At a time when Bangladesh is trying to establish itself in the world as a self-dignified and self-reliant country, a nexus of local and international conspirators are devising a conspiracy in order to hinder this progress. —- Sheikh Hasina, Honourable Prime Minister, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Friday night’s attack at a Spanish cafe in capital Dhaka’s most secured Diplomatic quarter (Gulshan) reflected the outburst of a new security related reality that has been slowly on rise in Bangladesh from 2013 onwards. On the night, Bangladesh experienced an unprecedented scale of attack that raised the concern over the securities to a new height.

From 2013, there have been attacks on many locals and foreigners within Bangladesh. Militant organizations, both local and international, have been continuously claiming responsibilities for these attacks. However, government attributed these attacks to home-grown militants, and denied any international organization’s link to the attacks. Many individuals –bloggers, writers, publishers, and academicians – who were claimed to be atheists, were killed for allegedly insulting Islam. Also, religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and Shites (shias) were killed during the period.

Holey Artisan incident

Friday night’s attack at the Spanish cafe, which is situated in capital Dhaka’s Gulshan area, started at around 9:30 pm local time when seven (07) attackers entered the restaurant with bombs and guns. The siege, which lasted for around 12 hours, ended when the Bangladesh Army, Navy, Air Force, Border Guards, Rapid Action Battalion and Police jointly conducted a successful operation named “thunderbolt”, which started at around 07:40 am local time, to take control of the cafe. However, by the time, twenty (20) civilians, and two (2) police officers were already killed, while many others were injured. Among the 20 dead civilians, there were nine (9) Italians, seven (7) Japanese, an American of Bangladeshi origin and an Indian. The rest four (4) were Bangladeshi nationals. Survivors of the attack said that those who could recite the Quran were spared while those who could not recite were killed (reported by the local newspaper ‘Daily Star’). Six (6) out of seven (7) gunmen were killed during the thunderbolt operation and one (1) gunman was captured by the security forces. Although the US-based SITE Intelligence reported that Amaq news agency of the Islamic State of Iraq & Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack, Bangladeshi authorities insisted that local militants carried out the siege, not ISIS.

Attacks on individuals

From 2013, more than thirty (30) people were killed prior to Friday attack. Among these killings, ISIS has, as the US-based SITE Intelligence reported, claimed responsibilities for killing of more than 15 people, whereas about half a dozen killings have been claimed by Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). However, those reports made by the SITE Intelligence regarding involvements of international militant organizations in these killings were strongly rejected by the Bangladeshi government as baseless and the police are yet to find the real clues to the murders.

The first killing of bloggers took place in 2013 in the wake of Shahbagh movement. For most of those killings, the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) claimed responsibility. The ABT claims to be connected to al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). However, these militant groups were present even before 2013. The ABT claimed several attacks that resulted in the murders of bloggers and a publisher, including an American citizen.

On the other hand, responsibilities for the killing of foreigners (including an Italian NGO worker, an Italian priest and a Japanese aid worker) and attack on the Shite (Shia) mosque have been claimed by ISIS. The organization, through its online magazine Dabiq, claimed that it has established contacts with the Bangladeshi militant group known as the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), and that they are working together. However, Bangladesh government insisted that ISIS did not have an operational presence in the country and attributed the ISIS-claimed attacks to home-grown militants.

There were claims that ISIS was behind an attack on a Shite (Shia) procession to celebrate Ashura (24th October, 2015) that killed one person and injured around 100, killing of a police officer at a police checkpoint (4th November, 2015) and a suicide attack on an Ahmediya mosque (25th December, 2015).

In each of the attacks claimed by the AQIS, attackers used machetes. On the other hand, the attacks claimed in the name of ISIS involved a variety of weapons, including machetes, pistols and crude explosives.

The extent of targets for the militants kept widening. Three people (wife of a Superintendent of Police in Chittagong, a Christian trader in Natore and mother of a lieutenant colonel in Dhaka) were killed in a single day on 5th June of this year in manners similar to the previous attacks. Hours after the Christian trader’s killing, the US-based SITE Intelligence reported that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Government blames opposition

The weeklong police crackdown during mid-June of this year launched in order to arrest militants countrywide was welcomed from all domestic corners, initially. However, with arrests of around 11,000 people, the crackdown was put to question by many opposition parties, including the other big political force the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). There have been allegations from the BNP that police and other law enforcers were indiscriminately arresting people. The BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam blamed the police for arresting their party leaders and workers under the cover of the crackdown.

On the contrary, the government has been blaming the opposition parties for target killings. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been blaming the BNP and its ally Jamaat-i-Islami for all the recent secret killings in the country. The government has also been wary of foreign involvement in the machete attacks. Previously prior to the Friday night’s Dhaka siege, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had categorically mentioned that “the reason behind the secret killings of soft targets is just to create a wave of tension at the global stage to depict Bangladesh negatively and create panic among the mass people.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, at her address to the nation after Dhaka siege ended, said that at a time when Bangladesh is trying to establish itself in the world as a self-dignified and self-reliant country, a nexus of local and international conspirators are devising a conspiracy in order to hinder this progress.

Observations

Although the number of attacks around the world declined last year (2015), attacks went up significantly in few countries, as found in a report by the US state department. While fewer attacks took place in 2015 in Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria, attacks and deaths increased in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines and Turkey.
The political divisiveness within Bangladesh’s political communities will only allow “third parties” to take advantages of the divided situation. It would be easier for “third parties” to operate under a political vacuum to undermine the country’s national security.

It is irrelevant to debate whether the international militant organizations exist in the country or not. Rather, the relevant factor here should be the fact that the attacks have been taking place, and it’s real.

*Bahauddin Foizee, primarily associated with a law firm, is an analyst, columnist on global affairs, and specializes on Middle Eastern, Asia-Pacific & European geopolitics.

By Karlijn Muiderman*

The Sahelian and Maghreb countries form a large part of what has been called an ‘arc of instability’. Stuttering economic development, conflict, extremism, and illegal trade are the breeding ground for international migration. Re-strengthening Saharan-Sahelian trade relations over the region’s key trading routes could be a key step to support economic development and geopolitical stability.

The origins of trans-Sahelian trade

The Sahara-Sahel zone is double the size of the European Union. Its countries rank lowest on the UN’s Human Development Index, while population growth is growing explosively.

Environmental degradation and water shortages heavily undermine access to resources and economic activities, and have caused desertification, deforestation, soil erosion and inadequate supplies of water. Droughts are frequent, yet from June to December the Niger River floods and creates the Niger Delta.

In this context, over the centuries, ethnic groups in the dry parts of the region have coped with economic uncertainties by establishing and participating in informal and cross-border trade. For example, elite members of the Tuareg ethnic group in northern Mali and Libya, and the Toubou in northern Chad and Libya, became rulers of the trans-Saharan caravan trade, first with camels and later with trucks. Subsidised food was smuggled from north to south, from Algeria to Mali, while migrant workers were smuggled from south to north when work was available in Libya and Algeria.

Today, the Toubou and Tuareg groups have increased their control in Libya. The Tebu influence has even spread to Niger, where a fast link between Agadez and Sebha has been established Using Toyato Hilux jeeps, along the transa migrant truck route. Working in transportation through the Sahara offers an economic niche and generates enormous income.

In recent years, illegal smuggling networks have intensified and professionalised along the routes, including in Mali and Niger, which are important departure and transit countries. And the trade has expanded to meet the demands of young Africans seeking job opportunities in Europe. The value of the smuggling economy in Libya has exploded from $8-20 million per year in 2013, to $323 million in 2015.

Even the civil war in Libya has not significantly reduced Sub-Saharan migration to the Libyan coast. Agadez in Niger has become the key transit point since the tightening of control of the Malian-Algerian border. But those who become stranded are ripe for recruitment by violent groups, as well as local populations and especially young people, who are joining armed groups in unprecedented numbers.

Towards an arc of stability

In the Broker’s Sahel Watch programme, many important and concrete recommendations have been shared on advancing stability in the region. The objective is to contribute to a long-term project of sustained political, economic and security cooperation.

This would aim to support the development of the entire region and to enhance geopolitical stability. Recommendations in the 2015 report of the Sahel and West-Africa Club (SWAC) on national and regional perspectives included the idea that the “two shores of the Sahel” should once again become a “dynamic trading hub between West Africa and the Maghreb”. This would be the best main to create a common regional political agenda, which could also positively impact geopolitical stability.

Traditionally, Algeria and Morocco have had significant influence over the region, and many states rely on both formal and informal trade exchanges with Morocco and Algeria. But SWAC reported in 2014 that regional cooperation is sometimes halted by old antagonisms. It advocates thinking about the potential for economic cooperation and to once again become the centre of a macro-region from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, by strengthening cross-border cooperation between the Agadez-Gao-Tamanrasset (or Niger-Mali-Algeria) triangle.

Several aspects to this are key in respect to smuggling. Trade relations should look at formal and informal economic activity. Legal options for informal economic activity could prevent involuntary recruitment, and the government could enhance income-generating ability, such as by improving basic security and control of territory. Closely related is more orderly border management, integrated with central systems, which might require special taxes but would standardise public control. Infrastructure to support agriculture would support the stability of residents and connect communities and increase access to markets, since the few roads in the less populated areas have become an instrument of control for extremist groups in the region. Key trading routes in the Sahara-Sahel region could bring prosperity to the region again.

About the author:
*Karlijn Muiderman coordinates the Sahel Watch programme at The Broker.

Source:
This article was published at Insight On Conflict.

By Patrick Bond*

The South African Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin has confirmed that foreign corporations are milking the economy, drawing away profits far faster than they are reinvested or than local firms bring home offsetting profits from abroad. Can anything be done to stop the hemorrhaging?

First, the appalling numbers: South Africa’s ‘current account deficit’ fell to a dangerous -5% of GDP because the ‘balance of payments’ (mainly profit outflows) suffered rapid decay; the other component of the current account, the trade deficit – i.e., imports minus exports – is trivial in comparison. The net outflow of corporate dividends paid to owners of foreign capital reached R174 billion ($11 bn) in the first quarter (measured on an annualised basis), 30% higher than the equivalent 2015 level. The quarter’s trade deficit was just R38 billion ($2.5 bn).

Hitting a 5% current account deficit is often a signal that speculative investors will start a currency run, as occurred even in strong East Asian exporters in 1998. Today only one other country (Colombia) among the 60 largest economies has a higher current account deficit.

Another destructive signal is foreign debt. Because repatriating profits must be done with hard currency (not rands), South Africa’s external debt has soared to about R2 trillion (39% of GDP, $125 billion), from less than R100 billion (16% of GDP, $25 billion) in 1994.

Who’s to blame?

The metabolism of destructive economics is quickening.  Since the minerals commodity slump began in 2011, South Africa has been squeezed ever tighter, especially by transnational mining and smelting corporations. Anglo American and Glencore lost three quarters of their share value in 2015 alone, and Lonmin was down 99% in value from its 2011 peak to 2015 trough.

Desperate, such firms have been exporting profits ever more rapidly in comparison to overseas-generated profits that local corporations pay to local shareholders. (The ratio is about two to one.)

As a result, Moeletsi Mbeki once joked, “Big companies taking their capital out of South Africa are a bigger threat to economic freedom than [Economic Freedom Fighters leader] Julius Malema.”

