the face of death threats, Republican officials are pleading with him to cool the temperature. But Trump is shoveling more coal into the boiler, making demands that range from pointless to illegal. The state has already conducted a full hand recount of the ballots, and the absentee ballots were already matched to the signatures -- twice -- before being tallied. Now Trump wants Kemp to call a special session of the legislature and push them to choose Electors who will ignore the popular vote and support him. That demand is part of the most direct assault on the country s democracy in its history. Even if he got his way, and Georgia s 16 electoral votes, that would still leave him far from victory in an election he lost by more than seven million votes and a margin of 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Since the November election, Trump and his crack team of lawyers and backers have made ever more bizarre claims about what exactly led to his loss. More than 30 lawsuits have been thrown out of court by a variety of judges, including some named to the bench by Trump -- and just this Saturday a federal appeals court threw out yet another lawsuit in Georgia.Trump suggested the Supreme Court could still pull victory out of the jaws of defeat for him. The event probably boosted Trump s spirits. Whether it helped the Republican cause is questionable. What is certain is that it was one more hammer blow in Trump s ongoing battering of American democracy.

On Monday, 23 November, US President-elect Joe Biden, speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, announced his national security appointments, including the next US secretary of state. Antony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration, was chosen as the successor of Mike Pompeo, the present secretary of state. The post of national security adviser went to Jake Sullivan. Avril Haines was tapped as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold the position. The president-elect chose a Latino — also a first — to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Elevating the position of the permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations in New York to a cabinet-level post in the Biden administration, the president-elect picked up a veteran American diplomat, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to fill this important post. On the other hand, former US secretary of state in the second Obama administration, John Kerry, was appointed as a climate envoy. Biden had called leading European officials on the same Monday and reassured them of American commitment to traditional alliances and multilateral diplomacy — a commitment that is a far cry from the kind of diplomacy that the Trump administration adopted in the period from 2017-2020, if we could call its policies on the international scene, and particularly towards traditional American allies after World War II, “diplomacy”. All the appointees to these important posts in the next US administration had worked in the Obama administration, the first and the second, from 2009 till 20 January 2017. They are known for their commitment to multilateralism, free trade policies and an active US role in the world. Some experts and commentators said, after these announcements, that the Biden administration is a third Obama administration. In introducing his national security team, Biden said that the appointments reflect “the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it”. He added that the United States is “once again [sits] at the head of the table” and is ready to “confront our adversaries and not reject our allies. Ready to stand for our values.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, nominated for the post of the US permanent representative to the UN, stressed the above by saying, “America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back.” Dennis Ross, the former chief negotiator of the US in Middle East peace talks, has commented that this is a national security team of “professionalism and competence”. Antony Blinken promised that a Biden administration would place an emphasis on “leadership, cooperation and democracy”. The nominee for the post of secretary of state, was a former speech writer for former US President Bill Clinton and national security adviser to Biden as vice-president and a deputy national security adviser to Obama. From an Arab and a Middle Eastern perspective, Blinken knows well the Arab world and the Middle East, and will hit the ground running in dealing with Middle Eastern and Arab questions, crises and officials. Known for his personal and ideological attachment to American political values and American leadership, he is expected to stress human rights issues and the question of democracy in dealing with the region. A few days ago, he called out a leading Arab country for human rights abuses. In a recent Intelligence Matters podcast, Blinken said the United States had to rebuild alliances to tackle the “democratic recession” enabled by