The cost burden of Quebec’s carbon-pricing policy, is likely to be modest across income groups and industries, according to a McGill University research team.

The policy, which began to be implemented in 2013, provides a model for capping emissions “without undue hardship for the population,” the researchers conclude. If anything, they suggest, the program could be more aggressive in seeking to cut emissions. Their findings are reported in the December issue of Canadian Public Policy.

Quebec is one of the only jurisdictions in North America that has adopted a carbon-pricing policy as a way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. If the Quebec carbon market – which is linked to California’s – develops successfully, this approach could attract other provinces and states seeking to curb emissions in the wake of the recent Paris climate-change agreement, the researchers note.

One political stumbling block to such initiatives is their potential to create uneven costs for different sectors and income groups. To assess the risk of that happening with Quebec’s program, the McGill team analyzed its expected short-run impacts on households, industries and regions.

Lead author Christopher Barrington-Leigh, an economist at McGill’s School of Environment, notes that the Quebec program combines a rising price floor — to assure a minimum return on carbon-efficiency investments — with a price ceiling to ensure against high short-run economic costs. “As a result, everyone in Quebec has an idea of future costs in the medium run, is ensured against too sudden a transition, and has an incentive to invest in transitioning toward more climate-friendly consumption and production,” he says.

One potential inequity: the province’s “generous” plan to hand out free emissions permits to incumbent industries is likely to result in some windfall profits for companies and shareholders, according to the researchers. “Future policy platforms from the Quebec government could offset this by including higher subsidies or energy efficiency rebate programs” to help lower-income families adjust to rising fuel prices, they suggest.

Overall, however, “the policy appears tuned to provide a balance of price predictability, steady decarbonisation, and manageable transition costs,” they conclude.

Pressure is building on Asian Football Confederation president and world soccer body FIFA presidential candidate Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa to respond with chapter and verse to allegations that he played a role in the detention and abuse of athletes during the 2011 popular uprising in his native Bahrain. The revolt was brutally squashed with the help of Saudi troops.

The pressure has already in recent months prompted Mr. Salman, who refused to discuss the issue for the 4.5 years since the events allegedly occurred, to deny that athletes were abused at the time and reject allegations that he was involved. His denials have left key questions unanswered and moved a prominent German politician, human rights activists, and Mark Pieth, the academic employed by FIFA at one point to oversee its reform efforts, to publicly oppose Mr. Salman’s standing for office.

Mr. Salman has put forward proposals for a reform of FIFA, the scandal-ridden world soccer body, that go some way towards the core of the group’s deep-seated corruption problems. Mr. Salman’s proposals include a separation of FIFA’s governance role from the group’s significant business interests that include billions of dollars in revenues from sponsorship and World Cup broadcasting rights.

Despite the merit of his proposals, Mr. Salman has also demonstrated that he is the product of an autocratic system and the scion of an entitled ruling family by employing lawyers to handle criticism and probing questions in the media in a bid to straight out of the blocks intimidate journalists rather than engage them and resort to legal steps only as a last resort.

In doing so, Mr. Salman follows in the footsteps of his relative and former sports superior, Prince Nasser bin Hamad al-Khalifa, a son of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, commander of the Royal Guard and head of the Bahrain Olympic Committee and the government’s Supreme Council for Youth and Sports.

Mr. Salman employs the same lawyers as Prince Nasser, London-based Schillings whose motto is ‘Defending Reputation, Demanding Privacy.’ Schillings in 2014 unsuccessfully attempted to fundamentally alter in line with the Bahrain government’s version of events this writer’s reporting on the lifting of Prince Nasser’s immunity by an English court. The court lifted Prince Nasser’s immunity in a case initiated by several Bahrainis who alleged that they were tortured in the aftermath of the 2011 popular uprising.

In 2011, the Bahrain News Agency (BNA) reported that Prince Nasser had issued a decree ordering that measures be taken against those guilty of insulting Bahrain and its leadership. Prince Nasser formed the committee after an earlier royal decree had declared a state of emergency in Bahrain. The royal decree allowed the Bahrain military to crackdown on the protests and establish military courts. Mr. Salman reportedly was at the time general secretary of the supreme sports and youth council.

A series of BNA stories further reported on the implementation of Prince Nasser’s decree and the launch of a committee to investigate “breaches by individuals associated with the sports movement during the recent unfortunate events in the Kingdom of Bahrain.” BNA reported that the committee met on 10 April 2011 under Mr. Salman’s chairmanship.

BNA also reported that the Bahrain Football Association (BFA) that was at the time headed by Mr. Salman threatened penalties and suspensions for those who “violated the law”, including athletes, administrators and coaches who participated in “illegal demonstrations” or any other act that aims to “overthrow the regime or insult national figures.” BNA said that the BFA had suspended clubs, noting that “the Bahrain FA stressed that these penalties were issued in accordance with the Investigative Committee’s decisions concerning all those who have offended our leadership and our precious Kingdom.”

A Bahraini newspaper, in another indication of the implementation of Prince Nasser’s decree, quoted at the time Bahrain Table Tennis Association Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad Al Khalifa, as saying that his group had decided to act against players who “offended the nation and its wise leadership.”

BNA is the official organ of the government in a country that Reporters Without Borders ranks number 163 out of 180 countries; the media are tightly controlled through repressive articles in its penal code; journalists, activists, photographers and social media users are targeted; and in which writers exercise self-censorship including avoiding statements of fact like the fact that Shiites constitute the majority in Bahrain.

In total, an estimated 150 athletes and sports executives were arrested on the basis of Prince Nasser’s decree. Several alleged immediately after their release that they were tortured during their detention, among them two members of Bahrain’s national soccer team. The players remained silent for the 4.5 years since they first alleged having been abused. Recently, however, they denied the allegations in media appearances organized by Mr. Salman’s election campaign.

In his refusal in the last five years to discuss the allegations, Mr. Salman insisted that sports and politics was separate, a statement contradicted by BNA’s reporting and the fact that Bahrain’s ruling family keeps a tight rein on the country’s sports.

Since launching his presidential campaign, Mr. Salman has denied in interviews the establishment of the investigation committee and the assertion that he headed it but has yet to directly address the consistent BNA reporting. At no time, did Mr. Salman suggest that he objected to the penalizing of athletes and executives or that he would not have accepted to chair the committee if it had been established.

Mr. Salman’s position has sparked opposition to his FIFA presidential candidacy.

Speaking to Germany’s Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, Mr. Pieth who headed an independent governance committee for FIFA that issued its recommendations in 2013, called for strong opposition to Mr. Salman’s candidacy.

“The outcry has to come from the 209 (national) associations” that elect the FIFA president, Mr. Pieth said. “You have to ask: Is Salman a credible representative for democracy and a new start? Is he suitable? A representative of an autocratic ruling family is not suitable to lead this institution out of the crisis,” he added.

Referring to support for Mr. Salman by Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah widely viewed as one of the most powerful men in international sports, Mr. Pieth went on to say that “we have a mechanism that we call patronage, not a mafia. But they are similar. It is perpetuated by the people in question.”

A member of Kuwait’s ruling family as well as of the International Olympic Committee and FIFA’s executive committee Mr. Al-Sabah is locked into a power struggle within his own ruling family. He is appealing a six-month prison sentence for allegedly violating a gag order and faces a civil suit for damages based on allegations that he and his brother, the head of the Kuwaiti Football Association, were responsible for Kuwait’s recent suspension by the IOC, FIFA and a host of other international sports associations.

Mr. Salman’s foremost rival among the six presidential candidate, Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, appeared to be hinting at the patronage mechanism when he this month registered his concern with the FIFA electoral committee about a cooperation agreement with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) that the Bahraini signed last week on behalf of the AFC. The agreement or at least its timing was widely seen as an attempt to secure Africa’s votes for Mr. Salman.

“I have always promoted cross-regional understanding, however the timing of this MOU between the AFC and the CAF looks like a blatant attempt to engineer a bloc vote,” Prince Ali said.

In a separate statement, Claudia Roth, deputy chair of the Bundestag, the German parliament and head of the Green Party, said Mr. Salman’s election would be “a mockery of the victims of the human rights abuses in Bahrain… An attempt at democratization, an opening with the recognition of equal rights for a large percentage of the population was suppressed with brutal violence in 2011. To that end tanks were dispatched to Bahrain from Saudi Arabia. Many were killed and wounded. Among others, athletes were arrested; there are clear indications of torture that also include soccer players,” Ms. Roth said.

By Sudip Talukdar*

There has been no clarity about the terror attack on the Pathankot air base as insinuations and allegations fly thick and fast on how the entire operation should have been handled. The Modi government in general and the defence minister and the national security advisor (NSA) in particular, sound defensive about their belated and fumbling responses to the latest act of depredation, often issuing statements that contradict the facts on the ground.

The decision to deploy the National Security Guard (NSG) after a prodigal waste of time not only highlights grave bungling, despite the availability of credible intelligence, but also questions the ability of crack infantry divisions and Para-Commandos to do the job. Their past record, combat worthiness and vast field experience, forged over decades of counter–terror operations in some of the most challenging terrains, remains unmatched and would have ensured a swift and befitting retribution. After all, why would some of world’s finest militaries bother to send their special forces for specific training in asymmetric warfare by the Indian Army if not for handling these exigencies?

In politics and public perception, optics shapes credibility. It conveys how serious any government is about protecting national interests and its citizens. The Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval’s feeble defence of the botched up operations and insistence that the NSG team comprised army men barely served any purpose. Nor did the defence minister exactly cover himself with glory when his utterances took on a personal hue. It is not their job to act like a brigade or battalion commander at the tactical level, a task best left to those trained for the purpose, but provide leadership during a crisis. Now the Army Chief has been roped in to tow the official line.

Pathankot has deflated some of the hype surrounding the NSG and the Indian Air Force Garuds. Even in a subsidiary role, Army columns eliminated all of the six fidayeens, three on the very first day itself and the fourth one later, after he had injured a quartet of NSG commandos in a grenade attack during an engagement, according to Daily Mail report. The Army’s armoured vehicle blasted a building, killing two other jihadis holed in there. Some reports suggested that a DSC jawan had killed a terrorist. Unfortunately, elements of 1 Para Commando, stationed at the air base, were not involved in operations, the report added.

What Lt. Gen. Prakash Katoch, an ex Para-Commando himself, told the media is significant. He pointed out that “the Army Special Forces would have been a better option, as they do regular exercises inside bases. (The decision makers) did not even know the type of Special Forces we have”. There has been a steep escalation of lethal level with the terrorists planting more than a dozen, live, booby-trapped grenades, in the undergrowths around the airbase, to cause maximum casualties after their deaths. One of the grenades, tied to a slain terrorist, killed Lt Col Niranjan Kumar, an engineer-sapper on deputation with the NSG.

Add to it is the deleterious turf wars that feed on the very system perpetuating the practice, stifling innovative approaches and solutions, besides keeping vital domain knowledge and strategic assets out of reckoning. Unfortunately, the Army may have been an unwitting victim of the ‘us and they’ syndrome, for none of its fault. The most conspicuous example is that of the highly disciplined veterans being kept out of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), post early retirement, on specious grounds.

