If you ban encrypted hard drives, only criminals will have encrypted hard drives.

By Mitchell Blatt*

In addition to its war on guns, the New York Daily News also has it out against encryption technologies that can protect the security of our information. Even though the San Bernardino terrorists didn’t use encrypted hard drives, the newspaper still warned they could have. But so can law-abiding citizens, and our rights shouldn’t be trampled just because of terrorists.

Its December 3 editorial “Making mass murder easy” says that access to both guns and encrypted hard drives enable terrorism. Somehow the problem of violence would be solved if only the government could clamp down on something we should have the right to, the thinking goes, and the government would of course make it work perfectly, keeping dangerous products out of the hands only of the bad people and not impacting anyone else at all.

Encrypted hard drives “can only be unlocked by their owners,” the Daily News dramatically warned, “Even if their owner has just been killed having completed a suicide terrorist mission. Madness.”

And what if their owner is, like most people, not a terrorist? Maybe they think that non-terrorists would have nothing to hide? Why don’t ordinary people just keep their drives unprotected so anyone—an overzealous police officer, a business rival, an ex-boyfriend—can steal it and easily look at everything on the drive?

What if the owner of the hard drive is not a terrorist, but rather a journalist who operates in an authoritarian country who has just interviewed political dissidents? Wouldn’t that be a good reason to have an encrypted hard drive? It’s as if the Daily News thinks there is only one government or entity in the world that could possibly want to have access to what someone has on their hard drive, and that this mythical government is unimpeachably good.

Never mind that that United States government—at federal, state, and local levels—has been guilty of some violations of civil liberties of its own. There are many individuals and institutions that are much worse than the U.S. government, and all of them would have the access to the same drives and communications channels as the NSA and FBI.

Earlier this year, I noted how UK Prime Minister David Cameron was contemplating banning chat apps with encrypted chat functions like WhatsApp. He wanted them to open up “backdoors” for the government to be able to listen in. (His administration ultimately abandoned those plans.)

It’s perfectly understandable why governments would want to know what people who might be terrorists are saying, but the problem with opening a backdoor, is that anyone can get in it. Sure the government might say they are the only ones who know where it is, but hackers work hard to probe for weaknesses and exploit them. There’s nothing to guarantee a determined hacker—including the very professional foreign spies that hacked into the White House servers—won’t be able to find the backdoor and access people’s private communications.

It’s particularly insidious for a newspaper to be advocating for banning or heavily regulating encryption devices on sale to the general public. Journalists are among those who would most need encryption to carry out the most serious and important of journalism—that which threatens governments and institutions enough for them to try to suppress it.

Reporters Without Borders documents incident after indecent of authorities stealing hard drives containing sensitive information from reporters. In 2012, Chilean journalist Mauricio Weibel had his laptop and files stolen in a suspicious robbery. He was working on a book that exposed corruption of officials once involved in the military dictatorship that lasted until 1990, some of whom remain in office today. German reporter Bernhard Zand and a local cameraman with whom he was working while reporting in China had the files of their laptops deleted while they were out to dinner. Even the raid in the U.S. on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen in 2010 for publishing an exclusive about the new iPhone was questionable, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Its not just journalists who are at risk. Businesses have secrets, too—including political and national security secrets held by military contractors—and Northrop Grumman hard drives, probably disposed of improperly, have been found in Ghana with unencrypted credit card numbers and information about the recruitment of airport screeners.

As Larry Salibra, CEO of Pay4Bugs, is an authority on information security who has given talks to journalists in Hong Kong about protecting sources. He said in an email interview that there are many legitimate reasons for someone to encrypt their data:

People store their most important information on their phones and computers such financial information, business secrets and personal Information. Leaking such information into the wrong hands this information can and does lead to identify theft, destroyed businesses and even death. Pervasive full device encryption removes an incentive of bad people to try to steal our devices and means that when we mess up and lose a device that information remains protected.

Of course not everyone thinks encryption is so important. “Most people don’t have anything worth encrypting,” Republican strategist and author Stuart Stevens wrote in a response over unencrypted email:

I think data security is largely an expression of a new arrogance. Most people don’t have anything worth encrypting. I’ve never used it but think the whole notion of political secrets are largely better suited for House of Cards than reality.

That said, if Google and Apple are threatening our national security, there’s probably not much left to threaten.

Still the level of precautions one chooses to take towards one’s own computers, drives, and communications should be an individual choice, as with most things in a free country. And the threat from terrorists is exaggerated. The thumb drives confiscated from the San Bernardino attackers’ house were unencrypted. The SMS communications between the Paris attackers were unencrypted, according to The Intercept.

Moreover, it’s not even possible to prevent people from using encrypted apps without dramatically clamping down on freedom of expression. Apps like WhatsApp and Telegram and Protonmail and GPG mail, all of which offer various levels of encryption, are easily available online, some of them housed in foreign countries. To try to prevent people from using them, the government would have to censor the internet, as countries like China and Iran do, but even then people in those countries can still access banned websites over virtual private networks (VPNs).

Yet censoring the internet seems to be what both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in mind, if we are to take them at their word.

“[W]e’ve got to shut off their means of communicating,” Clinton said.

“We have to do something. … maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways,” Trump said. “Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”

Foolish people. Is that what the Founding Fathers were for thinking that a democratic country founded on the protection of individual rights could work?

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey.Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

Source:
This article was published at Bombs and Dollars

By Augusto Varas*

The recent loosening of US-imposed economic, travel and financial restrictions on Cuba are creating increasing expectations that the island’s economy will move towards a liberal-democratic and market-oriented system that will open up new opportunities for foreign companies in the island. The new US-Cuban relationship is also creating expectations in the island and abroad regarding future political changes in Cuba. However, economic and democratic liberalization will have to wait for the end of the US embargo and will depend on the way in which the Cuban authorities deal with the social and political effects of the lifting of the embargo. Currently Cuba is continuing to maintain its international policies, strengthen its ties with Russia and take a non-radical political approach to relations with Latin America.

Politics and economics

Due to the restoration of US-Cuban diplomatic links after 50 years of strained relations, the coming arrivals of the Rolling Stones, Coca-Cola, the Marriot and Hilton hotel chains, Carnival cruises, Sony Music and realtors in Cuba are examples of the growing interest of the international business community in this process. This enthusiasm has also been observed in neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic, whose ambassador to Spain indicated that opening up the market to attract global tourism to Cuba will also impact positively on the Dominican Republic, creating “the possibility of shared destinies”. More skeptically, in the political field, Julia Sweig, senior research fellow at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, stated that Cuba “is going to be more democratic than it has been, is going to be more liberal than it has been, but that would be with a one party system”.

Undoubtedly, the US-Cuban rapprochement will create a new environment for international business and will promote the better commercial integration of Cuba with Latin American and Caribbean countries. Cuba’s comparative advantages in terms of its educated human resources (according to the BBC, “50,000 [Cuban] health workers [are] engaged in health projects in 68 countries, half of them doctors”); its technological, scientific and research capabilities; and its strategic location for international commerce and transportation should generate a better environment for the island’s integration into regional and world trade and investment systems. At the same time the end of the embargo would make it possible for Cubans to manage US dollar accounts in other countries’ banks and have access to credit from US banks and their affiliates in other countries, and from international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Nevertheless, the recent US-Cuban diplomatic developments are not enough to dramatically change Cuba’s economic and political systems. The release of 53 prisoners after the announcement of the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and another 3,500 after Pope Francis’s visit to Havana in September 2015 were goodwill gestures by the Cuban government towards those involved in the rapprochement process. However, despite the Pope’s efforts to improve the island’s political and human rights conditions, it will take a long time to make such efforts real. A necessary condition would be the removal of the US economic blockade, but even if this were to happen the Cuban government would need some time to readjust and accommodate itself to this new situation. According to Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, “What has been negotiated is the normalization of bilateral relations, not a change in [Cuba’s] domestic policies”. In this context Cuban and US diplomatic delegations recently agreed to boost cooperation on security issues such as the combating of terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling.

International policy

All these possible changes do not imply a clear departure from Cuba’s current confrontational policy regarding international affairs, particularly vis-à-vis the US. At the UN President Raúl Castro defined US demands for the protection of Cuban citizens’ rights as a selective and discriminatory way of enforcing policy decisions, and in turn stated his political demands to the US: an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade; the devolution of the Guantanamo naval base; the cessation of media programs critical of the Cuban government; and compensation for the human and economic damage caused to the island and its people by the blockade. He also criticized world demilitarization and demanded the end of the use of information technologies to attack other states in cyberspace.

Cuba’s international policy is instrumental to increasing the island’s leverage regarding its demands vis-à-vis the US. A key feature of this policy is the strengthening of Cuban-Russian relations. After the December 2014 announcement that the US would reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba, in April 2015 Ricardo Cabrisas, vice president of the Cuban Council of Ministers, visited Kazan for the special session of the Cuban-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade-economic and Scientific-technical cooperation. In May Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev and President Castro met to discuss prospects for joint projects of bilateral interest. As a result of these talks Russia will supply generators to the Maximo Gomes and Este Habana power plants in Cuba.

Consistently with the Cuban-Russian relationship, in his UN speech President Castro criticized NATO and European Union (EU) policy towards Russia, supported the nuclear deal with Iran and the establishment of a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem, criticized the EU for not assuming its responsibilities regarding the migration crisis and stated clear opposition to a regime change in Syria. In this regard the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami denounced the alleged deployment of Cuban military forces in Syria in support of the Asad regime. The director general of bilateral affairs of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gerardo Peñalver Portal, categorically denied and refuted this allegation, describing it as “irresponsible and unfounded information”. The opening of the United Arab Emirates embassy in Havana is another example of Cuba’s projection onto the international scene.

Regarding Latin America, President Castro expressed support for the current presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina (including the latter country’s Malvinas claim); advocated for protection from the effects of climate change for Caribbean countries; demanded independence for Puerto Rico; claimed reparations for slavery and the slave trade; and highlighted the importance of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States – the regional organization that is independent of the US, as opposed to the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) – and its proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

While criticizing capitalism and welfare societies as failed role models, Castro stated that Cuba would seek its own development model, which could follow the Vietnamese path. Interestingly, in this context Castro did not mention the leftist regional organization Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, thus signaling that even though Cuba’s international positions differ from those of the US and EU, the island does not wish to be involved in radical leftist politics in Latin America. On the contrary, Cuba has been diplomatically mediating between the US and Venezuela, and playing a key role in the Colombian peace process. Accordingly, a new space for cooperation with Cuba in the region could be expanded and could even make possible some kind of partnership on drug-trafficking control in the Caribbean.

Similarly, José Miguel Insulza, a former secretary general of the OAS, indicated that with the new US policy “the OAS’ doors are opened for Cuba”.

In light of these moderate positions and despite Cuba’s strong rhetoric opposing US policies, US Secretary of State John Kerry recently indicated that it is possible to gradually restore full relations with Cuba before the island is a full democracy, as the US did previously with Vietnam and China: “I personally think that the embargo should be removed because doing so will help the people of Cuba … the US Congress is rightly concerned about human rights, democracy and the ability of people to meet”, but he insisted that the only condition is “a pathway to improve the relationship between [the Cuban] government and its people”.

Regional relations

Since Cuba has been a long-term symbol of US intervention in the region, these changes are also having regional effects. During her recent visit to the White House Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, stated that this is “a turning point in the relationship with Latin America [and] changes the level of US relations with the region. It is a parameter to be followed.”
With a new political profile Cuba will be more efficient in supporting the Colombian peace process, not only with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army, but also with the National Liberation Army, thus increasing the island’s international prestige and profile.

As a consequence of these changes new opportunities for Latin American countries to contribute to Cuban democratization will be opened. In this scenario Latin American and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Cuba could have a reinforcing effect in a transitional process toward a more pluralist polity.

Generally, Cuba will have to manage its regional relations with new approaches. After Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador, Cuba is one of the most important sources of international migrants in Latin America. Other regional countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, Chile and the Dominican Republic are the main destinations of Cuban migrants. The presence of Cuban doctors in Chile and Venezuela is an example of this regional process. It is reasonable to think that increased freedom of movement in Cuba would probably increase migration flows to other Latin American countries, creating new problems for the authorities of both Cuba and the countries to which Cubans migrate.

