Independent: As Saudi Arabia grows desperate, this could be the beginning of the end of the war in Yemen

The Yemen war is about to come to an end. A Saudi official admitted this week that for the first time since 2016, Riyadh is in talks with the Houthi rebels. The talks have surfaced despite the Houthis being in charge of the capital Sanaa and the other most populous parts in Northern Yemen, which indicates that the Saudis are coming to terms with this status quo. The radical approach of effectively flushing the Houthis out of the north has been abandoned. The new approach of accepting the Houthis as part of the new post-war reality in Yemen, on the other hand, is much more sophisticated. [...]

Instead of the endless fighting, Saudi Arabia is trying to convince the Houthis to sever ties with its regional rival, Iran. After all, all the Houthis want is legitimacy of their new strategic posture in Yemen. This, in their view, must be cited in a similar power-sharing agreement that guarantees their share in a federation-like new system that includes president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government and separatists in the south. [...]

The attack on the Saudi Aramco oil installations in September, which knocked out half of the Kingdom’s production, was a tipping point. This week, Aramco launched an initial public offering (IPO) to be listed on the local stock market, abandoning Mohamed bin Salman’s original plan to list it on overseas markets. The escalation with Iran began to have a direct effect on the Saudi economy.

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Vox: 2018 was by far the worst year on record for gun violence in schools

According to data from the US Naval Postgraduate School, there were 94 school gun violence incidents this year — a record high since 1970, which is as far back as the data goes, and 59 percent higher than the previous record of 59 in 2006. [...]

Separately, the project also tracks deaths. By this metric, 2018 was also the worst year on record. So far, 55 people, including the shooter, were killed in school gun violence. The second-worst annual death toll was 40 in 1993. (To put these numbers in context, there were nearly 39,000 gun deaths, including homicides and suicides, in the US in 2016.) [...]

But it doesn’t seem that 2018 was a particularly abnormal year for mass shootings, regardless of whether they happened on school grounds. The Gun Violence Archive’s data, visualized by Vox in map form, indicates that there have been 328 mass shootings so far in 2018, or nearly one a day, resulting in 365 killed and 1,301 wounded. That’s roughly in line with recent years going back to 2015, which have averaged about one mass shooting a day. (The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more people were shot but not necessarily killed, excluding the shooter, in a similar time or place, which differs from some other groups’ definitions.)[...]

Second, the US has a ton of guns. It has far more than not just other developed nations but any other country, period. Estimated for 2017, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 120.5 guns per 100 residents, meaning there were more firearms than people. The world’s second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 52.8 guns per 100 residents, according to an analysis from the Small Arms Survey.

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Al Jazeera: Why Saudi Arabia's foreign policy is failing

At the beginning of the Cold War, Riyadh took a backseat in most regional conflicts, leaving the rowdy revolutionaries of the Arab world (Egypt, Iraq and Syria) to take the lead. On Palestine, for example, the Saudis decided to keep a low profile. Although Riyadh backed the war efforts of the so-called "ring states" - the Arab countries surrounding Israel - it always refrained from getting involved in a direct military confrontation with the Zionist state. When it decided to get involved - for example by leading the 1973 oil embargo - it always did so through soft or economic power. [...]

Throughout the Cold War, Saudi Arabia also played a quiet albeit important role in the international arena, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it joined Pakistan and the United States in their efforts to support armed groups resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, funding most of the CIA programmes to arm and train the Mujahideen. The House of Saud also helped plunge oil prices in the second half of the 1980s, bringing the oil-dependent Soviet economy to its knees. [...]

For the first time in its recent history, Saudi Arabia found itself completely exposed, with no one to fall back on but itself. To add insult to injury, the Obama administration showed little sensitivity towards Saudi concerns as it sought rapprochement with Iran, leaving Riyadh deeply worried about its security. As the feeling of insecurity in the House of Saud grew, "backseat" diplomacy gave way to a more assertive foreign policy; the tactics, however, remained more or less the same: confrontation by proxy. [...]