Turf wars will also render the Army advisory on avoiding combat fatigues in the wake of Pathankot attack, inoperative. The CAPFs and some state constabularies, ditching the khaki, have appropriated the patterned uniforms for daily use. What earthly purpose or utility is being served by combat fatigues in peaceful civilian environment is beyond fathoming. After all, militaries use leafy patterns on tunics and trousers as a mode of camouflage in a jungle terrain, not to break up crowds with a baton. Policeman seldom understand how a soldier’s emotions are tied to his uniform, a source of honour and pride, for which he stakes his very life.

The home ministry zealously protects its sprawling turf with a plethora of spook, intelligence and security agencies under its control. But it might have unwittingly become the biggest hurdle in strategic matters. In
the game of one-up-man-ship, the steady encroachment on strictly military domains can only be counterproductive in the long run. For instance, the northern borders need more military muscle than lightly armed Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which can neither defend the space nor handle the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, but only encourage greater incursions. The force stays put at the home ministry insistence.

The Army wanted a lieutenant general to head the NSG for operational reasons, especially in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, when bungling and red tape considerably delayed the arrival of Special Action Group 51 and 52. They are the Agency’s ace combat wings, manned exclusively by Para Commandos. Predictably, the government rejected the demand at home ministry’s behest. Similarly, the ministry had also insisted on replacing Assam Rifles, an Army adjunct, with the BSF on the Indo-Myanmar border.

The BSF has a none-too-enviable record in curbing drug smuggling or illegal immigration on the Punjab and West Bengal borders, respectively. Disturbing reports have lately surfaced about how BSF constables, acting as pawns of drug mafia, in cahoots with politicians, may have facilitated the movement of terrorists through the drug route and into the airbase. Should not the home ministry put its own house in order before flexing muscles?

If IPS officers are seamlessly integrated with their parent ministry, then why are Army officers being left out of the defence ministry? They would have injected the required degree of professionalism and domain skills. Functionaries heading security agencies and CAPFs enjoy a tremendous clout and proximity to politicians, which works to the detriment of the Army. State police chiefs have even equipped their security details with sophisticated weaponry denied to their opposite numbers in olive green.

The British feared and despised the patriotic fervour of our revolutionaries, just as their inheritors disdain the soldiers’ devotion to duty. It is a passion that propels them to scale steep mountains, ignoring acute hunger, pain and privation, in order to dislodge the enemy. Why would they want to erect memorials to revolutionaries or soldiers? This is the kind of attitude that lies behind political parties raking up dead issues, post Pathankot, about Army columns allegedly spooking New Delhi. An editor of Vinod Mehta’s stature had dismissed the original report as a planted story and dared the daily to do its worst when it slapped a Rs 100 crore defamation suit against him.

*Sudip Talukdar is an author and strategic affairs columnist. He can be reached at: editor@spsindia.in

To counter the hollowing out of the middle class, efforts must be made to renew people’s belief in the future, US Vice-President Joe Biden told participants in a keynote address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016.

“The middle class is about possibilities – the possibilities for anyone willing to work hard to achieve a decent life,” Biden said. A thriving and growing middle class has been the main reason for social stability in the world’s democracies, Biden stressed. “When the middle class does well, the wealthy do very well and the poor have a ladder up.”

Biden warned, “The [Fourth Industrial] Revolution has the potential to further hollow out the middle class. It is our responsibility to bend these changes to the benefit of society – to make sure that the digital revolution creates more winners than losers.”

Biden blamed short-term thinking by employers for worsening conditions for workers. He outlined five ways to bolster the middle class – invest in education and training, strengthen core social protection and obligations to employees, modernize infrastructure, ensure that tax regimes are more progressive and that everybody pays their fair share, and make capital more widely available.

“We have to go back to more of the basics,” Biden said. “Rebuilding pathways to the middle class is an economic imperative.” If the middle class loses its belief in the possibility of a better life, “then we have lost something really special – the soul of our humanity that no machine can replace,” Biden observed.

In a remarkable confession of failure, Igor Barinov, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, says that no one knows how to counter the ideological messages of ISIS or to counter effectively its highly-developed recruitment strategies.

In remarks on the LifeNews channel, Barinov says that ISIS has a highly elaborate system that identifies what its potential recruits and supporters are most interested in – economic, political, moral and “even gender, when young women are seeking husbands” – in order to attract people to its cause (lifenews.ru/news/179129 and nazaccent.ru/content/19097-glava-fadn-raskryl-sekret-uspeha-verbovshikov.html).

He calls the North Caucasus “a problem region,” in that there are many conflicts which are well on their way to be solved but in which tensions remain that ISIS emissaries can exploit. He gives the Osetin-Ingush conflict as an example and suggests ISIS could easily provoke a new outburst of conflict there given its active recruitment program.

By Major General P K Chakravorty (Retd.)*

Vietnam lies in the Asia-Pacific region which has of late become a major witness to a phenomenal rise of China, which as a country is not only the world’s second largest economy, but is also a nation with the largest armed forces. The United States, concerned with the increasing might of China, especially its military power, is trying to rebalance its forces in the region.

It is pertinent to note that most of US imports come from this region and with regard to exports, the Asia-Pacific is the second largest destination for the US. The US also has its military bases in Japan and Republic of Korea, as also friendly port facilities for US warships in Singapore, Thailand and Philippines. Agreements with Australia have seen the stationing of US Marines at the port of Darwin. But despite its mammoth military presence in the Asia-Pacific, the US preaches freedom of navigation in this area against the Chinese maritime claims in the East China and South China Sea. The East China Sea disputes are with Japan and the South China Sea disputes are with Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

While China has an unsettled land border with India, what surprised India was China’s objection to drilling for oil by ONGC Videsh in two oil blocks donated by Vietnam. India rightly stated her right to undertake commercial activities in what it considers are international waters. This bold step by the Indian and Vietnamese governments led to China’s silence on this issue. Further it strengthened the bonds friendship between these two countries.

New Waves of Strategic partnership

Shakespeare had aptly written in his play, Julius Caesar, that “coming events cast their shadows before”. China aspires to be a future world power and India has two major issues with the country. The first is the border issue and the second pertains to the supply of nuclear weapons to Pakistan. Vietnam too contests the Chinese claim on the islands in the South China Sea, and which has consequently brought this country close to India so much so that they are now invested in an intense strategic partnership.

India and Vietnam enjoy strong strategic relations which had emerged with the first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Defence being signed in 1994, followed by formal Defence Protocol in 2000 and the Strategic Partnership in 2007. Ever since, India has had an annual Strategic Defence Dialogue with Vietnam in which the the Indian Defence Secretary represents the country. Considering the intensity of our relations, the upgradation of these talks to the Ministerial levels would certainly become more impactful and beneficial for both India and Vietnam.

Cam Ranh Bay has been often described as one of the jewels of Vietnam. The long protective seaward peninsula, natural inner and outer harbours form what many believe to be possibly the best deep water port sea port facility in the entire world. There is also an Air Force base with excellent runways for state of the art aircraft. The usage of these facilities by the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force would help India to strengthen its strategic partnership with Vietnam and and enable us to undertake actions to protect our economic assets in the South China Sea. The area is being quietly considered between the two countries.

Based on Vietnam’s requirements, India could provide Dornier surveillance aircrafts, mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), upgraded T-72 tanks and indigenously manufactured Artillery equipment once the same has proved trials and few of our old ships of the Indian Navy. Vietnam has been provided a US $ 100 million Line of Credit to possibly purchase four Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) from Goa Shipyard Limited.

Vietnam is impressed with our Missile development and is keen to purchase our supersonic cruise missile BrahMos which could be used on land and sea. The issue merits serious consideration as there are no objections from the foreign joint developer. Vietnam is also keen that opportunity be accorded to train their scientists.

Vietnam admires the professional training of our Armed Forces and looks forward to assistance in training in the areas including, conversion training for SU-30 pilots of the Peoples Vietnam Air Force by the Indian Air Force; submarine crew training of the Peoples Vietnam Navy by the Indian Navy; training in Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare with the Indian Army; training in English language.

The Vietnamese President as also the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Tr??ng T?n Sang and Nguy?n Phú Tr?ng, respectively had visited India and were frank about strengthening defence relations with India. Vietnam would like to cooperate in the field of training as also gaining knowledge in the field of rocketry and missiles. It would be in India’s interest to cultivate Vietnam and cooperate in strategic aspects to dissuade China from undertaking a misadventure.

Vietnam is looking for cooperation in areas of outer space with India. They have already launched two satellites and are planning their own navigation satellites. Cooperation with India would be mutually beneficial to both countries. All these were discussed during the recent high level visits conducted by the Indian President and Foreign Minister to Vietnam.

Recent Events

It is of interest to note that a new satellite monitoring station is expected to be activated in Vietnam and linked to another neighbouring facility in Indonesia. This is important due to Chinese assertiveness in this area. China has currently built airstrips and their aircrafts are undertaking surveillance and logistics operations in the area. India has set up a Data Reception, Tracking and Telemetry Station at Ho Chi Minh City. This will be activated soon and would be linked up with another station at Biakin, Indonesia. The latest facility will assist India to track our satellites and receive data from them. Similar facilities exist in Brunei.

India with this resource will be in a position to track Chinese activities in the Spratly group of islands where China has currently constructed airfields for Chinese aircraft to undertake operations. As India is undertaking oil exploration in the South China Sea, it is essential to obtain real time inputs regarding Chinese military activity in the region. This would facilitate a suitable response if required in conjunction with the Vietnamese Armed Forces. Indeed this is a step which further intensifies strategic cooperation between the two countries.

*Major General P K Chakravorty (Retd.) is security and strategic affairs analyst with a specific focus on India’s maritime interests. He can be reached at: chakravortyprabir.chakravorty@gmail.com

The recent Jakarta attacks claimed by ISIS represent a clear statement of intent that the organization is serious in seeking to expand its operations into Southeast Asia. Regional governments must prepare to meet the challenge head-on.

By Kumar Ramakrishna*

On 14 January 2016, four Indonesian militants mounted a brazen lunchtime grenade-and-firearm assault on a Starbucks Café and a police post in the immediate vicinity of the Sarinah Mall in downtown Jakarta. The general area boasts government offices, shopping malls and eateries as well as a United Nations office and the United States embassy. The attackers were killed by the security forces, but three civilians, including one Canadian, died in the fire fight. Twenty others were injured including four foreigners from the Netherlands, Algeria, Austria and Germany.

Indonesian police remarked that the modus operandi of the Jakarta militants appeared reminiscent of the devastating Paris assault by ISIS-directed mobile squads in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed. It eventually emerged that the assault was apparently directed by Muhammad Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian extremist blogger and activist with ties to local terrorist networks. Naim is also today allegedly a leading figure within the Syria-based Katibah Nusantara unit, comprising largely Indonesian and Malaysian fighters, and part of the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – the hyper-violent hybrid terrorist/insurgent entity that controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. In his blogs Naim had praised the Paris attacks and had sent funds to an emerging ISIS cell in Solo to carry out a similar operation in the Indonesian capital.