Despite citizens’ and governmental officials’ optimism regarding better living conditions thanks to the new Cuban-US relationship, an unexpected phenomenon has been observed, i.e. the increasing number of Cuban migrants going to the US (31,314 thus far in 2015). These migrants are concerned about a possible ending of the U.S. policy permitting Cubans reaching the US to remain there permanently. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act allows Cubans who reach U.S. soil to stay and apply for a green card after one year, and makes them eligible for benefits granted to refugees fleeing persecution, such as some cash assistance and medical coverage. As a consequence of improved bilateral relations it is highly likely that these privileges will be removed from a new package of US policy measures.

Worried about emigration and desirous of preventing a brain drain, Cuban authorities are changing their policy toward medical doctors who deserted while serving on government-backed programs abroad. According to Granma (the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party), health professionals who, under the terms of the migratory reform, have left the country, be it because of financial, family related or professional reasons, including the victims of deceitful brain-drain practices, will be offered the opportunity to rejoin our national health system if they wish to do so, and shall be guaranteed a position with conditions similar to the ones they previously enjoyed.

These kinds of changes, together with the relaxation of other US restrictions such as those on visits and remittances, will reduce the power of Cuban-American political and lobbying organizations in the US and create a space for moderate groups to interact with the Cuban authorities regarding future transitional scenarios.

Simultaneously, the new diplomatic atmosphere will make possible a different type of interaction between Latin American and extra-regional NGOs and their Cuban counterparts. Since collaborative linkages between Cuban and international NGOs have often been subjected to government political authority or control, this new context could make possible a freer kind of relationship that would expand the presence and role of civil society organizations in a gradual transitional process.

In sum, although some effects of the new Cuban-US relationship have been observed, and it is highly likely that Cuba will be reintegrated into world commerce and multilateral financial institutions and will play a growing political role in regional and world affairs, all these changes will not have an automatic democratizing and liberalizing effect on the island’s political and economic systems. International actors will have to balance their investment interests in a less isolated Cuban economy with their own commitments to civil and political liberties.

About the author:
*Augusto Varas has a PhD in sociology from Washington University- St. Louis. He is the author of numerous articles and books on civil society, the armed forces, democracy and international politics. He has been an adviser to the General Secretariat of the Presidency Ministry of President Patricio Aylwin of Chile, and the Ford Foundation representative for the Andean region and Southern Cone. He is a NOREF consultant and the president of the EQUITAS Foundation (Chile).

Source:
This article was published by NOREF as Expert Analysis December 2015 (PDF)

The content of this publication is presented as is. The stated points of view are those of the author and do not reflect those of the organisation for which he works or NOREF. NOREF does not give any warranties, either expressed or implied, concerning the content.

By Benedetta Berti*

Beginning as a largely non-violent, non-sectarian political mobilization, the Syrian revolution gradually morphed into a protracted and bloody civil war as well as into a regional proxy conflict that has directly involved both regional states and non-state actors alike. Today, the Syrian conflict remains deeply internationalized, militarized and fractionalized. The domestic battlefield is characterized by a crucible of different political and armed movements. But while the fragmentation and proliferation of armed groups within the anti-Assad camp is well known, the Syrian regime has also been relying on a number of non-state allies. These include Syrian local ‘community-defense’ groups and other pro-regime paramilitary organizations; Shiite militia groups (mostly from Iraq) and, most notably, the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Indeed since the very beginning of the Syrian revolution, Hezbollah clearly sided with the Bashar-al Assad regime, shifting from offering political support and solidarity to becoming one of the warring parties. The reasons behind Hezbollah’s ‘all-in’ approach with respect to the Syrian civil war are related to the historical strategic alliance between the Lebanese-Shiite organization and the Syrian regime; to the geo-strategic importance of preserving the so called ‘Axis of Refusal/resistance’ between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as well as to the strength of the personal relationship between the group’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Syrian President.

As a result, Hezbollah has grown to be a crucial ally of the Bashar al-Assad regime. In the process the group has evolved at the military and political level, ultimately impacting upon its strategic outlook, capabilities and role—both in Syria as well as back home in Lebanon.

In military terms, Hezbollah’s assistance to the regime has greatly increased since 2011, shifting from an initial advisory role and limited military assistance to full military support. In practical terms, Hezbollah’s fighters have participated in both offensive and defensive operations, often embedded with the Syrian military, and have represented a key force-multiplier for the Assad regime. Over the past years, Hezbollah fighters have indeed helped the regime win a number of important tactical victories. including the battle over the border town of al-Qusayr and the long and bloody confrontation in the Qalamoun region.

Needless to say, this prolonged involvement has directly impacted the group’s military capabilities and overall strategic outlook. As the direct military involvement has grown, Hezbollah now needs to sustain the presence of roughly 3,000-4,000 fighters on Syrian soil. This number, although significant, is not per se unsustainable for the organization, given the post-2006 swelling of its ranks and the recent and very much ongoing recruiting efforts, adding to what is believed to be a fighting force of 20-30,000 fighters (between full-time and part-time members). Even so, Hezbollah has been understandably concerned about the number of casualties amongst its ranks, believed to be somewhere between, 1,200 and 1,700 fighters, if not because of the military implications of such losses, then certainly because of the negative political and legitimacy repercussions. Also, the sustained military deployment has meant ramping up the group’s expenses, resulting in some financial pressure.

Hezbollah has so far been able to bear the escalating human and financial costs of the war; but there is no denying that being bogged down in the Syrian quagmire does limit its freedom of maneuver with respect to its other theaters of operations. For example, the price of an unintended escalation with its historical enemy, Israel, would be higher in the context of the ongoing military involvement in Syria. Still it is important to emphasize that the group’s overall capabilities to engage in a confrontation with Israel have not been dramatically reduced and, what is more, the Syrian battlefield has increased the military capabilities of the organization, serving as a difficult yet valuable training ground for its soldiers.

The depth and length of Hezbollah’s military involvement in Syria has also affected the group’s interests with respect to the war as well as its relationship with the Bashar al-Assad regime. Simply put, after all the political capital, money and blood spilled to keep Bashar al-Assad in power, the stakes are extremely high for Nasrallah’s organization. Both a collapse of the regime or a political transition that completely sidelined Assad and his core advisers would represent a significant loss for Hezbollah; rocking its status and power in Lebanon, empowering the domestic opposition to the group and perhaps even impacting on its relationship with the Lebanese Shiite community. To lay down its weapons and leave Syria without losing face or political capital, Hezbollah needs either an (admittedly unlikely) Assad victory, a political deal that leaves key parts of the regime in power, or a de facto partition that allows the Syrian regime—propped up by Iran and Hezbollah—to keep control over a strategic pocket of the country.

In turn, the situation has created a symbiotic dependency between the Syrian regime and Hezbollah: on the one hand Assad needs Hezbollah fighters on the ground as well as Iranian assistance to continue the war, in turn increasing its dependency on the Lebanese-Shiite group and on Tehran. On the other hand, because of the sunk costs related to losing Syria, Hezbollah is also in a position where it needs Assad to stay in power. Unsurprisingly, the involvement in Syria also further strengthens and deepens the strategic alliance and relationship with Iran, whose financial assistance is more than ever needed to sustain the military efforts and whose geo-strategic goals for Syria converge with Hezbollah’s.

From Tehran’s point of view, it is just as important for Hezbollah to be able to continue backing the Bashar al-Assad regime without having to become more directly involved in the fighting on the ground. Another interesting byproduct of Hezbollah’s military involvement in Syria is the group’s de facto involvement with Russia, as both parties stand on the same side of the civil war. The Russian military intervention in Syria was certainly a welcome development for all parties on the Assad side, including Hezbollah, as it followed a few months where Bashar al-Assad and his allies were losing more and more battles to an increasingly better funded and coordinated opposition. But whilst Russian support in Syria is good news for Hezbollah, it also may also come with a hefty price tag. For example, the strength of Russian-Israeli relations and the openly discussed shared interest in “de-conflicting” activities in Syria has resulted in a situation where reported Israeli operations against Hezbollah can continue even following Moscow’s involvement on the ground, whilst Hezbollah’s freedom of maneuver to respond has de facto been limited. Indeed, whilst Hezbollah and Russia (and Iran for that matter) have an immediate convergence of interests in propping up the Syrian regime, in the longer term their distinct geo-strategic interests may lead to tensions over, for example, the different “red lines” with respect to acceptable political deals to end the conflict.

But Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria has not just altered its relationship with its previous allies, such as Syria and Iran; it has also heightened its rivalries and created new enemies, both in Syria and within Lebanon. Because of its military role supporting Assad, it is not surprising to note that Hezbollah is seen as a key enemy by anti-Assad opposition forces. In particular, Hezbollah is especially despised and targeted by groups operating within the “Salafi-jihadist” camp. This is certainly true when it comes to groups like Jahbat al-Nusra or the Islamic State: both organizations have engaged in a number of bloody battles against Hezbollah and in both cases their military rivalry is heightened by their belief that the group and the Shiite community in general is “heretical” in its interpretation of Islam. Similarly, within Lebanon, Hezbollah’s assistance of the Syrian regime has not only fueled political and sectarian tensions between the Shiite and Sunni communities, but it has also resulted in direct violence against Nasrallah’s group and the Shiite community in general. Indeed in the past few years there have been a number of direct attacks against Hezbollah; including rocket attacks against the “al-Dahiye”—the Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut; suicide bombings against Shiite, Hezbollah and Iranian targets and operations targeting the Lebanese Armed Forces. For instance, al-Qaeda affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades bombed the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in November 2013; the Al Nusrah Front in Lebanon claimed responsibility, among other attacks, for the a bloody suicide bombing in the Alawite Jabal Mohsen neighborhood in Tripoli in January 2015, and, more recently, ISIS itself took responsibility for a tragic suicide attack in south Beirut in November 2015.

In this context, it is possible to see how participating in the Syrian conflict has rendered Hezbollah more vulnerable to domestic attacks, while overall contributing to further polarization of the Lebanese political arena. In turn this has affected Hezbollah’s domestic stance and national image, with its political opponents harshly questioning whether the historical label of “national resistance” has forever been shredded and replaced by that of “sectarian militia.” In response, Hezbollah has invested in a political campaign to stress its self-image as a national resistance movement. Indeed Nasrallah has reiterated on numerous times that Hezbollah perceives itself as fighting and resisting against two national enemies, the old Israeli foe as well as the “takfiri threat”—which Hezbollah is extremely keen to describe as a national challenge, not a sectarian one.

Finally, the ongoing Syrian conflict has also had an impact on Hezbollah’s strategy with respect to its oldest and most intractable enemy, Israel. Here, however, it is perhaps surprising to note that such impact remains limited. Indeed nothing profound has changed in the group’s attitude and strategy with respect to the “next war with Israel”: since 2006 both Israel and Hezbollah have simultaneously continued to prepare for the next conflict, whilst preserving a strategic interest in delaying such confrontation.

Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria does not fundamentally alter the equation: if anything, the Lebanese-Shiite organization is now even more interested in avoiding an all-out war with Israel while it is fighting in Syria alongside Assad and in Lebanon against the takfiri threat. Nasrallah’s group has so far been determined to square the circle between two competing strategic interests: the desire to avoid a fully-fledged war with Israel and the need to preserve a de facto deterrence and not to project weakness, both internally as well as toward its enemy. As a result, Hezbollah seems to have chosen a strategy of tit-for-tat, limited retaliation with respect to reported Israeli attacks against its equipment and personnel. For example, a reported February 2014 rocket attack against Hezbollah targets along the Syrian-Lebanese border was met with unclaimed low-level attacks along the Golan demarcation line and by detonating an explosive device within the contested Shebaa Farms area. More recently, Hezbollah responded relatively swiftly and in a similar manner following a reported Israeli operation targeting Iranian and Hezbollah fighters in the Syrian Golan in the winter of 2015, focusing again its response along the Golan Heights and in the Shebaa Farms. The latest reported Israeli strike against Hezbollah targets occurred in December 2015 with the killing of Samir Kuntar, who had joined Hezbollah after his release from Israeli jails in the 2008 prisoners exchange with the Lebanese-Shiite organization and who had been active in setting up a stronghold in the Syrian Golan. The very high-profile nature of the operation has led Hezbollah to publicly address Kuntar’s death both by pointing the  finger at Israel and by promising retaliation, “no matter the cost.” At the same time, the notion that Kuntar will be avenged “at a time and place the resistance choose”’ stresses the fact that Hezbollah is still balancing its need to strike back with its lack of interest in an all-out war. This may lead the group to invest in foreign operations.

