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Carter Reaffirms US Support In Call With Turkish Defense Minister

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Speaking by telephone today with Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Işik, Defense Secretary Ash Carter reiterated U.S. support for Turkey’s democratically elected civilian government and the rule of law, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

In a statement summarizing the call, Cook said Işik expressed his appreciation for the call and assured Carter that Turkey remains a determined and committed partner and ally in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and terrorism of all kinds.

Importance of Incirlik Operations

“The two discussed the importance of operations at Incirlik Air Base to the counter-ISIL campaign,” Cook said. “The minister expressed regret over his inability to attend the counter-ISIL defense ministerial that Secretary Carter is hosting [tomorrow] in Washington, but assured the secretary that the Turkish ambassador to the United States will be in attendance and will be fully empowered to speak for the Turkish government.”

The secretary and the defense minister agreed to keep in touch in the days and weeks ahead, Cook added.


South Africa To Launch HIV Vaccine Trials

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The HIV vaccine, known as HVTN100, will be trialed in South Africa later this year, after preliminary testing showed promise.

The experimental vaccine came after a 2009 trial in Thailand called RV144. This was the first major success, after years of struggling to invent a vaccine.

One year after the 2009 tests, the effectiveness of RV144 was evaluated at 60 percent. However, after 3.5 years after the vaccination tests, the effectiveness reduced to some 31 percent, leading researchers to a new goal: raise the effectiveness of a vaccine back to a 60-percent minimum, and keep it there.

Turkey Purges Education Sector

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Turkey’s education ministry has revoked the licences of 21,000 teachers working in private institutions, Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a ministry official.

The announcement is the latest in a sweeping government crackdown following Friday’s failed coup attempt.

It came shortly after a report by state broadcaster TRT that Turkey’s High Education Board had ordered the resignation of 1,577 deans at public and private universities across the country.

Turkey’s coup in numbers

21,000 private teachers have licences removed
15,000 suspended from education ministry
8,000 police officers detained or suspended
6,000 soldiers detained
1,500 staff at Ministry of Finance dismissed
2745 judges dismissed
1,577 deans – Education board demands resignation
492 sacked from Religious Affairs Directorate
399 from Ministry of Family and Social Policies stripped of responsibilities
257 fired from the prime minister’s office
100 intelligence officials sacked
47 district governors dismissed
30 provincial governors dismissed
20 news websites blocked

Original article

Checkpoint Or Chokepoint: Aviation Security Lessons From Istanbul And Brussels – Analysis

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International airports are highly secured buildings, because they are attractive targets for individuals or groups seeking to make a statement, be it out of political, religious, or social frustrations. Some security experts have suggested that instituting more checkpoints to scan visitors will increase security, but some are sceptical.

By Eugene EG Tan*

There have been several attacks by terrorists on major international airports in the past year. In the latest attack on 28 June 2016, a suicide gun-and-bomb attack was carried out by three men at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, causing at least 36 deaths. Another airport in Istanbul, Sabiha Gökçen, was also attacked earlier, on 23 December 2015, by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) causing one death.

While it would be easy to discount Istanbul as a prime target because of its proximity to the conflict in Syria, the attacks on Brussels Zaventum Airport on 22 March 2016 remind us that terrorist attacks can hit any international airport in the world. On that day, three men detonated suicide vests inside the airport, causing 16 deaths and injuring hundreds more. Moreover, while these attacks have been largely attributed to ISIS and other terrorist organisations like the TAK, there was a smaller scale incident where a homemade bomb was detonated at Shanghai Pudong Airport on 12 June 2016 by a man thought to have huge gambling debts, injuring four people.

To Check or Not to Check

The latest attack at Ataturk airport happened just outside the airport, before the security screening checkpoint at the entrance to the airport. The attack at Zaventum and Pudong airports were in the general public area of the airport concourse, located inside the airport. The attack on Sabiha Gökçen involved mortar shells launched from outside the perimeter of the airport, and away from the terminal buildings. These attacks highlight the difficulty of airport security and the large area that needs to be secured.

It is thus an often-asked question where checkpoints should be placed, how stringent should the checks be, and what purpose would a security checkpoint serve, or should there even be security checkpoints before the transit area.

Proponents of ultimate security would champion the security model that Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport reportedly employs, where all vehicles and persons entering the airport are stopped at a distance from the airport and asked a few innocuous questions. It is through this method that suspicious activity can be picked up by the security personnel stationed at that checkpoint. While this ensures that terrorists are kept away from the airport complex, this also increases the time needed for passengers to get to the airport.

On the other hand, the large public area in Brussels Zaventum enabled the suicide bombers to walk into the terminal building without much fuss, blending with the many travellers present. Similarly, the homemade bomb attack at Pudong International showed the ease of bringing a bomb into the public areas of some airports around the world.

Istanbul Ataturk, being a major international gateway in a restive region, had hardened its security post-Brussels, instituting a checkpoint scanning everyone entering the airport building. What stood out in the Istanbul Ataturk attack was the level of planning required to land a disruptive attack on the airport proper. A diversionary bomb attack was set off in the car park to trigger the emergency response, resulting in the thinning of the security at the checkpoint. A secondary bomb was then triggered at the checkpoint, where scores of people were waiting to clear security checks. The blast and the resulting damage and confusion allowed a tertiary suicide attack inside the terminal building.