Why regional governments must take note

Though the casualty toll was (thankfully) paltry compared to the Paris incident of two months ago, the Jakarta attack should be viewed as a statement of intent that Indonesia and regional governments should heed, for two reasons:

The Southeast Asian Cultural Hinterlan

First, aside from its importance for global maritime trade, Southeast Asia is home to a quarter of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslim population and is thus a natural “strategic reserve” for ISIS. The ISIS leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, seeks not merely to consolidate the Islamic Caliphate he declared in June 2014 within its current Levantine (territorial) epicentre, but also, however improbably, expand it worldwide. In this connection, Southeast Asia has been targeted for incorporation within the imperial designs of the ISIS leadership. Some argue that Southeast Asian “Islam with a smiling face” – exemplified by the well-known progressive Indonesian mass organisations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, who between them boast tens of millions of members – is well placed to deal with the violent Islamist fringe represented by ISIS and its ilk. Such sanguine assumptions are misplaced.

Regional bastions of (authentic) Southeast Asian Islam have in recent times been engaged in a rearguard struggle against what is sometimes called “Wahhabi colonialism” – a reference to the so-called “desert Islam” being circulated in Indonesia and the wider region by a network of religious and educational institutions as well as pressure groups funded by Middle Eastern donors.

The rigidly puritanical fundamentalism of Wahhabism arguably sustains the virulent ISIS ideology – so effectively disseminated worldwide across diverse social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It would be unwise to imagine that this intertwined theological and ideological challenge to Southeast Asian Islam can be addressed in ad hoc fashion.

The Indirect Approach

The second is the indirect strategy. In its statement claiming the Jakarta attacks ISIS declared that its “soldiers of the caliphate” had struck a blow against “the crusader alliance”. This meant that foreign nationals of the countries in the US-led coalition currently bombing ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria were targeted in the Indonesian capital. The apparent targets in the attack – Starbucks and the Sarinah Mall – are certainly frequented by Westerners.

This strategy of avoiding superior coalition military strength in the Levant and attacking its interests in areas of relative weakness, such as (ill-defended) soft targets in Southeast Asia, is not new. It is an application of the well-worn “indirect approach”, long known to military strategists from Sun Tzu to Liddell Hart. Paris was one application of this strategy; Jakarta is now another. ISIS may well be compensating for its steadily deteriorating strategic situation in Iraq and Syria in the face of coalition military pressure by upping the ante overseas.

As far as Southeast Asia is concerned, the ISIS indirect strategy can be operationalized in three ways. First, returning ISIS fighters could be recruited to mount new attacks. Second, Syria-based ISIS leaders could co-opt from a distance sympathetic individual freelance militants and existing cells and groups such as MIT in Indonesia and Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, turning them into operational adjuncts of ISIS.

The Jakarta attacks arguably represent precisely this modus operandi as Naim apparently funded and directed a Solo-based cell to undertake the attacks. Third, ISIS could again from afar encourage relatively less sophisticated lone wolf attacks against coalition nationals. Moreover, lone wolves could also be self-radicalised “insiders”, from commercial airline pilots as we have seen in Indonesia and armed forces and even airport screening personnel in Malaysia, to national servicemen in Singapore. The ISIS indirect threat, in short, is multi-faceted and ignored at our peril.

A Two-Pronged Response is Still Needed

A two-pronged response seems apposite. First, the real-time physical threat needs addressing by various means. These include enhanced intelligence exchange on terrorist identities, movements, logistics and funding pipelines between and within governments in the region and with key foreign partners; capacity-building programs to assist regional countries reduce their susceptibility to penetration by ISIS and affiliated groups; and finally, calibrated force twinned with enhanced legal frameworks to deal nimbly with rapidly emerging cells, as well as newly released militants who may still pose a residual threat.

Second, the underlying conditions that give rise to the physical threat in the first place also require policy measures. These include better political and socio-economic governance to diminish the grievances that ISIS extremism feeds upon and wider understanding of the drivers of radicalisation into ISIS extremism. Expanded grassroots awareness of the attitudinal and behavioral indicators of self-radicalisation into violent extremism is needed as well.

Finally, intensified regional and international exchanges of best practices in counter-ideological and related theological efforts to defeat ISIS extremism online or offline is utterly required. In sum, nothing radically new is required. Rather, as the legendary British General Sir Gerald Templer once asserted decades ago in another context, what is really needed is that existing methods are applied at a higher tempo and much more effectively.

*Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head of Policy Studies in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Divya Kumar Soti*

After the Pathankot terror attack, India has once again shared evidence with Pakistan which points towards the involvement of terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in planning and executing the attacks on India from the Pakistani soil despite being banned in the government files there. Pakistan has also once again promised to cooperate. But, while all this happens, it will be instructive to look into what is happening in the 26/11 case in which India has already shared clinching evidence with Pakistan.

Last month, within a few hours of India’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s return to India from Islamabad where she had attended the Heart of Asia Summit and met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the chief of Jamaat ud Daawah (JuD), Hafiz Saeed released a video on Twitter where he proclaimed that India won’t be able to prove his and his organization’s role in 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks till eternity. Hafiz Saeed’s statement was clearly provocative, but given the manner in which the 26/11 trial is proceeding in Pakistan, his confidence may not be misplaced.

When Sushma Swaraj was still in Pakistan, a hostile government witness told Islamabad’s antiterrorism court which is conducting the 26/11 trial that Ajmal Amir Kasab is alive. Yes you read it right, according to his testimony, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only terrorist to be captured alive after the 26/11 attacks and who was hanged to death by India in 2012 is still alive and can be produced in the court.

This kind of absurd drama in the name of bringing perpetrators of 26/11 carnage to justice is underway in Pakistan for quite sometime now. This trial in Pakistan started almost around the same time when India instituted a trial in this case. In India, which is known for a sluggish judicial process, the trial was completed in less than four years and Ajmal Kasab’s death sentence got confirmed by two appellate courts including the Supreme Court of India. Similarly, in US, trial against 26/11 conspirator David Coleman Headley was instituted in 2009 and was concluded in 2013 culminating in a sentence for 35 years of imprisonment. However, in Pakistan, this matter is still languishing in the lower court.

It is not so that every terror related trial in Pakistan takes so long to reach any conclusion. For instance, in case of Dr. Shakil Afridi who allegedly helped CIA in finding out Osama bin Laden at Abottabad, his property was immediately confiscated after his arrest and he was tried for high treason. In less than two years he was sentenced to 33 years of imprisonment. Pakistan did not yield despite international community’s pressure to release Dr. Afridi.

Now, let us compare all this with 26/11 case to understand what lies ahead for the Pathankot trial in Pakistan. While Hafiz Saeed got released from the preventive detention within a few days, another key conspirator Lashkar Commander Sajid Mir was never arrested by Pakistani authorities. Some media reports over the last few years did suggest that Sajid Mir was detained for sometime but was released probably because he had previously served in Pakistani Army.

Last year, another key conspirator Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi has been able to secure bail for himself. According to a BBC Report, during his stay in jail, Lakhvi had access to T.V. and Internet and was allowed to host numerous guests daily. Some media reports go as far as to claim that Lakhvi even fathered a child while being in Jail. After getting bail he is living at some “undisclosed location”. Pakistan has plainly refused to share his voice samples with India saying that there is no such provision in its law. Pakistan has not banned the Lakhvi-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) despite immense international persuasion.

But amidst all this, a ray of hope has emerged. David Headley, the man who had reconnoitered the potential target sites in Mumbai for Lashkar-e-Taiba as part of the 26/11 conspiracy, has agreed to testify before the Mumbai Special Court, which is currently trying another accused Syed Zabiuddin Ansari aka Abu Jundal who was allegedly present in Lashkar’s Karachi control room during the 26/11 attacks and was arrested in 2012. Headley’s proposal to act as a Prosecution witness and approver in lieu of immunity from sentencing has been agreed upon by prosecutors and the court. During the trial in US Court in 26/11 case, Headley had pleaded guilty under the plea bargaining provisions of US Law and had spilled the beans in front of international media describing the role of key conspirators like Lakhvi as well as the roles of ISI officers- Major Iqbaal and Major Sameer (code names).

But what Headley told during the US trial or what he is going to tell the Indian court will not form part of the record of the antiterrorism court in Islamabad and the manner in which bizarre testimonies by hostile witnesses are being recorded, it is very much likely that either the accused will go scot-free from the Trial Court itself or will be acquitted by higher courts due to weak evidence. If there are lacunae in the evidence presented before the trial court, higher courts may not be able to do much as such higher courts do not sit to record evidence or give findings of facts.

In such a scenario, Pakistani government can absolve itself of any responsibility by saying that it can’t do much when Courts have acquitted the accused. The investigation by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is not up to the mark and multiple Indian dossiers handed over to Pakistan have repeatedly pointed out the various loopholes and parts of the conspiracy which have not been covered by the prosecution.

So, it becomes necessary that Pakistan admits Headley as an approver in its 26/11 trial. Headley is under a plea bargaining contract with the US government under which he had promised to tell the truth in US Court in return of exemption from life imprisonment. And thus, it will be extremely difficult for him to change his previous confessions given before the US Court.

It will also be very difficult for Pakistan to dismiss Headley’s past testimony given in the US Court because American citizens also lost their lives in 26/11 carnage and it will not be easy for Pakistan to question FBI’s investigation and US Court’s judgment. It is because of this reason Pakistan has tried to ignore Headley and has never taken cognizance of what transpired in US trial. Despite Headley’s detailed confession before the Chicago Court in 2011, Pakistan never tried to admit him to its own 26/11 trial.

India and US need to keep up the pressure upon Pakistan in 26/11 case. If the accused get acquitted in Pakistan, there will be question marks over the Pakistan policy of both the Indian governments that have been in power since the trial began. It is necessary to keep a sharp eye on the ground realities of Pakistan while engaging with it as that is the best way of minimizing risks which essentially get involved in Indo-Pak interactions.

*Divya Kumar Soti is a national security and strategic affairs analyst based in India. He can be reached at: editor@spsindia.in

Let me at the outset say that policing in a conflict zone like India’s Kashmir Valley is not an easy job and the police are highly vulnerable. The police department (J&K Police) in this corner of the world is almost always in the news. Since no good news isnews in conflict zones, the story is not different in the Kashmir Valley where the police force always catches media attention for the wrong reasons and mostly for issues that bring embarrassment to the organization, to the personnel and even to their families.

However, the picture is not all that bad and the fact remains that the police do have a goodwill role as well in society. It will not be wrong to argue that media trolls and journalistic jingoism have a great role and part not what Noam Chomsky said in “manufacturing consent,” but in manufacturing resentment and that too against a particular group. The legendary sociologist Prof. Dabla has already highlighted the social stigma and hardships faced by policemen in Kashmir. For the stigma and hardships of the group, rather would I say manufactured resentment, can much be attributed to media propaganda?