In sum, there is little doubt that the Syrian civil war will continue to be highly consequential for Hezbollah in terms of military commitment, domestic political capital and regional role. Indeed, in the past few years, the prolonged engagement on the ground in Syria has redefined Hezbollah’s relations with both historical allies such as Iran and the Assad regime, whilst at least partially altering its strategic calculus with respect to old foes like Israel. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has also had to deal with newly acquired enemies, such as ISIS and al-Nusra, while learning to engage with countries like Russia. In the longer term, the future development of the Syrian civil war will similarly impact Hezbollah’s future evolution. The prolonged continuation of the conflict would likely increase the party’s war-weariness and could negatively impact its military status and political legitimacy. At the same time, a “bad negotiated deal” would also represent a significant threat for the organization, weakening its status at home and regionally. As a result, Hezbollah—much like the other parties on the ground—is very much bogged down in a conflict the group needs to end but it cannot afford to lose.

About the author:
*Benedetta Berti is a TED Senior Fellow, a Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), and an independent human security​ ​consultant.  Her work focuses on human security and internal conflicts, as well as on post-conflict stabilization and peacebuilding. Dr. Berti is the author of three books, including Armed Political Organizations. From Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and her work has appeared, among others, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Al-Jazeera. In 2015 the Italian government awarded her the Order of the Star of Italy (order of Knighthood).

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

However much of a brat he might seem to some, Kim Dotcom’s relevance goes far beyond his self-generating hyperbole and excessive enthusiasm. In the legal battles of extradition and how services on the Internet matter, Dotcom, resident in New Zealand, remains a person of importance. So important, in fact, that the US Department of Justice has been on to him and three associates since 2012.

His arrest in January 2012, along with associates Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk, and Finn Batato, demonstrated how the US state prioritizes economic interest. Most terrorist suspects, actual or otherwise, get the drone treatment, airstrikes and the like. Dotcom got dozens of agents, some heavily armed, and two police helicopters. As Wired noted in perplexed wonder, it was the sort of “paramilitary assault reserved for drug lords, murderers, and terrorists, not copyright infringers.”[1] The seizure covered 18 luxury vehicles, 150 terabytes of data, and NZ$11 million in cash.

His special treatment was further highlighted by the bugging exploits of the New Zealand intelligence services, the Government Communications Security Bureau, something for which the country’s prime minister found himself apologising over.[2]

In September 2012, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Paul Neazor, found that the GCSB exploits had been illegal, having relied on incorrect police information about Dotcom’s residency status. Instead of taking this to heart and preventing a repeat of such behaviour, Prime Minister John Key pressed ahead with seeking to enlarge GCSB’s powers to spy on New Zealanders to ostensibly to prevent cybercrime.

Dotcom’s claim to notoriety lies in being the main figure behind the online storage locker Megaupload, a creation that consumed more bandwidth than either Dropbox or Box. It was an operation that generated $175m in what are claimed by US prosecutors to be illegal profits. According to those authorities, the downloads of pirated movies and music through the site in its heyday generated 4 percent of global internet traffic.[3]

On Tuesday, a New Zealand district court claimed that Dotcom could be extradited to the United States to stand trial for money laundering, copyright infringement, racketeering and wire fraud facilitated via the file-sharing service.[4] The US indictment comprised 13 counts in total, a strategy that was developed because copyright infringement alone is a non-extraditable offence between NZ and the US.[5] The defendants had, it was contended, been members of “a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering of a massive scale”.

It is claimed that the value lost in terms of copyright violation was “in excess of $500 million,” covering movies, music, television programs, electronic books, and entertainment software.[6] Such content, as the indictment outlines, “is not searchable on the website, which allows the Mega Conspiracy to conceal the scope of its infringement.”

In the words of Judge Nevin Dawson, outlined in his 271-page ruling, the US had gathered what the court considered “overwhelming” evidence against the defendants. The respondents had failed to show that the evidence had fallen “well short of undermining the case” being made.

This was an odd suggestion, given that the judge generally accepted, at face value, the veracity of the prosecution claims. Repeated efforts to get the US authorities to show what this “overwhelming” evidence consisted of failed to bear fruit. In a troubling way, it seemed that the legal pull was taking place outside the court, and off NZ shores.

The defence effort had comprised an attempt to show that Megaupload operated along the lines of other Internet Service Providers (ISPs), similar to cloud-based operations. The defendants also suggested that take down notices were abided by in cases of infringements.

Again, the judge refused to accept those arguments, when he should have been cognisant of the fact that an improper use of a platform does not compromise it. YouTube operators, for instance, do not tend to find themselves in the slammer when copyright protected film and music is placed on the site. The infringing material is simply removed.

Nor did the judge consider that Dotcom’s team may have undertaken several measures to ensure that infringement was made less likely (one reason for making material non-searchable) and invulnerable to legal challenges precisely because they were attempting to stay within the confines of the law.[7]

This is by no means it for the Dotcom team. The extradition ruling can be appealed, and one of the defence attorneys responsible for the case, Ira Rothken, suggested that the ruling on the US request for extradition will be reviewed in the High Court. Rothken’s broader feeling here is that ISP copyright safe harbour rules have been rendered a fiction. “Justice was not served today.”

Dotcom’s case provides a good if bitter foretaste of something far more sinister in the world of copyright policing, largely centred on such countries as the US. New Zealand should know – it proved to be an engaging, and sometimes significant demurrer during the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations with their larger counterpart. But the reach of US justice, in its hard fisted economic guise, will become even wider, serving, as it does all too often, the Hollywood entertainment complex.

Notes: 
[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/kim-dotcom-extradition-ruling/

[2] http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/254663/key-and-dotcom-the-story-so-far

[3] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9f0d30b6-a927-11e5-843e-626928909745.html#axzz3vVZeTl7U

[4] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2653497/Dotcom-JG.pdf

[5] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1502317-gov-uscourts-vaed-275313-34-0.html

[6] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/kim-dotcom-extradition-ruling/

[7] https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=nevin+dawson

Bangladesh is reeling under the strains of political rivalries between its two top leaders: PM Sheikh Hasina and Opposition leader and former PM Khaleda Zia – both are close relatives of former rulers.

As Bangladesh is heading for the December 30 municipal elections, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) looks more confident than the ruling Awami League (AL) party of PM Sheikh Hasina.

The Awami League party is not at all happy that the main opposition party BNP has decided to contest the municipal elections, making the chances difficult for the ruling party to post a big show at the local government.

The Hasina government had expected the opposition to boycott the local poll, citing malpractices by the government as it had done earlier by ignoring the impact of boycotting the national poll.

Having learned a vital lesson by boycotting the parliamentary poll that led to the thumping victory for the ruling party with many of its candidates having returned to parliament unopposed, now the BNP has decided to fight local elections and prepare the party for the next parliamentary poll.

The municipal elections, as usual, are flooded with irregularities. The national Election Commission refuses to address the allegations of the incidents of violation of the election code of conduct by ministers and MPs in different country, but BNP also refuses to boycott the polls citing the lack of any effective drive to make the election truly fair. Responsible officials are also frequently violating election rules, leading to pre-election violence and hampering the polls atmosphere.

The campaign situation is so bad that the Election Commission had to expose its helplessness by seeking Prime Minister Hasina’s intervention. About EC’s inactions, former Election Commissioner Sohul Hossain told the media that the EC cannot avoid its responsibility by only asking the returning officers to take actions over the code breaching. He said both the Commission and returning officers need to act simultaneously against code violation. “Here the overall responsibility goes to the Election Commission. The Commission, by the time, should have said it would take care of everything,” he added.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has alleged that their party candidates and their supporters are being attacked, tortured and arrested in different municipalities. He criticized the EC for not taking any action against those violating the election code of conduct and carrying out attacks on their opponents despite repeated complaints lodged by the party. BNP says a fair election is still possible if the Commission sincerely and neutrally plays its role braving the fear and obstructions. The Election Commission doesn’t seem to be as much active as it was supposed to be in arranging a fair election.” BNP has also expressed its surprise over the EC’s ‘helplessness’ by seeking the Prime Minister’s intervention to prevent the election code of conduct violation by the ruling party men. “The Election Commission has tremendous power. A fair election is possible if the Commission properly exercises its power,” said BNP standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy.

As the Commission did not take effective action and monitoring measures at the initial stage, the violation of election code has been on the rise alarmingly. Former caretaker government adviser M Hafizuddin Khan also said the EC wants to shirk its responsibility by shifting the duty to returning officers. Terming the present Commission ‘weak’, he said it is not taking effective steps when it comes to the violation of the election code conduct.

Earlier on Sunday, Election Commissioner Md Shahnewaz sought the Prime Minister’s intervention in checking the violation of the election code of the conduct by ministers and MPs. Such helplessness of the EC is surprising,” he added. Roy had come up with the remarks while talking to reporters after taking part in electioneering in favour of Bandarban municipality BNP mayoral candidate Jabed Reza. He alleged that the Commission has failed to protect the dignity and independence of the statutory body. Roy said their party has strong doubt about fair elections to the 235 municipalities on December 30. “Though we knew the election won’t be fair, we’ve participated in it to show the country’s people once again that it’s how much logical to go to polls under the current regime.

Meanwhile, the ruling Awami League, maybe as a gimmick to show that the government is not promoting irregularities, has also lodged objection to the Election Commission against 10 out of 30 election monitoring organisations ahead of the municipal polls. The ruling party raised the objection in a letter to the EC Secretariat on Wednesday, said Director of the EC Secretariat SM Asaduzzaman. The 10 organisations include Manobadhikar Somonnoy Parishad, Democracy Watch, Manobik Sahajjo Sangstha, Manobadhikar O Samaj Unnayan Sangstha, Light House, Odhikar, Right Jessore, Jagorani Chakra and National Youth Forum. A ruling party delegation, led by its joint general secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif, also met the Chief Election Commissioner on Thursday to discuss the issue.

Claiming that her party will get 80 percent votes if there is no manipulation and rigging in the December 30 municipal polls, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia demanded deployment of Army in the election. “I can predict, BNP will get 80 percent votes if the election is held fairly. But as a worthless and spineless person [CEC] is there in the Election Commission and you cannot expect proper polling from him,” she said. Speaking at a discussion at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh in Dhaka, Khaleda Zia said: “Deployment of Army is a must to hold credible municipal polls. We can expect a fair election to some extent if the Army is deployed. She, however, maintained that Sheikh Hasina will not agree to deploy army as she does not want the force to be there in the field. In her around 51-minute speech, the former prime minister also came down hard on the EC for not taking action against the ruling party men for regularly violating the election code of conduct. “Even the Prime Minster [Sheikh Hasina] herself violated the election code of conduct and a complaint was lodged with the Election Commission, but it remained quiet about it.”

The BNP chief said people will cast their votes in favor of the sheaf of paddy if they get the opportunity to go to polling stations freely. Khaleda urged the freedom fighters to go to the polling stations braving any obstacle and cast their votes for BNP candidates to restore democracy in the country.

Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad has said a large number of executive and judicial magistrates is being deployed to control the law and order situation during the Dec 30 polls to 234 municipalities across Bangladesh. “In some places, there have been clashes and even candidates have been injured. But in many other places, a cordial atmosphere has prevailed and campaigning has taken place without any trouble,” he said in a briefing at the EC office in Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar. “Let the trouble-makers follow the example set by those campaigning in a festive atmosphere,” he appealed. “I am confident the atmosphere will get better a day before the polls. Deployment of many executive and judicial magistrates will help,” Ahmad said. “From Monday, the deployment of law enforcing agencies will start.”

When asked about the BNP’s allegations about widespread violation of the electoral code of conduct by the ruling Awami League, the CEC said: “We are closely monitoring the situation and taking firm action against OCs, returning officers and officials found guilty of dereliction of duty.” He said executive magistrates with the power to impose fines for violation of the election code have helped improve the situation considerably. “I can say with certainty that the situation has improved as a result of the measures we have taken,” he claimed. He advised citizens to take recourse to legal action if they came across electoral malpractices. Kazi Ahmad said the BNP complained against certain organizations. “Both the BNP and the Awami League have complained against some observers. We are examining the complaints and will decide on them soon,” CEC said, the EC has registered the independent monitoring groups, he said.

A recent survey on upcoming municipal polls by ruling Awami League indicated the party’s massive victory but the BNP objected to the survey, saying the survey on upcoming municipal polls was a ‘survey of debacle’. The survey said that

Awami League mayor candidates would win in 201 municipalities.