Who let the capital out? African National Congress Secretary General Gwede Mantashe admitted last year: “At the time when neoliberalism was on the ascendancy as an ideology, it became fashionable to allow companies to migrate and list in the stock exchanges of developed economies.”

Exchange control liberalization began in 1995 with the Financial Rand’s abolition. The process sped up thanks to permission granted in 1999-2000 by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni, allowing the country’s largest firms to delist from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and thus shift profit and dividend flows abroad. (Manuel and Mboweni received accolades from world financiers and are today employees of Rothschild’s and Goldman Sachs, respectively.)

Exchange controls were relaxed on dozens of occasions since 1994. The 2015 concessions by Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene – now employed by Allen Gray Investments after the BRICS New Development Bank Johannesburg branch manager job fell through – allow the wealthy to take R10 million ($650,000) offshore annually, a 2.5 times rise over prior years. Explained a Moneyweb reporter, this “effectively ended [individual] controls for all but the most wealthy South Africans.”

Meanwhile, institutional investors – representing the savings, pension funds and insurance accounts of the mass of small investors – are compelled to keep 75% of their assets in local investments. By all accounts, such controls prevented the 2008 world crisis from melting South Africa’s finances. But the big institutions have avoided reinvestment in fixed capital; instead they keep the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and real estate at bubbly levels.

Local companies on ‘capital strike’

The corporate outflow is all the more frustrating because of a local capital strike. According to the Reserve Bank , corporate fixed investment is down nearly 7% in recent months, at a time government investment is also down 12%. (This trend isn’t peculiar to South Africa, for according to the United Nations, in 2011, $224 billion in Foreign Direct Investments were made in the extractive industries, and in 2015 just $66 billion.)

The only major new South African fixed investment comes from parastatals: Eskom’s over-priced and ecologically destructive Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power plants. Even more destructive Transnet projects lie ahead: the export of 18 billion tonnes of coal through a new rail line and the 8-fold increase in the South Durban port-petrochemical capacity (the National Development Plan’s top two infrastructure priorities), together representing the over-breeding of gigantic white elephants in President Jacob Zuma’s home province.

Corporates claim to act rationally by leaving local profits as idle cash, given the Reserve Bank’s four interest rates hikes over the past year, disincentivizing new investment. South Africa’s medium-term interest rates are now fourth highest amongst the world’s major countries surveyed by The Economist. (Only governments in Brazil, Venezuela and Turkey pay a higher price for debt, and only companies in these countries plus Argentina, Ukraine, Egypt and Russia pay more when borrowing.)

Illicit financial flows

But even worse, some of the same firms removed an additional R330 billion offshore annually as ‘illicit financial flows’ through tax-dodging techniques from 2004-13, according to the Washington NGO Global Financial Integrity. These outflows exceed $80 billion annually across the continent, reports Thabo Mbeki’s African Union commission, throwing into question the merits of Foreign Direct Investment, given the scale of this looting.

Several spectacular local cases have been documented in recent years: misinvoicing by the biggest platinum companies, especially Lonmin with its Bermuda ‘marketing’ arm (and 9% ownership by Cyril Ramaphosa); De Beers with its R45 billion in misinvoicing over seven years; and MTN (under Chairman Ramaphosa) Mauritius profit diversions from several African countries.

Information from the Panama Papers recently revealed how Fidentia fraudster J. Arthur Brown and Foxwhelp’s Khulubuse Zuma (the president’s nephew) set up profit hideouts offshore, along with 1700 other South Africans. Last year, WikiLeaks whistle-blew R200 million in the Swiss HSBC accounts of Fana Hlongwane, the British Aerospace agent and arms-dealing advisor to then Defence Minister Joe Modise.

How common is such behavior? Laments local NGO Corruption Watch, “Two years ago PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed in their 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey that 69% of [SA] respondents indicating they had experienced some form of economic crime in the 24 months preceding the survey.”

In its 2016 Survey, PwC once again recorded a world-leading 69% corporate corruption rate for South Africa, compared to a global average for economic crime of 36%. According to the firm’s forensic services chief Louis Strydom, “We are faced with the stark reality that economic crime is at a pandemic level in South Africa.”

Notwithstanding a recent get-tough SA Revenue Service announcement following the Panama Papers’ jolt, the authorities’ inability to uncover such crime, prosecute it and put criminals into jail is no secret. More than two thirds of PwC’s 232 South African respondents believe Pretoria lacks the regulatory will or capacity to halt Sandton criminals.

“The latest trend is disturbing,” observed Business Day’s Hilary Joffe. “Now that MTN has managed to have its fine [for failing to cut five million non-registered cellphone subscribers including Boko Haram lines] in Nigeria cut down from $5.5bn to $1.7bn, can we have our money back? The trouble with South African companies running into big trouble abroad is that their woes can easily spill over into our balance of payments.”

Solution

The only short-term solution is a radical tightening of exchange controls against corporations and wealthy individuals, much as John Maynard Keynes advised more than 80 years ago: “The whole management of the domestic economy depends upon being free to have the appropriate interest rate without reference to the rates prevailing in the rest of the world. Capital controls is a corollary to this.”

Although tightened exchange controls were also advocated by Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, the metalworkers union and obscure local academics for many years, a highly adverse balance of forces made the policy demand impossible to win in practice.

However, last week’s news of the extremely adverse balance of payments may force the issue before long, unless the corporates and ratings agencies continue wielding their destructive power over the supine South African state.

*Patrick Bond is a professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Governance, Johannesburg. A version of this article appeared at TheConversation.

It is well known that the FBI still does not have roughly 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her private server due to Clinton categorizing them as personal and not work related. We have also reported that Russia may be in possession of those emails, and according to Judge Andrew Napolitano, there is a debate going on in the Kremlin about whether or not to release them.

Given that the FBI still doesn’t have the emails, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton (of the US is “under-incarcerated” fame), who is a Trump supporter and also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has become so frustrated that Cotton suggests the FBI is about to ask Putin for his copies. Cotton also took a jab at Bill Clinton’s meeting with Loretta Lynch, saying that his plane was also on the tarmac, and he thought Bill Clinton may be waiting to climb on board to talk with him as well.

As Breitbart reports

A combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Sen. Thomas Cotton (R.-Ark.) said he was glad to make it on time for his speech after a series of travel delays.

“We were on the tarmac, I thought Bill Clinton might be boarding my plane to talk to me,” said the former Army Airborne Ranger officer.

Cotton said it was shocking, but not shocking to him, that the former president would meet with Attorney General Loretta Lynch — whose department is investigating both his wife and himself for his handling of the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton’s decision to conduct all her official business on her own private email account on her own private server and the way she has handled official and media inquires about it was just teaser of how her administration will approach transparency and national security, Cotton said.

The FBI still does not have 30,000 emails the expected Democratic nominee for president claimed to have deleted.

“It has gotten so bad, the FBI is on the verge of asking Vladimir Putin for his copies of Hillary’s emails,” Cotton said.

In addition to the criminal nature of the former first lady scheme, he said, conducting official and classified business on an unsecured server exposed American national security to our enemies.

Americans should not be surprised that the former secretary of state would put America at risk, he said. Working with President Barack Obama, Clinton oversaw a foreign policy that treated allies as troublemakers and our enemies as victims with legitimate complaints about the United States. Chief among the enemies is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Obama-Clinton empowered by lifting sanctions, thawing frozen assets, and ignoring Iran’s support of violent terrorism.

Truth be told, it may not be a bad idea.

By Milivoje Pantovic

Serbia’s prime minister designate Aleksandar Vucic blamed Britain and Croatia for the EU’s delay in opening important negotiations with Belgrade on two chapters of European legislation.

Aleksandar Vucic said on Friday that Britain and Croatia were responsible for the EU’s decision this week not to open talks on Chapter 23 and 24 of the legislation Serbia needs to adopt to join the European Union.

“On Sunday I will be in Paris with regional and EU leaders and I will demand an explanation as to why the chapters are not open in the talks with Serbia,” Vucic told a press conference.

Croatia said on Monday that it was not able to approve Serbia opening Chapter 23 in its EU membership talks, citing what it called “substantial reasons”.

Britain also withheld support, citing “technical reasons” related to the country’s recent referendum decision to leave the EU.

Vucic accused Croatia of trying to block Serbia’s accession, accusing Zagreb of playing “childish games”.

“Their only concern is how to stop Serbia on its EU path,” he said.

“We have done everything that was asked of us so that the chapters would be open. If we have made some mistake, I would like the EU to inform Serbia what those mistakes are,” he added.

Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dacic meanwhile called the EU’s decision “shameful, incomprehensible and humiliating”.

“This decision is result of a political decision to halt or slow down Serbia’s EU path,” said Dacic.

Dacic said he had asked Vucic for urgent consultations on the issue.

“The EU should stop the tragicomic explanations that we are being blocked by Croatia and the United Kingdom. No, we are being blocked by the EU, because no one can convince me that the entire EU is not more influential then Croatia,” he said.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with moral components of human life and usually is called philosophy of the morality1 as it reflects understandings of society regarding what is and what is not correct within a certain act, as well as differences between a good and evil. If you accuse somebody of being lazy and he does not do his job well, that does not mean that he has immoral behavior, but from other side, lying and robbery are implicit violations of ethical norms. That is why ethics is very often described as an agglomerate of principles or as codex of moral behavior.

Our conscience tells us, even in the journalism (of course if we have that conscience) very often in a brutally clear way, that there is a significant difference between tacts that are accurate ones and acts that are wrong. Knowing ethical principles and the facts from which it has been derived can have an influence on our behavior.

When, for example, journalists “dive” into someone’s life, their decision to publish, and it is very often, unpleasant details, they justify this by saying the “people have a right to know.” The problem with this type of justification is that it does not answer the question exactly of what is it that the people have a right to know, and above all, why do people have the right to know this kind of information.

All over the world codes of conduct2 have been proposed for journalists. In fact, ethics is inseparable from journalism, because the practice of journalism is centered on a set of essentially ethical concepts: freedom, democracy, truth, objectivity, honesty and privacy. If the proper role of journalism is seen as providing information, then the ethical questions focus on one issue: maintaining the quality of that information. This issue has become a matter of political controversy and public concern.

Many people think that the media are inaccurate and biased. The Robert Maxwell case3 has re-opened the issue of media ownership. Questions of censorship and freedom of information have arisen in connection with Spycatcher, the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland and the wars in the Falklands and the Gulf. Not to mention issues with ISIL, as well as subjects as diverse and of  concern about the trivializing and exploitative representation of women in media, etc.

The dissemination and discussion of information concerning the major problems the world and its people face is necessary to both the democratic understanding and  action — without which problems cannot be solved, and without which, in fact, they will escalate. Ethics is not just a matter of codes of conduct (plus or minus sanctions), nor is it just a matter of rules to be followed. It has more to do with principles concerning the rights and wrongs of human conduct, principles that have some reasoned theoretical basis and which therefore can be applied objectively and impartially.

Freedom, democracy, truth, objectivity, honesty and privacy

These five criteria represent the basics of any kind of ethical system, including the one that belongs to professional journalists.

First of all, an ethical system must have joint values related to the ones mentioned within this context. Before the bringing of ethical judgments, society must achieve an agreement about the standards of moral behavior.