Effectiveness in Moving Checkpoints

Following the Brussels Zaventum attacks, there have been calls to strengthen security screening of passengers before allowing access to the public access areas. However, ACI Europe, which promotes the collective interest of Europe’s airports, had warned that additional checks on people entering the public areas of the airport could be disruptive and potentially create new security vulnerabilities by moving rather than securing the target.

It is of note that the Istanbul Ataturk attacks showed the prophetic nature of ACI Europe’s warning, with most of the casualties having resulted from the secondary attack at the checkpoint. The checkpoint was situated at the entrance of the terminal, where taxis and cars drop off passengers. Heavy traffic flows meant that the crowds waiting to clear the checkpoints were effectively sitting ducks for a terrorist attack.

In short, this checkpoint was situated in an area that had not been designed for security scanning, and had effectively become a chokepoint for people wanting to enter the terminal building.

However, as deplorable as loss of life may be, the checkpoint largely protected the airport terminal itself because the force of the attack was kept outside the public area of the terminal. Only one suicide bomber made it past the checkpoint into the terminal building, and he was very swiftly identified as a bomber and tackled to the ground by a security guard.

Comparatively, the suicide bombers at Brussels Zaventum had no checkpoints to stop them, and caused tremendous damage to the airport itself. Consequently, while Brussels Zaventum was completely closed for twelve days after the attack (and progressively reopened), Istanbul Ataturk was up and running just hours after.

Tragedy of Unintended Consequences

It is equally pertinent to note the unintended consequences created by checkpoints. For example, the restrictions on Liquids, Aerosols, and Gels (LAGs) on planes mean that LAG bottles containing more than 100ml are discarded at the security checkpoint. This can be a potential weapon should a large amount of hazardous material be thrown into the same bin by ‘innocuous’-looking passengers. Hence, while checkpoints can keep intruders out, checkpoints are also a double-edged sword because of the vulnerable chokepoints that they may unwittingly create.

Airports around the world should carefully consider their individual security needs and flow of human traffic when situating and setting up a checkpoint. The potential danger in rashly moving checkpoints to unsuitable locations is often understated, and more weight should be given to considerations such as ease of access by visitors to the airport, cost of security, and the suitability of areas used for additional screening.

In conclusion, airport administrators need also to realise that checkpoints are not a silver bullet to prevent intrusion, and they can be bypassed by people who seek to circumvent security checks through a variety of means, including insider cooperation or diversionary tactics. Checkpoints, if placed strategically and used effectively, can however better detect and prevent would-be terrorists from entering a sensitive area.

In the wake of these terror attacks, airport authorities need to carefully analyse the risks and benefit that may result from instituting additional checkpoints. Checkpoints may give the illusion of strengthened security against terrorists, but it is the safety of passengers and the continuity of operations at the airport that should be the primary concern of airports.

*Eugene EG Tan is an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Dragon Tamed In South China Sea: India’s Timid Response Needs To Change – OpEd

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By Bhaswati Mukherjee

In a powerful rebuke to China’s aggressive and militaristic push in the South China Sea, an international tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague on July 12, 2016, rejected most of China’s claims of sovereignty in this zone. Earlier, China’s aggressive territorial push had resulted in turning this busy international trade route into one of the most volatile spots in the world.

The Tribunal’s ruling that there was no historical or legal basis for almost 90% China’s claims, demarcated by the “nine-dash line” (NDL) on Chinese maps, came as a surprise to the Chinese who had confidently expected a nuanced verdict. Chinese arrogance with regard to the case brought by the Philippines along with no compelling evidence, either historical or legal or based on the parameters laid down in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to which it is a ‘State Party’, made for a very weak case. The Tribunal noted that the Chinese construction of artificial islands has caused “irreparable harm” to the marine environment, and has also threatened shipping, tourism as well as fishing and oil exploration there. With regard to the construction by China of a military airstrip and naval berths on an atoll named “Mischief Reef,” the Tribunal noted that this was within Philippines territorial waters in accordance with UNCLOS.

In a case resembling David versus Goliath, it was tiny Philippines who had the courage in January 2013 to challenge mighty China after the Chinese took over control of the Scarborough Shoal (SS). According to the Philippines, the shoal falls within its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), in accordance with UNCLOS. Arguing before the PCA, Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Albert F. Del Rosario, on July 7, 2015, noted the equalizing power of international law. He said “no provision of UNCLOS is as vital to achieving this critical objective than Part XV on dispute resolution which allows the weak to challenge the powerful on an equal footing, confident in the conviction that principles trump power, that law triumphs over force and that right prevails over might”. The Philippines argument that China had exploited the living and non-living resources in areas beyond UNCLOS limits, while forcibly preventing other coastal state from exploiting resources within their EEZ, was a powerful argument which influenced the Tribunal. So also was the assertion by Philippines that any recognition of China’s “historic rights conflict fundamentally with the very character of UNCLOS”.

Predictably, the initial public response of the Chinese authorities was to try to safeguard and assuage domestic public opinion which had been given to understand that China has historical claims, backed by ancient maps, to virtually the entire South China Sea. President Xi Jinping has made defence of historic maritime claims a central part of the governing Communist Party narrative that he has restored China to domestic, and even, global greatness. Any challenge to that narrative is seen in Beijing as a challenge to the Party’s rule. In reality, therefore, the ruling which has been predictably and angrily rejected by China is a huge personal setback to Chinese President Xi. It is being speculated that the fall out of the Tribunal decision will negatively impact the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project.