The ruling party was finding out all kinds of tactics so that BNP did not contest in poll but this time they made mistake in the strategy, she said adding that they did not think BNP this time would come to election. Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia made the remarks while inaugurating biennial council and election-2015 of a faction of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalist at auditorium of Supreme Court Bar Association in Supreme Court. This is for the first time BFUJ has to organise its council session outside the National Press Club. BNP claimed that the BNP would win bagging 80 per cent vote in the election if the election is held in free, fair and neutral manner . ‘Whatever survey is conducted is false and that would yield nothing,’ she said claiming that she knows about the result of the true survey and those indicate ruling party is destined to defeat. She said the ruling party resorted to such tactic to legalize their corruption.

Khaleda claimed that the BNP would win bagging 80 percent of the vote in the election if the election is held in free, fair and neutral manner. She said it has been heard that journalists would not be allowed to enter to polling centers in December 30 local polls. She said if it is true then it is clear that their aim is to rig the poll. She said the journalists must stay inside the polling centers and urged them to project the real picture inside the polling centers. She said it would be proved for the third time that fair election did not take place under Awami League government and people did not accept ‘Hasina style’ and ‘Rakib style’ elections. She told the function to prove again that they are failed to hold fair election. Khaleda urged all voters to go to polling centers and cast their votes saying win of sheaf of paddy is certain. She said people ensured victory sheaf of paddy again and again when the party contested in the elections.

Through contesting the poll the BNP has proved that it is an election-oriented party, wants to contest in the election and believe in free, fair and inclusive election. It does not believe in one-party election through stuffing ballot boxes to win own candidates, she added. The former prime minister said earlier journalists had proved that fair election is not possible under Hasina and Rakib. She said other commissioners in the commission are more sycophants of the government.

On December 30, the voting will take place from 8am to 4pm. The campaigning ends at midnight on Monday (today).
Although local elections are essentially different from national poll, the current municipal poll outcomes are likely to shape – even define- the future politics of Bangladesh. If the BNP makes inroads in local settings, even if it does not win maximum number of seats and municipalities, the ruling AL would feel threatened to lose the next national poll. However, the Hasina government is making strenuous efforts to deny the opposition party that comfort zone.

The vote last week by the city council of Petrozavodsk to fire Galina Shirshina as mayor could be reversed by the courts because the independent mayor enjoys support in Moscow but even if that does not happen, her case is already backfiring on republic head Aleksandr Khudilyanen and United Russia.

That is because the deputies violated the law on removing mayors and because the authorities failed to bring criminal charges against her as they have done in other cases when the powers that be wanted to dispense with an opposition figure, and thus, Shirshina’s case removes the fig leaf of legitimacy for the law the deputies claimed to be using.

In today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Aleksey Gorbachev and Garmonenko call attention to these risks, ones that they suggest are especially great because the deputies so cavalierly violated the provisions of the 2009 law on removing mayors and because the authorities failed to bring charges against Shirshina (ng.ru/politics/2015-12-28/1_shirshina.html).

Last Friday, the deputies of the Karelian capital’s city council voted overwhelmingly to dismiss the independent mayor. They cited her failure to deal with the city’s problems in the way that they approve even though the 2009 law they invoked says a major can be removed only for complete “non-fulfillment of duties over the course of three or more months.”

Similar political overreaching has occurred in other cases where city councils have sought to remove mayors, but in all other cases, the deputies have supplemented their position by arranging with executive officials to bring criminal charges against their target thus making it more difficult for the individual to appeal.

That did not happen with Shirshina, and now she is preparing to sue to recover her office, according to Yabloko president Emiliya Slabunova, even though the latter says that her party does not have any particular illusions about their ability to achieve success. Nonetheless, she says, “we will try.”

According to Slabunova, the Karelian leadership has “by itself transformed Shirshina into a federation-level politician,” and that means that Shirshina could return “either as a deputy of the State Duma or the Legislative Assembly.” Moreover, experts say, it is not excluded that the courts may restore her to the mayor’s office.

According to the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalists, sources in the Presidential Administration have told them that the Kremlin doesn’t have problems with her and has cleared her to serve on committees chaired by Vyacheslav Volodin, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration. The courts could thus find for her without the Kremlin opposing that.

Aleksandr Kobrinsky, a lawyer who serves in St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, says she has a good case. “From a legal point of view,” he argues, the Petrozavodsk deputies misapplied the law by focusing on what she had done rather than by arguing that she had failed to perform her duties for three months as the law requires.

His argument was echoed by Nikolay Mironov, head of the Moscow Center for Economic and Political Reforms. Mironov added that even if the law’s provisions had been followed, the law itself is anti-constitutional because it allows deputies to remove an elected official for his or her position without consulting the people, who under the Russian Constitution are “the source of power.”

A new metamaterial with an unusual refraction of light will speed up computers

A team of scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in the Russian Academy of Sciences has proposed a two-dimensional metamaterial composed of silver elements, that refracts light in an unusual way. The research has been published on Nov. 18, 2015 in Optical Material Express. In the future, these structures will be able to be used to develop compact optical devices, as well as to create an ‘invisibility cloak.’

The results of computer simulations carried out by the authors showed that it would be a high performance material for light with a wavelength from 400-500nm (violet, blue and light blue). Efficiency in this case is defined as the percentage of light scattered in a desired direction. The efficiency of the material is approximately 70% for refraction, and 80% for reflection of the light. Theoretically, the efficiency could reach 100%, but in real metals there are losses due to ohm resistance.

A metamaterial is a material, the properties of which are created by an artificial periodic structure. The prefix ‘meta’ (from the Greek μετ? — beyond) indicates that the characteristics of the material are beyond what we see in nature. Most often, when we talk about metamaterials, we mean materials with a negative refractive index. When light is incident on the surface of such a material, the refracted light is on the same side of the normal to the surface as the incident light.

The difference between the behavior of the light in a medium with a positive and a negative refractive index can be seen, for example, when a rod is immersed in liquid.

The existence of substances with a negative refractive index was predicted as early as the middle of the 20th century. In 1976 Soviet physicist V.G. Veselago published an article that theoretically describes their properties, including an unusual refraction of light. The term ‘metamaterials’ for such substances was suggested by Roger Walser in 1999. The first samples of metamaterials were made from arrays of thin wires and only worked with microwave radiation.

Importantly, the unusual optical effects do not necessarily imply the use of the volumetric (3d) metamaterials. You can also manipulate the light with the help of two-dimensional structures — so-called metasurfaces. In fact, it is a thin film composed of individual elements.

The principle of operation of the metasurface is based on the phenomenon of diffraction. Any flat periodic array can be viewed as a diffraction lattice, which splits the incident light into a few rays. The number and direction of the rays depends on geometrical parameters: the angle of incidence, wavelength and the period of the lattice. The structure of the unit cell, in turn, determines how the energy of the incident light is distributed between the rays. For a negative refractive index it is necessary that all but one of the diffraction rays are suppressed, then all of the incident light will be directed in the required direction.

This idea underlies the recent work by the group of scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. The unit cell of the proposed lattice is composed of a pair of closely spaced silver cylinders with a radius of the order of 100 nanometres (see figure). Such a structure is simple and operates at optical wavelengths, while most analogues have more complex geometries and only work with microwaves.

The effective interaction of pairs of metal cylinders with light is due to the plasmon resonance effect. Light is absorbed by the metal rods, forcing the electrons in the metal to oscillate and re-radiate. Researchers were able to adjust the parameters of the cell so that the resulting optical lattice response is consistent with abnormal (i.e. negative) refraction of the incident wave (see figure). Interestingly, by reversing the orientation of the cylinder pairs you can get an abnormal reflection effect. It should be noted that the scheme works with a wide range of angles of incidence.

The results achieved can be applied to control optical signals in ultra-compact devices. In this case we are talking primarily about optical transmission and information processing technologies, which will help expedite computer processing in the future. The conventional electrical interconnects used in modern chips are operating at the limit of their carrying capacities and inhibit further growth in computing performance. To replace the electrical interconnects by optical we need to be able to effectively control optical signals at nanoscale.

In order to solve this problem the efforts of the scientific community are focused to a large extent on creating structures capable of ‘turning’ the light in the desired direction. It should be noted that an experimental demonstration of anomalous scattering using the lattice described above requires the manufacture of smooth metal cylinders separated by a very small distance (less than 10 nanometres). This is quite a difficult practical problem, the solution of which could be a breakthrough for modern photonics.

A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen’s University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland’s people and their culture.

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis.

However, the origins of this heritage are unknown. The only way to discover our genetic past is to sequence genomes directly from ancient people, by embarking on a type of genetic time travel.

Migration has been a hot topic in archaeology. Opinion has been divided on whether the great transitions in the British Isles, from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture and later from stone to metal use, were due to local adoption of new ways or whether these influences were derived from influxes of new people.

These ancient Irish genomes each show unequivocal evidence for massive migration. The early farmer has a majority ancestry originating ultimately in the Middle East, where agriculture was invented. The Bronze Age genomes are different again with about a third of their ancestry coming from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe.

“There was a great wave of genome change that swept into Europe from above the Black Sea into Bronze Age Europe and we now know it washed all the way to the shores of its most westerly island,” said Professor of Population Genetics in Trinity College Dublin, Dan Bradley, who led the study, “and this degree of genetic change invites the possibility of other associated changes, perhaps even the introduction of language ancestral to western Celtic tongues.”

“It is clear that this project has demonstrated what a powerful tool ancient DNA analysis can provide in answering questions which have long perplexed academics regarding the origins of the Irish,” said Dr Eileen Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Osteoarchaeology at Queen’s University Belfast.

Whereas the early farmer had black hair, brown eyes and more resembled southern Europeans, the genetic variants circulating in the three Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island had the most common Irish Y chromosome type, blue eye alleles and the most important variant for the genetic disease, haemochromatosis.

The latter C282Y mutation is so frequent in people of Irish descent that it is sometimes referred to as a Celtic disease. This discovery therefore marks the first identification of an important disease variant in prehistory.

“Genetic affinity is strongest between the Bronze Age genomes and modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, suggesting establishment of central attributes of the insular Celtic genome some 4,000 years ago,” added PhD Researcher in Genetics at Trinity, Lara Cassidy.

Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition obtained a crushing victory in the 6 December parliamentary elections, putting an end to fifteen years of domination of the legislature by parties associated with former President Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro and opening up the possibility of a peaceful, negotiated solution to the crisis afflicting the country.

The MUD overcame extremely adverse campaign conditions and surpassed its own most optimistic forecasts, winning 112 of the 167 seats in the National Assembly (AN). This gives it a two-thirds majority in parliament, and with it the opportunity to exercise control not only over the legislative agenda but also, to some degree, over the government. Despite this development, the two sides will need all their creativity and imagination, as well as the political will, to agree solutions to the country’s urgent problems. The international community should support these efforts.

President Nicolás Maduro – who had threatened to achieve victory “by whatever means necessary” and to take to the streets with his supporters if he lost – recognised the opposition victory. He attributed it, in a speech broadcast moments after the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced the first results, to an “economic war”, waged by the private sector and its national and international allies, which the government blames for the record inflation and scarcity levels the country is experiencing. The post-electoral violence many had feared did not materialise. However, in the succeeding days both Maduro and the outgoing chairman of the AN, Diosdado Cabello, made clear how difficult it was for them to accept the new political reality.

Maduro has said he will not sign an amnesty law for up to 80 political prisoners which the MUD has promised will be its first legislative act. He has also threatened retaliation against those who voted against the government, saying, for example, that he is not inclined to build more houses for ungrateful voters. The government has stripped the assembly of control over its television channel and radio station by transferring ownership to their workers. Cabello has insisted on proceeding with the appointment of thirteen new Supreme Court justices, so as not to leave the decision in the hands of the opposition majority due to be sworn in on 5 January. Furthermore, on 15 December he oversaw the inauguration of a “Communal Parliament”, of uncertain legal basis, which would seek to balance the power of the assembly.

Despite this reluctance there is reason to think that the new political reality will, sooner or later, make itself felt and that there will have to be negotiations over the most urgent issues, whether political, social or economic. Venezuela is in the throes of an extremely grave economic crisis which threatens to provoke a humanitarian disaster. If the two sides engage in a strategy of confrontation, ignoring the will of the electorate, the crisis will rapidly worsen and could sweep aside not only the government but opposition leaders as well.