Secondly,those standards must be based on reason and experience and should try to harmonize rights and interests of the people with their obligations towards others.

Thirdly, andd ethical system must search for the justice. There should not be double standards for certain behaviors, except if there is no convincing and morally sustainable reason for discrimination.

Fourthly, ethical systems should be based on the freedom of choice. At the same time a system of ethics that is not embrace responsibility encourages freedom without responsibility and by doing that does not have the moral authority to encourage honorable behavior. If that happens, then we get, as has been said, – moral anarchy.

And finally, my firm belief is that we should use this sentence with regard to professional journalism: “As many rights that I might gain, I should also an gain equal amount of responsibility.”

In quality control – should we focus on Law or Ethics? The issue of quality is inescapable.

Yes, maintaining the quality of information, as we mentioned earlier, is just like having a code of conduct, is the restoration of the honor of journalism.

What is true on a national level, is also true internationally. A commitment to the quality of information and information flow to meet the urgent and demanding need for action in a troubled world is required on a global scale. To ensure freedom of information on this scale both global networks and democratic access are essential. Here the enemies of freedom are perhaps even more formidable, through intolerant or totalitarian governments and transnational capitalist corporations are not natural allies, and to some extent their interests conflict. But whether censorship — ideological, religious or commercial -– can prevail against the need for quality in the global media is not something that can today be predicted.

Ethical decisions

For the majority of journalists, being objective is a must and it is a shrine, but there also exists an acceptance of the stand that absolute objectivity is illusion. That is why journalists some times accept a less philosophical demanding definition that enables them to conduct their job without feeling that they have made a mistake. Due to that realistic point of view on objectivity, journalists aspire to keep outside their reports personal sympathies and opinions, to achieve balance within reporting and to rely on credible and responsible sources. According to that traditional point-of-view, media ethics is related to facts and impartiality within the carrying out of those facts.

Ethical decisions are always made within a certain particular context that includes political, social and cultural climate. Although context does not determine automatically the outcome of the ethical judgment, it does have an influence that cannot be ignored. De facto, the factors of the context, very often, are creating an internal morality conflict of the stances of our conscience about what we should do and what is popular to be done.

Also, we have to question as well the motives of the moral agent (moral agents are those who are making ethical decisions, regardless if they are acting independently or as representatives of some institutions, and all communicators are moral agents when they put themselves in conflict of ethical dilemmas of their professions and when they have to take full responsibility for their acts) because good motives sometimes might be used to justify something that looks like non-ethical act.

For example, a journalist can discover a case of corruption in the government –- that is journalistic techniques which the majority of us would tolerate (or even greeted) in the name of public good. However, motives cannot be analyzed only on the basis of their popularity or acceptance in public, but should have a view in regards to the consequences of the act.

The act is a component of the behavior within the process of communication. The act is something that attracts our attention through the acting of others and can lead us to describe their acts as either ethical or non-ethical. Acts can be verbal, as when a reporter lies about the sources of the information, or non-verbal, as when advertisers omit essential information about the product that might help a buyer to make a decision in regards to the buying of the product. Or, if, some TV station it provides a number to call and vote about certain issue through text messaging, while at the same time, lists the price of the telephone call can affect whether telephone calls are received exclusively because of that question.

An ethical solution should be judged in a sense of the relations of a moral agent with a person or persons or the public on which, in an ethical way, it is directly influenced. For example, magazines that are addressed to sophisticated readers could easily include a statement that consists of bawdry speech, but some local newspaper must avoid or censor that kind of statement. Remember, we mentioned earlier some political, social and cultural influences…

There are three moral markers that are fundamental in journalism, when ethics is in question: credibility, integrity and civility.

To be credible means that he/she is a trustful person and on whom you have confidence. From the ethical point of view, credibility is the starting point within our treatment towards others and full membership within the moral community.

Integrity is also key factor of moral development. Stephen Carter4 defines integrity as: a) making differences between good and bad; b) acting on the basis of observed differences, and even on a personal damage and c) open talks that you are acting on the bases of making differences of good and bad. Of course, as we stated before, to this should be added readiness for taking over of the responsibility for your own affairs.

Civility might be described as “the first principle of morality”, because that encircles the stand about devotion and respect of others. Those ideas reflect within all leading religions in the world. The problem is, as always, in the implementation of what has been written in the Holy Books, isn’t it? At the XVI Century, Erasmus of Rotterdam5 wrote that “civility is what makes us possible to live together as society”. It encircles composition of the rules, very often on conventions, that makes apparatuses for the interaction with others.

With regards to values, we have a problem of journalistic and media neutrality. Is it possible to be neutral in certain cases – especially in those cases in which the violence, crime, and discrimination are affirmed?

Philippe Breton6 has underlined that “under the mask of division of work and professional ideology supported by so call neutralism, media are becoming most suitable mean for the spreading of xenophobic amalgams”, which can devastatingly act upon the public. Breton’s words can be portrayed on the area of any xenophobic territories in the World: “We are the best, but we do not know in what. What is more favorable one stand of one group about itself, it will be more unfavorable in regards all other groups, with a tendency for accusing others for the all misfortune of their group, and from there raises possibilities to have a conflict with other groups, and every conflict even more strengthen distrust and hatred.”

We then come to the issue of: Political corruption, which is, in the widest sense, every kind of misuse of authority for the reasons of personal and/or group benefit regardless if we are talking about the public or private sector. The word itself came from Latin word “corruptus” which means “destroy” or “corrupt” and when it is use as an adjective literary means: “completely destroyed/corrupted”. But, to be more specific, corruption is the misuse of power to gain private benefit. Corruption can be high, petty or political corruption, depending on the amount of money that is lost within the sector in which it happens. There is a definition from Vito Tanzi7 who says that corruption is purposely not complying with the principles of impartiality during decision making process with the goal of realizing advantages for the perpetrator or connected persons through that kind of procedures.

Corruption exists in every country in the world, democratic of non-democratic, in the west or the east, developed or non-developed, transition or non-transition country, so it looks like it is inherent in human civilization. However, within developing countries, the media is very often faced with the combination of the factors that creates a fertile ground for corruption, as it is lack of training and technical skills, law professional standards, limited financial resources, mat or by state controlled ownership structures of the media, inadequate or antidemocratic made law framework – forms of corruption in media starts from the bribe in the shape of cash for the news, through the organization of fake news, bestowal, hidden adverts and up to nepotism and controlling of the achieved private or political interests. The fight against corruption in media might involve a wide spectrum of the approach, starting from the raising of the conscience about ethical standards, strengthening of the freedom of the press, introducing of the adequate media politics and legislature, accentuation of the media responsibility, as well as support towards investigative journalism through the adequate education.

Why morality and ethics are important for professional journalists?

The answer is simple – To make a difference between good and evil – universal values as the truth, justice, love, beauty, freedom, goodness, solidarity, human dignity, peace-glorifying of the life. Characteristic attributes of the journalists are integrity, honesty, harmony, respect, sacrifice, trust. Questions about universal values and norms that came out of it becomes very important every time when basic human rights are brutally violated in the name of some state, national, racial, class, party interest.

When there is moral decay, than the laws are fulfilling the emptiness: that is why we have today so many laws and lawyers – A German saying states: “Where the law does not have power, that the power becomes the law.” I add that where we do not have the Rule of Law, we surely have Law of Rule.

By punishing and awarding we can come to expect decent behavior, but never we will come see a moral behavior, because the motive of the behavior has been imposed from outside and is not experienced from the inside. I can be obedient citizen, but not a moral person.

Legal norms are endured, moral norms are respected: distrust towards the state and their institutions is widely spread. That is why people more often break legal laws, and not moral norms.

The responsibility of journalists and the media considers responsible acting and behavior towards him/herself, people near them, others, call, nature, narrow groups and the whole community, respectively the state itself. Only when individuals become mature and achieve the ability for responsibility, will they become religious, customary, moral and legal subject, otherwise, without that he/she stays on the level of biological nature. Here is the key concept of conscience. Victor Hugo8 used to say: “I am a convict who only listen his own conscience.”

To have conscience means to be honest to myself. Conscience is the authority to which you cannot lie.

However, how to survive as a professional journalist in a World that has killed at least 110 journalists9 in 2015?

How to survive as professional journalist in a World where you are going to be killed or prosecuted just because you are doing a legitimate and sincere job as, I repeat, a professional journalist?

Again, the answer will not be blowing in the wind if everybody conducts their work ethically, like professional journalists do. Nothing more, or less, but who will be the one who will establish a comprehensive book of rules for such? I hope that you remember the one who did it more than 2000 years ago. That Holy Book still exists, but comprehensive ethics does not. Yet, maybe, if everybody just copies/pastes the work of professional journalists, the World might become a better place for living. Yes, that is the answer. And, please, do not shoot. Yet.

References:

1. Louis Alvin Day: Ethics in Media Communications: Cases and Controversies“:
https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Media-Communications-Controversies-InfoTrac/dp/0534637140

2. Society of Professional Journalists: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

3. A Notorious Fraud – the Robert Maxwell Farrago – by Australian guardians: http://australianguardians.org/?page_id=808

4. Stephen L. Carter „The culture of disbelief“: http://www.stephencarterbooks.com/books/nonfiction/integrity

5. Erasmus of Rotterdam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus

6. Phillipe Breton: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Breton

7. Vito Tanzi: https://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/FT/staffp/1998/12-98/pdf/tanzi.pdf

8. Victor Hugo: http://www.biography.com/people/victor-hugo-9346557

9. Reporters without borders: https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-annual-round-110-journalists-killed-2015

By Jaya Ramachandran

Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have rejected a report by the so-called Middle East Quartet – comprising the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union – urging both parties to indulge in “meaningful negotiations that resolve all final status issues”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report, saying that it “perpetuates the myth that Israeli construction in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace.” The Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly said the report doesn’t meet the Palestinians’ expectations ‘as a nation living under a foreign colonial military occupation.’

The report was released on July 1, two days after the killing of a 13-year old girl by a Palestinian youth. It calls on Israel and Palestine to “independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution” and to “refrain from unilateral steps that prejudice the outcome of the final negotiations”.

Subsequent to the publication of the report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked Israel and the Palestine Authority to engage with the Quartet to implement the findings “to rebuild hope among Palestinians and Israelis in a political solution and to create the conditions to return to meaningful negotiations”.

Ban underscored that there is a strong need for affirmative steps to reverse negative trends on the ground which risk entrenching a one-State reality of “perpetual occupation and conflict” that is incompatible with the national aspirations of both peoples.

The Quartet has been working on the report since February 2016 when at its meeting in Munich it reiterated its concern that current trends are imperilling the viability of the two-state solution. Underlining its commitment to supporting a comprehensive, just, and lasting resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Quartet agreed to prepare a report on the situation on the ground.

The Quartet reiterates that a negotiated two-state outcome is the only way to achieve an enduring peace that meets Israeli security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues.

A two-state solution implies the existence of the State of Israel and State of Palestine within pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

The report is the first of its kind, which analyses the impediments to a lasting resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and offers recommendations on the way forward, urging Israel to stop its settlement policy and Palestine to end incitement to violence.

The report provides recommendations to what it has identified as the major threats to achieving a negotiated peace: continued violence, terrorist attacks against civilians and incitement to violence; settlement construction and expansion; and the Palestinian Authority’s lack of control in Gaza.