Not only has MBS created more enemies than he can handle, but he has also chosen the wrong allies. He has embarked on a dangerous path of normalisation with Israel, believing that it would pay back in the long run. But with this decision, he risks losing the hearts and minds of the Arab people to Turkey and Iran, both of which have positioned themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause.

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Big Think: Why the wars America starts are unwinnable | Danny Sjursen

Danny Sjursen—a prominent U.S. Army strategist and also a former history instructor at West Point Academy—posits that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't winnable. So... why don't we leave? As he puts it: "We have the inertia of a military-industrial complex, which makes a lot of money for a lot of people and keeps a lot of people employed, on one end, and then we have the sunken cost fallacy on the other side, where we say “We’ve committed so much we can’t possibly leave.” Danny is brought to you today by the Charles Koch Foundation. The Charles Koch Foundation aims to further understanding of how US foreign policy affects American people and societal well-being. Through grants, events, and collaborative partnerships, the Foundation is working to stretch the boundaries of foreign policy research and debate by discussing ideas in strategy, trade, and diplomacy that often go unheeded in the US capital. For more information, visit charleskochfoundation.org. NOTE: The views expressed in this video are those of the guest speaking in an unofficial capacity and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Command and General Staff College, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the US government.

statista: The ten countries where it's worst to be female

A new study from the Thomson Reuters Foundation has found that India is the most dangerous country in the world for women. The research was based on a survey of 550 experts on women's issues and criteria included healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual/non-sexual violence and human trafficking.

Ending violence against women in India was made into a national priority after a student was raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi five years ago. Experts have now said that the country is not moving fast enough to eradicate danger to women with rape, sexual harassment/harassment and female infanticide still continuing at alarming levels.

The war-ravaged countries of Afghanistan and Syria came second and third in the study while number 10 is certainly a surprising addition. According to experts, the United States makes the top-10 list of the most dangerous countries for women due to the #MeToo and Time's Up campaigns dominating newspaper headlines and media coverage for months. 

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statista: Where Corruption Is Raging Around The World

On Wednesday, Transparency International released its 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index which measured perceived public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories on a scale of 0 to 100. The research found that most countries across the world are making little or no progress in ending corruption. The ones scoring close to 100 are successfully containing corruption while those scoring 50 or lower have serious problems. The average global score was only 43.

Some governments have seen noticeable improvements in their scores over the past six years with the Ivory Coast, Senegal and the UK all making progress. Others had to endure a slide with Syria, Yemen, Australia and Hungary all deteriorating. The latter in partcular saw its score fall ten points over the last six years. It could fall even further in the future if draft legistlation is enacted that could restrict NGOs and revoke their charitable status.

New Zealand was ranked the world's least corrupt nation in 2017 with a score of 89, ahead of Denmark with 88. Third position was a three way tie between Finland, Norway and Switzerland who all scored 85. Syria, South Suda, and Somalia were at the bottom of the index with all three scoring lower than 15. Along with Austria and Belgium, the United States came 16th with a score of 75.

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The Atlantic: The War in Yemen and the Making of a Chaos State

Two-thirds of Yemenis were already what the UN called “food insecure” before the Houthis advanced south, but in the nearly three years since then, Yemen and the wider Middle East have plunged into dangerous instability. Never known as an international tourist draw, the country has recently made headlines for outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria—and ballistic missiles that travel hundreds of miles toward the Saudi capital of Riyadh. With the war on isis slowing down in Syria and Iraq, Yemen is now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. [...]

“Yemen more closely resembles a region of mini-states at varying degrees of war with one another, and beset by a complex range of internal politics and conflicts, than a single state engaged in a binary conflict,” wrote Peter Salisbury, a researcher with the London-based Chatham House policy institute, in a December report on the country. [...]

Alliances with al-Qaeda and other shady actors are everyday business inside Yemen, but the war has only complicated things, said Elisabeth Kendall, a senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Oxford University’s Pembroke College. She’s made multiple trips to Yemen over the years, most recently in August. “Al-Qaeda now don’t hold territory, but they have made strong alliances with tribes,” she said, particularly in the al-Bayda highlands north of Aden, near Houthi forces. “They’re fighting the same mutual enemy—the Houthis—and they’re feeling embattled on various fronts in the home territories against the Houthis. Why would you not hook up with a bunch of guys with guns just because they’re waving black flags?”  [...]