My urging is not an outcome of any subjectivity, but to a greater extent sociological and scientific. It was not until my interaction with a police officer just few days back that my a priori notions about the police were debunked and deconstructed. It was also not that I was not acquitted with the concept of a priori notions put forward by philosophies like Immanuel Kant and others. I have been reading from books, magazines, journals, newspapers not only about the concept, but also studied how dangerous and disastrous can it be especially for logical and scientific understanding of the things or for that matter understanding the complex social reality of Kashmir.

I admit that I had certain preconceived notions about police and the police department as far as their operations are concerned. Maybe due to manufactured resentment, I never liked the police or police departmenst like the majority of Kashmiri people given the prolonged conflict situation especially since 1989. The people doubt the police on many grounds even in present day Kashmir since they have played a lot in today’s counterterrorism machinery. Everyone is scared of them and everyone doubts their credibility as Kashmir has witnessed enormous human rights abuses and people doubt the whole security grid.

As the old byword goes, ‘We hate people because we don’t understand them’, I too was the victim of the same perception till I got an opportunity to interact with a policeman when visiting the police station. While interacting with the policeman, most of my negative perceptions were debunked and deconstructed.

The first event took place just a few days back when our locality had to visit the police station not too far from the capital city of Srinagar. It was to seek the intervention of the police to get some public grievances addressed. The village had been in darkness for a month and the Power Development Department was not paying any attention to the people of the village. It was only with the intervention of Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), that electricity was restored in the village after a month just within a few hours. The way SDPO dealt and behaved with the people really impressed everyone. Everyone was compelled to praise the good cop, and his humane gesture became the talk of the town. I was wondering can Policing in Kashmir be further improved. Can it be made public-friendly like this? Can people and Police together weave a peaceful Kashmir? If there are such good cops who are there for people, we can change the ugly social realities of Kashmir.

The other day I happened to visit the police station again to complain against a public officer for misusing his power and position, misleading people and abusing the law. When I reached the police station I did not observe or experience what I used to hear from people, no misbehavior, no indecency, but instead a warm welcome. After going through my application the officer in charge very politely asked me to meet the SDPO and guided me to his office. Again to my utter surprise I was just to reach the office, when his guard welcomed me and I had not to wait even for a minute to interact with the SDPO. I was realizing that the Police has changed and improved a lot in this part of the world. After going through my application it did not take him a minute to mark the application and forward it. The application reached to the table of Station House Officer, where without wasting any movement he marked the application and did the needful. I was happy at seeing such professionalism at work.

This was an experience that I never had, ssince our childhood we had viewed the police as corrupt, brutal, lazy and oppressive. It must be realized that the police in Kashmir has come a long way as far as their public dealing is concerned and soon I hope the police-public dichotomy will be dealt with on all grounds and at all levels. Today’s Kashmir badly needs a professional and public friendly police who are highly human sensitive, gender sensitive and aim to restore the past glory of the law and order.

Dr. Fayaz Ahmad Bhat, is a student of Sociology, and a social activist He is an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has many research publications to his credit. His columns and analyses are appearing on and off in international, national and local news papers, web portals and blogs. He has awards and fellowships to his credit as well.

The Karnataka Government has filed an appeal before the Supreme Court of India against the acquittal of Jayalalithaa by the Karnataka High Court. The Karnataka Government would open its arguments in the appeal filed against the acquittal of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J Jayalalithaa by pointing out that it was allowed only a written submission. The matter will be heard on a day to day basis by the Supreme Court from February 2 onwards.

Represented by the Special Public Prosecutor, B V Acharya, Karnataka would make out a straight forward case on why the order of acquittal should be set aside. Karnataka will contend before the Supreme Court “We were never given an opportunity of an oral hearing by the Karnataka High Court. At the fag end of the arguments on the appeal before the High Court, we were just permitted to hand out a written submission. Just correct one glaring error”.

Jayalalithaa was convicted by a special court in a Rs 66 crore corruption case last September which led to her being unseated as Chief Minister. A subsequent Bangalore High Court appeal in May 2015 overturned the sentence, acquitting her of all charges and paving the way for her takeover as CM once again. Jaya won an MLA seat in a bypoll scheduled for the Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency in Chennai on June 27.

In May, the Karnataka High Court found that there was no evidence that while in office, Ms Jayalalithaa had accumulated more than Rs. 60 crore that could not be explained by her declared income. At the time, she famously drew Rs. 1 as a monthly salary. The judge said that her wealth had increased by about 10 per cent during her first term, which was permissible. In its appeal, the Karnataka government has said the judge’s math was faulty. The totaling mistake shows that the value of disproportionate assets of the accused comes to Rs. 16.32 crore that is 76.7 per cent of the income, against the 8.12 per cent arrived at by the High Court.

The Karnataka government, after much deliberation, finally filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking it to set aside the Bangalore High Court judgment of May 2015 which acquitted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa of all charges in a 19-year-old disproportionate assets case. In its interim prayer, Special Public Prosecutor BV Acharya has asked for a stay on the High Court order until the petition is disposed of.

In a stinging rebuke of the High Court’s order, the SLP calls for setting aside a judgment that “lacks reasoning, is not logical and is cryptic. The evidence has not been considered objectively and lacks deliberation. The judgment is not resolutely expressed.” The five key points that are raised in the petition challenging Jayalalithaa’s acquittal were published by on May 19. “Simply put, there are five key points,” said Sandesh Chouta, Acharya’s junior counsel. “(1) Despite the Supreme Court holding that the prosecuting agency in the case is the Karnataka government, Karnataka was not made a party in the appeal; (2) The prosecutor appointed by Karnataka was not given an opportunity to present oral arguments; (3) Arithmetic errors are many – even if you accept everything in the High Court order, the proportion of disproportionate assets comes to 34% and not 8.12% as said by the judge; (4) If corrections are carried out to the duplication of income in the judgment, the quantum of disproportionate assets goes up to 76%, and (5) The figures accepted by the High Court are far less than those given by the accused themselves, which is incorrect,” he said.

The petition argues that the acquittal of Jayalalithaa must be overturned as the case is against a person who was “holding a position of Chief Minister of a State at the time of the commission of the offence. The charges are grave. The order of acquittal has resulted in gross miscarriage of justice. A totalling mistake has resulted in acquittal instead of an order confirming conviction… if the said judgment of the Hon’ble High Court is not stayed, it would result in travesty of justice,” it says.

Apart from the technical points raised in the miscalculation of assets and income, the petition also slams Justice Kumaraswamy of the Bangalore High Court for passing an erroneous order.

In a major victory for AIADMK, a special bench of the Karnataka High Court set aside the trial court order convicting former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case. The value of disproportionate assets was Rs. 2.82 crore and this value was not enough to convict them on charges of corruption, said Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy in his verdict while disagreeing with the verdict of the Special Court, which had computed the value of DA at Rs. 53.6 crore. The Apex Court is expected to set aside the acquittal judgment favoring Jayalalithaa who since has reassumed the office of chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

Karnataka Government, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader K. Anbazhagan and on the intervention application filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy, had sought stay on the acquittal.

The Karnataka government has repeatedly spoken about the arithmetic error made by the High Court as a result of which Jayalalithaa and three others got the benefit of an acquittal. The acquittal can be set aside by correcting one error, Karnataka will also contend in the Supreme Court. The Karnataka government had said in a petition to the Supreme Court that Ms Jayalalithaa’s acquittal by the state High Court was a “farce.” The Supreme Court in July issued notice to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa after Karnataka’s appeal against her acquittal in a corruption case.
The judgment of acquittal is liable to be converted into one of conviction even as per the purported principle in Krishnanand Agnihotri’s case. The 1977 case law which the High Court has relied on holds that an offence was not made out if the value of disproportionate assets was found to be less than 10 per cent of the income. This cannot be relied on here as the disproportionate assets runs into crores of rupees.

Earlier on July 27, 2015 the Supreme Court refused to stay the Karnataka HC acquittal of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case. A Bench comprising Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice R.K. Agrawal issued notices to Ms. Jayalalithaa, her close aide N. Sasikala, V.N. Sudhakaran, J. Elavarasi. The Apex Court also issued notice to a separate petition filed by Mr. Anbazhagan challenging the Karnataka HC stay order setting aside confiscation of properties of the accused in the name of Indo-Doha Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd., Signora Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., Ramraj Agro Mills Ltd., Meadow Agro Farms, Riverway Agro Products.

The Karnataka Government was represented by Special Public Prosecutor B.V. Acharya, Mr. Anbazhagan was represented by senior advocate T.R. Andhyarujina, Supreme Court advocate V.G. Pragasam. Ms. Jayalalithaa was represented by L. Nageshwar Rao. The six firms involved in the case were represented by C.A. Sundaram. During the hearing Justice Ghose said at one point that the Bench had gone through all the documents and were issuing the notice. When Mr. Acharya asked for a conditional order of stay, Justice Ghose said, “It may be a very important matter for you, but for us, this is nothing, we will decide as per law.”

The nearly two-decades-old case against the former movie star was transferred from Tamil Nadu to neighbouring Karnataka in 2003 to ensure the trial would not be impacted by the influence of either Ms Jayalalithaa or her political opponents. The verdict allowed Ms Jayalalithaa to return as Chief Minister eight months after she was forced to resign when a lower court in Bangalore found her guilty in the same case and sentenced her to four years in prison.

Meanwhile, Congress president Sonia Gandhi was of the view that former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s acquittal in a high-profile corruption case must be challenged in the Supreme Court. Whatever the truth, now that all the details have come to light, the Congress apparently does not intend to be saddled with the reputation of being the party that let Jayalalithaa off the hook in a corruption matter.

The Supreme Court is likely to cancel the CM Jayalalithaa’s acquittal but the impact of her losing power once again on the forthcoming state elections could be profound.

While the DMK party has every reason to be ready for a celebration as Supreme Court is likely to deliver the final judgment soon, the ruling AIADMK party could feel happy it could rule the Tamil state for a few months in the mean time as an erroneous judgment was delivered in Jaya’s favor.

Diversity is Canada’s greatest source of strength and is propelling the country into a bright and prosperous future. This was the message delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to participants at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 on the transformations driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Trudeau recounted the accomplishments of the first three industrial revolutions but warned that “new technology is always dazzling, but it needs to serve the cause of human progress.” He pointed out that technology will not determine our future, but “our choices and leadership” will. “I believe in positive and ambitious leadership,” he said. “The Fourth Industrial Revolution will not be successful unless it creates opportunities for the billions who are unable to be here today.”

Added the prime minister: “In Canada, we get this. We need societies that recognize diversity as a source of strength and not of weakness.” He called on governments to support the private sector and pointed to Silicon Valley as a model of creativity. “When diverse ways of seeing and thinking come together, they spark creativity. Diversity is something leaders can do much about,” he said.