Among the reasons for optimism is the stance of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB), whose institutional behaviour during (and especially after) the election process indicates that it will not go along with any attempt to overturn the constitutional order. This suggests that Maduro has abandoned the option that the government might hold onto power by force of arms, as he had explicitly suggested prior to the election.

Nonetheless, negotiations will be difficult to establish and it will take both sides some time to accustom themselves to a political situation that demands agreements rather than confrontation. The government is unaccustomed to finding itself in a minority and its recent announcements seem to indicate that it will seek to use the streets for further confrontation. Some factions within the regime will exert pressure to resist decisions taken by the AN and even engage in a war of attrition. But the MUD also has its internal divisions. It is a hotchpotch of parties which, taken individually, have little popular support and certain topics may aggravate tensions among them and strain traditionally fragile relationships.

In any event the new political map offers the opportunity to establish a pact between two equally legitimate branches of state and thereby improve the chances of avoiding an even greater deterioration of social and economic conditions during the remaining three years of Maduro’s term. If this is not done, then deadlock between a legislature whose laws are vetoed and an executive submitted to censure and feeling under threat could lead Venezuela down the road to a severe crisis of governance from which it would be difficult to escape without the help of third parties to facilitate or mediate dialogue.

With the aim of guaranteeing a stable political process, free from violence and in accordance with the constitution:

The government, the MUD and the future members of the new National Assembly should:

• facilitate a peaceful route to the swearing-in of the new National Assembly on 5 January 2016, within the framework established by the 1999 constitution;
• draw up a shared legislative agenda designed to resolve the urgent issues facing the economy and society and including the adoption of agreed mechanisms for restoring civil liberties; and
• devise and agree a speedy means of freeing those people jailed as a result of the events that occurred between February and May 2014 and any others held as the result of similar events. Consider the possibility of granting immediate release by means of an amnesty that respects the rights of victims to truth, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. Alternatively, establish an extraordinary judicial review of sentences, based on the opinion of a special commission mandated to study each case on an expedited basis.

The government should:

• comply with and ensure compliance with the decisions taken by the National Assembly, without prejudice to the constitutional attributes of the executive. Abstain from inciting its supporters to confront the assembly in the streets or through means other than those provided for in the constitution;
• resume the publication of objective and reliable macro-economic statistics, as well as those relating to communicable diseases and crime; and
• restore the rule of law throughout the national territory, including lifting the states of emergency in force in municipalities bordering Colombia.

The international community, in particular the UN, the European Union, the Organization of American States and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) should:

• reiterate their calls to the government and all political actors to comply and enforce the constitution and international treaties, as well as to refrain from incitement to violence;
• support national efforts to create political mechanisms for dialogue and conciliation, including possibly strengthening the presence of international organisations; serve as guarantors and mediators and finance projects designed to improve the quality of Venezuelan democracy; and
• give strong support to humanitarian actions, especially those relating to the containment and eradication of communicable diseases and improvements in systems for distributing medicine and food, beginning with rural areas and deprived districts of towns and cities.

The full report may be accessed here.

Iran has emerged on to the world stage after 36 years of isolation. India must double up its diplomacy and commercial engagement with Iran, and move boldly beyond the curtain of ‘civilisational’ ties. Time to put that natural advantage to good commercial use through a vigorous private sector engagement with Tehran.

By Mohandas Pai and Manjeet Kripalani*

On December 15, Iran emerged from 36 years of global isolation. The country’s leadership assured the world that its nuclear centrifuges are dismantled, and the process of lifting the three-decade old UN, EU and the U.S. sanctions has now begun.

Expectedly, there is overt and covert Western pressure to sabotage[1] the long-awaited “Implementation Day.” But hopefully, common sense will prevail. Sanctions have strained Iran’s ability to finance its growth and to trade with the world. Now this market of 80 million is ready for – and can afford – everything from airplane spare parts to container ports, consumer goods to technology products.

A recent week-long policy trip by Gateway House members to Iran in November revealed the intense desire of Iranians to re-engage with the world. “Let’s not call it a ‘deal’, says Moustafa Zahrani, the urbane director general of IPIS, the foreign ministry’s think tank, of the nuclear negotiations. “A deal has winners and losers. The nuclear agreement is a political decision by wise actors for the sake of humanity. All will benefit.”

A major benefit will be a strategic one. Since October 2015, Iran has been fighting along with Russia to root out ISIS in Syria and Iraq, a war that the West has been steadily losing. Iran’s participation, its superior intelligence and focus, will pose a formidable challenge for ISIS’ caliphate plans, which include the submission of India.

This is why India must double up its diplomacy and commercial engagement with Iran, and move boldly beyond the curtain of ‘civilisational’ ties. Those exist: the Persian culture is so embedded in the language and culture of India, Iran is hardly a foreign country for us.

But that natural advantage has not been put to good commercial use. The more worldly and profitable presence instead is, despite the crippling sanctions, Western; from Schindler elevators and Bosch microphones, to Pepsi and Coke in hotels and cafes across the country. Boeing already has a $7 billion order for spare parts for Iran Air. Hotels in Tehran are packed with American, European, Chinese and Asian businessmen, and the schedules of Iranian officials and entrepreneurs are overbooked by visiting foreign delegations. A brand new Novotel hotel stands opposite Tehran’s airport, and SWIFT is already active in 12 Iranian state-owned banks. New domestic investment banks like Turqoise Partners are much in demand and are flooded with investment inquiries, as is the Tehran Stock Exchange.

Iran’s many business chambers are fully prepared for the rush: “We are ready to take up any action of any nature and any value,” S. Kamaleddin Sahlabadi, the international counsellor for the Isfahan Chamber of Commerce, told our group.

Taking him up on the offer should be a priority. Both business and security-wise. According to the IMF, in the next five years the GCC’s $750 billion surplus will turn into a $600 billion deficit largely due to the low price of oil. With oil at $40 a barrel and the advance of ISIS in West Asia,  the combination is deadly, putting in jeopardy India’s interests in the region – 16% of of our exports go to GCC countries, we import 60% of our oil from them, and 6 million of our people work there. Shifting some of these assets to Iran immediately will be a wise move – trade, oil and some human capital.

India’s private industry will understand Iran easily enough:it is like India circa 1991, removed from global markets and making do with import substitution. Iran has used the years under the sanctions to develop internally, with good roads, water and housing supplies and an education system where women predominate – nearly 70% of Iranian science and engineering students are women. Close to 300,000 engineers in Iran have built home-grown replacements not just for nuclear technology but also for internet and mobile applications. Iran’s young, 20-something IT community has created Cafe Bazaar in place of Google Play; Bamilo instead of Amazon; Taxi Yaab instead of Uber, Mazando instead of Ebay. Since June 2012, Iran has held 62 ‘startup weekends’, there are innovation accelerators, and banks like Turquoise Partners are seed-funding this e-commerce take-off. This year Germany played tech godmother, hosting the iBridges tech conference for regional start-ups where Iranian players made a spectacular appearance.

Alas, India doesn’t figure in this new picture. Bangalore, with its large entrepreneurial community should loom large in Tehran, but apart from Flipkart, even superstar Hessam Armandehi, the young CEO of Cafe Bazaar, is unfamiliar with India’s startup scene. They look instead northwards. Alireza Jozi, the co-founder of TechRasa – the Iranian version of Bangalore’s Your Story – is an émigré from Austria who returned two years ago to build Iran’s tech ecosystem. His ambition for Iran’s tech talent? To surpass Turkey and “become the tech hub of the region.”

This is possible, given Iran’s aspirations and Turkey’s downward geopolitical spiral. India’s private sector must actively contribute to the Iranian dream. So far, our engagement is largely through government, with the signature bilateral Chabahar port project caught in India’s baroque inter-ministerial rivalries, and the Iranians losing patience. If New Delhi does not move decisively, Chabahar may, like Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, become a Chinese project and a critical link, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to its One Belt-One Road initiative.

Meanwhile, there’s a market craving credit and consumer goods. Under sanctions, Hawala financed Iran’s economy. Now Tehran is offering generous incentives to foreign investors to formalise its economy: Equal access to the home market, taxes of 10% or less, 100% repatriation of profits, special economic export zones. India’s private sector can offer consumer credit, factories for auto parts and electric vehicles, a pharma base and technology investments. What Iran cannot buy from Israel – the other big regional supplier – it can get from India, enabling her to become a regional goods and services supplier to the Gulf from a stable West Asian base.

*About the authors:
Mohandas Pai is chairperson, Manipal Global Education Services and founder member, Gateway House.Manjeet Kripalani is executive director of Gateway House: Indian Council of Global Affairs, Mumbai.

Source:
This feature was written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

Notes:
[1] Board of Governors, International Atomic Energy Agency, Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme,  2 December 2015, <http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_PMD_Assessment_2Dec2015.pdf>

A security researcher has uncovered a publicly-available database containing the personal information of 191 million voters on the internet, but it isn’t clear who owns it.

Chris Vickery, who shared his findings on DataBreaches.net, disclosed the trove of voter data, which includes names, home addresses, voter IDs, phone numbers, and birth dates, as well as political affiliations and voting histories since 2000. The database does not contain financial information or Social Security numbers.

The Texas tech support specialist said that he found the database while looking for information exposed on the internet in an attempt to raise awareness of security breaches.

Vickery has since reached out to law enforcement, as well as the California attorney general’s office. The database was still online as of Monday.

“When one of their attorneys asked, ‘Well how much data are we talking about?’ and I read her the list of data fields and told her that we had access to voter records of over 17 million California voters, her response was ‘Wow,’ and she promptly forwarded the matter to the head of their e-crime division,” DataBreaches.net’s administrator wrote online.

Vickery looked up his own information in the database table covering Texas and confirmed it was all accurate, and researchers from DataBreaches.net and security website CSO did as well. Vickery also looked up several police officers in his city and confirmed that the information matched.

Steve Ragan, a security blogger at CSO, assisted in investigating the breach. He pointed out that none of the political database firms he identified that are connected with the database have claimed ownership of the IP address where the information is published.

He said that the leak is worse than a recent breach of voter data from Hillary Clinton’s campaign by a member of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, “because the data he discovered isn’t a client score – it’s a complete voter record for 191 million registered voters.”

“The problem is, no one seems to care that this database is out there and no one wants to claim ownership,” he said.

Companies often charge large amounts of money to sell voter data, and many states place restrictions on the use of voter information for commercial purposes. However, political campaigns are largely exempt from many of the communications laws applying to businesses, and are under no obligation to safeguard their data.

“Our society has never had to confront the idea of all these records, all in one place, being available to anyone in the entire world for any purpose instantly,” Vickery said, according to Forbes. “That’s a hard pill to swallow. It crosses the line.”

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat on Sunday denied reports that he proposed to start secret negotiations with Israel last summer.

The statement from the PLO official came shortly after the Israeli Broadcasting Authority published on its Reshet Bet website that Erekat had proposed secret negotiations, but that Israel had turned down the offer.

According to unidentified sources in the Israeli report, Erekat had made the proposal during a meeting on July 24 in Jordanian intelligence offices in Amman with the outgoing Israeli minister Silvan Shalom, who was in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Reshet Bet also said that Erekat and Shalom met again three months later in Cairo where Shalom notified Erekat that the Israeli government rejected his proposal about secret negotiations.

The PLO official confirmed in a statement that he met with then-Israeli Vice PM Shalom in Amman and Cairo in July and August, but that he had not asked for secret negotiations.

The two reportedly discussed Palestinian demands regarding a return to negotiations, which were then rejected by Shalom during the meeting, Erekat said. Erekat added that he demanded a return to 1967 borders, the release of prisoners, as well as an end to settlement expansion.

The PLO official said that Israeli leadership is attempting to “claim to the US congress” that Palestinian, not Israeli leadership, is responsible for a continued freeze in negotiations.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s office also denied the Reshet Bet reports, saying that Israel has always been willing to start negotiations but it was the Palestinian side who refused.

The potential importance of the meeting between Erekat and Shalom was not made clear in the statement, and Shalom resigned from his position as vice PM earlier this month following multiple allegations sexual harassment.

Erekat took office in July as Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee, prompting speculation that he is being lined up to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president. The secretary-general has made several appearances on the international stage in recent months, participating in interviews with Israeli and European news outlets.

Following renewed violence that began in October and continued through December, representatives from the UN, US, and Middle East Quartet have visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory in attempt to restore calm.

While Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas have both acknowledged in recent months that they would be willing to meet, Palestinian and Israeli leadership have not met face to face for negotiations since peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

Attempted peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leadership have been ongoing for decades and are largely viewed as having failed to make any progress towards ending the decades-long military occupation by Israel.

The US remains the world’s chief supplier of armaments, having sold $36.2 billion worth of weaponry this year and controlling over 50 percent of the market, the New York Times reports.

According to the newspaper, this increase in foreign arms sales, compared to the $26.7 billion revenues of 2013, was due to major contracts with South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Russia, which currently ranks second in terms of global arms sales, earned $10.2 billion from arms exports. Sweden sold $5.5 billion of arms, while France and China earned $4.4 billion and $2.2 billion respectively from sales of military equipment.

The world’s top weaponry buyer was South Korea, as the country has purchased $7.8 billion worth of military hardware (most of it supplied by the US).

At the same time, Iraq spent $7.3 billion on weapon purchases while Brazil obtained $6.5 billion worth of armaments in 2014.

By Carlos Malamud*

The results of the presidential election in Argentina and of the parliamentarian election in Venezuela have encouraged different interpretations of a new political cycle in Latin America, which, among other implications, could entail the end of populist policies in the region. However, it would still be very soon to notice a change of trends and, although the economic crisis could have, and actually has, political consequences, these would be evident in different ways in each country.

The IMF’s forecast talks about negative growth for 2016 in Venezuela (-6%), Brazil (-1%) and Argentina (-0.7%), whereas Ecuador, after the fall of 2015, would experience quite a modest growth, of only 0.1%. For their part, Bolivia and Nicaragua, two members of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), would show growth above the regional average and above 3.5%. This means that not all the countries would bear the same turbulences and the reduction of public resources to finance social programmes would be different in each of them.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that the Bolivarian populism was preceded by an initial wave of “classic populism”, in the thirties and the nineties, with Peronism as one of its most complete models, and by a second wave of “neoliberal” populism, with its Menemist and Fujimorist touches. Therefore, we should not exclude, in the hypothetical event of a radical turn of political cycle in Latin America, which some would adventurously call a “turn to the right”, the emergence of a new populist alternative with more conservative or liberal embellishments.

The end of the populist experience in Argentina and the arrival of a new National Assembly (parliament) in Venezuela create great challenges for the institutional stability of these two countries. The idea of indefinite presence in the power is in the DNA of Bolivarian populism, since they are the embodiment of unchanging nations and the expression of the people’s will. Hence the fact that the same idea of alternation is seen as something counterrevolutionary, which would imply handing over the power to the most antiquated interests of a reactionary right and allied with imperialism.

Populist leaders who governed their countries in the last 15 years have assumed a patrimonialist conception of the power, which has taken them to appropriate the state system and to colonize the institutions as if these belonged to them. That is the reason why deep difficulties from which a new government must be created in these conditions entail the unavoidable ouster of former governors.

Maybe, a clarifying example in this regard is what is happening with and at the Venezuelan parliament. On one hand, we have the attempt to replace it with a Community Assembly, not stipulated by the Constitution, whose main objective would be emptying a Congress led by deputies of the opposition with an extremely qualified majority. On the other hand, the election of outgoing parliamentarians is being forced (they officially end their mandate on 4 January) for 12 judges that would made up the Supreme Court, responsible for determining the constitutionality of the laws or the legality of the actions coming from the Executive Power.

Unquestionably, Latin America is facing an extremely complicated moment, with increasing economic and political difficulties. However, one more time it has to insist on regional diversity and the fact that not all countries will undergo changes, if any, in the same way. It is undeniable that events taking place in Argentina and Venezuela will have repercussions on other places, but we do not know how. For the moment, we can just look forward to it and follow what happens in the region with attention. Having said that, the fact that Nicolás Maduro has not attended the Mercosur Summit in Paraguay to avoid confronting Mauricio Macri is a symbol of the interesting times to come.

About the author:
*Carlos Malamud, Senior Analyst for Latin America, Elcano Royal Institute | @CarlosMalamud

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute  and on 24/12/2015 in The Diplomat in Spain.

By Kimberley Anne Nazareth*

The recent attacks in Paris, triggered by the ever growing Islamic State (IS) has caused a great deal of concern not only among the Western nations but in the Persian Gulf as well. The event has questioned the success of the US-led coalition as well as the involvement of the regional countries, particularly Iran, in the battle against the IS.

To that end, has the IS’s existence benefitted Iran in the regional as well as international context, and to what extent?

Regional Dynamics

Iran is definitely a game-changer. It is deeply involved in the fight against IS in both Iraq and Syria. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s support for the Assad regime is a double-edged sword. It acts as an enabler as it has kept the Assad regime afloat, and a constrainer as it a can influence the activities of the regime. Iran’s support for Assad has caused a clash between Iran and the West and the influence it potentially wields is a reason why the West should engage with Iran.

From a strategic point of view, the regional countries have the most to lose if the growth of IS is not curbed. Hence, a committed regional effort is required to dismantle its influence in the region. This includes Iran and the other gulf countries.

Though most West Asian countries have joined the international coalition, their degrees of commitment are questionable. Many of these countries are also part of the problem; and they have been indirectly responsible of the spread of the IS.

It also means that these countries too have to include Iran in the fold. The regional challenges in the form of proxy wars, flare-ups and sectarian conflicts between the countries have created a security dilemma – which includes the war in Yemen, the Saudi–Qatar unease, the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry etc.; these rivalries have obstructed the effective functioning of the coalition forces as well as creating a parallel crisis in the region.

The threat posed by IS has given Iran an upper hand in playing a greater role in regional security issues – reaching out to its nemesis, Saudi Arabia, is one way. But the sectarian and regional flare ups are creating a dilemma. The Gulf States and the others are wary of Iran’s influence, especially in the Shia dominated or ruled countries in the region – which includes Iraq and Syria. Syria has been especially supportive of Iran’s enhanced role in the region. Iran has never backed down from supporting Shiite organisations, especially in its fight against the IS.

International Community

If the regional countries seem complacent, the international community, dominated by the Western powers, are in a worse position. They lack a clear strategy. Their complacency was witnessed in their procrastination to form the coalition. They have also been divided on a roadmap to tackle the Assad situation. There is more that divides them, than unites them especially when Russia is thrown into the mix.

The main question is as to whether Iran should be part of the coalition. There are many like Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution who advises against such a coalition. Conversely however, strategically, some sort of partnership would be prudent as both Iraq and Syria are not hostile towards Iran, as well as face the common threat of the IS. However, other complications have arisen and Iran and the US are now embroiled in a fight for influence in the region, with Russia who is friendly towards Iran rather than its ‘frenemy’, US. Though their goals do converge, there are other factors, such as Iran’s support of groups like Hezbollah that impede a working relationship.

The US’ battle against the IS has proven to be futile in spite of President Barack Obama’s repeated attempts at reassuring his citizens as well as the international community. The Paris attacks are a clear indication that the IS is still expanding its influence beyond the areas it controls; and that the strategy of the coalition is under-equipped to deal with them.

Iran’s Regional and Global Trajectories

The threat posed by IS will not disappear in the near future, and as predicted by many, the crisis will continue for a longer term. It creates a window of opportunity for Iran as a regional powerhouse to play a leading role especially in the Shia-dominated states. However, the regional countries, especially the Sunni-ruled countries are apprehensive of the role Iran should play.

If the international community is serious about its need to dismantle the IS, getting all regional countries to take onus as well as regional collaborative efforts should be promoted with greater fervor. This collaborative effort would further compel Iran into a leadership role.

However, Iran’s changing role in world affairs is viewed with heavy skepticism, especially due to its ‘extracurricular’ activities aimed at one ‘unfriendly’ regional nation at the least. Therefore, at the moment, though Western countries are beginning to see Iran as a problem solver rather than a creator, they are still uncertain.

* Kimberley Anne Nazareth
Research Intern, NSP, IPCS
E-mail: kimberleynazareth@gmail.com

By John Feffer*

In fairy tales, the hero makes a wish. After a few trials the wish comes true, and everyone lives happily ever after. But only in this Disney version of fairy tales is wish fulfillment so straightforward.

In Goethe’s modern fairy tale, a scholar dreams of knowledge and power. A stranger grants his wish, but the ambitious Faust must pledge his soul to the Devil to seal the deal. In the famous short story “The Monkey’s Paw,” a distraught mother rubs the animal’s amputated limb and wishes for her dead son to return. When the knock on the door comes late at night, she realizes that her dead son has indeed returned, but not necessarily to life.

The moral? Unless you’re two-dimensional and Technicolor, be careful what you wish for.

Those who aspire to occupy the Oval Office, should their wish come true, are not guaranteed a fairy-tale ending. Indeed, few exit the presidency without giving up their soul (or large parts thereof). Some are even haunted by the dead who come knocking at midnight, demanding to be heard. Presidents watch their hair turn grey and their shoulders slump from the weight of the office.

Barack Obama became president of the United States seven years ago. He made many a difficult bargain in order to fulfill his wish to become America’s first African American commander-in-chief. In the process, he’s auctioned off parts of his soul to different vested interests and, as a result, disappointed many.

Some commentators on the left have blasted his presidency because it doesn’t conform to their Disney understanding of American politics (in which the fairy leftist waves a wand and all Americans suddenly become Swedish socialists). Many commentators on the right have dismissed the Obama administration from day one because it doesn’t conform to their Reaganesque understanding of American society (in which gummint shrivels up like a raisin in the sun leaving Americans free to choose, starve, and fire their semi-automatics).

But there are also plenty of people in the middle who have grown cynical of the Obama administration, because seven years is a long time to sustain hope and pray for change. This broad slice of the electorate expected peace, and they’ve gotten a lot of war. They hoped in the wake of the financial crisis for an economy geared to the 99 percent, and they’ve seen the raucous return of the rich. They expected a transformation of the way Washington does business, and they witnessed a continuation of business as usual.

It’s best, of course, to approach American politics with diminished expectations. Such realism applies double when the president himself is a realist. The Barack Obama who took office in 2009 was no revolutionary, though many mistook the radical fact of an African American winning the presidency for a radical agenda.

Obama promised to end one war (Iraq), not all wars. He offered a modest program of economic reforms, but he was also heavily funded during his campaign by Wall Street donors. And he was a centrist Democrat taking the reins of a government increasingly hobbled by the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. Only against the backdrop of the president’s constrained ambitions and Washington’s dysfunctional politics do the first seven years of the Obama era make any sense at all.

Coming on the heels of perhaps his greatest accomplishment — a global commitment to tackle climate change — it’s time to look at what Obama has and hasn’t done as president. There’s one year left in his term. But Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are already vying to be in the on-deck circle. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio are itching to be the last-minute pinch-hitter.

There’s an excellent chance that U.S. foreign policy after January 2017 will be more militaristic, more beholden to the rich and powerful, and more embedded in the Beltway’s business as usual. And that’s if Hillary wins. There’s also a possibility, should the inevitably right-wing Republican candidate cobble together a majority of the resentful, that the United States will return to the armed exceptionalism of the Bush era.

At this critical juncture, then, we need to be clear-eyed about Obama’s accomplishments in order to brace ourselves for 2017. It’s been seven years of turbulence. Buckle up and prepare for a crash landing.

The Green Miracle

The most telling moment in the recent climate change talks came when U.S. negotiator Todd Stern walked into the assembly in Paris, with the representative of the Marshall Islands by his side, and received a standing ovation.

At a similar meeting in Bali eight years before, the U.S. team consistently played an obstructionist role and endured one round of boos after another. “If for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us,” Kevin Conrad, the negotiator from Papua New Guinea, told the U.S. delegation. “Please, get out of the way.” At the very last moment, the Bush team signed a watered-down version of an accord that effectively pushed the hard choices off for the next administration.

This time around, however, the United States was willing to lead — not only at the Paris conference itself, but also in all the patient negotiations required in the lead-up to the gathering. This included a compact with China, a commitment to provide more funds to developing countries to ensure sustainable economic growth, and a push to get as many countries as possible to make pledges to reduce their carbon emissions. In the end, 186 out of 196 countries stepped up to the plate.

Yes, the resulting agreement in Paris could have required the international community to make more binding commitments, provide more funds for poorer countries, and allocate more urgent subsidies of renewables to ensure that the global temperatures won’t exceed a 1.5 degree Celsius jump (at Foreign Policy In Focus, Oscar Reyes gives seven good reasons to be skeptical of the COP21 results). But the very fact that the United States helped to negotiate a lowering of the aspirational threshold from 2 degrees to 1.5 represents a sea change in government policy. Of course, these accomplishments are the result of significant lobbying by environmentalists and scientists. But the Obama administration, compared to its predecessor, is far more open to such lobbying (perhaps because environmentalists and scientists actually serve in the administration).