Nearly a third of the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have hit what local observers at the Yemen Data Project, an independent group that collects information on the war, call “non-military” targets. That category includes marketplaces, water and electricity sites, food storage, hospitals, medical centers, mosques and all those kind of things, Craig said. “Less than 45 percent of Yemen’s medical facilities are now operating because of the conflict. People can’t, a lot of the time, afford to get there.” Since the war began in March 2015, Saudi aircraft have bombed water and electrical infrastructure more than 100 times. Beyond that, “there have been 68 air raids that have targeted medical facilities; 183 that have targeted marketplaces,” Craig said.

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Al Jazeera: What is going on in southern Yemen?

On Sunday, forces loyal to the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, exchanged fire in the southern Yemeni city of Aden with an armed group aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secession movement supported by the United Arab Emirates.

Both sides in this conflict have been fighting alongside the Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for the past few years now. [...]

Since its liberation from the Houthis, Aden has witnessed severe security challenges, economic and basic infrastructure problems, and most recently growing support for secession from the North. The city has also seen a deliberate attempt to silence activists supporting the Hadi-allied Islah Party (seen as having links to the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as some voices within the Salafi movement with a number of imams gunned down in the last several months. [...]

There are significant regional cleavages within southern Yemen which could gain political salience if Aden proceeds with its independence ambitions. Local identities with roots in the colonial era could re-emerge and aggressively reassert themselves. For example, the Hadramout region may not agree to be ruled again from Aden.

Additionally, the post-independence fate of South Sudan suggests that ill-conceived political separation is inherently dangerous and can lead to a major humanitarian crisis. Seven years after its independence from Sudan, South Sudan has become a tragedy rather than a model for other regions seeking independence.

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Quartz: Middle Eastern investors are only interested in three addresses in London

“We are seeing a significant surge in enquiries and sales from wealthy Middle East buyers, with a 30% rise over the last four months,” said Becky Fatemi, managing director of Rokstone, in a statement to Quartz. “What is interesting is that the Gulf investors are focusing all of their interest in buying property in the ‘platinum triangle’ of Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair. Go outside of this trio of addresses and their interest in buying declines significantly.”

Rokstone, who notes that demand is at least in part driven “by the political and economic instability in the Gulf region,” says there has been a 20% rise in enquiries from Qatar, a 15% rise in enquiries from Bahrain, and a 5% rise in applicants from Yemen. It also said that over 70% of Middle East buyers only purchase property within 10-15 minutes walk of Harrods, the luxury department store in London’s Knightsbridge neighborhood. [...]

This includes the formerly sought-after area of Hampstead where Middle Eastern buyers had previously snapped up properties in droves in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, considered “too far out” from central London says Rokstone, the difference between the asking and final selling prices is down by over 36%—the biggest drop of any luxury address in the capital.

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openDemocracy: Western complicity is fuelling Yemen’s humanitarian crisis

It was the latest bloody episode in a conflict that has been raging for a thousand days and claimed 10,000 victims with 20 million more (from a population of 28 million) in dire need of assistance. [...] 

Yemen’s impoverished civilian population has been caught in the middle of this contagion of hostilities with Human Rights Watch finding in 2016 that 60 per cent of civilian deaths resulted from air strikes. [...]

The UK has licensed $4.6 billion worth of arms sales to the Saudi regime, a relationship described as ‘shameful’ by Campaign Against Arms Trade, given Riyadh’s record as "one of the world's most authoritarian regimes."

France, too, has sold "€9 billion of weaponry to Saudi Arabia from 2010-2016, amounting to 15-20 per cent of France’s annual arms exports."

And the United States has "designed and negotiated a package totalling approximately $110 billion" with Riyadh in 2017 following on from a total of $115 billion approved in arms sales by the Obama administration in 2009-2016.   