When the first Syrian refugee families arrived in Toronto, Trudeau said he welcomed them as new Canadians and as the future of the Canadian economy. “Diversity is the engine of investment; it generates creativity and enriches the world. We know this in Canada,” he added.

The prime minister noted that people respond to a positive and inclusive vision of society. “The result is creativity that enriches Canada and the world. It makes me profoundly optimistic and confident.” Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, wanted Canada to be known for its resources. “I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness,” Trudeau said. “We have a diverse and outstandingly creative population, great education and infrastructure, social and financial stability and a government [willing] to invest in the future. We have remarkable confidence. We believe in progress and we are willing to work hard to get there,” he said.

A very upbeat Trudeau dispelled the negative views of some. “Some people say it is impossible to change inequality. Others insist that climate change is a lost cause; they maintain that catastrophe is unavoidable unless we give up economic growth. Some maintain that people of different cultures and languages cannot live together and that diversity is dangerous. I don’t believe in this,” he said.

The prime minister maintained that it is possible to fight climate change without sacrificing growth and prosperity and that it is possible to foster a shared identity and shared values in safe, stable communities that work. “The one thing certain about the next industrial revolution is that it will bring enormous change. If you are looking for a country that has diversity, resilience and confidence, there’s never been a better time to look to Canada,” he said.

Turning to Canada’s economy, the prime minister maintained that Canadians believe that the economy and the environment go together. “We are a resource-based economy and we believe this is a huge opportunity for us. The world needs to do both,” he said.

During his election campaign, Trudeau and his team made a strategic decision to present a positive vision: “We decided that, by presenting a positive vision, not only would we be able to get elected, we would have a strong and inclusive mandate to provide a government for Canadians. We wanted to bring forward what Canadians want to be, rather than what we are afraid of.”

Trudeau noted that it’s easy to get elected by playing up to divisions and negativity. “Once you get elected through dividing people, it become hard to govern,” he said. “The primary responsibility of any government is to keep its citizens safe, but also to keep them free and true to our values. Getting this balance right in a responsible way is what people are looking for.”

Responding to the many global challenges that abound, Trudeau said he remains “tremendously” optimistic. “There are huge challenges out there. But the Fourth Industrial Revolution has tremendous benefits for humanity. What is important is how we choose to invest and adapt … to take advantage of opportunities and leverage new ways of success,” he said.

The prime minister noted that some politicians choose the path of cuts and austerity, but that he believes in the opposite. “We need to invest in our people, our infrastructure and education so our citizens can be full participators in the global economy.” It is important to have a government that understands that investing in new opportunities is about investing in the future, Trudeau concluded.

“While I think this man is crazy, while I think this man has no valid points to make, I will not be able to silence his voice.” — Tom Tugendhat, The Independent, 19 January 2016

Earlier this week, the UK parliament found its agenda occupied by something many members would have rather avoided altogether. The question on whether Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the country was slated for discussion. It was those 570,000 signatures behind a petition calling on the UK government to prevent him coming into the country which pressed that aged body into discussion. Three hours in Westminster Hall were set aside for the debate.

The wording of the “Ban Trump” petition targets what it calls “hate speech”. Her Majesty’s government has previously “banned entry to many individuals” for that reason, and further, such restrictions had to be “applied to the rich as well as the poor.”

The fuss? Trump’s comments about London and its radicalised mix. His comments about race. His comment about how terrifyingly unsafe parts of the metropolis are on account of Islam and its various purportedly ghoulish influences. His suggestion that the US shut down immigration in so far as it involves Muslims.

“This is a man,” insisted Labour legislator Tulip Siddiq, “who is extremely high-profile,… a man who is interviewing for the most important job in the world. His words are not comical, his words are not funny. His words are poisonous.”[1]

Labour’s Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, decided to take the contrastingly courteous, if somewhat demeaning route of letting Trump in for reasons of education. “I will urge that we treat him with courtesy inviting him here to show us where the UK ‘no-go’ areas are for police, introducing him to centres of racial harmony in Wales and England, discussing our 24 deaths from gunshots per year compared with 160 this year in the US.”[2]

Flynn further insisted on showing Trump those “unprecedented areas of flooding in England” as a form of didactic instruction. Trump, “the global warming denier” would do well to heed the lessons of his climate change denialism.

Ditto the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who took note about Trump’s animosity towards Mexicans and Muslims. “As you know, my wife is Mexican and my constituency is very, very multicultural so what I was going to do was go down to the mosque with him and let him talk to people there.”

Yet another, Naz Shah, envisages taking Trump on a curry tour in her constituency city of Bradford. As a “proud Muslim woman”, she would introduce the candidate to multiethnic gastronomy and the values of the Quran.

Such suggestions seem like grand acts of futility and tend to play right into Trump’s hands. But they certainly are not as detrimental as a total ban. His aim is not to go back to the school of hard won awareness. Rather, it is to convince others that he has no need to. At the very least, positions as those of Flynn take the view that debate, rather than exclusion, should be embraced.

The Trump brand was not shunned by all in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Philip Davies could only find admiration for a politician who stood up to “say things that are unpopular.” Be honest, upfront, direct.

The anger expressed about Trump’s comments are understandable enough, but venting about them is tantamount to an undue embroidering, a vesting of gravitas. He speaks about what he does not know; he utilises the soapbox for reasons of populism that his opponents dignify by response. To give him such privileged status – that of being refused entry – ranks as one of the more absurd points. Why could he be so dangerous, so revolutionary? Uttering the unspeakable or the unmentionable, his defenders will say.

The very idea of placing a possible ban on the debate list also gives him a certain “street cred”, a form of patriotic zest that may well make him even more appealing back home. Flynn even went so far as to suggest that a ban would give the impression that the UK was awash with anti-American sentiment.

Similar views were expressed by Tory MP Andrew Murrison. Despite Trump’s obvious ridiculousness, to ban such a figure, certainly one with a chance of becoming president, would be seen as an “almighty snub” to the United States, an anti-American instinct played out behind the façade of targeting hate speech.

Besides, suggested fellow Tory colleague Sir Edward Leigh, to do so would be to invite a sense of disproportion into the debate. The UK had a glaring record of inviting despots of blood thirsty character in the past, characters who had soiled records “far worse than anything Donald Trump can dream of”.[3]

What did he genuinely do to deserve that? Best let him in and debate the matters at hand, showing them up as equally absurd and irrelevant in the way free speech ought to. Placing a bar on him will have quite the opposite effect. It was that sentiment that eventually won through.

Notes: 
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-trump-debate-tory-mps-say-uk-should-apologise-to-us-for-having-debate-about-banning-the-a6820156.html

[2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/mps-set-to-debate-whether-to-ban-donald-trump-from-britain-a3158841.html

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35345279

By Cécile Barbière

(EurActiv) — The International Monetary Fund has highlighted the positive effect of public spending on refugees on European GDP, but has also recommended that employers pay them less than the minimum wage.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced a report today (20 January) on the economic challenge posed by the influx of refugees into Europe. In this document, the organisation recommends a short-term differentiation in the treatment of refugees and EU citizens.

Precipitated by the Syrian crisis, as well as conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, the vast migration towards Europe is a cause of real concern on the continent, where attitudes towards the economic, social and cultural integration of migrants took a worrying turn after the events in Cologne.

From January to October 2015, 995,000 refugees applied for asylum in the European Union. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German minister of finance, recently proposed the implementation of a European petrol tax to help the EU fund the vast social programmes needed to rise to this challenge.

The importance of employment

For the IMF, employment is the major means by which the refugees will become economically integrated in their host countries. To accelerate their integration, the IMF recommends the implementation of “temporary and limited derogations of the minimum wage for refugees”. The aim of this measure would be to redress the initial imbalance on the labour market between the recent immigrants and the native population.

An immigrant’s level of education and linguistic ability can greatly affect their chances of finding work. But overall rates of unemployment among immigrants tend to be higher, and salaries lower, than the average for the population of their host country.

In Germany, where the IMF has carried out a study on the integration of foreigners in the labour market, migrants generally earn 20% less than Germans of equal competence. For immigrants that do not speak German, the difference is 30%. And in 2013, the unemployment rate among immigrants was double the German average.

Flexibility

The concept of the minimum wage is already flexible in certain countries, including Germany. Here, refugees can join the list of the long term unemployed, who do not qualify for the minimum wage until they have complete six months of employment.

An advantage of this measure, according to the IMF, is “to reduce any possible resentment” from the citizens of the host countries, who may otherwise see the refugees as direct competitors for jobs in Europe’s under-performing labour market.

But for the IMF, this fear is unfounded. The organisation highlighted the fact that the large majority of studies have found such waves of immigration to have only a very small impact on employment.

Spending on refugees to boost GDP

While the IMF’s projections are by no means certain, they do highlight the generally positive economic impact of hosting refugees, even in the short term. Increasing public spending on refugees should “raise internal demand and GDP”, according to the report.

Money assigned to the refugees is spent immediately, generating more demand. The IMF has calculated that public spending on the refugee crisis in European countries should increase GDP by 0.05% in 2015 and 0.1% in 2016, compared to 2014.

But large disparities exist between EU countries. In France, where the number of asylum seekers rose by just 22% in 2015, the cost of dealing with the refugees has stayed relatively stable. The associated rise in GDP between 2014 and 2016 is expected to be only 0.01% as a result.

Meanwhile, spending in some countries is exploding. It is no surprise that the share of German GDP allocated to supporting refugees could rise from 0.08% to 0.35% from 2014 to 2016. Costs in Sweden are set to leap from 0.3% to 1% of GDP over the same period. The IMF based its predictions on the arrival of 800,000 people per year between 2015 and 2017.

On average, these new arrivals will be able to work in their host countries after two years. But the contribution of these refugees to European GDP, even in the short term, should be positive, adding 0.05% in 2015 and 0.13% in 2017.

Naturally, the effects are most visible in the countries with the most refugees. Austria’s GDP will increase by 0.5%, Sweden’s by 0.4% and Germany’s by 0.3%.

In the medium term, the wave of refugees will have an even more pronounced effect on European economic growth. The IMF predicts the new arrivals will boost the European Union’s GDP by 0.25%, while Germany, Austria and Sweden stand to gain between 0.5% and 1.1%.

The incendiary statement made by the Republican U.S. presidential contender Donald Trump in December 2015, who called for the “complete shutdown” of all Muslims from entering the United States, provoked outrage and dismay across the world and underlined the rise of an Islamophobic trend in the campaign season rhetoric in America. Many American Muslims reacted to Trump’s comments by saying that his prejudiced conviction was unconstitutional and un-American and ran counter to the principle of freedom of religion sustained in the First Amendment.

Prior to that, Donald Trump had called for the profiling of American Muslims in special databases and demanded that they should carry identification cards with them to be easily distinguished from the rest of U.S. citizens.