More importantly, the way the United States has engaged with other countries on this issue reflects a fundamentally different attitude toward diplomacy. Perhaps we have all become accustomed in the last seven years to the United States acting like an adult in the international community. But the rhetoric of the Republican presidential aspirants is a stark reminder that the tantrum style of foreign policy — “I will rip up that Iran deal on day one of my presidency!” — is only a few swing votes of the Electoral College away from the Oval Office.

The climate deal is just one of a series of diplomatic accomplishments for the Obama administration. It not only negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran, but also pushed it through a largely hostile Congress and over the objections of key Democratic senators like Charles Schumer and Ben Cardin. It ended more than a half-century of hostility with Cuba even without a regime change in Havana. And it secured a détente with Burma that helped to speed that country’s peaceful, democratic transformation.

This diplomatic hat trick is all the more remarkable when set against the diplomatic failures of the administration. An agreement with North Korea— the Leap Day deal of 2012 — fell apart almost immediately when Pyongyang announced a satellite launch. Secretary of State John Kerry racked up a lot of air miles trying to advance negotiations between Israel and Palestine, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t interested in giving any ground (quite literally in this instance). The reset with Russia went back a little too far into the past, all the way in fact to the Cold War, because of an eagerness on the part of NATO to push eastward and on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin to push westward.

In these three cases, the Obama administration could perhaps have proven more skillful, more willing to take risks, and more open to twisting the arms of allies (for instance, Israel). But the president is fundamentally a cautious leader. With Iran, Cuba, and Burma, he had the U.S. business community and U.S. public opinion pushing vigorously from behind, and the Republican Party opposition simply couldn’t push hard enough in the opposite direction. Obama had no such tailwinds with North Korea, Palestine, and Russia, plus he encountered some significant headwinds from the headstrong trio of Kim Jong Eun, Netanyahu, and Putin.

For those of us pushing for additional diplomatic breakthroughs, the lesson is to enlist the support of the business community (often a bitter pill to swallow) and transform, however slowly, U.S. public opinion. Civil society has to do the heavy lifting, which is as it should be. Leadership in the absence of some degree of popular support is autocracy, and the results aren’t likely to be sustainable either.

The National Security President

If Obama had focused for the last seven years exclusively on diplomacy, he might have lived up to the Nobel Peace Prize that he received, in a burst of premature extrapolation, only a few months after his inauguration.

But as the president took pains to point out in his Nobel acceptance speech, he’s no pacifist. He opposes many wars because he recognizes the diminishing utility of military force. But where he believes that force can yield results, he will let fly drones, call down aerial bombardment, and even dispatch U.S. troops. It’s not so much a moral decision — his nod to “just war” doctrine notwithstanding — as a tactical one.

Moreover, Obama has presided over a strengthening of the surveillance state and an almost maniacal hounding of national security whistleblowers. The president has never pretended to be a libertarian, though he voiced some cautions about the Patriot Act when he was senator and promised to close the Guantanamo detention facility as his first act in the Oval Office. As president, Obama has been rather consistent in his support of an activist government. It just so happens that he believes that government should provide both universal health care and universal surveillance.

The war in Syria has flummoxed the Obama administration (as it has so many other countries). The president has been careful to resist pressure — from Democrats and Republicans alike — to introduce U.S. ground troops in the fight against the Islamic State (or against “radical Islam,” Bashar al-Assad, Russian forces in Ukraine, the Houthis in Yemen, or any of the other threats du jour).

At the same time, Obama has showed no compunction whatsoever in funding “moderate” militias, sending in military “advisors,” and partnering with countries like Turkey that have their own dubious agendas. It’s a middle path tailor-made to piss off just about everybody — those who want to crush America’s enemies by all means necessary, as well as those (like me) who believe that even these more judicious (and often extrajudicial) flexings of American muscle will produce more virulent strains of extremism.

Even The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who has generally made fun of warmongers, took the president to task for his uninspiring efforts at counterterrorism. “President Oh-bummer,” he labeled Obama. Having exhausted his rhetorical powers, the president has perhaps tired of trying to persuade America of his middle course (though he continues to press his case that his strategy is succeeding against the Islamic State).

Whether Obama’s heart is in this exercise of American power, he’s certainly made such discriminate deterrence a hallmark of his administration. To secure his diplomatic achievements, perhaps the president believes that he has to demonstrate his willingness to punch, and punch hard. It’s a Faustian bargain, and one at the heart of the presidential enterprise in America. Every president in the modern era has expanded American power — even Jimmy Carter in the last two years of his term — while negotiating peace deals in selected locations.

It’s the price of empire. The leaders of Costa Rica and Norway don’t face such conflicts.

Beyond the Horizon

When it comes to foreign policy, the future looks like more of the same — if we’re lucky.

Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, is no stranger to diplomacy. But she’s also demonstrated time and again that she must overcompensate — as a Democrat, as a woman, as a former 1960s activist — to “act tough” in order to command respect in a violent, patriarchal world. She’s also proven even more committed to kowtowing to the Netanyahu strain of Israeli politics, which will make any movement forward on a host of Middle East issues considerably more difficult.

Bernie Sanders has a better position on some foreign policy questions, but I doubt that middle America, however appalled it might be at economic inequality, is ready to elect an avowed socialist (I would love to be proven wrong in this regard, though).

In his last year, then, Obama will be scrambling to institutionalize the more pacific parts of his legacy, as quietly as possible. That will mean fulfilling the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran, clearing obstacles from the path of engagement with Cuba, implementing his Clean Power Plan, continuing to repair America’s international reputation (for instance, by restoring U.S. funding for UNESCO), and preserving State Department funding from congressional attacks.

The other part of his legacy — drone strikes and aerial bombing, broad-spectrum surveillance, Special Forces operations around the globe — won’t need protecting from a successor.

I was a realist eight years ago when I wrote that Obama’s middle-of the-road policies would produce a “Goldilocks apocalypse.” American foreign policy of the last seven years was flawed in so many ways, and we’re still on the road to this catastrophe of the middle way. Obama is no Disney hero, and there’s no unambiguously happy ending.

But as I survey the post-2016 alternatives, I’m increasingly concerned that, for the immediate future at least, what we got over the last two terms is as good as it gets.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

A total of 110 journalists were killed in connection with their work or for unclear reasons in 2015, according to the round-up published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which is in a position to say that 67 of them were targeted because of their work or were killed while reporting.

These 67 deaths bring to 787 the total number of journalists killed in connection with their work since 2005. It has not been possible to clearly establish the circumstances or motives of this year’s 43 other deaths of journalists. Twenty-seven citizen-journalists and seven media workers were also killed in 2015.

This disturbing situation is largely attributable to deliberate violence against journalists and is indicative of the failure of the initiatives so far taken to protect media personnel.

A European country, France, was one of the deadliest countries for journalists in 2015. It ranked third, after Syria and Iraq. The January attack on Charlie Hebdo contributed to a reversal of last year’s trend, when two thirds of the deaths of occurred in war zones. This year, two thirds of the deaths were in countries “at peace.”

“The creation of a specific mechanism for enforcing international law on the protection of journalists is absolutely essential,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“Non-state groups perpetrate targeted atrocities while too many governments do not comply with their obligations under international law. The 110 journalists killed this year need a response that matches the emergency. A special representative of the United Nations secretary-general for the safety of journalists must be appointed without delay.”

In his annual report on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity on August 6, 2015, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said: “I am deeply concerned about the failure to reduce the frequency and scale of targeted violence that journalists face and the near absolute impunity for such crimes.”

In response to the persistence and variety of dangers facing journalists, RSF published a revised and amended version of its Safety Guide for Journalists in partnership with UNESCO on December 15.

RSF has been producing its annual round-up of violations against journalists for the past 20 years. It is based on precise data gathered by RSF in the course of its monitoring activities. The New York-based “Committee to Protect Journalists” is publishing its own round-up today.

By Dan Freeman-Maloy*

The better part of a decade ago, I described the Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter as “a canary in the mineshaft of liberal Canadian racism.” A piece on 1948 Palestine published in a recent edition of the Star* shows the canary very close to asphyxiating.

Since Potter insists he was within his rights to describe Palestinian fighters in Gaza as “lemming-like,” he’ll surely forgive the metaphor.

The article, entitled “The Toronto man who saved Nazareth,” celebrates the heritage of Ben Dunkelman, the most prominent Canadian to travel to 1948 Palestine to support the Zionist war effort. In more than 2500 words spread across the Star’s “Insight” section, Potter and his editors transform this Canadian’s role in occupying Palestinian communities into fodder for patriotism. “What he did was bring his hard-earned Canadian military professionalism to help organize a chaotic fighting force and help set down the rules of engagement,” the Star quotes one of a number of friendly sources as explaining. “And that included saying, ‘No, we will not expel civilians.’”

The record of this “gentle giant of a man,” as Potter introduces Dunkelman, is well documented. The son of the founder of Ontario retail giant Tip Top Tailors and a veteran of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, Dunkelman was not an obscure figure. In Canada, he was an eminent member of the country’s community of patriotic respectables. In Palestine, he was a participant in the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Galilee, commanding troops who repeatedly massacred civilians.

Dunkelman’s record of Canadian patriotism and Zionist colonization has long made for a popular sell. He has been happily remembered as “a Canadian and Israeli war hero,” as the Globe and Mail once described him.[1] His basic character should be apparent to anyone who picks up his autobiography, Dual Allegiance. Potter’s latest for the Star pines over lost pages of this book without conveying to readers its utterly thuggish tone. The first five pages, to give you a sense, move from a description of a fight Dunkelman picked with a Palestinian (“Kneeling astride him, I began hitting him again and again, until his body went limp”) to boyhood reminences that feature a young Dunkelman in Toronto, soon to enroll in Upper Canada College, “waving a little Union Jack.”[2] A lovely patriotic tale.

In Palestine, Dunkelman did not stop at beating Palestinians with his fists. In the summer and autumn of 1948, he served as commander of the Seventh (Armoured) Brigade of the newly established Israel Defence Forces (IDF). This is a representative sample of how Potter now presents this history to the Star’s readership: “Named to lead Israel’s 7th Brigade in the final phase of the 1948 war, Dunkelman pushed methodically — and almost bloodlessly — through the Galilee with a series of nighttime flanking movements, eventually ending at the Litani River in Lebanon. He quite literally shaped borders, delivering territory Israel might not otherwise hold today.”

“Bloodlessly”?

One of the Seventh Brigade’s “nighttime flanking movements,” on October 29-30, 1948, brought the Palestinian village of Safsaf under Dunkelman’s command. A Palestinian woman from Safsaf, Umm Shahadah al-Salih, described what happened the next morning. Villagers were ordered to assemble in file around two houses to the north of the village. “As we lined up, a few Jewish soldiers ordered four girls to accompany them to carry water for the soldiers. Instead, they took them to our empty houses and raped them. About 70 of our men were blindfolded and shot to death, one after the other, in front of us. The soldiers took their bodies and threw them on the cement covering of the village’s spring and dumped sand on them.”[3]

If Potter’s editors can cough up subway fare to Yonge and Bloor, he can read this and other accounts for free at the local library, in Nafez Nazzal’s The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 1948. The Seventh Brigade’s trail of death, destruction, and mass displacement of Palestinians from the Galilee into Lebanon is detailed authoritatively by Nazzal.

But right, this is a Canadian discussion of Palestine. Surely, Palestinians can’t be trusted! Unfortunately for Potter and the Star, more than mistrust of Palestinian testimony would be needed to make their whitewashing of these massacres halfway credible. In 1978, the year that Nazzal’s study was published, Israel began declassifying documents on these events. The Israeli record tells much the same story.