The Diplomatic Quartet’s main recommendations are:

• Both sides should work to de-escalate tensions by exercising restraint and refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric.
• The Palestinian Authority should act decisively and take all steps within its capacity to cease incitement to violence and strengthen ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, including by clearly condemning all acts of terrorism.
• Israel should cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion, designating land for exclusive Israeli use, and denying Palestinian development.
• Israel should implement positive and significant policy shifts, including transferring powers and responsibilities in Area C, consistent with the transition to greater Palestinian civil authority contemplated by prior agreements. Progress in the areas of housing, water, energy, communications, agriculture, and natural resources, along with significantly easing Palestinian movement restrictions, can be made while respecting Israel’s legitimate security needs.
• The Palestinian leadership should continue their efforts to strengthen institutions, improve governance, and develop a sustainable economy. Israel should take all necessary steps to enable this process, in line with the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee recommendations.
• All sides must continue to respect the ceasefire in Gaza, and the illicit arms buildup and militant activities must be terminated.

Further to these recommendations, the Quartet is encouraging the international community to accelerate its efforts to address the “dire” humanitarian, reconstruction and recovery needs of the people in Gaza, including expediting the disbursement of assistance pledges.

The Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, briefed the UN Security Council on the report on June 30. He said it is now time for both the Israelis and the Palestinians to rise to the challenge. (

The importance of the Quartet’s report is underlined by the fact that at an international conference in Paris on June 3, 2016, China joined Russia in stressing the primacy of the Middle East Quartet in assisting efforts towards a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

According to The BRICS Post, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told UN Secretary-General Ban that Beijing is willing to work closely with the UN to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Wang said China firmly supports the peace process in the Middle East, the two-state solution as the basis of the Palestinian question, the resumption of peace talks, and the role of the Middle East Quartet.

The conference, hosted by France, was joined by representatives of the UN, Arab League, members of the Middle East Quartet and foreign ministers from around 20 countries. It aimed at finding ways to revive the peace process between two sides. South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were among those who participated.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for the Middle East, warned that “we are fast approaching the point of no return”.

“The pause in the political dialogue between the parties is far too long. The two-state solution is jeopardized. Although it has not been removed from the agenda, the prospects of a just settlement on the internationally recognized legal basis are virtually fading away before our very eyes,” Bogdanov said.

Russia has also warned that the “divisions among the Palestinians” are an “impediment” to the peace process. “This issue should be prioritized to ensure that the Palestinians are represented in the negotiations on the final status by a single united delegation,” the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said.

In January 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, adding that the Palestinian problem “should not be marginalised”.

“China supports the peaceful process in the Middle East [and] the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital being eastern Jerusalem,” Xi said in Egypt.

The Chinese view is shared by other BRICS countries that include Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa. They too have backed the two-state solution for the conflict at international forums including the UN.

Reuters reports that a suicide bomber attacked a police station in the Indonesian city of Solo on Tuesday.

The suicide bomber killed himself and wounded a police officer. No other casualties were reported, according to Reuters.

“He broke into the yard, he was on a motorbike, and detonated himself,” national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told MetroTV.

Indonesia faced an attack by Daesh militants in January. Militants attacked a Starbucks in Jakarta, the capital, and killed four people.

The country’s security and anti-terrorism forces are engaged in an ongoing campaign against Daesh propaganda that targets Indonesian youth.

Original article

Normalcy prevailed over Madinah as the region’s Governor, Prince Faisal bin Salman, prayed amongst hundreds of thousands of worshipers at the Prophet’s Mosque hours after a suicide bomber attacked a police post outside the holy mosque.

The blast came after mosques were targeted in both Jeddah and Qatif.

Four policemen were killed and five others were injured in Madinah when a suicide bomber struck in the vicinity of a police post outside the Prophet’s Mosque, according to the interior ministry.

The bombing took place in a parking lot between the city court and the mosque, visited by millions every year.

When security officials became suspicious of an individual who was heading to the Prophet’s Mosque they approached him resulting in him triggering his explosive belt killing four of the officers and injuring others.

Videos circulated on social media showed a car burning and at least two security officers lying on the ground and two others lay crumpled near a burning car. The bomber also died in the attack, which took place at the time of iftar. No worshipper was injured in the attack, said a press correspondent from the scene.

Earlier, in Qatif, two suicide bombers blew themselves up one after the other outside the Faraj Al-Omran Mosque. No casualties were reported. A witness said a car bomb was detonated near the mosque, which was followed by a suicide attack just before 7 p.m. Police have launched an investigation into the attack.

Before that at 2:15 a.m., a suicide bomber blew himself up near the US Consulate in Jeddah. Security officers confronted him as he moved suspiciously at a parking lot of the Dr. Soliman Fakeih Hospital. Two policemen were wounded lightly in the attack.

The bomber was named as Abdullah Qalzar Khan, an expat from Pakistan, who lived in Jeddah with his wife and her parents and came to the country 12 years ago to work as a private driver.

Photos taken from the scene showed the bomber’s body dismembered by the blast.

No claims of responsibility for any of the attacks have been made.

Daesh has carried out a series of bombing and shooting attacks in Saudi Arabia since 2014 that have killed scores of people, mostly Shiites and members of the security services. In January, a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Al-Ahsa, killing four people before worshippers disarmed and tied up an accomplice who had shot at them.

In October last year, a gunman opened fire on worshippers in Qatif, killing five people before he was shot dead by police.

By Sandip Kumar Mishra*

North Korea seems to be adamant to seek further sophistication in its nuclear weaponisation programme, despite international pressure and sanctions to the contrary. Through its fourth nuclear test in January 2016, it wanted to demonstrate to the international community that its nuclear programme was non-negotiable. The UNSC Resolution 2270 and all other previous resolutions and sanctions appear to be ineffective.

On 22-23 June 2016 North Korea’s participation in the Annual Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) in Beijing, a platform for nuclear envoys from the six countries of the Six-Party Talks, is indicative of North Korea softening its stand. Although the platform is an informal gathering, since the formal Six-Party Talks have not been held after 2008, it is the only mechanism that brings nuclear envoys from these countries to one table. North Korean participation in the dialogue happened after a two-year gap as it did not send its envoys for the dialogues in 2014 and 2015. In the June 2016 dialogue, Choe Son-hui, Deputy Director for North American Affairs at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry and the Deputy Chief Envoy for the Six-Party talks participated in the deliberations.

However, on the very first day of the dialogue, it became clear that none of the parties had any creative plan to move forward. While North Korea refused any compromise on its nuclear programme, the five other countries repeated their commitment to denuclearising North Korea. It was reported that the North Korean envoy very forcefully stated, “The Six-Party talks are dead.” This means that North Korea is quite firm in maintaining that it will not give up its nuclear programme.

The deadlock on the North Korean nuclear issue has been one of the destabilising factors in regional politics. There are, broadly, three positions represented by the six parties involved in the negotiations. First, South Korea, US and Japan stress that North Korea must first give up its nuclear weapons to have any other discussions and exchanges with the outside world. These countries have been, bilaterally and multilaterally, trying to further isolate North Korea and arm-twist it into abandoning its nuclear programme. Second, China and Russia are also in favour of North Korean denuclearisation but they do not support South Korea, US and Japan’s isolationist methods. Third, North Korea itself is stubborn to retain its nuclear programme and further enhance it. According to the subjective perception of North Korea, abandoning its nuclear and missile programmes would mean an end to the North Korean regime.

It is interesting to note that all the other five countries seek a denuclearised North Korea. The US and China, who otherwise contest each other on several issues in the Asia-Pacific, seem to be in agreement on the final goal of a non-nuclear North Korea. Consequently, if these countries take a more accommodative approach it would be easy to reach a common understanding to achieve this objective. Since, arm-twisting and sanctions have not been very effective in stopping North Korean nuclearisation, South Korea, US and Japan may need to go along with China and Russia. This means that they need to have a common engagement policy towards Pyongyang. It must be underlined that this common engagement policy should be based on transparency and mutual trust. More so because after the third nuclear test by North Korea in early 2013, China was cooperating with the international community in putting pressure on North Korea. However, after the fourth nuclear test, in January 2016, the US and South Korea squarely blamed China for being unable to stop it. As per China’s perspective, they were doing enough to discourage North Korea and the test was not because of China but in spite of China. This blame-game has distanced the five countries on the North Korean nuclear issue and it must be avoided for any future common engagement process to be effective.

In recent years, through several pronouncements and diplomatic moves by North Korea, it is clear that Pyongyang is also willing to interact with the international community. It would be better to have a 2.0 version of the Six-Party Talks among these countries in which broader peace and confidence-building measures would be discussed. The North Korean nuclear issue should not be part of its agenda at least in the first few rounds. It is impractical to follow a ‘nuclear issue first and peace and all other issues later’ approach when it is not moving forward. The sequencing should be reversed as ‘peace and other issues first and nuclear issue later’. Rather than blaming North Korea for being adamant on its position, it would be wise for the other five countries to move beyond their diplomatic stubbornness. This change in stance might lead to the positive outcome that is being sought.

* Sandip Kumar Mishra
Associate Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, & Visiting Fellow, IPCS.

As we gather with family and friends to celebrate the July 4th holiday we should remember that we are not celebrating the state, but rather commemorating an act of secession from an oppressive government. We are celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain – a daring move by the Founders inspired by a desire for liberty.

Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” That does not only mean that we should be prepared to defend against foreign invaders. Perhaps more importantly it means that we must retain the lessons from the original American revolt and guard against a government that views the people as the enemy.

We are familiar with the great observation from essayist Randolph Bourne that “War is the health of the state.” But Bourne further explained that, “if the State’s chief function is war, then the State must suck out of the nation a large part of its energy for its purely sterile purposes of defense and aggression. It devotes to waste or to actual destruction as much as it can of the vitality of the nation.”

War benefits the special interests. It benefits the military-industrial complex. It benefits the neocons whose “expertise” always leads to disaster. It benefits the mainstream media. It benefits the wealthy. As Bourne said, it sucks the productive parts from the economy and concentrates them in the hands of the state for destructive purposes.

It is often said – and surely it will be repeated many times today – that our nation’s wars have preserved our freedoms. That is not true. Aside from our fight to secede from British rule, America’s wars have one-by-one diminished our freedoms. They have not been fought to bring us liberty, but have most often been fought at the behest of deceitful and evil people to no benefit but their own. Thousands have died in vain on the lies of the war-promoters. Much of our freedom has died as well.

We should ask ourselves whether the last 15 years of the war on terror have benefited the rest of us. Are we safer? More free? Is any end in sight?

No to all the above. In our age of undeclared war, we are also in perpetual war. Trillions of dollars have been spent and millions of lives lost to no benefit. Instead, we are mired ever deeper in the Middle East. Drone attacks proceed at the same pace. We are “pivoting” to Asia not with friendship but with warships. And some fools even think it’s a good idea to try to provoke Russia into World War III!

At home the government uses the threat of terrorism to further gut the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments. Yet in the 15 years since 9/11 less than 100 Americans have been killed by “radical jihadists” – including the recent attack in Orlando.