One of the widely-acclaimed responses to Donald Trump came from an American Muslim who had served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Sergeant Tayyib Rashid posted a copy of his Marine identification card on Twitter along with a brief text message, reading:

– Hey @realDonaldTrump, I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours? #SemperFi
#USMC

Tayyib Rashid’s tweet was liked more than 51,000 times and extraordinarily retweeted by 39,234 users, prompting the emergence of the hashtag #MuslimID, an apparently sarcastic reaction to Trump’s controversial proposal. It was then when many American Muslims began sharing screenshots of their professional IDs as physicians, nurses, teachers, police officers, social entrepreneurs and journalists on Twitter using this hashtag.

But who is Tayyib Rashid? Mr. Rashid is a 38-year-old American Muslim, belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Born in Pakistan, he immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 10, fleeing the persecution Ahmadi Muslims faced in the South Asian country. He adopted American nationality, and served five years of active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps beginning in 1997. Tayyib Rashid feels strong passion and loyalty towards the United States and works to promote the values of non-violence and fraternity endorsed by Islam among his fellow Americans.

“I find it extremely troubling that Mr. Trump would use the gift of free speech we have in this great nation, which I fought to defend, to promote fear and hate in such a manner,” the former Chicago Marine told Truth NGO in an interview.

“I think Americans greatly value the U.S. Constitution and will not allow someone to hijack the foundation of what has made this country so great. I firmly believe that Mr. Trump’s proposal will never become a reality,” he added.

Tayyib Rashid believes there is no conflict between his identity as a Muslim and his identity as an American. He says the Muslims need to stand up in unison and demonstrate that misjudgments about their religion are unsubstantiated.

In the following interview, Tayyib Rashid talked about the commendation he received after he responded to Donald Trump on Twitter and his viewpoints on the importance of peace and non-violence in Islam.

Q: Mr. Rashid; as an American Muslim who has served the nation in uniform, how did you feel after hearing the GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump saying that all Muslims should be barred from entering the United States and need to be profiled in specific databases? Why do you think he has said such unconventional things about the Muslims?

A: As a Muslim who believes in the Messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, I was taught from a very early age that loyalty to my country of residence is part of my faith. This is one of the main reasons why I enlisted in the Marine Corps and it’s one of my life’s greatest achievements that I was able to serve my faith and my country by serving in the Armed Forces. Therefore, I was really shocked and disappointed by Mr. Trump’s comments because they are inconsistent with the principles of justice and opposite to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. His comments reflect the fear and hate that an extremist segment of the United States believes about minorities in the U.S. in general and Muslims in particular. I find it extremely troubling that Mr. Trump would use the gift of free speech we have in this great nation, which I fought to defend, to promote fear and hate in such a manner.

Q: Hundreds of Americans and non-Americans were enthused after you tweeted a response to Donald Trump’s statements on the need for Muslim Americans to have special ID cards by saying that you already carry a badge of honor that testifies to your service as a U.S. Marine for 5 years. What were the best and most inspiring responses you received? Do you feel that your fellow citizens recognize the value of your service as a Muslim American?

A: Without a doubt, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, which gives me a great deal of pride in being an American. People have reached out to me from all demographics and all walks of life expressing their support for my message. Some responses were humorous and made me chuckle while others brought tears of joy [to my eyes] with kind words of encouragement and support for me and the Muslim community in general. I feel this experience has fostered an even greater love in my heart for America, because it has validated that Americans are good and moral citizens of the world and that they recognize hate for what it is and reject it in favor of justice and compassion. I received over 2,500 messages of support, but here are just a few examples:

• “Hugs to you, sir (from the granddaughter of a Jewish Russian refugee).”
• “First thank you sir for your service to our USA. Stereotyping Muslims for political purposes is not an American value!”
• “@realDonaldTrump, some aloe for that burn maybe?”
• “Saw you last night on MSNBC, I thought you did a great job and I would like to learn more about your organization. If we (all people no matter what religion) all could do what you discussed last night, this world would be a much better place. Very proud of you!”
• “@MuslimMarine I wanted to say thank you. We are human, you are my brother. I support you. Let’s bridge the gap.”

Q: It was so inspiring. So, do you think the ideas put forward by Donald Trump, who has proposed the banning of all Muslims from the United States and registering them in a national database will be translated into action? Polls show that the majority of Americans do not have a close understanding of Islam and many of them have never seen a Muslim in their proximity. Won’t this unawareness pave the way for the actualization of what Mr. Trump is advocating?

A: No, I think Americans greatly value the U.S. Constitution and will not allow someone to hijack the foundation of what has made this country so great. I firmly believe that Mr. Trump’s proposal will never become a reality. I recognize that today many Americans – 60% according to PEW research – don’t know the true teachings of Islam. To remedy this gap, each of the 75 chapters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has engaged in initiatives to serve our communities. Previously, we have launched the Muslims for Peace, Muslims for Loyalty, and Muslims for Life campaigns. Our latest effort is the True Islam campaign that seeks to remove some of the most common misconceptions about the true Islamic teaching. Below are just a few points that we are trying to present to fight extremism. You can visit www.TrueIslam.com for full details.

True Islam wholly rejects all forms of terrorism; believes in non-violent Jihad of the self and pen; believes in the equality, education, and empowerment of women; advocates for freedom of speech, conscience, and religion; advocates for separation of mosque and state and believes in loyalty to your country of residence.

Q: Following the Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting, several influential politicians, public figures and media organizations in the United States began putting the blame on the Muslims for the atrocities that had unfolded. Does this kind of unwarranted incrimination make the life difficult for the American Muslims who become the first targets of Islamophobic attacks? The noted American director Michael Moore voiced solidarity with the Muslims by launching the campaign “We Are All Muslim.” Are such acts of solidarity sufficiently effective to deter hatred and prejudice from the American Muslims?

A: Certainly, when politicians and other public figures get involved in such hate-mongering and bigotry as has been done by Mr. Trump, it does have an impact on how some ignorant people in society treat minorities in general and in this case how they treat anyone they perceive to be Muslim. The result is that you see a significant spike in hate crimes all over the U.S. against not only Muslims but also people of the Sikh and Hindu faiths.

As a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, I find this level of bigotry reprehensible and absolutely unacceptable. While I certainly appreciate the kind support of people like Michael Moore, I believe such support by itself is not enough and that Muslims have to step up to the plate and meet this challenge head-on. American Muslims have a tremendous responsibility to get out in the public and open the channels of dialog with our fellow Americans and create opportunities for them to ask difficult questions that will enable a better understanding of what Muslims truly believe.

The worst thing [we] Muslims can do is to retreat into our own private bubbles because what we know is that there is a vacuum of information about Islam and Muslims. This great demand is being filled with the narrative of the extremist terrorists and anti-Islamic hate-mongers. To meet this demand, Ahmadi Muslims, under the direction of the spiritual head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, His Holiness, the khalifa of Islam, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, all over the United States are creating opportunities to have meaningful discussions with our fellow Americans. We are doing this through personal contacts, social media, public events, social service initiatives, etc. We will not let the terrorists and Islamophobes speak for us.

For example, I am in regular contact with all my neighbors, co-workers, and contacts on social media to answer questions and to remove misconceptions about Islam. I not only share the theory of the Islamic teaching but also show by my own practical example and the example of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community at large that there is no conflict between my identity as a Muslim and my identity as an American. I firmly believe that we can control our environment and it is our responsibility as Muslims to educate the public. While we will always welcome the support of good-hearted people like Michael Moore, we cannot shirk our responsibility to engage our neighbors and non-Muslim friends in meaningful dialog to remove misconceptions and improve our relationships. That is what’s needed today and we welcome any request for dialog with open arms.

Q: Some American Muslims have recently raised this concern that the United States is no longer a safe and peaceful place for them, and they should consider moving to a Muslim-majority country. This is something they’ve at least broached, even though they may never realize it. With legislations that discriminate against the Muslims and the prejudiced statements by politicians who are poised to become the future leaders of the nation, is the United States safeguarding the rights of its Muslim minority properly?

A: The Holy Quran has stated that Muslims are best of people created for the service of mankind. Muslims should worry more about how they are discharging their responsibility to serve their fellow man and stop worrying about what some extremist politicians and bigots have to say. We should let our actions speak for us. So long as we have freedom to practice our faith and we engage in serving our fellow Americans, I firmly believe that we will be able to live in peace and security. Certainly, if some Muslims fear for their safety and want to leave for a “Muslim majority” country, they should do so. I however find that as an Ahmadi Muslim, I have more freedom to practice my faith here in America than most other Muslim countries. I find it refreshingly ironic that the U.S. Constitution reflects Islamic values more accurately than the constitution of countries like Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

Q: You talked about the constitutional rights. One of the principles upon which the U.S. Constitution was founded is freedom of religion and respect for the rights of the minorities. You came to the United States at the age of 10 in search of the liberties and freedoms you were denied at home, in Pakistan. Are these freedoms being gradually taken away from you? Are you feeling threatened as Islamophobic trends grow in the States?

A: I am thrilled to call myself an American Muslim not only because of my faith but also because I’ve received overwhelming love and support from my fellow Americans who respect and value me and my faith. So long as I have freedom of religion and freedom of speech, my faith teaches me that I must be loyal to my country. When I was 19, I took an oath to defend this great nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath still holds true today and will hold true until the day I die. While then I defended America using my M16, today I defend it using my pen, my iPhone, and laptop. The members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and I will not let extremists and Islamophobes threaten the peace and security of this beautiful country and we will defend these rights till our dying breath by engaging in meaningful dialog, education, and service to humanity.

Q: As almost every major Muslim scholar, intellectual and religious authority has emphasized, there’s no room for violence and terror in Islam. Prophet Muhammad always advised the Muslims to treat each other respectfully and cordially, avoid using the language of coercion and force in dealing with others and venerate one’s neighbors and family members, let alone opening fire on the innocent people. Is this message of peace from the Muslims reaching out to the American public adequately so that they understand the essence of Islam as a non-violent faith?

A: No; I think there is much work to do to get this message to stick. It’s one thing to say that Islam is peaceful, and quite another thing to demonstrate it by practical example. Today, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the only Muslim community, established in 207 nations in the world, recognized for its peaceful approach in every nation where it is established. It is a living example that demonstrates Islam is a religion of peace. The reason for its success is its leadership, His Holiness, the khalifa of Islam, Mirza Masroor Ahmad. Under his leadership and previous khalifas of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, not a single member of the worldwide AMC has ever engaged in violent terrorist activities. This reflects a perfect track record for over 120 years. Rather than engaging in violence or protest, Ahmadi Muslims all over the world regularly try their best to serve their communities and promote peace even in the face of severe persecution such as in places like Pakistan. If Muslims cannot demonstrate peace with practical living examples through their actions, character, and relationships with others, then their declaration of Islam being peaceful is meaningless.