The response of the Philippines has been both dignified and restrained, with the reiteration that Philippines was committed to “pursue the peaceful resolution and management of disputes”. Philippines will now have to negotiate a face saver with China, since the Tribunal’s award cannot be forcibly implemented on the ground. Vietnam has also endorsed the decision of the Tribunal. Malaysia and Indonesia have been more circumspect and have called for full respect of diplomatic and legal processes enshrined in international law, especially UNCLOS. There is speculation that China will try to pressure weaker states in ASEAN to support its position on this issue. Experts on international law are of the view that the most positive outcome would be if China would come to the negotiating table for a final settlement. No one, realistically, expects China to vacate or dismantle the artificial islands it has built. The ruling may ensure that further militarization does not take place and that bilateral arrangements are made with affected states like Philippines to reduce tensions in the region.

There have been discussions on whether India could have issued a more muscular or more supportive statement of the Tribunal’s decision, given our important stakes in the region. China has always underlined that India should respect international law and many had thought that it was time to pay back in the same coin to the Chinese. This would have been an appropriate occasion for India to underline it has always accepted arbitration under UNCLOS, including the final settlement of overlapping claims with Bangladesh. In my view, the Indian statement “noting” the Tribunal’s award and urging all parties to show utmost respect for the UNCLOS, while understandable from a Ministry of External Affairs’ perspective, was weak and demonstrated our continuing desire to appease China.

ONGC’s Videsh Ltd. (OVL) has bought 100 percent stake for oil and gas exploration in Vietnam’s Block 128, which lies in an area claimed by China. OVL has been threatened on a few occasions by China that
its exploration activities violated China’s sovereignty. So far, these operations in which India has heavily invested are ongoing. India has not backed down. India should then have fully supported and endorsed the Tribunal’s award.

Indian policy of appeasement of China needs to be reviewed. Chinese defiance of international law in this manner, its bullying tactics with its smaller neighbours and its refusal to settle its boundary issue with India, underlines the ineffectiveness of the Indian policy of appeasement at any cost of this recalcitrant and aggressive neighbour. The closing arguments of the Philippines at the PCA when it stated that “if China can defy the limits placed by the Convention on its maritime entitlement in the South China Sea, then what value is there in the Convention for small states parties as regards their bigger, more powerful and better armed neighbours” should resonate in a world where the League of Nations collapsed after Italy invaded Ethiopia (then Abyssinia). Then came Chamberlain and the infamous Munich Pact which ignored Hitler’s invasion of an independent state and to buy peace at any cost. It only resulted in a more deadly war a few months later. Defiance of international law, we should remember, is a threat to international peace and security and to the established global order.

*Bhaswati Mukherjee is a former Indian Ambassador. She can be reached at: rustytota@gmail.com

Robert Reich: Short Note To Bernie Supporters Who Equate Hillary With Trump – OpEd

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May I have a word with those of you Bernie supporters who consider Donald Trump to be no worse than Hillary Clinton?

You’re dead wrong.

As I said when I endorsed Bernie for president, I view Hillary as enormously qualified to be president of the political system we now have. She is smart, capable, and experienced. I endorsed Bernie because I thought he would help create the political system we need. But Bernie will not be the Democratic nominee.

This does not mean the end of the movement Bernie advanced. That movement was never about Bernie; it was about reclaiming our democracy and our economy. And that movement will live on, and it will grow. It needs your continuing activism and your tenacity.

You are, of course, entitled to support anyone you wish to. But if you don’t get behind Hillary you increase the odds that Donald Trump will be president.

That would be a disaster for America and the world. Trump is a menace. He is not just unsuited to being the president of the United States – a bigoted narcissist who incites and excuses violence – but his presidency would threaten everything this nation stands for: tolerance, inclusion, freedom of the press, equal justice, and equal opportunity.

A Trump presidency would make it far more difficult ever to achieve the progressive goals you and I share.

After Nice: The Threat Within Europe – Analysis

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The mass truck attack on pedestrians along a promenade in Nice on Bastille Day marks a significant new stage in Islamic State’s transformation to a global terrorist movement. It epitomises the IS strategy to seed a culture of extremism and violence among the Muslim population of Europe following the loss of territory in its heartland of Iraq and Syria and pursue its political goals.

By Rohan Gunaratna*

On Bastille Day,14 July 14 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a 19-tonne refrigerated lorry into the crowds at 1045 p.m. killing, maiming and injuring nearly 300 men, women and children. The 31-year-old French Tunisian delivery man, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed through two kilometres of the Promenade des Anglais before exchanging fire with the police. He killed 84 and injured 202. The death toll is likely to rise as 52 critical of which 25 on life support.

The wider impact of the IS attack is too early to assess accurately. “Shocking France and their soul”, the attack was traumatic on the French, if not, the wider European population. The truck attack seemed to echo the injunction to IS followers by the IS spokesman Abu Mohamed al Adnani through al Furqan on 21 September 2014: “If you cannot [detonate] a bomb or [fire] a bullet…bash his [westerner] skull in…slaughter him with a knife, run him over with your car, throw him off a cliff, strangle him, or inject him with poison.”

IS Culture of Violence

The carnage in the aftermath of Nice did not produce sorrow but celebration among the IS fraternity. The IS strategy is to seed a culture of extremism and violence among the Muslim population of Europe. To accomplish this feat, IS seeks to replace traditional Islam with the IS version of Islam of hatred and incitement. To galvanise the French Muslim population to sustain attacks, the French speaking fighters in the IS heartland and elsewhere disseminated propaganda messages.