President Trump, something that let “autocracies from Russia to China… exploit our difficulties”. He has been clear about the importance of promoting democracy and human rights in American foreign policy, and a former Obama official has expressed his belief that Blinken would be “visibly tougher on Russia and more receptive to the idea of ideological competition with China, ranking up a few notches the democracy and human rights dimension of foreign policy”. Last January, Blinken talked to the Hudson Institute, a leading American think tank, and dealt with American leadership and the promotion of democracy around the world. He said: “At the very moment… democracies most need leadership and I would argue leadership from the United States… Unfortunately, we have a president (Trump) who, by embracing autocrats and dismissing democrats, seems, to many, to suit it up for the other side.” Blinken added: “It is a long way of saying that if we renew our democracy at home, if we revitalise our alliances with democracies in the first instance around the world, that creates a foundation for us to act, I believe, more effectively with lots of challenges.” I personally believe that the elements of the foreign policy of the future Biden administration are to be found in the quotes above. Needless to say, the world has changed from the Obama years in office. The United States itself has changed in the last four years under the incumbent president, for whom around 74 million Americans voted in the 2020 elections. In elaborating and executing its foreign policy, the Biden administration will take, probably, these changes into account in order to have a strong foreign policy based on a large domestic consensus. There is no need, speaking of the United States and the Middle East, to repeat the foreign policy of Obama s second term vis-à-vis the upheavals that the region witnessed from 2011 onwards. It would be a departure from past policies if the national security team that the president-elect chose would review what went wrong in American foreign policy in the Middle East in the last decade (the Obama and Trump administrations combined) and try new approaches to solve old and persistent challenges. However, the most challenging job would definitely be how to promote democracy and human rights questions without stirring unnecessary confrontations with allies and strategic partners of the United States. The other challenge would be how to deal with the negative legacy of the Trump administration when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the future of the Palestinian question; in other words, sticking to the status quo or working with both the Palestinians and the Israelis to promote security and peace. Related questions, no less important, will be how to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Iran. What will be the strategic priorities of the Biden administration in the Middle East and the dynamic interrelations among them? I would argue that a more pro-active American policy towards the Palestinian question, a more neutral American position, would be helpful in promoting democracy and human rights issues in the Arab world. The new national security team in Washington has raised hopes and high expectations of a break with the Trump years and “America First” dogma. Hopefully, the world would become safer for democracy, security and peace in the next four years. Something that will require blending realism with ideals in American foreign policy.

For decades, successive governments in Ethiopia have dragged Egypt through the mud, saying they wanted “exclusive” rights over the River Nile and not heeding the well-being of other riparian nations, mainly upstream ones. This narrative, regrettably spread by Ethiopia in drifting away from Egypt, a country whose help has been crucial in helping Ethiopia to establish sectors like banking and aviation and modernise others like medicine, has stained the image of Egypt among the peoples of the Nile Basin. This has been so even though Egypt has usually lent a helping hand to the peoples of Africa in general and the Nile Basin in particular. Egypt has successfully implemented major water and irrigation projects, including the digging of wells and the construction of small dams for rainfall harvesting in countries like South Sudan, Sudan, Kenya and Uganda, so that African countries can make the most of their rainfall and develop their irrigation schemes. It has also embarked on another journey that will stand forever as a symbol of the country s unyielding commitment to a better and more prosperous Nile Basin. In 2018, a consortium of giant Egyptian companies including the Arab Contractors and El-Sewedy Electric reached a deal with the Tanzanian government under its reformist President John Magufuli to establish a mega-project in Tanzania. When this project, the Stiegler s Gorge Dam, goes online, it will transform the lives of Tanzanians by providing access to electricity for millions in this East African country, officially