The state uses war to take away our freedoms. If on this 240th anniversary of the original July 4th we wish to survive as a free society we must begin to exercise some of that “eternal vigilance” against an ever more oppressive state. If the people demand change, the politicians will listen.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Ajai Sahni*

The July 2, 2016, hostage crisis and slaughter at the Holey Artisan restaurant in upscale Gulshan, Dhaka, was unprecedented in its character and scale in the history of terrorism in Bangladesh. It reflects an abrupt escalation of the challenge for the state apparatus and raises complex questions of counter-terrorist (CT) responses in the past, and of future imperatives.

CT strategies and tactics are unlikely, however, to be better informed by the shrill cacophony of global commentary on this incident, and on initiatives of the Bangladesh Government to contain Islamist radicalization and terrorism in this country. Such commentary has been overwhelmingly unaware of, or has studiously ignored, the history of state-backed Islamist radicalization under preceding regimes over decades, and the inextricable intermeshing of the principal political parties in Opposition – the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) – and processes of radicalization and violent Islamist mobilization. Worse, much of this commentary, particularly a powerful stream emerging from the West, has been actively hostile and obstructive to the Sheikh Hasina Government’s efforts to reverse trends towards radicalization in the country, including her extraordinary commitment to bring the guilty of the 1971 War Crimes to justice.

Given the sheer ignorance of or disinformation implicit in, much of the discourse, it is necessary to reiterate, here, that those who participated in the atrocities during the Liberation War of 1971 (an estimated three million were killed and 10 million were displaced in nine months of genocidal war and campaigns of mass rape waged by the Pakistan Army against its own people) were the very groups and individuals who came to dominate the processes of Islamist radicalization in the country once they were ‘rehabilitated’ to political prominence after the assassination of the country’s first President and subsequently Prime Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the slaughter of almost his entire family, in 1975. Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana (who were outside Bangladesh at the time of the coup), were the only members of Mujibur Rahman’s immediate family to survive the massacre. Zia-ur-Rahman, an Army General who seized power after two years of chaos thereafter, and declared himself President, promulgated an Indemnity Ordinance which conferred immunity from prosecution on the Army officers who plotted and executed the bloody coup against Mujibur Rahman. Begum Khaleda Zia, the chief of the Opposition BNP, is the widow of Ziaur Rahman. There is deep, enduring, personal and bloody history here, and current incidents and trends in terrorism in Bangladesh cannot be correctly assessed unless they are placed squarely within its context.

One of the crucial questions that the Holey Artisan attack has revived – as has every stabbing and hacking incident in Bangladesh over the past months – is the role of Daesh (Islamic State, previously Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham). Daesh has regularly claimed every single incident of Islamist terrorism, including the succession of hackings/stabbings since September 2015. It is useful to remind ourselves, here, that this series of targeted attacks – against intellectuals, bloggers, atheists, ‘anti-Islamic’ individuals, minorities, and foreigners – began well before Daesh saw a propaganda opportunity in it. Indeed, ‘lists’ of individuals marked for brutal murder, were circulated soon after the Shabagh Movement was initiated in February 2013, and the first killing in this sequence – Ahmad Rajib Haider’s – dates back to February 15, 2013. The early succession of murders attracted fitful attention; but once the local perpetrators began to announce affiliation to Daesh or to al Qaeda, these supposed acts of ‘international terrorism’ excited great attention in Western capitals and media.

The Bangladesh Government has consistently denied any international terrorist formation’s presence in the country – particularly including Daesh and al Qaeda. These denials have been cavalierly dismissed by most commentators, who have displayed a sustained preference for hysteria over reality. The problem, essentially, is that ‘presence’, ‘collaboration’, ‘affiliation’, or any of their variants, are left intentionally undefined. Consequently, the bare claim that a group or individual is ‘affiliated to’ or ‘represents’ Daesh is sufficient proof of the ‘fact’.

It is, however, meaningless to speak of such affiliation or representation unless some operational linkages – the transfer of resources, technologies, fighters, know how, training, or the chain of command and control – are demonstrated. This has not been the case in a single incident in the past.

The Holey Bakery attack, on first sight, appears to be an exception. The attackers sent pictures from the place of their butchery to a private Daesh-linked email account during their operation, and these pictures were almost immediately uploaded. To many, this suggests incontrovertible proof of the Daesh ‘presence’ in Bangladesh, and the Government’s insistence that the operation was executed by a domestic terrorist formation, the Jamaat-ul-Mujahiddeen Bangladesh (JMB), rings hollow.

Available intelligence, however, suggests that these were one-way communications, and that no contact between the perpetrators of the Holey Bakery attack and Daesh command existed prior to the attack. Of course, once the photographs had been sent, Daesh quickly seized the opportunity to claim the attack, but there is no suggestion that it had any prior awareness even of the existence of this group. This has been the pattern of past claims as well, absent the ‘validating’ photographs, with local killers claiming Daesh affiliation and Daesh grabbing the chance to claim another wilayat (province) in its imagined global empire.

What is actually happening, here, is that factions or elements within existing domestic terrorist or radicalised groups have announced a transfer of their loyality to Daesh, even as they continue to engage in precisely the kind of activities they were involved in even before such a transfer. There is no augmentation of capacities or of resources.

The reality is, the Sheikh Hasina Government has decimated the leadership of established Islamist terrorist formations and their sympathetic institutions, and fragmented their remnants. Enormously weakened splinters have long been attempting to regroup, but have found few takers for their domestic agenda, despite the enormous proliferation of Islamist fundamentalist and radical institutions in the country over the past decades. In identifying with global jihadist organizations the surviving fractions evidently hope to improve their capacities for local mobilization – and are being enormously aided in this by the Western media and political leaderships who have accepted all claims of such institutional and ideological identity at face value, and compounded the sensation and hysteria around even the most minor acts of terrorism, offering vast quantities of the ‘oxygen of publicity’ to tiny and marginalized groupings. At the same time, they have mounted vicious critiques of Dhaka, on the one hand, for its ‘failure’ to rein in terrorists, and, on the other, against the purported ‘excesses’ against political groups aligned to these.

This does, of course, raise the question of the abrupt escalation in the Holey Bakery attack, from the stabbings and hackings of the past (though this was the method of choice by which the perpetrators dispatched their hostages in this case as well) to this relatively sophisticated operation using automatic weapons and explosives. Such capabilities have long existed within terrorist groups in Bangladesh, though they were not domestically deployed. Indeed, through 2004-2008, a Bangladeshi ‘footprint’ was recorded in almost every major Islamist terrorist attack in India, outside Jammu & Kashmir, particularly involving Harkat-ul-Jihad Isalmi Bangladesh (HuJI-B), often in collaboration with Pakistani formations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Mujahiddeen (HuM), among others, as well as with the Indian Mujahiddeen (IM). Bangladesh has, moreover, long been a major transit route for the smuggling of small arms and explosives into India’s troubled Northeast, and is domestically awash with such weapons. These capacities were not domestically deployed, first, because radical Islamist groups enjoyed significant state support under the BNP-JeI regime, and were used to sustain a calibrated campaign of intimidation through low grade terrorism and street violence; and subsequently, under the shock of the sweeping measures initiated by the Sheikh Hasina regime since 2009, which decapitated and dismantled most of the established terrorist formations in the country. Evidently, a degree of recovery, at least by small cells, has now been engineered.

Significantly, the Bangladesh Government has suggested that Pakistan and its external intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), were likely behind the Holey Artisan attack. Given the record of history, this is a credible thesis. Pakistan has long meddled in internal affairs in Bangladesh, principally through the BNP-JeI combine, and its affiliate radical formations. Crucially, after US and coalition forces swept across Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan facilitated the transfer of large numbers of foreign and Bangladeshi fighters to Bangladesh, and then fomented an accelerated process of radicalization, creating a measure of instability that inspired some of the more febrile minds of the time to describe the country as “the next Afghanistan”. History and generalized allegations, however, cannot suffice. Bangladeshi authorities will have to provide concrete evidence of direct operational linkages between the terrorists at the Holey Artisan and the Pakistani intelligence establishment or its proxies, if these charges are to stick.

Bangladesh is a country of over 160 million, primarily Sunni, Muslims – the population profile purportedly most susceptible to the Wahabi lunacy that Daesh and al Qaeda represent. And yet, the numbers of Bangladeshis who are believed to have joined Daesh forces in Iraq-Syria are in the low single digits (compared to the thousands who have flooded this theatre from Western countries with minuscule Muslim populations). Indeed, Daesh admits to its failure in what it describes as ‘Bengal’, even while it claims the various domestic terrorist strikes there. Thus, in a detailed profile of its sole Bangladeshi ‘martyr’, the latest volume (14) of Dabiq, the Daesh mouthpiece, concedes that he is among the very few who have joined its jihad in Iraq-Syria from this country, observing,

Abu Jandal al-Bangali (may Allah accept him) was among the few muwahhidn who emigrated from the land of Bengal to the blessed land of Sham by Allah’s grace… Abu Jandalgrew up in Dhaka and came from an affluent family with deep connections in the Bengali military. His father was a murtadd officer of the taghut forces and was killed during an internal mutiny of “Bangladesh” border guards in “2009.”

This did not happen on its own. With all its faults – and I am not competent to comment on its political and economic attainments or failings – the Sheikh Hasina Government has done infinitely more against Islamist terrorism and radicalization, certainly, than any other Government in South Asia, and possibly any other Government in the world; and it has done so despite the enormous hostility of powerful forces in the West.

A second perversity of the responses to the Holey Bakery attack is the astonishment expressed by many to the profile of the attackers – who came from ‘well to do’ backgrounds and some of the best educational institutions in the country. This astonishment should, in fact, be astonishing. Despite voluminous documentation to the contrary, the fiction that all Islamist terrorists are drawn from madrassahs and from impoverished backgrounds, dominates the commentary, and every time numerous exceptions are brought to light (as, indeed, in the case of the Holey Artisan attackers), this information is received with an air of bewilderment. The reality is, there has always been a significant representation of educated and relatively affluent individuals (Osama bin Laden was not brought up in destitution, nor was Ayman al Zawahiri), not only among Islamist terrorists, but in terrorist movements across the world. Why does the presence of some modestly upper class children among terrorists in Bangladesh raise so many questions, while Anders Behring Breivik, scion of a wealthy family in the very staid and peaceful community of Oslo in Norway, and who slaughtered 77 of his own countrymen and women, provokes no comparable paroxysms of psychological analysis? Post World War II terrorist movements in the West, including the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Japanese and German Red Armies, the Italian Red Brigade, among others, found their leaderships and recruits among the educated and well off in Europe and Japan. Across South Asia, numberless youth drawn from notable – and not just moderately well off – families have joined various state-backed and global ‘jihads’.

There has, of course, been a further skew towards the mobilization of the more educated and relatively affluent among those who are attracted to Daesh. The reason for this should be fairly obvious. Traditional Islamist terrorist recruitment was face-to-face, and often preyed relatively disproportionately on the poor and the poorly educated, and among its purportedly ‘natural’ constituency in madrassahs, mosques and other fundamentalist idaras. Daesh’s global outreach is overwhelmingly through the internet, and this creates a natural educational and economic barrier to its mobilization. Unless an individual is sufficiently educated to acquire a certain minimal proficiency in the use of the internet, and has access to a personal or private computer – internet cafes are unlikely to be safe places to try to get into Daesh websites over any extended period – they cannot be targeted by Daesh propaganda and recruitment campaigns.