IS supporters and sympathisers on social media, attempted to justify the message among the wider Muslim community stating that the French brought this attack on themselves. “Khilafah News” and “Online Da’wah Operations”—circulated a uniform message calling on users to use specified hashtags to “show the world the truth about the war on the Islamic State and how they brought this to themselves.”

IS also attempted to portray the Nice attack as revenge and retaliation against the coalition kill of the best known IS military commander Umar al-Shishani announced by IS on 13 July, 2016. Another image invoked the November 2015 Paris attacks referencing Nice next to a picture of Paris attacker Abu ‘Umar al-Baljiki stating, “As you kill you will be killed.”

In an attempt to incite IS supporters and sympathisers to repeat the Nice attack, IS threatened Berlin. With a fighter in front of the Reichstag Building in Germany, an earlier image released by Furat Media read “Bald [Next] in Berlin.” A low cost, high impact act of terror, Nice as a model is very likely to be repeated elsewhere.

IS Radicalisation of French Muslims

France faced a large-scale and an escalating threat from IS-directed and inspired-attacks. IS central and IS supporters released propaganda repeating its calls and chants galvanising French Muslims. While the bulk of the French Muslims were mainstream, the IS propaganda aimed to radicalise them into extremism and militarise a tiny segment into violence.

IS understood that propaganda shapes public opinion. In the lead-up to the attacks, IS propaganda products compiled by SITE Intelligence Group demonstrated the continuing threat to France, Belgium and Europe from IS-directed and -inspired attacks.

IS released a French-language video chant by a child swearing revenge for massacres and destruction caused by coalition airstrikes. Two versions of the video, enentitled, “Blood for Blood,” and produced by the group’s al-Hayat Media Centre, were released, one with Arabic subtitles, and the other with English.

IS released the ninth issue of its French magazine, “Dar al-Islam,” and among its articles, called on lone wolves to kill a French imam in Bordeaux, traced the travels of Jihadi John alias Abu Muharib al-Muhajir and provided internet security and anonymity tips.

On 5 July IS disseminated a French video chant, entitled, “My Revenge,” which promoted its attacks in France and Belgium and featured clips of the Paris attackers and the two fighters involved in the March 2016 operation in Brussels. American, French, Indonesian, Russian, and Uzbek fighters in IS Furat Province in Iraq lauded Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen and called upon Muslims to follow his example and kill “disbelievers”.

IS official news agency Amaq released the self-recorded video of Larossi Aballa, who stabbed to death a French police captain and his wife, a police secretary, in front of their two-year child in a Paris suburb. Abdalla, speaking French, pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and called upon Muslims to follow the directive of IS spokesman al-‘Adnani to carry out attacks.

Abdalla urged potential lone wolves to disregard the religion of the victim, even if they are Muslim. IS promoted the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and the stabbing death of the French police captain and his wife in France in its al-Naba newspaper and circulated on Telegram and Twitter.

IS Aleppo Province in Syria released a video focusing on the 12-year-old son of a slain French fighter, who expressed a desire to return to France to carry out a suicide operation. The Arabic- and French-language video, entitled, “The Path of the Fathers,” was distributed on Telegram and Twitter on 14 May 2016.

Response

The attack in France was premeditated. It was a deliberate act of political violence calculated to terrorise the civilians and inflict fear. The attack in Nice should not be considered an attack on France alone. To secure France from the IS threat, it is necessary to craft a Europe-wide response.

With IS propaganda seducing European Muslims, Europe has suffered from multiple IS directed and inspired attacks by IS. IS call for attacks will inspire multiple offensives in the coming months.

Every terrorist attack is an opportunity for government to reflect on how best to fight the threat. Working closely with its allies, friends, and others, Paris should mobilise the international community to contain, isolate and eliminate IS. To be effective, the European response should not only be focused on military measures. The European response should be to the decade-old challenge of Europe’s weak immigration and integration policies.

As extremist and terrorist ideology resonates among Muslims who live isolated in diaspora and migrant enclaves, IS strategy is to reach out to vulnerable segments of Muslims in Europe. To fight back, Europe should work with the mainstream Muslim communities to reach out to the vulnerable segments of the diaspora and migrant communities and develop effective counter radicalisation and deradicalisation programmes.

In parallel to working with their coalition partners to dismantle IS in the heartland, Europe should collectively respond to the current and emerging IS threat by developing programmes to integrate the Muslims living in diaspora and migrant enclaves.

*Rohan Gunaratna is a Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the Head of RSIS’ International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) and the editor of the Handbook of Terrorism in the Asia-Pacific (Imperial College Press, London 2016).

Loss Of Employer-Based Health Insurance In Early Retirement Affects Mental, Physical Health

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The loss of private health insurance from an employer can lead to poorer mental and physical health as older adults transition to early retirement, according to a study by Georgia State University.

The study evaluated the impact of private insurance coverage on the symptoms of depression, activities of daily living (such as getting dressed) and instrumental activities of daily life (such as shopping for groceries and taking medications) during the transition from full-time work to early full retirement. The findings are published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Social Sciences.

Private health insurance is an important factor for the health of early retirees, and those who maintain steady coverage tend to fare best in retirement. Losing insurance from an employer was associated with increased symptoms of depression and limitations in daily activities.

Employment-based insurance was typically associated with better health. Even when retirees sought private non-group insurance, this insurance didn’t offset the negative consequences of being without employment-based insurance.