categorised by the World Bank as a “middle-income country.” It will regulate the flow of the mighty Rufiji River to help Tanzania advance the agricultural projects needed to maintain higher growth rates in this country of roughly 60 million people. Before the Egyptian companies concerned were selected to finalise this mega-project, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi paid a visit to Tanzania in 2017, the first by an incumbent Egyptian president in 50 years, which set the stage for political harmony between the two countries. The Julius Nyerere Hydropower Plant at Stiegler s Gorge, named after Tanzania s historic leader, will have a 2,115-Megawatt capacity, a bit higher even than Egypt s Aswan High Dam, creating a colossal man-made lake behind it of 34 billion cubic metres of water. The dam stretches over 1,200 square km and is 134 metres high, some five metres lower than the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza. The cost of this rock-fill dam amounts to roughly $3 billion, compared to $4.8 billion, the cost of Ethiopia s controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has caused the Eastern Nile Basin region to sit on a powder keg. The project is expected to be operational in a couple of years, particularly as the Egyptian companies concerned are plugging away to finish it on schedule in 2022. What matters the most about Tanzania s Stiegler s Gorge Dam is the political will shown by Egypt to finish the project first on time and second by strictly committing itself to the highest-possible construction standards. In November this year, the Egyptian ministers of housing and electricity attended a historic event in Tanzania in the presence of Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa pertaining to the diversion of the Rufiji River in order to construct the main dam and in testimony to the pace at which Egyptian companies are proceeding with the construction work. Located in Morogoro southwest of Dar Es-Salam, the commercial capital of Tanzania and the largest city in the country, the project includes the building of a 600-metre tunnel to divert the Rufiji River s water, three tunnels to provide the necessary water to operate the power plant, four saddle dams for rainfall harvesting and 400-kilovolt transmission lines to be merged with the national power grid in Tanzania and bringing the benefits of the dam to the country s 17 million families. Stationed at the site of this mega-project are some 6,000 workers, almost half of them Tanzanians in order to ensure the transfer of know-how. El-Sewedy Electric boasts long experience in erecting power projects in Africa, and its experience is being passed on to Tanzanian engineers. After the dam has regulated the flow of the Rufiji River, its reservoir will empower Tanzania, originally an agriculture-driven economy, to follow up on its plans for further agricultural production and to maintain its status as a well-performing economy in the East Africa region. The dam will also help the country realise its vision of becoming the largest exporter of cashew nuts in the world, as it aspires to double its production of these over the next four years, particularly as the crop is cultivated near the commercial capital of Dar Es-Salam. The smooth construction of the Stiegler s Gorge Dam is a reminder that Ethiopia could also have constructed its GERD Dam project without causing so much fuss, whether downstream or upstream on the Nile. Initially, Ethiopia was to establish a similar dam to that being built in Tanzania at a somewhat more affordable cost instead of using “humanitarian assistance funding” to speed up the building of the GERD. Under the initial calculations, the project would have generated the electricity necessary for those who are still living in the dark in this landlocked nation without inflicting harm on downstream peoples in Sudan and Egypt, whether on a larger or a smaller scale. But unlike in the case of Tanzania, Ethiopia has rejected repeated calls from Egypt for the co-implementation of the project, citing issues of “sovereignty”. Also unlike in the Tanzanian case, a consensus on the project has not been Ethiopia s top priority. The Horn of Africa nation has been adamantly rejecting calls for a fair compromise, and it has chosen confrontation rather than cooperation on the dam and has falsely tried to present itself as a “victim” of so-called Egyptian monopoly over the Nile. In reality, when the Stiegler s Gorge Dam is finished, the Nile Basin region will be disabused of the notion, unfortunately long held by short-sighted Ethiopian governments, that Egypt only works to keep the upper hand as far as the Nile waters are concerned. The wall of anti-Egyptian sentiments will fall when the Tanzanians see their long-awaited dream of an uninterrupted new power supply coming true, this time through the dedicated and cost-effective work of their brothers in Egypt. The writer is a former press and information officer in Ethiopia and an expert on African affairs.