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Vox:One map that puts America's gun violence epidemic in perspective (Oct 2, 2017)

The United States owns way, way more guns per capita than the rest of the world. And the best research on gun violence suggests that's probably contributing to our homicide problem — as exemplified by Sunday's horrific shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. 

Here's a map of firearm ownership around the world, using 2012 data compiled by the Guardian. The United States has nearly twice as many guns per 100 people as the next closest country, Yemen — 88.8 guns per 100 as opposed to 54.8 in Yemen:

Now, gun ownership doesn't translate directly to more homicides. For instance, the United States has more than 12 times as many guns per person as Honduras, but the 2012 US gun homicide rate per 100,000 people (2.97) is 1/22 of Honduras's (68.43). That's because while guns make murder easier, internal instability or weak governance, or especially a recent history of internal conflict, can also contribute to this sort of violence. [...]

Interestingly, these results tended to hold true even when you exclude the United States and its super-high homicide and gun-ownership rates. "More guns are associated with more homicides across industrialized countries," Hemenway and Miller conclude. Another study, by Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, found that the US has crime rates comparable to those in similarly developed countries, but much higher rates of lethal violence — owing in significant part to our high rates of gun ownership.

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Salon: World hunger is increasing thanks to wars and climate change

Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion of undernourished people in the world was cut in half. In 2015, U.N. member countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which doubled down on this success by setting out to end hunger entirely by 2030. But a recent U.N. report shows that, after years of decline, hunger is on the rise again. [...]

Around the world, social and political instability are on the rise. Since 2010, state-based conflict has increased by 60 percent and armed conflict within countries has increased by 125 percent. More than half of the food-insecure people identified in the U.N. report (489 million out of 815 million) live in countries with ongoing violence. More than three-quarters of the world’s chronically malnourished children (122 million of 155 million) live in conflict-affected regions. [...]

Globally, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons doubled between 2007 and 2016. Of the estimated 64 million people who are currently displaced, more than 15 million are linked to one of the world’s most severe conflict-related food crises in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia. [...]

In many places, one of the best ways to bolster food security is by helping farmers connect to both traditional and innovative social networks, through which they can pool resources, store food, seed and inputs and make investments. Mobile phones enable farmers to get information on weather and market prices, work cooperatively with other producers and buyers and obtain aid, agricultural extension or veterinary services. Leveraging multiple forms of connectivity is a central strategy for supporting resilient livelihoods.

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openDemocracy: Yemen: a tragic tale of humanitarian hypocrisy

Yemen is facing a triple tragedy: the spectre of famine, the world’s largest cholera outbreak and daily deprivation and injustice. The seasonal flooding combined with a heatwave has led to an increase in the rate of cholera infection since mid-August.

Serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are being committed with impunity. The Saudi-led coalition has conducted scores of unlawful airstrikes that have killed and injured thousands, targeting schools, markets, hospitals and homes, while Houthi rebels have indiscriminately shelled civilian residential areas. Child soldiers are being recruited, human rights activists are routinely oppressed. [...]

The international airport in Sanaa has been kept closed by the Saudi-led coalition for over a year now, preventing the delivery of food and medical supplies inland, and also stopping sick and wounded Yemenis from being treated abroad.

Hudaydah, Yemen’s busiest port, has been bombed beyond use or repair. When new cranes were donated by the US government to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) last December to deliver food aid, they were stopped at sea by the coalition and refused entry which further placed hundreds of Yemeni children’s lives at risk. [...]

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman donated $66.7 million in aid this year to respond to the outbreak of cholera in Yemen.

The US provides the Saudis with air-to-air refuelling and intelligence used for airstrikes and a bulk of their weapons. In May this year the two nations signed an arms deal amounting to almost $110 billion.

Meanwhile in Britain, the government approved £283 million of arms sales to Saudi Arabia just six months following the Saudi airstrike on a funeral which killed 140 people and injured hundreds more. Since the beginning of the Yemeni bombing campaign in 2015, the UK has licensed over £3.3 billion worth of arms to Saudi forces.