“If people are getting insurance from places other than their employer, these kinds of insurance tend to be less good,” said Ben Lennox Kail, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgia State. “And if people are getting lower-quality insurances, older adults are going to be sicker upon retirement.”

The data collection predated the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and didn’t include plans offered through the Health Insurance Marketplace, but the findings give insight into how the ACA might impact health in the years leading up to Medicare eligibility.

In the United States, early retirement is fairly common: 47 percent of men and 60 percent of women exited the labor force before they became eligible for Social Security. About half of workers ages 51 to 61 transitioned from full-time work to early retirement, according to a 2006 study in The Gerontologist.

With fewer employers offering retiree health benefits, this shift could have important health implications, and little is known about how the loss of private insurance affects health after early retirement.

Based on the study’s results, Kail is concerned that declines in employment-based insurance may have serious negative consequences for the United States population’s health. The study also shows the loss of private insurance coverage can quickly alter individuals’ mental health trajectories.

“It seems like changes in insurance or being without insurance have more immediate mental health consequences than they do physical health consequences,” Kail said. “Maybe losing insurance itself is a small trauma that triggers depressive symptoms.”

Some early retirees attempt to offset the loss of insurance by acquiring non-group insurance. However, in this study, 75 percent of participants who had lost their employment-based insurance during retirement were without any form of private insurance.

Kail used data from the 1996-2010 Health and Retirement Study collected from participants ages 50 to 64 who were included in the sample until they turned 65 and became age-eligible for Medicare coverage. The individuals, who either worked full-time or had transitioned to full retirement, were re-interviewed every two years.

Eight depressive symptoms were measured. Participants were asked if they felt depressed, if everything was an effort, if their sleep was restless, if they were happy, felt lonely, felt sad or could not get going and enjoy life. Difficulties with the following activities of daily living tasks were measured: walking across the room, getting dressed, eating, taking a bath or shower and getting in or out of bed. In addition, difficulties with the following instrumental activities of daily living were measured: using the telephone, managing money, shopping for groceries, preparing a hot meal and taking medications.

Kail said future research should focus on the distinctions between different forms of insurance and the generosity of coverage, as well as how these factors are associated with diverse health outcomes. For instance, there are differences across the five levels of insurance offered through the Health Insurance Marketplace.

When people lose employment-based insurance prior to Medicare eligibility, the ACA mandates them to secure new insurance, likely a non-group plan. It isn’t clear whether these plans will offset the health consequences of losing employer-provided insurance. The ACA attempted to address the shortage of non-group plans through the temporary federal Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, which reimburses employers who continue offering insurance coverage to retirees. However, the program quickly ran out of funding because of high demand.


Former European Commissioners Blast EU Deals With Iran

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By Jorge Valero

(EurActiv) — Former Commissioners Karel de Gucht and Louis Michel have criticised European Union moves to strike business deals with Iran, urging EU institutions and member states to make them conditional on Tehran improving its dismal human rights record.

Both politicians played an important role in shaping the EU’s dealings with other countries over the last decade. Michel, father of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, was European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid between 2004 and 2009. De Gucht was in charge of the trade portfolio between 2010 and 2014.

The call will come as an embarrassment to the current European Commission. In April, the EU responded to the lifting of the economic and financial sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear programme with a landmark visit to the country of eight Commissioners, led by foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini.

De Gucht and Michel signed a letter urging EU institutions and member states to prioritise progress on human rights over new deals with the regime.

The text, seen by EurActiv.com, stressed that Europe should condition “any further relations with Iran to a clear progress on human rights and a halt to executions”.

The letter said that the rate of executions in the country shows “a horrific image of the planned state killing machine”, as Amnesty International underlined in July 2015.

The letter goes on to cite the country’s close ties with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah, still included in the EU’s terrorist list; the criminal repression of ethnic and religious minorities; the marginalisation of women; the lack of guarantees for free and fair elections, and Iran’s bullying attitude toward some European countries.

President Rouhani cancelled a visit to Vienna last April after the Austrian government refused to forbid a peaceful opposition rally during his visit.

“As the Iranian people and the opposition are not allowed to freely express their opinion inside Iran, we should not allow the regime’s repression inside the country to be extended to the European capitals,” the letter said.

The Belgian initiative came against the backdrop of the “new era” in the bilateral relations that EU authorities and the capitals are trying to build with Tehran.

Amid the economic slowdown, political turbulence, tensions with Russia and the high level of terrorist alert, the agreement signed between Iran and the international community to monitor its nuclear programme was one rare piece of good news in 2016.

“We are turning the page”, Mogherini said during the visit last April. “As Europeans, we want the Iranian people to have and to see the benefits of this agreement turning into changes in their everyday lives”, she stressed.

“I’m sure I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in the Commission but I dare to say that I speak on behalf on the 500 million Europeans that are supporting a new era in our relations.”

The visit helped to build the foundations for further cooperation and to bring the badly needed foreign investment to the country in the fields of aviation or energy.

But the ‘reset’ of relations came in spite of the record number of executions and the EU sanctions still imposed on the country due to its poor human right record and links with terrorist organisations.

The UN also highlighted in March the worsening situation in terms of executions and the “fundamental flaws” in the administration of justice.

NGOs and MEPs lamented the secondary role that human right issues played during the EU’s visit to Iran.

It was “a very short visit” of one day with “a very specific purpose”, an EU official told EurActiv at the time.