It is crucial, here, to distinguish between radicalization and mobilization/ recruitment. Despite all the noise about cyber radicalization, very little radicalization actually takes places on the internet. Individuals radicalized within their own communities, or in sub-cultures within their own communities, preferentially access extremist Islamist propaganda material – including Daesh campaigns – on the internet. It is, consequently, far more accurate to speak of cyber mobilization and recruitment, rather than cyber radicalization. This distinction is crucial, and would have critical impact on the application of CT resources and policies.

The Holey Artisan has brought disproportionate attention to Islamist terrorism and extremism in Bangladesh, and many have speculated that this will catalyze a spike in terrorism, not only in this country, but across the region. Some ‘experts’ are particularly concerned that Bangladesh may emerge as a ‘base’ for attacks against India. Apart from the fact that this has been the case in the past, and that India needs to take care of its own security much better than it presently does, it should equally be realized that the prominence that this incident has secured is a double edged weapon. Just as too much attention has resulted in a crystallization of forces against Daesh in Iraq-Syria, and consequent and mounting reverses, the escalation that the Holey Artisan attack represents can only galvanize the Sheikh Hasina Government to redouble its efforts to identify and neutralize the Islamist extremist complex in the country.

Crucially, in this context, there is urgent need to abandon the hypocrisy and opportunism that has dominated global responses to terrorism, if any enduring success is to be achieved. Every time there is an attack in the West, there are calls for global cooperation against terror; every time there is a stabbing, hacking, or, in the present case, major terrorist incident, in Bangladesh, a tirade of criticism is unleashed against the Sheikh Hasina regime, arguing that her ‘stifling of the political opposition’ has strengthened the extremists. This is contrafactual nonsense, and displays an ignorance of trends in radicalization, Islamist extremism and terrorism in Bangladesh.

It is not clear how arresting Islamists affiliated to political formations that openly advocate radical Islam as their official ideology is a violation of human rights in Bangladesh; but banning the burqa, shutting down mosques, indiscriminate arrests, and a rising politics of racist hatred in the West, uphold the same human rights and makes democracy secure. It is time to acknowledge that domestic radicalization is the base on which international terrorism builds, and that this is, equally, the case in the ‘advanced’ countries, as it is in the relatively disadvantaged. If there is to be any meaningful CT cooperation across the world, there must be a clear recognition of the political formations that contribute to and support Islamist radicalization, on the one hand; and of those that have stood firmly against these trends, on the other.

* Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management & South Asia Terrorism Portal

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

On June 23, 2016, normal life in Imphal and other areas was crippled on the first day of the 48 hours State-wide bandh (general shut down strike) imposed by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) demanding implementation of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) system in Manipur.

On the same day, acting on specific intelligence, District Police arrested Nameirakpam Mangi aka Yaima (48), the ‘publicity in-charge’ of the Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System (JCILPS), Sagolband New Cachar unit, along with 27 Gelatine sticks, 50 detonators, two 6-foot long non-electric safety fuses, two mobile phones and one Honda Activa during a raid of on house in Yurembam Mayai Leikai in Imphal West District. Nameirakpam, a member of National Revolutionary Front of Manipur (NRFM), further revealed that he was working under the direct command of NRFM ‘commander’ Binodon aka Kishan aka Wangba, and Dhabalo aka Paikhomba.

Earlier, on June 15, 2016, a scuffle erupted between the Police and protesters when Police fired tear gas shells as protesters tried to storm the Chief Minister’s (CM) office after a joint sit-in protest at Keishampat Leimajam Leikai Community Hall in Imphal West District, over the ILP issue. Women protesters lay down on the streets of Keishampat shouting slogans such as, ‘Implement ILPS in the State’, ‘Go back foreigners’, ‘Long live Manipur’ and ‘We condemn wanted tag on Kh Ratan’ [Khomdram Ratan is the JCILPS convenor], etc., as Police attempted to stop them from marching towards the CM’s office.

ILP is an official travel document issued by the Government of India to permit inward travel of an Indian citizen into a protected area for a limited period. It is obligatory for Indians residing outside such restricted areas to obtain permission prior to entering them. The system was introduced by the British to protect their commercial interests, particularly in oil and tea, and continues now essentially as a mechanism to firewall the tribal peoples and their cultures from economic and cultural onslaughts by outsiders.

The first demand for the extension of the ILP system to Manipur was made in the Indian Parliament in 1980. The mass movement in support of this demand Manipur commenced in 2011, after Census of Manipur showed that the population of Non-Manipuris in the State had grown at an alarming rate. According to the 2011 Census, Manipur’s population is 2.7 million, of which 1.7 million are indigenous people, while the remaining one million have their roots outside the State. The ILP system, intended to regulate the influx of migrants and foreigners, presently exists in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. Significantly, urging the Centre to introduce to include Manipur under the scheme, the Manipur Assembly passed a resolution on July 13, 2012, declaring: “That the Manipur Legislative Assembly passes a Resolution to extend and adopt the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulations, 1873, with necessary changes in the point of details to the State of Manipur and to urge the Government of India to comply with the same.” The Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulations, 1873, are the legislative underpinning of the ILP. Further, during a debate in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) on November 29, 2012, Dr. Thokchom Meinya, the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Inner Manipur constituency, strongly urged upon the Union Government and the Home Ministry in particular to immediately look into the matter of introducing the ILP system in the State.

On March 16, 2015, the State Assembly passed a Bill “The Manipur Regulation of Visitors, Tenants & Migrant Workers Bill 2015” with a clause that purportedly enables migrants to purchase land in Manipur. However, the Bill made it mandatory for non-Manipuris to register themselves with the Government for reasons of “their safety and security and for the maintenance of public order”, upon entering the State. The Bill was a step towards regulating the movement of ‘outsiders’ and fulfilled the longstanding demand of powerful local groups, but failed to satisfy the hardliners. Expectedly, on June 25, 2015, the JCILPS, an umbrella organisation of 30 civil bodies in Manipur, restarted its agitation demanding withdrawal of the Bill and also submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister, Okram Ibobi Singh, urging the State to introduce a fresh Bill that would restrict and regulate the influx of outsiders and internal migrants, whose demographic influence ‘threatened the socio-economic, cultural and political practices of the people of the State’.

Regrettably, the stir intensified with the killing of Sapam Robin Hood, a class XI student, in Police firing on July 8, 2015, when a large number of students from leading schools of Imphal who joined the protesters to demand the introduction of the ILP Bill in the July assembly session. The State faced a complete blockade on numerous occasions. Subsequently, on July 12, 2015, the Manipur Government withdrew the controversial Manipur Regulation of Visitors, Tenants and Migrant Workers’ Bill, 2015. Thereafter, on August 28, 2015, the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed three Bills – The Protection of Manipur People’s Bill, 2015; The Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (7th Amendment) Bill 2015 and The Manipur Shops and Establishment (MS&E) (2nd Amendment) Bill 2015, each intended to check various aspects of demographic imbalances in the State. The Bills place restrictions on the entry into and exit from Manipur for Non Manipur persons and tenants; prohibit the sale of land belonging to a Scheduled Tribe (ST) person in the Valley areas to a non-ST persons without the prior consent of the Deputy Commissioner concerned; and make it mandatory for all shop owners to register their employees, respectively.

The tribal communities in Manipur, including the Hmars, Nagas and Kukis, have, however, spoken in unison against the Bills as they suspect that these would lead to dilution of tribal rights over their lands. Tribal groups like the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO), the All Naga Students’ Union of Manipur (ANSAM) and the United Naga Council (UNC) raised a united voice, particularly against the land Bill. The crux of the problem of the Bills is in their interpretation. While the Valley people, predominantly Meiteis, view the Bills as a mechanism to protect the State and its people from outsiders, the Hill people (various tribal formations) see the Bills as a threat to their rights over identity and land.

Unfortunately, the agitation intensified when nine protesting tribal youth were killed in Police firing on August 31, 2015, at Churachandpur District. According to reports, the bodies of the victims are still being kept at a morgue, as family members refuse to claim them as a mark of protest. H. Mangchinkhup, the convener of the Joint Action Committee against Inner Line Permit (JACILP) declared, on December 9, 2015, “We will not bury the bodies till the three Bills are repealed. They will be kept in the morgue in Churachandpur till our demands are met.” In view of the opposition from the tribal groups in the State, the Governor did not give his assent to the Bills but sent them to the President on September 16, 2015, with the remark: “I reserve the Bills for consideration of the President.”

Significantly, on May 11, 2016, President Pranab Mukherjee issued his response, remarking: “I withhold assent from the Bills.” However, the Chief Minister of Manipur and other political leaders kept this information as a closely guarded secret for over a month, while people continued to demonstrate in the streets demanding implementation of ILP.

On June 19, 2016, JACILP thanked the President of India and the Union Government for upholding the sanctity of the Constitution by withholding the Protection of Manipur People’s Bill, 2015, and wished and prayed that the Bill along with the other two ‘anti-tribal’ Bills – the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (Seventh Amendment) Bill, 2015 and the Manipur Shops and Establishments (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015 – be rejected.

The recent chain of protests was sparked on June 10, 2016, when a 10-day economic blockade and ban on construction of all ongoing national projects in Hill (tribal) areas began in Manipur, leaving a large number of goods-laden trucks stranded on the inter-State borders. The blockade was jointly called by JAC of Churachandpur and an apex tribal body Outer Manipur Tribal’s Forum (OMTF) comprising UNC, Zomi Council, Thadou Inpi, Hmar Inpui and Mizo People Convention (MPC), protesting against the process of implementation of ILPS in Manipur through conversion of the three ILP-related Bills into Acts.

On the other hand, demanding the speedy implementation of the ILP system, on June 25, 2016, a group of people staged a protest demonstration under the aegis of the Thangmeiband Kendra Development Organisation (TAKDO), led by Thangmeiband Assembly Constituency (AC) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Khomdram Joykisan. Protestors displayed placards that read: “Government of Manipur should not blemish democracy”, “Enforce ILPS in Manipur”, “We condemn declaration of former JCILPS convenor Khomdram Ratan as wanted man” etc.

Other groups of the State also came forward to show their solidarity with the demand for implementation of ILP. On June 27, 2016, sit-in-protests were staged at different places in the State under the aegis of JCILPS, with participation of numerous organisations, including Haobam Marak Lourembam Leikai, Haobam Marak Chingtham Leikai, Konjeng Leikai Club Keithel, Konjeng Langpoklakpam Leikai, Kwakeithel Konjeng Leikai, Kwakeithel Konjeng Awang Leikai and Kwakeithel Lamdong Leikai. Women’s groups such as Women’s Welfare Association, Yumnam Khunou Makha Leikai, Women’s Empowerment Association, Yumnam Khunou, Meira Paibis (Mothers’ Association) of Wangkhei Khunou, Sinam and Ishikha, also participated in the protests.

Meanwhile, apprehensions were raised among other groups as well. Announcing the formation of the United Gorkha Committee Manipur (UGCM) on June 27, 2016, Hari Prasad Nepal, Bhumi Prasad Vikas and Shiva Kumar Basnet, who were elected as president, vice president and general secretary, respectively, gave an assurance that grievances and issues related to the Gorkha community would be addressed, and that the Gorkha position would be voiced before the new drafting committee on ILP system.