Israel Galili had been chief of staff of the Haganah, the main precursor to the IDF. In a declassified November 11, 1948 briefing cited by Israeli historian Benny Morris, Galili described the conduct of Dunkelman’s men in Safsaf. He spoke of the fate of “52 men tied with a rope and dropped into a well and shot,” and of three cases of rape, including of a fourteen-year-old girl. He also described large-scale killing of civilians by the Seventh Brigade in the villages of Saliha, Jish, and Sa‘sa‘. In Sa‘sa‘, Galili said, Dunkelman’s troops committed “mass murder” and then forced all remaining survivors out: “The whole village was expelled.”[4]

Palestinian witnesses recount the most horrifying details. One survivor of the occupation of Safsaf recalled the stabbing of a pregnant woman with a bayonet. The witness lived out his life in the Ayn Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon; his testimony was kept alive by his nephew and cited in Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.[5] In his memoirs, Dunkelman admits to authorizing looting by his forces[6], but predictably does not discuss most abuses. He does, however, proudly relate how one of his units set a landmark in the summer of 1948 with “the first bayonet charge ever mounted by the Israeli Army.” Facing an Arab position in the central Galilee, the company commander “ordered his men to fix bayonets; then, yelling like banshees, they rushed the Arab positions. When the astonished Arabs saw what was coming up the hill at them, they kicked off their boots and fled in terror.”[7]

We don’t know much about specific atrocities with bayonets. We do know that that Operation Hiram, during which Dunkelman’s troops carried out severe atrocities, helped push Palestinians out of the Upper Galilee en masse. On October 31, Dunkelman received an order from the IDF’s northern command spelling out this objective: “The inhabitants should be assisted to leave the conquered areas,” Dunkelman was instructed.[8] Here massacres by Dunkelman’s troops played their part. “What happened at Safsaf and Jish no doubt reached the villagers of Ras al Ahmar, `Alma, Deishum and al Malikiya hours before the Seventh Brigade’s columns,” writes Morris. “These villages, apart from `Alma, seem to have been completely or largely empty when the IDF arrived.”[9] A week and a half into November 1948, an IDF intelligence report observed that “more than 50,000 new refugees” had crossed the border into Lebanon as a result of Operation Hiram.[10]

Dunkelman — cue Potter’s praise — did not order expulsions in every Palestinian community that his forces occupied. He specifically opposed the (widespread) expulsion of Palestinian Christians by Israeli forces.[11] When in July 1948 his troops occupied one of the main Christian centres in Palestine, the city of Nazareth, he spared it the harsher treatment he accorded to predominantly Muslim villages in its vicinity. Potter is effusive with praise! He laments to the Star’s readership that Dunkelman “won no medals for refusing to molest civilians” in Nazareth, but takes the opportunity to trumpet Canadian civility: “Transpose that morality to the modern era and imagine how the U.S. military interrogations at Abu Ghraib might have played out with a Dunkelman in command.” If those held at gunpoint were Muslims? Should we really follow this thread? “In many of the Palestinian oral histories that have now come to the fore,” observes Ilan Pappé, “few brigade names appear. However, Brigade Seven is mentioned again and again, together with such adjectives as ‘terrorist’ and ‘barbarous.’”[12]

Israel has not declassified enough documentation for us to know for certain whether Dunkelman ordered his troops to massacre Palestinian civilians in line with instructions from higher-level IDF officers, took the initiative himself, or left the details to lower levels of command. But there is no record of him taking any action to discipline the culprits. By all accepted standards, he is therefore among them. Only the best liberal patriots want to award war criminals prizes for each possible war crime they didn’t commit.

Introducing a co-edited volume entitled Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmad Sa’di explore the challenges of asserting Palestinian memory “under the conditions of its silencing by the thundering story of Zionism”.[13] Engaging with 1948 as a landmark of enduring trauma, both individual and collective, may not be simple. But one can imagine an alternate universe in which Canadian journalists made a respectable effort. In which some attempt was made to look to the kind of work assembled by Abu-Lughod and Sa’di, to consider the recorded memories of those who lives were uprooted by Dunkelman’s troops, to bring their experiences into this history.

Instead, the Star basks in patriotic self-satisfaction and ignores the evidence.

This is not just a question of professional standards, or of historical accuracy. As Abu-Lughod and Sa’di argue, “the Nakba is not over yet”.[14] It was Israel’s current defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, who described Israel’s twenty-first century assaults on the Palestinians as “the second half of 1948”.[15] How this war is represented abroad can affect its continuation into the present. I haven’t paid much attention to Potter’s work since his distortions of Israel’s 2006 assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. But it seems he’s decided to whitewash past and present attacks on the Palestinians in much the same spirit.

People in Canada need to demand better. In the coming period, we will have to face the fact that the end of the Harper years did not spell an end to Canadian support for Israel’s perpetual warfare against the Palestinian people. The liberal patriotic impulse is to bury this problem in comforting myths: to pretend that even in its support for Israel, Canadian liberalism shines. This requires nothing less than falsification of the record. An open discussion of the realities of Palestine will raise troubling questions about local burdens of responsibility. If this is what drives so many opinion-makers to avoid it, it is also what makes it urgent.

*Dan Freeman-Maloy is an activist and writer based in Montreal. For a more detailed review of the record of Western recruits in 1948 Palestine, see this article of his from the Journal of Palestine Studies.

* Potter’s article first appeared in the Saturday December 19 edition of the Star, under the shorter title “The man who saved Nazareth.” After submitting the above criticism to friendly outlets the following day, I was advised to first attempt to get the Star to publish some of the details that Potter’s article obscured. This involved a polite submission linked in full here. The editors were mostly unresponsive. On December 28, the Star did run a number of short letters on the story, under the heading “Nazareth story parallels Christmas.” None of the letters identified the well-documented atrocities committed by troops under Dunkelman’s command. A short letter describing the realities of Operation Hiram in particular was submitted to the Star by Khaled Mouammar, former president of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF). Unlike the published letter from Bernie Farber, former executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) — which praised Dunkelman as a “hero” and a “mensch” — Mouammar’s letter was rejected. The Star has to date published no details on Seventh Brigade atrocities, denying readers the opportunity to evaluate Dunkelman’s record in light of the available evidence.

Notes:
[1] Elizabeth Nickson, “Poor little rich boy grows up,” Globe and Mail (September 25, 1999).
[2] Ben Dunkelman, Dual Allegiance: An Autobiography (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976), 1-5.
[3] Nafez Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978), 95.
[4] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 230.
[5] Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006), 184.
[6] Dunkelman, Dual Allegiance, 296.
[7] Dunkelman, Dual Allegiance, 272.
[8] Benny Morris, “Operation Hiram Revisited,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, No. 2 (Winter 1999), 70.
[9] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 482.
[10] Morris, Birth Revisited, 473.
[11] Morris, Birth Revisited, 477..
[12] Pappé, Ethnic Cleansing, 158.
[13] Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmad H. Sa’di, eds., Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 6.
[14] Abu-Lughod and Sa’di, Nakba, 10.
[15] Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 107.

(EurActiv) — In a year of crises for Europe, from the Ukraine war to Greece’s debt turmoil to the historic refugee influx, Germany’s Angela Merkel emerged as the continent’s de facto leader, drawing more praise and fire than ever.

Whether spearheading EU diplomacy with Moscow, bargaining with Athens over tough bail-out terms or responding to the world’s biggest refugee wave since World War II – Merkel was in the middle, again and again.

At a time of growing uncertainty and division in Europe, the pragmatic quantum chemist whom Germans call “Mutti”, or mummy, preached fiscal rectitude and humanitarian principles, often drawing a mixed response.

Her unusually bold move to throw open Germany’s doors to Syrian refugees has particularly battered her long-stellar poll ratings at home, and left the leader of Europe’s top economy isolated on key issues in the 28-member EU.

“2015 has been an incredible year, hard to comprehend really,” said the 61-year-old chancellor, who is not usually given to hyperbole, at a congress of her centre-right party this month.

“I’ve never experienced such a rapid sequence of highly significant events.”

That was quite a statement for the Protestant pastor’s daughter, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain and lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall a quarter-century ago.

‘We can do this’

The rise of Germany’s influence during Merkel’s decade in power has often unsettled European neighbours.

When an unyielding Merkel told debt-hit eurozone members to slash public spending, she was caricatured as an austerity dominatrix in Nazi garb who deployed accountants rather than tanks.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, more politely, stressed that while he had esteem for Merkel, “Europe has to serve all 28 countries, not just one.”

Merkel won over some of her harshest critics with her decision in September to open the doors to a record wave of refugees who were heading in, many on foot, from Budapest.

The country that once sent rail carriage-loads of people into concentration camps was now cheering as trains arrived packed with refugees from war-torn Syria, in moving TV footage seen around the world.

“We can do this,” has been Merkel’s mantra ever since, as she has sought to instill courage in a country scrambling to welcome the one million newcomers who arrived this year.

Merkel was hailed as “Mama Merkel” by refugees who flocked to take selfies with her, and pictured as a Mother Teresa figure on the cover of Spiegel magazine.

In rare unanimity, media organisations including Agence France-Presse, Time magazine and the Financial Times declared the long-time “Queen of Europe” the world’s most influential person of 2015.

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote that “she has become a towering European figure, certainly the equal of such postwar German giants as Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl – perhaps even surpassing them”.

Even Greece’s left-wing former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, long the arch-nemesis of Berlin, told news weekly Stern that “maybe, if I was German, I would vote for Merkel”.

‘Historic challenge’

Many Germans, however, now have doubts, fearing that Merkel, their trusted guarantor of stability, is plunging the country into chaos.

Polls point to growing fears about the influx of mostly Muslims, a right-wing populist party has been gathering steam and there has been a spike in racist hate crimes.

“Germany is definitely split,” said Oskar Niedermayer of Berlin’s Free University.

“In general, Merkel and her work are still very highly regarded, but on the refugee crisis a majority think she is pursuing the wrong policy.”

Merkel’s plan to avoid a million more arrivals next year is based in large part on convincing other EU members to accept more refugees.

Yet the response so far has ranged from deafening silence to howls of protest.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected Germany’s “moral imperialism” and sealed national borders with razor wire, while Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka charged that Merkel had “encouraged illegal migration” to Europe.

Even European Council president Donald Tusk labelled Merkel’s migrants policy “dangerous”.

At the party congress, Merkel conceded that the refugee influx – “a rendezvous with globalisation” – presented an “enormous” task and would change the country forever.

“It is a historic challenge for Europe, and I say we want Europe to meet this challenge,” she said, to thundering applause. “And I am convinced it will.”

Niedermayer said that Merkel, in her best speech so far, had “bought herself a few months, but not more” while voters and her own party base would likely grow more impatient.

“That’s why 2016 will be the true acid test.”

Emeritus professor of medicine, Elisio Pascual, at the Miguel Hernández Univeristy (UMH) in Elche and former head of the Rheumatology Unit at Alicante University Hospital has published a research paper presenting previously unknown data that contribute to our understanding of gout as a crystal deposition disease.

The study, “Mechanisms of crystal formation in gout -a structural approach”, was published in the Nature Reviews in Rheumatology journal and lays the foundations for understanding how and where the formation of monosodium urate crystals occurs, something that has received little attention from the scientific community to date. These foundations advance our understanding of the chronic and progressive nature of gout if left untreated or treated inadequately.

Gout manifests as acute, very painful attacks of arthritis, often in various foot joints, though also in other parts of the body. It is caused by high levels of uric acid in the blood, which crystallises and is deposited in the form of monosodium urate on the joints, tendons and surrounding tissue.

Until now the mechanisms by which the crystals form and where were unknown, as was exactly why it occurs at these specific sites. This is because the process typically used to study the tissue (fixation) caused the crystals to dissolve, meaning they are absent from the samples sent off to the pathology lab for analysis.

However, if instead we use the method used for surgical biopsy (cryosection), the crystals are well-preserved and can be studied to deduce the mechanisms behind their formation. Together with recent data on crystal deposit sites obtained using ultrasonography, scientists now have a more complete overview of the crystal formation process.

The study was triggered by the observation of tiny tissue fragments containing organised deposits of monosodium urate crystals. Findings show that crystals form at the cartilage surface, as well as inside tendons and ligaments. They form on the collagen fibres (supporting fibres in organs and tissues) found in the synovial fluid around gouty joints, which are complementary in structure. Also complementary in structure are existing crystal deposits, which is what makes gout a progressive disease. The mechanisms behind biomineralisation can be used as a framework to interpret pathological crystal deposition.

These findings are important in that they change our perception of gout. Sometimes taken as an episodic disease, only present during attacks of gout arthritis, this study reveals that it is in fact the consequence of continual crystal deposition which will only increase over time if left untreated.

Elisio Pascual insists on the importance that “the general public knows that gout is a very treatable disease, even curable”, adding that “in Alicante we have made significant contributions to bring treatment into line with the reality of the disease, which we now understand a lot better”.