Smallest Hard Disk To Date Writes Information Atom By Atom

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Every day, modern society creates more than a billion gigabytes of new data. To store all this data, it is increasingly important that each single bit occupies as little space as possible. A team of scientists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University managed to bring this reduction to the ultimate limit: they built a memory of 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits), where each bit is represented by the position of one single chlorine atom.

“In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created by humans to be written on a single post stamp”, said lead-scientist Sander Otte. They reached a storage density of 500 Terabits per square inch (Tbpsi), 500 times better than the best commercial hard disk currently available. His team reports on this memory in Nature Nanotechnology on Monday July 18.

In 1959, physicist Richard Feynman challenged his colleagues to engineer the world at the smallest possible scale. In his famous lecture There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, he speculated that if we had a platform allowing us to arrange individual atoms in an exact orderly pattern, it would be possible to store one piece of information per atom. To honor the visionary Feynman, Otte and his team now coded a section of Feynman’s lecture on an area 100 nanometers wide.

Sliding puzzle

The team used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), in which a sharp needle probes the atoms of a surface, one by one. With these probes scientists cannot only see the atoms but they can also use them to push the atoms around. “You could compare it to a sliding puzzle”, Otte explained. “Every bit consists of two positions on a surface of copper atoms, and one chlorine atom that we can slide back and forth between these two positions. If the chlorine atom is in the top position, there is a hole beneath it — we call this a 1. If the hole is in the top position and the chlorine atom is therefore on the bottom, then the bit is a 0.”

Because the chlorine atoms are surrounded by other chlorine atoms, except near the holes, they keep each other in place. That is why this method with holes is much more stable than methods with loose atoms and more suitable for data storage.

Codes

The researchers from Delft organized their memory in blocks of 8 bytes (64 bits). Each block has a marker, made of the same type of ‘holes’ as the raster of chlorine atoms. Inspired by the pixelated square barcodes (QR codes) often used to scan tickets for airplanes and concerts, these markers work like miniature QR codes that carry information about the precise location of the block on the copper layer.

The code will also indicate if a block is damaged, for instance due to some local contaminant or an error in the surface. This allows the memory to be scaled up easily to very big sizes, even if the copper surface is not entirely perfect.

Datacenters

The new approach offers excellent prospects in terms of stability and scalability. Still, this type of memory should not be expected in datacenters soon. Otte said, “In its current form the memory can operate only in very clean vacuum conditions and at liquid nitrogen temperature (77 K), so the actual storage of data on an atomic scale is still some way off. But through this achievement we have certainly come a big step closer”.

Small Victory For Canada’s First Nations Reveals Large Problems – Analysis

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By Eli Cain*

On June 30, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to revoke Enbridge Inc.’s permits for the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline in what is being hailed as a victory for First Nations communities.[1] The proposed project would have carried crude oil from the landlocked Alberta oil sands to Canada’s Pacific coastline, crossing large sections of First Nations land in the process.[2] This latest decision by the Court of Appeals is another major setback to the beleaguered project.[3]

The Northern Gateway pipeline was given provisional approval by the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Canadian Conservative Party.[4] This approval was, however, conditional upon the Canadian government consulting with the leaders of the potentially affected First Nations communities. It is constitutionally mandated that the Canadian government conduct these consultations before construction on any public work project can begin—as pursuant to Section 35 of the Canadian constitution. This right is further elaborated in the Canadian Supreme Court Cases Haida Nation v. British Columbia, Taku River Tlingit First Nation v. British Columbia, and Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada.[5] According to the Canadian Department on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, these cases collectively decree that, “the Crown has a duty to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate [Aboriginal Nations] when the Crown contemplates conduct that might adversely impact potential or established Aboriginal or Treaty rights.”[6]

The legal actions taken against the Northern Gateway Pipeline stem from its failure to implement this constitutional provision. In a joint case filed in 2014, a coalition with members of the First Nations and environmental activists argued that Enbridge Inc. had failed to properly consult the affected Aboriginal communities. In its June 30 finding, the Federal Court of Appeals agreed with the coalition of activists and Aboriginals, writing that Enbridge Inc. had “offered only a brief, hurried and inadequate opportunity […] to exchange and discuss information and to dialogue” with the affected First Nations communities.[7]

This ruling did not, however, deem the pipeline itself unconstitutional. Rather, the Court found that the Canadian government did not satisfy the constitutional mandate of consultation, and thus it found cause to revoke Enbridge Inc.’s license to build the pipeline. The Court’s decision does not permanently defeat the pipeline. Instead, it returns the decision of whether or not to grant Enbridge Inc. another license back to the Canadian government, which may decide to award Enbridge Inc. another license—again conditional upon proper consultation. [8] Although theoretically possible, this scenario is unlikely given the vocal opposition that the Trudeau administration has expressed toward this project.[9] Thus, it is doubtful that the Northern Gateway pipeline will be granted another license. While it denied COHA’s request for an interview, the Canadian Department of Natural Resources commented over e-mail that “the Government of Canada is committed to a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership, including our duty to consult.” With regard to the recent decision by the Federal Court of Appeals, the source said, “We will take the time necessary to review the ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal before determining our next steps, if any.”[10]