Unfortunately the fact is that too many Muslim countries continue to violate freedom of religion and freedom of conscience when it comes to the rights of minorities living in Muslim majority lands. So long as those Muslim nations continue to promote things like blasphemy laws that persecute and usurp the right of minorities, Muslims living in the United States and other western countries will have a difficulty convincing others that Islam is a religion of peace. I submit to my fellow Americans that these so-called Muslim countries violate the true Islamic principles as mentioned in the Holy Quran and as practiced by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The Holy Prophet demonstrated through his actions what true Islam is and this is precisely what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is trying to promote by launching the True Islam campaign. I would encourage my fellow Americans to visit www.trueislam.com, endorse the principles that resonate with them, and help us spread peace by promoting this message of peace among their personal contacts.

This interview was originally published on the Truth NGO website.

After the withdrawal of sanctions imposed on Iran the way has been cleared for the commencement of construction of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline (IP). While Iran has already completed its part of the pipeline, Pakistan has yet to begin the work. The pipeline originally included India, which later on backed out due to the US pressure and Pakistan also couldn’t go-ahead fearing it may also face economic sanctions.

Three key issues were raised regarding IP: 1) probability of imposition of sanctions, 2) security of pipeline and 3) mobilizing funds for the construction of pipeline. Initially Iran had offered to provide US$250 million loan to Pakistan but the ruling junta didn’t accept it under the pressure of the US.

With the withdrawal of sanctions there remains no hitch except security of pipeline, particularly the portion passing through Baluchistan. If India-Pakistan relationships improve and India also agrees to join the project the threats to pipeline will be minimized. It was often alleged that the militants operating in Baluchistan were supported by anti-Iran and anti-Pakistan elements.

Even since the talk began about import of LNG, I have been the most vocal opponent. This opposition was mainly due to: 1) the pipeline is a symbol of friendship between three countries – Iran, Pakistan, India — enjoy common borders and also have connecting rail and road networks, 2) Pakistan being deprived of huge transit fees, 3) mobilizing capital and 4) delicacies of the technology.

As the entire scenario has changed the outlook and working parameters have also changed. Pakistan could now seek funds from China, Russia and multilateral financial institutions for the construction of the part of pipeline passing through the country.

Despite the most fervent opponent of LNG import, I will still not recommend abandoning the LNG project and suggest completing the construction of terminal in Karachi on top priority. However, the project should be constructed by the private sector only without any involvement of the government. This option is another option to boost availability of gas in Pakistan to meet future requirements.

The top beneficiaries of enhanced availability of gas should be industrial units (fertilizer plants and textile units) and not the power plants. Burning gas at power plants is complete waste of this precious resource. Pakistan should also expedite work on hydel power plants, which will also enhance water storage capacities in the country.

Circular debt issue of power sector just can’t be resolved by running power plants on gas. It could only be overcome by containing blatant theft of electricity and recovering all each rupee of the outstanding amount running into billions of rupees.

Measures by the German government to limit the numbers of refugees entering the country are “extremely likely” to be introduced, announced Joachim Gauck, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, in an address to participants at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.

Such a limitation strategy is “morally and politically necessary to preserve the state’s ability to function,” he added.

In German cities, recent events that challenge fundamental values such as tolerance, respect and the equality of women have made it clear that “migration is only politically viable to the extent that citizens are willing to accept it,” Gauck said.

While Gauck highlighted Germany’s humanitarian responsibility to take in victims of persecution, he cautioned that if democrats in the centre of politics do not talk about limitations, then “populists and xenophobes will ultimately set a limit.”

The rise in popularity of right-wing parties across Europe, along with near-daily attacks on refugee accommodation in Germany, highlight the urgency to negotiate consensus on the issue across society, according to Gauck.

The migration crisis has presented the European Union with its “biggest-ever test,” said Gauck. Member states must do more to support refugees in countries bordering Syria and Iraq. According to Gauck, a recent visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan confirmed his belief that most Syrians would rather secure shelter and income nearer home than travel to Europe.

Gauck encouraged countries to look at innovative solutions, such as creating a free trade zone in Jordan where refugees and Jordanians could work side-by-side to export products and services to Europe.

Gauck called for more effective protection for Europe’s external borders, with defined gateways to allow in those with a right to enter.

“Freedom of movement within the Schengen area can only be preserved if security is guaranteed at the external borders,” warned the German president. Failing that, national borders will once again become important.

Commenting on policies adopted by some Central European countries, Gauck said, “I find it difficult to understand when countries whose citizens once experienced solidarity as the victims of political persecution now deny solidarity to those fleeing persecution.” The president concluded his address by calling on European states to resist a retreat into national solutions, but rather to show solidarity in sharing Germany’s burden and renew efforts to shape a Europe in which everyone feels included.

Fortum said Wednesday it will have a one-time negative impact of approximately EUR 110 million on its fourth quarter 2015 net profit arising from impairments and provisions. The impact before taxes will mainly be included in the items affecting comparability of the Power and Technology segment.

The company said that one-time items mainly relate to Fortum’s two coal-fired power plants in Finland, Inkoo and Meri-Pori. The demand for coal condensing power in the Nordic power market has decreased as a result of the drop in the wholesale price for electricity. Fortum is booking a provision for the dismantling of the Inkoo power plant and starting preparations for permanent dismantling.

The Inkoo operations were ceased in February 2014 and assets written down in 2013. In addition Fortum is making an impairment loss for Fortum’s share of Meri-Pori assets, the company said.

According to Fortum, the negative impact to net profit also includes an additional write-down based on information received during the fourth quarter regarding the closure of the units 1 and 2 in Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden.

In addition, Fortum said its fourth quarter 2015 will include approximately EUR 75 million negative effect to net profit related to derivatives mainly hedging Fortum’s future power production, which do not get hedge accounting status according to IFRS (IAS 39).

By David W. Murray*

In the winter issue of National Affairs, Jon Caulkins seeks to answer the question, “is marijuana dangerous?” While acknowledging some of the known harms of the drug, he ultimately undersells marijuana’s health risks, calling them “minor.” He characterizes the drug as a “performance degrader” and “more dangerously, a temptation commodity with habituating tendencies.”Caulkins’ evidence regarding respective drug dangers, such as comparison to alcohol, turns on damage to organs (excluding, notably, the brain) and lethality. One wishes that he was more familiar with the 1974 testimony before a Senate Committee that also examined alcohol and marijuana in comparative fashion:

Brain activities in relationship to [alcohol and marijuana] are drastically different. Alcohol does not … directly and profoundly affect brain function as the cannabis preparations do…. You can use alcohol for a long period of time without producing any sort of persistent damage. But with marihuana … it seems as though you have to use it only for a relatively short time … before (it) produces distinctive and irreversible changes in the brain.

Since the time of that over-forty-year-old testimony, the evidence for marijuana’s brain-altering damage has only grown, as has the average potency, dramatically, something Caulkins’ analysis critically leaves out. There are also changes to the “habituating tendency” of the developmentally-adolescent to use the drug on a daily basis.

The drug is increasingly ingested in additional forms beyond smoked leaves (Caulkins notices the pulmonary consequences of smoking). Today, youth are consuming edibles with high doses of THC (the intoxicating and damaging component), and drinks, and “vaped” combustible concentrates, while at the same time often combining the drug with continued use of alcohol.

The impact of increased potency is still unknown, but will not be inconsequential. Forms of the drug now contain 70-80 percent THC, in contrast to the more familiar THC potencies found in smoked leaves of earlier years, which only rarely exceeded 5-10 percent.

Two things immediately follow from these chemical facts. First, most longitudinal studies of the risks of marijuana for producing cognitive effects and chemical dependency tracked youth using low-potency marijuana. The future for today’s adolescents is simply an unknown, but all signs indicate that the damage will escalate.

Second, the realization of potency renders somewhat irrelevant one of Caulkins’ key policy points, which follows his careful calculation of the volumes of the drug being consumed by users with different use profiles. Because Caulkins analyzes only the amount of (largely) self-reported leaf consumption by either slight or heavy users, he misses the critical variable, which is the amount of THC actually being consumed. As potency has escalated and is not factored in to his equations, his calculations are not as meaningful as he supposes.

A single candy bar purchased today in Colorado, for instance, can contain ten times the amount of THC as a single, premium quality marijuana “joint” of recent years. Psychotic episodes related to the consumption of these edibles are escalating in both emergency room episode reports as well as mortality toxicology reports. Caulkins needs to re-do his analysis with this factor considered.

There is also the matter of his reliance on the National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) as input for his analysis. The survey, consisting of self-reports of use, also depends upon self-reports of problems in relation to DSM-established criteria for dependency. But these self-reports depend upon (no matter whether they are understated or not) a person’s sense of their behavior as it is affected by the drug.

The problem lies here: a drug that can be shown to alter brain structure and function (albeit in subtle ways, in some instances, and the permanency of such changes is today largely unknown) does not necessarily produce an impact that rises to the level of self-apprehension. That is, the user likely has a blind-spot about the actual impact, which can occur without noticeable manifestations for the person or his friends, until the impact becomes pronounced.

Rather than behavior alone, we should attend to, in addition to clinical judgments, the results of brain analysis, such as MRI analyses, of brain changes. Such a literature exists, and it is not comforting. Even casual use, a profile that Caulkins is inclined to treat as non-threatening in his policy recommendations, has been linked to “neural noise” as well as structural brain changes, even at relatively low exposure – that is, “youthful recreational use” or even “half-a-joint.”

Caulkins also appeals to relatively standard policy postures adopted by libertarians who count on market forces to shape drug behavior futures. It remains an open question whether such market forces are appropriate regulators for adolescents who are, says the medical literature, doing major but unwitting damage to themselves. And under legalization youth exposure increases considerably.

But more importantly, it’s hard to reconcile the pure public health impact of expanding drug use by adults (or semi-adults) with the recent literature showing detrimental effects of maternal use on offspring, including (in animal studies) permanent impairment of the brains of embryos exposed through maternal use. Recent findings are troubling, and call into question the conventional wisdom that drug use “harms only the user him/her self.” Should not drug policy concern itself with these effects?

There is also the question of Caulkins’ use of the literature regarding the ratios of users to those who become dependent users for various forms of drug use, including alcohol, as a means of evaluating respective dangers. The research has been interpreted to rank-order relative dangers from drugs and alcohol by calculating the respective number of users who become dependent users, seeing the outcomes as a reflection of the drug’s impact. Somewhat carelessly, this literature is cited to argue that marijuana is actually “less dangerous” than other drugs, particularly alcohol and tobacco. The most common citation is to research (Antony, 1994) that found roughly one in nine marijuana users become dependent. Caulkins wisely notes that the ratio is likely higher than that (in fact, NIDA has indicated that for daily users, the ratio is about one-in-two). Very likely the potency issue will render those early ratio assumptions to be even farther off than we today experience.

But more importantly, Caulkins misses the clear policy caveats contained in the original research, which, when grasped, weaken his main theme—that we can accommodate by a new legal “architecture” some “permissible” level of non-dependent use and only suffer public health consequences consistent with what the past literature suggests.

What the Antony research actually demonstrates is that we have fixed on the wrong interpretation of the study’s findings. One cannot conclude from Antony’s ratios anything reliable about the respective “dangers” of the substances themselves, taken in isolation, as potentially dependency-producing drugs. Nor does the original research make that claim. In fact, the researchers are well aware of the potential limitations of these results, and explicitly discuss the complexities they present.