On June 28, 2016, Manipur Deputy CM Gaikhangam urged all stakeholders of the Hills and Valley to extend sincere cooperation to the State Government in drafting a new and inclusive ILP related Bill in the State Assembly, asserting, “The anti-Bill group from the Hills is still reluctant to come out for a clear-cut solution. They should also join the effort to help introduce a new Bill.”

The issue of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ has been a cause of major conflict in Manipur – and, indeed, across much of India’s Northeast – and has also aggravated tensions between various ethnic communities. The Centre’s propensity to brushing the issue under the carpet, even as the continued and substantial influx of foreigners is tolerated, has made locals hostile even to migrants from other parts of India. These competing ethnic demands and rivalries, and the failure of the State to resolve the consequent conflicts, continue to undermine peace in the State.

* Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

While strokes are known to increase risk for dementia, much less is known about diseases of large and small blood vessels in the brain, separate from stroke, and how they relate to dementia. Diseased blood vessels in the brain itself, which commonly is found in elderly people, may contribute more significantly to Alzheimer’s disease dementia than was previously believed, according to new study results published in June in The Lancet Neurology, a British medical journal.

“Cerebral vessel pathology might be an under-recognized risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease dementia,” the researchers wrote.

The study by researchers from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center analyzed medical and pathologic data on 1,143 older individuals who had donated their brains for research upon their deaths, including 478 (42 percent) with Alzheimer’s disease dementia. Analyses of the brains showed that 445 (39 percent) of study participants had moderate to severe atherosclerosis — plaques in the larger arteries at the base of the brain obstructing blood flow — and 401 (35 percent) had brain arteriolosclerosis — in which there is stiffening or hardening of the smaller artery walls.

The study found that the worse the brain vessel diseases, the higher the chance of having dementia, which is usually attributed to Alzheimer’s disease. The increase was 20 to 30 percent for each level of worsening severity. The study also found that atherosclerosis and arteriolosclerosis are associated with lower levels of thinking abilities, including in memory and other thinking skills, and these associations were present in persons with and without dementia.

“Both large and small vessel diseases have effects on dementia and thinking abilities, independently of one another, and independently of the common causes of dementia such as Alzheimer’s pathology and strokes,” said Dr. Zoe Arvanitakis. A neurologist and researcher at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Arvanitakis led the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Part of Rush University Medical Center, the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center is dedicated to the study of Alzheimer’s, a neurological condition that is the most common cause of dementia. It is one of 29 designated centers in the United States funded by the National Institute on Aging.

The study was not designed to determine causation of Alzheimer’s dementia, or even whether vascular disease or Alzheimer’s developed first. “But it does suggest that vessel disease plays a role in dementia,” Arvanitakis said. “We found that blood vessel diseases are very common in the brain, and are associated with dementia that is typically attributed to Alzheimer’s disease during life.”

Does preventing cerebrovascular disease also prevent Alzheimer’s?

The study examined which cognitive difficulties are caused by vessel diseases and whether vessel disease and Alzheimer’s are more destructive in tandem than they would be alone. An editorial in The Lancet Neurology that accompanied the study findings noted that while other studies have indicated that proactive measures like eating a selective diet and getting regular exercise might protect people against getting Alzheimer’s, those interventions might actually be acting on non-Alzheimer’s disease processes, such as cerebrovascular disease.

Arvanitakis says they don’t know yet. “They may decrease actual Alzheimer’s, and possibly even work by yet other pathways,” Arvanitakis said. “We hope to better distinguish how the clinical expression of vessel diseases in the brain differ from those of Alzheimer’s, so that we may eventually use earlier and more targeted treatments for dementia.”

Nearly 47 million people now live with dementia worldwide, according Alzheimer’s Disease International, the international federation of Alzheimer associations around the world. By 2050, that number is projected to be 132 million. Therefore, finding ways to treat or prevent the disease “is a major goal,” Arvanitakis said.

The participants in the study published in Lancet Neurology came from two (RADC) cohort studies, the Religious Orders Study and the Rush Memory and Aging Project, which have followed people older than 65, in their communities, for more than two decades. Participants receive annual health assessments and agree to donate their brains for research upon their deaths. The Lancet Neurology study used clinical data gathered from participants from 1994 to 2015, and pathologic data obtained from examination of the brains donated for autopsy, and used regression analyses to determine the odds of Alzheimer’s dementia and levels of cognitive function, for increasing levels of brain vessel diseases.

Zianon Pazniak, who 28 years ago published an article exposing the Soviet killing fields at Kuropaty, a wooded area near the Belarusian capital of Minsk, that helped power the rebirth of Belarusian national identity, has called on the international community not to forget this Soviet act of genocide against his people.

In June 1988, Pazniak and Yevgeny Shmygalyev published an article entitled “Kuropaty – the Road of Death.” Two weeks later, Belarusians assembled at that site but were dispersed by Soviet militia. Yesterday, speaking in New York – Pazniak has had political asylum in the US since 1996 – he called for the world not to forget Kuropaty (belaruspartisan.org/politic/348055/).

Pazniak told a meeting at New York’s Belarusian cathedral that the current government in his homeland is “carrying out a policy directed at understating the facts of history and the destruction of the self-identification of the Belarusians as a nation” and to that end has played down the horrors of Kuropaty.

Estimates of how many Belarusians and others were buried in mass graves at Kuropaty vary widely, from a low of 30,000 offered by Soviet officials before 1991 to more than 250,000 according to Polish and Western historians. But there is no dispute that such mass murders were carried out by the Soviet secret police and intended to destroy the Belarusian nation.

Pazniak, a medieval historian, became leader of the Belarusian Popular Front after publishing his article on Kuropaty, an article that shocked many in Moscow and the West with its details about Soviet cruelty and helped mobilized the Belarusian people against the Soviet system and for independence.

In the past, Kuropaty has attracted a great deal of international attention. US President Bill Clinton, for example, visited the site in 1994 and installed a small memorial “To Belarusians from the American people.” That remarkable monument has been damaged several times by vandals whom the Lukashenka regime has not chosen to track down.

But over time, the international community has devoted ever less attention to this crime against humanity, perhaps because Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his officials rarely mention Kuropaty and thus contribute to the notion that this was something “far away and long ago” and thus not relevant to the future.

But as Pazniak noted yesterday, Belarusians have not forgotten. Every year, hundreds of them go to the site on All Saints Day to honor the dead. And they have taken more dramatic actions as well. In 2004, the country’s Jewish community put up a monument there in memory of all Jews, Christians and Muslims [who were] victims of Stalinism.”

And in 2001, when the Belarusian government threatened to pave over the site in the course of building a new ring road about Minsk, young Belarusians organized a camp city on the site and remained there over winter until the Belarusian government bowed to the wishes of the people and changed the route.

(For a discussion of the Kuropaty case, see David R. Marples’ useful article, “Kuropaty: The Investigation of a Stalinist Historical Controversy,” Slavic Review 53:2 (1994): 513-523 at researchgate.net/publication/270407608_Kuropaty_The_Investigation_of_a_Stalinist_Historical_Controversy.)

Engineers at Oregon State University have created a new computer modeling package that people anywhere in the world could use to assess the potential of a stream for small-scale, “run of river” hydropower, an option to produce electricity that’s of special importance in the developing world.

The system is easy to use; does not require data that is often unavailable in foreign countries or remote locations; and can consider hydropower potential not only now, but in the future as projected changes in climate and stream runoff occur.

OSU experts say that people, agencies or communities interested in the potential for small-scale hydropower development can much more easily and accurately assess whether it would meet their current and future energy needs.

Findings on the new assessment tool have been published in Renewable Energy, in work supported by the National Science Foundation.

“These types of run-of-river hydropower developments have a special value in some remote, mountainous regions where electricity is often scarce or unavailable,” said Kendra Sharp, the Richard and Gretchen Evans Professor in Humanitarian Engineering in the OSU College of Engineering.

“There are parts of northern Pakistan, for instance, where about half of rural homes don’t have access to electricity, and systems such as this are one of the few affordable ways to produce it. The strength of this system is that it will be simple for people to use, and it’s pretty accurate even though it can work with limited data on the ground.”

The new technology was field-tested at a 5-megawatt small-scale hydropower facility built in the early 1980s on Falls Creek in the central Oregon Cascade Range. At that site, it projected that future climate changes will shift its optimal electricity production from spring to winter and that annual hydropower potential will slightly decrease from the conditions that prevailed from 1980-2010.

Small-scale hydropower, researchers say, continues to be popular because it can be developed with fairly basic and cost-competitive technology, and does not require large dams or reservoirs to function. Although all forms of power have some environmental effects, this approach has less impact on fisheries or stream ecosystems than major hydroelectric dams. Hydroelectric power is also renewable and does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the most basic approaches is diverting part of a stream into a holding basin, which contains a self-cleaning screen that prevents larger debris, insects, fish and objects from entering the system. The diverted water is then channeled to and fed through a turbine at a lower elevation before returning the water to the stream.

The technology is influenced by the seasonal variability of stream flow, the “head height,” or distance the water is able to drop, and other factors. Proper regulations to maintain minimum needed stream flow can help mitigate environmental impacts.

Most previous tools used to assess specific sites for their small-scale hydropower potential have not been able to consider the impacts of future changes in weather and climate, OSU researchers said, and are far too dependent on data that is often unavailable in developing nations.

This free, open source software program was developed by Thomas Mosier, who at the time was a graduate student at OSU, in collaboration with Sharp and David Hill, an OSU associate professor of coastal and ocean engineering. It is now available to anyone on request by contacting Kendra.sharp@oregonstate.edu.

Some churches in China’s coastal Zhejiang province have been ordered to handover all of their income to the government, says a non-profit Christian human rights organization.

Churches in Pingyang County, Wenzhou have been informed of new requirements stating they need to hand over their money, including donations, stated Washington D.C.-based China Aid in a report.

The order is part of the government’s so-called “five transformations” campaign which is being carried out to “mold Christianity into an institution that reflects the objectives of the Communist Party,” added the report.

The report did not specify what churches have been informed of the new regulations or what denomination they were.

The IOC will follow the UN and USA’s directives and continue to violate the most basic of Macedonia’s rights, “and that is the right to use our own name,” according to the Macedonian Human Rights Movement International (MHRMI).

“Yet again, Macedonian athletes will be forced to walk in behind the letter “F” for “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” at the Rio Olympics opening ceremonies. Macedonia, itself, gives in to American scare-tactics and refuses to stand up for its own name,” MHRMI said in a press statement.

According to MHRMI, it’s up to Macedonian athletes to, “Join the list of athletes who have taken a stand for common decency and human rights, and refuse to walk in behind the letter ‘F’.”

MHRMI said in its statement to the athletes, “You’ve worked so hard to make it to this stage to represent your country, not a made-up one called “FYROM”. Walk in behind the letter M and tell the world that our name is, and has always been, Macedonia.”

If Donald Trump becomes the next US president, Americans will come to realize that Trump’s ill-conceived foreign policy agenda – hardly espoused and advocated by a wide spectrum of sane elements in the US – will signal the beginning of an unbalanced, prejudice-coated foreign policy, whose parochial propensity could undermine the global image of a liberal American nation. While Trump seems to say all sorts of things, Noam Chomsky rightly comments: “Some of them make sense; some of them are crazy. But the US is an extremely powerful state [and] if Trump means what he’s saying; the human species is in very deep trouble.”