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Al Jazeera: What is fuelling Yemen's cholera epidemic?

More than 20 million Yemenis require humanitarian support, with nearly half of those in acute need of assistance, according to the United Nations. This year, a new wave of cholera cases further devastated the population, infecting hundreds of thousands of people and killing more than 2,000. Aid agencies have warned that without urgent action, the situation will continue to deteriorate.

Analysts have described the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen as a strategic failure, but although Saudi's crown prince recently expressed his desire for an exit strategy, there is no immediate end in sight - and the humanitarian consequences will endure long after the bombs stop falling. [...]

There has been a gradual disintegration of the municipal water infrastructure and systems in a context where few civil servants are being paid, and a relatively small trigger like a period of heavy rain or burst pipes creates a backflow of sewage into water pipes, an overflow of latrines and septic tanks, etcetera. [...]

In a roughly three-month period following the cholera outbreak in October 2010, Haiti had 50 percent more cases on a per population basis and over 200 percent more deaths.

Yemen's current cholera outbreak is the largest in terms of scale of suspected cases at the current time, though not necessarily the largest historically. In any case, these comparisons are not meaningful. Comparing Haiti and Yemen is not helpful in describing either epidemic. What matters is the impact on the country, and we can see this is a heavy burden to bear.

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Al Jazeera: Yemen's cholera epidemic is worst on record: Oxfam

Since cholera began to spread in April, the epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people, while the country grapples with death, starvation, malnutrition and diseases due to a worsening humanitarian situation caused by the war, Oxfam said in a statement on Friday. [...]

The charity said it fears that the total number of people infected with cholera could rise as high as 600,000, making it one of the largest outbreaks since records started in 1949.

The previous annual record was in Haiti in 2011, when 340,311 cases were recorded. [...]

In a statement released earlier this month, UNICEF's Yemen office said that most children in the country lacked basic medical care, adequate nutrition, fresh drinking water, suitable sanitation and education.

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The Intercept: After Viewing Secret Evidence, U.K. Court Rules Arms Sales to Saudis Lawful

British government officials licensed the sale of $4.2 billion (£3.3 billion) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the first 12 months of the Saudi-led bombing in Yemen, which is now in its third year. As of January this year the U.K. Ministry of Defence was itself tracking 252 cases of alleged breaches of international humanitarian law following Saudi coalition air strikes in Yemen. [...]

An array of international organizations — including a UN panel of experts, the European parliament, humanitarian and human rights groups — have repeatedly condemned the ongoing airstrikes against Yemen as unlawful. The British government has twice blocked attempts proposed through the UN Human Rights Council to establish a non-Saudi-led inquiry into alleged violations of international law. [...]

Similar recent attempts to suspend U.S. arms sales to Saudi have so far failed. The Trump administration notified Congress last month of its intention to resume the export of precision guided weapons to the country, suspended under Obama in December. On June 13 the Senate voted 53 to 47 in a narrow defeat of legislation seeking to block some arms sales to Saudi.

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Jacobin Magazine: Yemen’s Disaster

What led Yemen down this path to chaos? After all, the country includes the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the only socialist state in the Arab world. In the 1970s, the other Yemeni state, the Yemen Arab Republic, had a strong rural movement based on community and tribal solidarity, which organized, financed, and managed development initiatives. The Republic of Yemen, born in 1990, was the only democracy in the Arabian Peninsula. However flawed, it held real multiparty elections. [...]

In this context, it is worth remembering that 70 percent of Yemen’s population lives in rural areas and depends on cultivation and livestock. The first decade of the twenty-first century, however, saw a shift from agriculture to casual urban labor as the primary source of rural households’ incomes. In towns and cities, men congregated in search of casual unskilled employment, where living conditions were also affected by water scarcity. [...]

Ordinary citizens, especially young people and women, demanded the downfall of the Saleh regime and an end to his regime’s corruption and nepotism. They also wanted jobs, a national economy that would benefit the population as a whole, and true democracy. Participants were often young — not surprising in a country where 80 percent of the population is under thirty-five. [...]