Canada is not unique in mandating that its Aboriginal communities be consulted before projects like the Northern Gateway Pipeline begin. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (OHCHR), Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, all proclaim that indigenous peoples have a right to “free, prior, and informed” consent and consultation under international law.[11] However, OHCHR proclaims only that, “States must have consent as the objective of consultation,” and only mandates that States actually obtain consent if they attempt to relocate indigenous communities or store hazardous waste on their land.[12] While voluntary consent should certainly be obtained in those instances, it should also be obligatory for public work projects like the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Without mandating consent, indigenous consultations are a hollow reminder to indigenous peoples that their rights are only respected when it is convenient for states. As the Committee of Experts at the ILO wrote, “consultation does not necessarily imply that an agreement will be reached in the way the indigenous peoples prefer.”[13]

Despite the likely demise of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, this case reveals serious flaws in the Canadian system of Aboriginal consultation. Were there a less favorable administration in 24 Sussex Drive, this project’s licensure could legally and easily be renewed, in spite of its constitutional shortcomings. Additionally, the Canadian government follows the prevailing international doctrine and does not mandate that consent accompany consultation. Thus, the Canadian government can ignore the judgments of the affected Aboriginal communities and grant licenses to projects in spite of their opposition. The Northern Gateway Pipeline highlights how the consultation process employed by the Canadian government is little more than a perfunctory attempt at appeasing Aboriginal communities. It allows the government to appear socially conscionable while assuming none of the actual responsibility of respecting the territorial sovereignty of its Aboriginal communities.

The 2-1 decision by the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals to rescind Enbridge Inc.’s license to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia is a victory for the First Nations and environmental activists who opposed the project. Furthermore, as it is doubtful that the Trudeau government will give Enbridge Inc. another license, this victory likely signifies the permanent defeat of the project. Thus, the verdict against Enbridge Inc. represents the best case scenario for the affected First Nations. Yet this verdict is the exception that proves the rule that the Canadian system of Aboriginal consultation is broken. Until the Canadian legal framework regarding Aboriginal consultation (as well as the international legal frameworks espoused by organizations such as the UN) is changed to mandate not only consultation, but also consent, it will be all too easy for those with money to trump the interests of the Aboriginal communities.

*Eli Cain, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[1]Vieira, Paul, and Kim Mackrael. “Canada Court Overturns Approval of Enbridge’s Proposed Gateway Pipeline.” Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2016, sec. World. http://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-court-overturns-approval-of-enbridges-proposed-gateway-pipeline-1467320087.; Proctor, Jason. “Court Overturns Northern Gateway Pipeline Approval.” CBC News. Accessed July 18, 2016. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-gateway-pipeline-federal-court-of-appeal-1.3659561.

[2] Hirji, Zahra. “Canadian Court Nixes Approval of Major Western Pipeline.” Accessed July 18, 2016. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01072016/canadian-court-reverses-approval-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-first-nations.

[3] Ibid

[4] Lampert, Allison. “Northern Gateway Pipeline Has ‘no Place’ in B.C. Rainforest: Trudeau – Article – BNN.” Accessed July 19, 2016. http://beta.bnn.ca/trudeau-reiterates-opposition-to-northern-gateway-pipeline-1.521371.

[5] Branch, Government of Canada; Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada; Communications. “Aboriginal Consultation and Accommodation – Updated Guidelines for Federal Officials to Fulfill the Duty to Consult – March 2011.” Guide, January 27, 2010. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100014664/1100100014675#chp1_2.

[6] Ibid

[7] Vasil, Adria. “Ignoring First Nations Concerns Costs Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline.” NOW Toronto Magazine – Think Free, July 5, 2016. https://nowtoronto.com/api/content/92840ebc-42a8-11e6-a174-120dcefc1e29/.

[8] Hirji, Zahra. “Canadian Court Nixes Approval of Major Western Pipeline.” Accessed July 18, 2016. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01072016/canadian-court-reverses-approval-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-first-nations.

[9] Lampert, Allison. “Northern Gateway Pipeline Has ‘no Place’ in B.C. Rainforest: Trudeau – Article – BNN.” Accessed July 19, 2016. http://beta.bnn.ca/trudeau-reiterates-opposition-to-northern-gateway-pipeline-1.521371.

[10] Email message to author,July 12, 2016.

[11] “executive_summary_consultation_2015_web_02-17-2016_c.pdf.” Accessed July 19, 2016. http://dplf.org/sites/default/files/executive_summary_consultation_2015_web_02-17-2016_c.pdf.

[12] “FreePriorandInformedConsent.pdf.” Accessed July 19, 2016. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/FreePriorandInformedConsent.pdf.

[13] “51_article_inman_smis_cambou.pdf.” Accessed July 19, 2016. http://www.gojil.eu/issues/51/51_article_inman_smis_cambou.pdf.

What Catholics Have To Say About US Republican Platform

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By Adelaide Mena and Matt Hadro

The detailed platform adopted by the Republican Party this week received mixed reactions among Catholics for its positions.

It was an “extremely conservative platform” in the words of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), co-chair of the platform committee, “one that, as I said in my comments on the floor here, upholds our moral tradition.”

Among many issues, the 54-page statement of the party’s beliefs calls for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, asks for more restrictions on refugee resettlement in the U.S., defends marriage as between one man and one woman, calls for the passage of pro-life legislation, and even includes paragraphs calling pornography a “public health crisis.”

The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List called the platform “the most pro-life platform ever,” noting how it pushed for bans on late-term abortions, sex-selective abortions, and disability abortions, and advocated for the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal tax dollars from directly funding abortions.

Tom McClusky, the vice president of the March for Life who worked in the drafting of the pro-life plank of the platform, told CNA it was “the most detailed platform we’ve ever seen,” noting that “just about every single piece of pro-life legislation that is currently out there, it is mentioned in the platform.”