As they write:

The array of interrelated factors includes relative drug availability, and opportunities for use of different drugs as well as their costs; patterns and frequencies of drug use that differ across drugs; different profiles of vulnerabilities of individuals … as well as both formal and informal social controls and sanctions against drug use or in its favor…. Considered all together … the transition from drug use to drug dependence runs a span from the microscopic (e.g. the dopamine receptor) through the macroscopic (e.g. social norms for or against drug use; international drug control policies).

When this position is understood, we see that, if anything, it is an argument cutting against the policy of marijuana legalization under any liberalized architecture. Both tobacco and alcohol are legal substances, and have use rates multiple times in excess of (illicit) marijuana. Moreover, they are used in patterns that make exposure to them considerably in excess of exposure to marijuana. Those who smoke tobacco do so multiple times a day, commonly every day; in relative fashion the same holds true for alcohol use.

And this research specifically notes that it is just such patterns of access, frequency, and persistence of use that contribute to the overall dependency-producing potential, in conjunction with the biology of the substance itself in relation to the brain. Simply put, were marijuana to be legal, and subject to access and use patterns comparable to alcohol or tobacco on a daily basis, the impact on subjects as found in dependency and addiction rates, while unknown, would likely be staggering.

And then, to make the final observation, Caulkins envisions possible legal architectures for dispensing the drug, without any consideration of this overwhelming fact: wherever we today find commercial, legal marijuana, there we also find, robust and thriving, the very criminal and violent and corrupting black market. The danger is great and it is getting worse rapidly.

About the author:
*David W. Murray, Senior Fellow

Source:
This article was published at the Hudson Institute.

The deteriorating health of the long suffering King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand may very well play a significant role in answering the question of whether or not some semblance of normalcy will return to the country in the upcoming year. And the King’s health is definitely a key consideration in the long-term plans of the ruling junta’s leader and “interim” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest reigning monarch, has spent most of the past six years in hospital, emerging on rare occasions to return to his home, Chitralada Palace.  He is reported to be currently undergoing treatment for fever, lung infection, blood infection and knee problems. Although his role is largely ceremonial, the King is revered like a deity in Thailand and has historically played a key stabilizing role in national politics – a role he was unable to assume since 2014 coup d’état because of his increased frailness.

While the King is still alive, it is expected that the ruling junta is not likely to call, or permit, an election. Expectations are that they will wait until after Bhumibol has passed, and will no doubt oversee the succession to the throne. The succession and transition are anticipated to be tumultuous and will cause further major upheavals in the Thai political structure. His offspring and King-in-waiting, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, is disliked by the Thai people for his eccentric lifestyle and love of gambling, as well as for keeping close ties to deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The western world may aloofly observe the events surrounding the impending death of a monarch and the subsequent backroom machinations of choosing a successor, and consider it all morbidly amusing. But in a country where the law of lese majesté holds great sway, it is a significant event capable of changing the future of the nation in a very real manner, not to mention the fact that it can trample on the rights of the citizens. Witness the reality of a law that holds that critics of the monarchy are subject to exorbitant fines and imprisonment. Prayuth Chan-ocha knows all too well the manner in which succession and the vagaries of the law can change the fortunes and history of those involved. The law is being employed successfully to silence those bold enough to be critical of the monarchy, as well as those who might be careless enough to say something in jest. Witness the case of a hapless factory worker who was reckless enough to mock the king’s dog in December. He was charged with sedition, and is now facing decades in prison if found guilty. The law has been employed so well that there is wide spread concern that freedom of speech is all but non-existent in Thailand.

In pursuit of what appears to be the junta’s goal of orchestrating Thailand’s political future, the second part of its agenda involves the minimization and marginalization of the political power and influence of recently deposed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother, Thaksin, himself a deposed Prime Minister, who was ousted during a bloodless coup in 2006. He is now living in self-imposed exile.

Yingluck had been expected to appear before the European Parliament, where she was to address Eurocrats on the state of affairs in Thailand, after the European political body expressed concern for the future of democracy in Thailand. Her wings were clipped and her voice silenced however, when she was denied the right to leave the country by the junta, who claimed, among other things, that the invitation was fake. The speedbump was thrown in by the junta after the coup, when, fearful of her potential political comeback, the powers that be banned her from politics for five years and forbade her from travelling overseas without permission.

In fact, Yingluck has been mired in legal battles since her ouster, facing criminal charges last year by Thailand’s newly formed parliament, largely composed of junta-approved military members. As for her brother Thaksin, he has had his own share of time in a courtroom, having had both his diplomatic and regular passports revoked. An attempt to petition for an injunction against the state’s revocation was denied. As well, he has been spending time battling the Privy Council in court, alleging the council was instrumental in the May 2014 coup and then defending himself for allegedly defaming the army. Legal counsel for the army characterized Thaksin as a danger to the country.

Since the coup, junta leader and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has repeatedly promised to restore democracy to the country and hold elections. The promises have proved to be hollow, and at present he is planning for an election sometime in 2017.  However, should King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s health hold out long enough, it is reasonable to expect Prayuth to push the promise of a return to democracy out another year or two. Sadly, at this pace there won’t be much of Thailand’s democracy to save by that time.

By Bhaskar Roy*

North Korea’s fourth nuclear test (January 06) has reopened the debate on the security of North–East Asia.

While roundly condemned by all, including India, there seems to be no effect on this reclusive nation’s leader Kim Jong-un and the nation as a whole. The previous tests were conducted in 2006, 2009 and 2013, and had also attracted sharp international criticism. Going nuclear is an old strategic plan of the nation, invigorated by Kim Jong-un’s father and supreme leader of the country, Kim Jong-il.

Following the test, the North Korean official news agency KCNA said the country’s nuclear arming was for self-protection and cited the examples of what happened to Saddam Hussain and Muammar Gaddafi who were cajoled by the USA to give up their nuclear programmes. As far back as 2003, North Korean officials had told a trusted westerner that the US attack on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain would not have happened if Saddam had not agreed to dismantle his nuclear programme and his medium range scud missiles. North Korea, therefore, would continue with its nuclear programme.

Pyongyang claims that their hydrogen bomb (thermonuclear) test has been successful. The yield was around 6 kilotons, far too small for a H-bomb. Experts around the world are not convinced about the North Korean claim. Pyongyang clandestinely acquired enrichment technology from Pakistan in exchange for missile technology. This trade or exchange ended when Pakistan’s illegal nuclear proliferation was exposed. At that time Pakistan had mastered the H-bomb technology claiming that its 1998 nuclear tests had included a successfully tested H-bomb.

There is no evidence that Pyongyang has perfected miniaturizing technology of nuclear bombs to fabricate missile warheads. Nevertheless, the possession of a nuclear device by a country like North Korea is almost an existential threat for neighbours like South Korea and Japan, with which it has nurtured a visceral antipathy since the war. China was North Korea’s ardent supporter and had sacrificed many lives of the People’s Liberation Army in a war involving ideology. China also allowed its territory and facilities to be used clandestinely by North Korea (as well as Pakistan) for their missile and nuclear cooperation. Pakistan used aircraft of Shaheen Airlines controlled by Pakistan’s proliferation czar, Dr. A. Q Khan.

It cannot therefore, be denied that China has been complicit in Pyongyang adopting the nuclear option. History was different then – during those years both countries loudly proclaimed their “lips to teeth” friendship. A strong North Korea was an asset to Beijing in a region dominated by the US and its allies, South Korea and Japan, to counter China. The Sino–Soviet rift was another challenge for Beijing.

Since then global dynamics has changed drastically. China has emerged as a world power, strong enough to dictate its course but with adjustments. It has still not reached the position it is striving for, when it can play some cards which it is hiding, but glimpses of which are becoming increasingly visible. North Korea still remains very important in China’s strategic planning though it has embarrassed China repeatedly. For instance, Pyongyang’s withdrawal from the six-party (North Korea, China, US, South Korea, Japan and Russia) talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in 1988-99; its sinking of a South Korean frigate; shelling of a South Korean island and issuing of threats to South Korea and Japan brought immense pressure on China. Inside China strong opinions prevailed that Beijing should cut Pyongyang loose as this relationship was causing China more harm than good. Though Beijing both privately and publicly criticized and took punitive steps by temporarily suspending or reducing oil supplies, it never let its friend down. But bilateral relations remain under some strain.

Following Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear weapon test, reactions coming out of China, through official statements and expert comments, appear to be on two tracks. Officially, Beijing chastised North Korea and has become proactive trying to restart the nuclear talks. It has done so to be in step with world opinion. But it has also in parallel, aimed at smoothening the situation to ensure that harsh UN and international sanctions are not imposed on Pyongyang. Anyway, the existing sanctions were not applied as stringently as the sanctions on Iran.

On the other hand, expert comments in the official media in China suggest that blame is being shifted on the USA, South Korea and Japan. The comments state that North Korea is being provoked by the naval and military exercises between South Korea, USA and Japan, led by Washington, and pointedly aimed at Pyongyang. These exercises, however, are not ambiguous by any means. It has been officially stated that these exercises are structured to warn Pyongyang against any misadventure.

China claims that it no longer wields the kind of influence over North Korea that it once did. The relationship dipped when China established diplomatic relationship with South Korea in 1994. Pyongyang felt betrayed and made no secret about it. China’s efforts to draw Pyongyang’s supreme leader into a reform and economic development path such as its own did not succeed. North Korean senior leaders who tried to open up to foreign economic relations have been executed. North Korea, especially under Kim Jong–un, does not retire or dismiss such officials. This regime is especially cruel and is dismissive about China’s protests.

Kim Jong-un is very well aware that the lifeline of his regime is in China’s hands. Yet he dares to defy China, because he knows that Beijing needs him and North Korea as it is.

It is not that China is not concerned. But it is looking at larger strategic interests, as mentioned in the previous paragraphs. North Korea is the only communist regime in existence and is an ideological statement for China’s internal party politics. It is the only friendly communist country and hardliners in the communist party of China would raise questions.

Next, an imploding North Korea can unleash an exodus of North Koreans into China, which could cause serious law and order problems. Third, a defunct North Korea can merge with South Korea, creating a unified Korea, over which the US will have significant influence, bringing a nuclear US with boots on the ground on China’s immediate shoulders.

With the recent resolution between South Korea and Japan over South Korean “comfort women” or sex slaves during the Japanese invasion of Korea, a new cause for concern has been created for China. This one development may rearrange the security balance paradigm in North-East Asia. Both Japan and South Korea are capable of becoming nuclear weapon states if given the go-ahead by the USA. The US appears to be encouraging Japan to become more self-reliant for defence requirements.

China is in a difficult situation here. Is it serious about making North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programme and re-invite the IAEA nuclear inspectors? Or does it want to keep North Korea on a nuclear threshold and not become a deliverable nuclear power?

*The writer is a New Delhi – based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohart@yahoo.com