If you re President Donald Trump, when Attorney General William Barr tells you it s over -- then it s over. Barr s statement to the Associated Press Tuesday that "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election" should be a death-knell for Trump s effort to conjure a false narrative that the election was stolen from him.The fact that the announcement comes from Barr makes it hit particularly hard for Trump. Over his nearly two years in office, Barr has repeatedly distorted the truth to benefit Trump, and he has used the Justice Department to intervene selectively in politically-charged cases to the benefit of Trump s political allies. Barr even took pains to amplify Trump s pre-election claims of potentially massive voter fraud. In a June 2020 interview with NPR, Barr opined (without evidence) that mail-in ballots present "so many occasions for fraud there that cannot be policed. I think it would be very bad." And in Congressional testimony just weeks later in July 2020, Barr tried and failed again to conjure the demon of massive fraud in mail-in ballots. Yet part of the beauty of the Justice Department is that ultimately, it follows facts, not wild conspiracy theories. And even though Barr changed the rules and instructed prosecutors specifically to investigate potential instances of voter fraud (and potentially announce those findings publicly) immediately after the election, they apparently found nothing of note. Trump s increasingly desperate legal team, headed by Rudy Giuliani, immediately disputed Barr s conclusion: "with all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn t been any semblance" of an investigation.Let s break that down. In one corner, we have Giuliani and the rest of Trump s legal team, who have continually had their cases thrown out of court for complete lack of evidence. "Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here," wrote a Trump-appointed federal judge last week in a stinging rebuke to the campaign s efforts to undo Pennsylvania s vote count certification. In the other corner, we have Barr and the entire Justice Department looking for fraud and finding nothing. Take your pick. Throughout his tenure, Barr can, and has, bent the truth and diminished the Justice Department by using it for transparently political purposes. But facts are facts. It s one thing to twist them; it s another thing altogether to fabricate them where they simply don t exist. If Barr and the Justice Department couldn t provide support for Trump s conspiracy theory, then nobody can. Now, your questions: Bonnie (Connecticut): I thought the Constitution states a president has pardon power except in cases of impeachment. Shouldn t President Trump therefore lose the power to pardon? No, but the confusion here is understandable. Article II of the Constitution provides that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." On this point, the Constitution -- venerable document that it is -- is ambiguous. Read one way, it could appear to say that after the President is impeached by the House, he loses the power to issue pardons. But read another way, it says that the President can issue pardons for criminal offenses but not for impeachment. The latter reading is correct. There is no provision anywhere in the Constitution, statutes, or case law that strips a President of any power upon impeachment by the House (though of course, if convicted in the Senate, the President loses office and all of its powers). It would be anomalous for the President to lose only one power -- the power to pardon -- upon impeachment alone, and no serious legal authority has argued for this interpretation. Indeed, former President Bill Clinton issued many pardons after he was impeached in 1998. Rather, the clause in Article II means that while a President can pardon an official (or any person) for a crime, he cannot pardon an official out of impeachment. In other words, the President does not have power to un-impeach. For example, if a federal judge committed bribery, the President could pardon the judge from a criminal bribery charge, but the President could not rescue the judge from impeachment. Indeed, no President has ever pardoned or even attempted to pardon an official from an impeachment.Greg (Colorado): Given that the Constitution grants the president the exclusive right to grant pardons for federal crimes, can a president reverse pardons issued by a prior president? Probably not. The Constitutional pardon power is exceptionally broad: the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." There is no precedent for a court or Congress to overrule or reverse a Presidential pardon. At most, a President might, in certain narrow circumstances, be able to reverse his own pardon before it becomes official. In 2008, President George W. Bush pardoned convicted felon Isaac Toussie but then, upon learning that Toussie s father had made large donations to Republican political groups, rescinded the pardon the very next day. Administration officials claimed the pardon had not yet been finalized because Toussie had not yet received formal notice of the pardon. There is only limited and distant precedent for a President to revoke a prior President s pardon. Former President Ulysses S. Grant revoked several pardons issued by his predecessor, former President Andrew Johnson, in some instances claiming (like Bush) that the pardons were not final because no formal notice had been made to the recipients. In the 140-plus years since Grant, no President has even attempted to rescind a pardon issued by a prior President. Paul (California): Once Sen. Kamala Harris becomes vice president, how is her vacant Senate seat filled, and what happens in the interim if her absence gives Republicans a majority?Under California law, the governor has the power to select a replacement for an empty Senate seat. California is among the majority of states -- 37, to be precise -- that fills vacancies immediately by gubernatorial appointment. In the other 13 states, the seat remains vacant until the state can hold a special election to fill the vacant seat. The current governor, Gavin Newsom, is a Democrat, and is virtually certain to appoint a fellow Democrat to fill Harris s seat. Given the narrow margin in the Senate (currently 50-48 in favor of Republicans, with two runoffs pending in Georgia), Newsom likely will be prepared to make his appointment immediately upon Harris resignation from her Senate seat to take the vice president position.