By Hakim Khatib and Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi*

In a highly anticipated speech on the heels of his primary-contest sweep across the Northeast, Donald Trump emphasized a drastic shake-up in America’s foreign policy. He suggested, “getting out of the nation-building business” to demanding that NATO allies pay their “fair share” or be left to “defend themselves.”

“It’s time to shake the rust off America’s foreign policy,” the Republican presidential front-runner said.

In what was billed as a major policy speech, Trump called for an “America first” approach. To that theme, Trump voiced skepticism toward international deals like NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement). He claimed that a Trump administration would not allow the US to enter agreements that reduce America’s ability to control its own affairs. He panned what he described as the “false song of globalism.”

The speech, read from a teleprompter and focused on policy, was also heavy on campaign-season slams against President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. He called their policies “aimless” and destructive, and criticized them for not using the term “radical Islam.”

If elected president, Trump said, he would call for a summit with NATO allies and another summit with Asian allies to discuss common challenges such as migration and Islamic terrorism. He broadly called for the US to project strength in the world in order to decide who are America’s allies and enemies. Regarding Russia and China, he said: “we are not bound to be adversaries.”

Terrifyingly real, a world under Trump presidency wouldn’t only plummet race relations, but would also open a space for a looming third world war. Chomsky reminds us of the magnitude of having a Trump presidency: “American run polls show that the U.S is the greatest threat to world peace by a large margin.

“To have somebody who’s kind of a wild man with his finger on the button that could destroy the world or make decisions with enormous influence is an extremely frightening prospect.”

Any Resemblance?

Some of that critique came from a familiar place: The libertarian skepticism of engagement abroad and aggressive law enforcement at home expressed by Rand Paul. More telling was the bristling but insular vision of America’s role in the world presented most comprehensively by Trump and largely reinforced by Cruz. Packer says many Europeans are currently looking at Trump’s success and thinking: “Those Americans are crazy!” But Trump isn’t some strange US mutation, says New Yorker writer George Packer. He is instead, according to Packer, an evocative equivalent of European right-wing populists, à la Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

While politicians like Le Pen and Orbán inveigh against “Brussels,” Trump rails against “Washington” as the symbol of a degenerate political system “that doesn’t get things done anymore.” Just like his European counterparts, Trump is calling for isolation in the form of protective tariffs, entry-bans and border-walls. He inflames tensions against ethnic minorities and offers anxious citizens an authoritarian vision of a strongman who, although ignoring democratic conventions, would solve all problems on his own. Trump is presumably only the shrillest and most prominent embodiment of a trend that is becoming pervasive throughout the Western world.

Policy of Reorientation

Trump’s policy of reorientation braids skepticism of foreign military engagement, hostility to immigration, and resistance to free trade—what opponents call isolationism, nativism, and protectionism.

The embrace of these arguments by the two leading candidates in national polls is both a challenge to the outward-looking internationalism that has long dominated the GOP, and to the party’s internal debate that has been destabilized by an increased reliance on working-class white voters.

For decades, most Republican leaders have taken opposite views: Supporting a robust American role abroad, expansive immigration, and free trade. In recent decades, that internationalist Republican consensus was most ardently advanced by Reagan and George W. Bush, each of whom backed legalization for undocumented immigrants, expanded trade, and a vibrant American role in leading other nations toward greater freedom.

Obama the integrator, who fought discrimination against blacks and homosexuals, would be succeeded by Trump, who stirs up hatred against minorities while claiming that “political correctness” is the greatest threat to the United States. While Obama sought to explain complex problems, often sounding like an intellectual in the process, studies have shown that Trump, whose speeches are full of short, declarative sentences, speaks at a fourth-grade reading level. Problems, according to Trump, are “totally easy” to solve.

Foreign Policy Agenda?

There are many critics of Trump’s foreign policy agenda who in Europe and the Muslim world hold the argument that his foreign policy is based on social, cultural, political, and economic exclusivism.

Their critique is not without merit. Rubin correctly noted the ludicrous idea that Trump, who has alienated Muslims, now proposes to be the Middle East’s great friend. “Having declared he wants to ban Muslims from the United States,” McCarthy wrote, “he now vows to ‘be working very closely with our allies in the Muslim world, all of which are at risk from radical Islamic violence.’” McCarthy points out that contrary to Trump’s attempt of presenting himself as a sceptic of humanitarian interventionism and nation building, specifically in Libya, he championed the military campaign against Qaddafi back in 2011.

In his wholesale adoption of the agenda of anti-Muslim bigots, Donald Trump has uniquely contributed to the growing xenophobia against Muslims in America. Trump has called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” along with expressing support for requiring Muslim-Americans to register with a government database, mandating that Muslims carry special identification cards that note their faith. The Huffington’s editors describe Trump as follows: “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”

In 1976, Reagan argued precisely the opposite. He took on the Ford-Kissinger policy of “détente” with the Soviet Union, and criticized what he termed as the sell-out of freedom in Eastern Europe that put the US stamp of approval on Soviet domination of the region.

Kissinger declared that Reagan was “trigger-happy” and accused him of “inciting hawkish audiences with his demagoguery.” But at the party’s convention in Kansas City, Reagan won a fight to include a “Morality in Foreign Policy” plank in the GOP platform. It declared: “The goal of Republican foreign policy is the achievement of liberty under law and a just and lasting peace in the world. We recognize and commend that great beacon of human courage and morality, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for his compelling message that we must face the world with no illusions about the nature of tyranny. Ours will be a foreign policy that keeps this ever in mind. Honestly, openly, and with firm conviction, we shall go forward as a united people to forge a lasting peace in the world based upon our deep belief in the rights of man, the rule of law and guidance by the hand of God.’’

That’s a very different message than what Americans are hearing from Donald Trump today. Trump has no clear foreign policy vision.

Trump’s critics include foreign policy specialists who view the Republican front-runner as erratic and misguided. Some go further to say he’s pushing ideas that endanger US interests. He has faced criticism for making campaign promises such as banning Muslims from entering the US, forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall between the two nations and, as he suggested Monday at a rally in West Chester, Pennsylvania, making Gulf states pay for a “safe zone” in Syria. His freewheeling temperament has also been a target.

“The main takeaway for me is an unpredictability. That would be the most worrisome issue among our friends and allies around the world—what Trump says today may not be what he says tomorrow. And he does not seem to have much compunction about changing his views,” said Richard LeBaron, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and long-time diplomat who served as US ambassador to Kuwait under President George W. Bush.

“It’s very rarely a useful tool in foreign policy. It leads to misperceptions and it leads to miscalculations by other countries in how they react to the United States.” Foreign diplomats from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia have expressed alarm to US government officials about Trump, calling his public statements inflammatory and insulting.

Given the complexities entailed by Trump’s foreign policy doctrine, it virtually appears that not only for Americans and the administration in the White House but also for the rest of the world at large, the coming years may be very tricky and more challenging if the will of the majority of Americans during the forthcoming election resigns in favor of a hard-core Republican presidential candidate.

*Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi is an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-writer based in Pakistan. His research focuses on Conflict-Prevention, International Law, War Studies and other major issues relating to South Asia, Middle East, the European Union, the United Nations, and the US Foreign Policy.

Every four years, the International Olympic Committee approves three provisional sports to compete for permanent inclusion in future games. It seems that one of the latest candidates is the sport of attacking host countries before their Olympic Stadiums are even completed. In what can only be seen as good news for FIFA, the sporting body most used to being caught in the international community’s opprobrious glare as its rampant abuses come to light, the spotlight has shifted onto the greatest international sporting tournament on earth – the Olympics.

Russia could easily claim the gold for its spectacular mishandling of the Sochi Olympics, which included everything from rumors of bribes that it had paid out to win the bid away from Austria, to shoddy construction standards and allegations that Putin’s cronies cremed off the most lucrative contracts. And the string of controversies didn’t end there, but made a comeback earlier this year when clear evidence of industrial scale athlete doping was revealed to the New York Times by Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory during the Sochi Olympics. The official alleged that Russian antidoping experts working with members of the intelligence services swapped dirty urine samples for clean ones in the dead of night in order to ensure the eligibility of Russian athletes. Getting one over its international rivals at all levels, and by means foul or fair, appeared to be the Russian rationale throughout.

Brazil, the host of the upcoming 2016 Rio games has faced many problems, mostly of its own making. In late June, the acting governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro complained to Brazilian newspaper O Globo that his state had not yet been furnished with the federal funds it requires in order to ramp up security for the competition, saying “I am optimistic about the games, but I have to show the reality. We can make a great Olympics, but if some steps are not taken, it can be a big failure.” The financial problems the Games is causing for Brazil are already well-documented, as is the fact that poor Rio inhabitants are being forcibly pushed aside to make way for the Games. What Brazil could never have accounted for, however, is the devastatingly Zika crisis, which is prompting tourists and athletes alike to pull out of the tournament.

If, however, the IOC thinks that it can just try and get through the Rio Games and then sit tight and wait for happier times, it can think again. The 2018 Winter Games in South Korea are already tinged by controversy, beginning with a collective cringe as South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-Bak pardoned chairman of Samsung and IOC member Lee Kun-Hee for tax evasion, making it quite clear that he hoped this kindness could be returned when it came to assessing his nation’s Olympics bid. With the bid now confirmed, the team is already facing resignations of key players and even more corruption allegations.

And it doesn’t end there. Already, there are already rumors that the Tokyo 2020 games has already been permeated with corruption, with French police investigating an alleged payment from the Tokyo Olympic bid team to an account linked to the son of former world athletics chief and IOC member Lamine Diack that was believed to have been made during Japan’s bid to host the 2020 games.

According to Japanese authorities, the seemingly suspicious payment is entirely innocent, merely a legitimate payment made based on the earnings of a consultancy company. Japanese Olympic Committee President, Tsunekazu Takeda, explained that the transactions between his team and the consultancy firm Black Tidings involved “legitimate procedures” throughout and were declared by the bid committee, audited by an external organization and reported to the IOC itself. Hiring a consultancy firm to bolster an Olympic bid is, the Japanese assert, entirely standard practice. Why then, have the French seized upon this chance to stoke up a furor?

Sadly, there are rumors circulating here too. For some, France’s eagerness to demonstrate its zealousness in stamping out corruption is motivated entirely by self-interest and political opportunism. Paris is itself bidding for the 2024 games, and rather like a school child fervently stretching his hand aloft in his eagerness to show that he, not his classmates, has the right answers, France is trying to differentiate itself from its competitors by branding itself as the ‘anti-corruption’ choice – even if that means pointing out corruption where there is none and further besmirching the reputation of the event in the process.

When it comes to corruption, it seems like the Olympics, like the proverbial snake, will eat itself. Even those seemingly trying to stamp out corruption are suspected of having thoroughly corrupt reasons for doing so. The only way to manage this string of scandals, and to try to re-establish the integrity and international integrity of the Games is for the IOC to take a very firm position. Recognizing the need to claw back at least a veneer of respectability, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) has banned direct payments to members of the IOC and has officially recognized the signing of contracts between host countries, lobby groups, and consultants. But it’s obvious that the reforms weren’t nearly as effective as were billed. Only complete transparency from all those involved can help save the Olympics now.

*Alicia Conway is currently undertaking a Master’s in Economics and Management in London