The coalition has maintained a blockade that is claimed to be designed to prevent Iran from providing weapons and ammunition to the Saleh-Houthi alliance, but its primary impact has been preventing food and fuel imports, which the Yemeni people need to survive. Due to population increase, climate change, and other factors, Yemen depends on imports for the overwhelming majority of their fuel and basic staples — 90 percent of wheat and 100 percent of rice, tea, and sugar come from external sources.

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Haaretz: First-ever Photos of Yemen's Jews Stunned the Jewish World

The search for the authentic Jew was a common pursuit among Jewish communities in the 19th century. Many asked themselves the question in one form or another: “Am I really living according to the ways of my ancestors?”

In those years, a young German-Jew who had just turned 30 decided to leave the family business and set off on a journey around the world that would incorporate two of his great passions: photography; and the study of ancient and exotic peoples. Hermann Burchardt decided to use his substantial inheritance to rent an apartment in Damascus, which would serve as the base for his research expeditions and adventures. He had already studied Arabic and Turkish, which he hoped to use to his advantage. [...]

The images were nothing short of a revelation for European Jewry. After a break of thousands of years, there was at last a tangible sign of the existence of the Yemenite Jewish community. It seemed as if the world’s most authentic Jew, who had lived completely isolated from any foreign influence, had finally been found – at least, this is what they believed in Europe. The article so excited the journal’s readership that the photographs were turned into postcards, which were sold and circulated by the thousands.

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BBC4 Profile: Rex Tillerson

On Profile this week, we look at the life and career of new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

He flew to Moscow this week to urge Russia to abandon its support for Syria's President Assad following the chemical weapons on a town in northern Syria earlier this month.

It seems he came away empty handed, with Donald Trump warning that relations between Russia and the US were now at "an all-time low".

So who is Rex Tillerson ?

Mark Coles gets to grips with Tillerson's past : his formative years in the Scouts, his time as a drummer at university, the four decades spent at oil and gas giant ExxonMobil where he ended up as CEO and his controversial business ties with Russia which now hang over his new role as America's top diplomat.

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The Atlantic: Make the Anti-War Movement Great Again

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has been at war, the longest continuous conflict in its history. Its citizens have witnessed a failed surge into Afghanistan, a catastrophe in Iraq that helped destabilize vast swaths of the Middle East, an unconstitutional war in Libya that created a power vacuum exploited by ISIS, and a drone war that has killed hundreds of innocents in a half-dozen countries. The last two presidents campaigned against dumb wars and won. The more interventionist candidate has lost every election since 2008. [...]

Meanwhile, as Glenn Greenwald notes, “Trump has escalated the 16-year-old core premise of America’s foreign policy—that it has the right to bomb any country in the world where people it regards as terrorists are found—and in doing so, has fulfilled the warped campaign pledges he repeatedly expressed. The most recent atrocity was the killing of as many as 200 Iraqi civilians from U.S. airstrikes in Mosul. That was preceded a few days earlier by the killing of dozens of Syrian civilians in Raqqa province when the United States targeted a school where people had taken refuge, which itself was preceded a week earlier by the U.S. destruction of a mosque near Aleppo that also killed dozens. And one of Trump’s first military actions was what can only be described as a massacre carried out by Navy SEALs, in which 30 Yemenis were killed; among the children killed was an eight-year-old American girl (whose 16-year-old American brother was killed by a drone under Obama).” [...]

But Congress won’t assert itself absent a political angle. “The frustrating reality is that both the Obama and Trump administrations have been able to back the war without ever having to face much serious scrutiny from Congress or most of the media, and so they have not had to defend a policy that has shamefully encountered relatively little criticism and minimal resistance,” Daniel Larison writes. “Even when the U.S. role in fueling and arming the coalition’s planes has been acknowledged in reports, it is often mentioned only in passing and then minimized. It is very difficult to organize opposition to a policy that most people in the country may not even know is happening. I suppose it is good that our officers are sickened by what the U.S. has been helping the Saudis and their allies do, but most of our politicians and policymakers don’t appear to be bothered in the least.”

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