“There is some concern with the person at the top of the ticket,” he said, noting the importance of “having a platform that we could lean back on to hold him accountable.”

The platform also took a strong right-wing stand on immigration. After acknowledging the contributions of legal immigrants to American society, it called for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants into the United States.

“We oppose any form of amnesty for those who, by breaking the law, have disadvantaged those who have obeyed it,” the platform said.

It also advocated for a mandatory use of the E-Verify system nationwide, as well as a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for attempted re-entry into the U.S. by someone who has been deported for illegal immigration. So-called “sanctuary cities” should be denied federal aid, it said.

The platform also called for changes to the guest worker program. “In light of the alarming levels of unemployment and underemployment in this country, it is indefensible to continue offering lawful permanent residence to more than one million foreign nationals every year,” it stated.

Jeanne Atkinson of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network expressed her concerns with the immigration plank to CNA.

“Immigration is about people and families and communities, not about walls, and punitive and damaging enforcement measures,” she said. “Immigrants actually create jobs and strengthen our economy.”

She noted the section’s first paragraph, which commended “immigrant labor building our country and making vital contributions in every aspect of national life.”

“That’s really what the focus should be,” she insisted, “that emphasis should be throughout the rest of the document”

At the end of the immigration section, the document asked for “major changes” to the refugee resettlement system.

Back in November, the party’s presumptive nominee Donald Trump floated the idea of a temporary ban on all Muslims trying to enter the U.S., as a purported security measure. The GOP platform didn’t endorse that specific position, but stated that “asylum should be limited to cases of political, ethnic or religious persecution.”

It added that “refugees who cannot be carefully vetted cannot be admitted to the country, especially those whose homelands have been the breeding grounds for terrorism.” It insisted that “our nation’s immigration and refugee policies are placing Americans at risk.”

One significant addition to the 2016 platform in the “ensuring safe neighborhoods” section is an anti-pornography plank, calling porn a “public health crisis.” This comes after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement on porn back in November “Create In Me a Clean Heart.”

“Pornography is a scourge in every country, it is being fueled by globalization through the Internet and global travel,” Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles told CNA in an interview during last year’s synod on the family. “Everyone knows there are links between the porn industry and prostitution and human trafficking and child abuse.”

“We are in a crisis. Pornography is a public health crisis of the digital age,” Gail Dines, a professor of sociology at Wheelock College and founder of the group Culture Reframed, told CNA. Dines called it a “public health crisis” in a piece for the Washington Post in April.

She added that “it is in keeping with the 40 years of empirical research that we have that pornography has enormous social, psychological, cognitive, and sexual effects. We know that from the research, and that it is indeed a public health issue.”

Iraq’s embattled Christian minorities also have a place in the platform, which calls for attention to their plight and humanitarian aid.

“Defeating ISIS means more than pushing back its fighters while abandoning its victims. It must mean aiding those who have suffered the most — and doing so before they starve,” the platform stated.

Dr. Matthew Bunson, a contributor to EWTN, said the platform “expands the potential appeal for voters” by highlighting international Christian persecution and global repression of religious freedom, which he termed a “growing phenomenon of repression and curtailing of rights.”

For instance, it mentioned the dire need for aid among Iraq’s Christians and religious freedom concerns in China, part of the document’s “remarkably comprehensive” nature, he said.

Given concerns about Trump’s views on religious freedom – prompted by his ideas such as the Muslim immigration ban – Trump is “trying to protect his flank within the party by giving the cultural side what it wants the most,” Bunson suggested.

Is Pakistan Developing ‘Strategic Assets’ In Bangladesh? – Analysis

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By Anand Kumar*

It is no secret that Pakistan has a dual approach to terrorism. While it takes certain terror groups as threat to Pakistani state and wants to uproot them, at the same time it also wants to use another set of terror groups as strategic asset against its next door neighbor India. Under this strategy it launched Zarb-e-Azb against Teherik-e-Taliban considered a threat to Pakistan but keeps nurturing Taliban active in Afghanistan. It also nurtures Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and other similar groups which have chosen India as their target. The Indian state seems to be fighting a continuous battle against the Pakistan sponsored terror groups. However, Pakistan despite its nefarious acts does not seem to be succeeding in its design. To cause further trouble to India, Pakistan is now trying to open another front using terror groups liked by Pakistani state. This new front is from the side of Bangladesh, using Bangladeshi extremists as insurgency in northeast India is almost dead.

Pakistan has been uncomfortable with the Sheikh Hasina government after she took over power in January 2009. This discomfort was for two reasons. First it disrupted the cozy relationship with Bangladesh that it had built during the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – Jamaat regime as Sheikh Hasina decided to go after the terrorist groups of all variety. She acted against Islamists groups of Bangladesh as well as against groups like Let and JeM who were Pakistani but were trying to develop base in Bangladesh or at least link with the Bangladeshi terror groups. She also acted against northeast insurgents. In fact, her actions resulted in giving death blow to groups like United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).

Secondly, she was also disliked by Pakistan because she showed her desire to go for war crime trials and wanted to prosecute Jamaat-e-Islami leaders. The Jamaat-e-Islami had supported Pakistan during the Liberation War and still remains the most important constituency for Pakistan in Bangladesh. Though the BNP has also been pro-Pakistan in the past, it is somewhat difficult for the party under present circumstances to be as brazen as Jamaat has been all along. What was worse for Pakistan, Sheikh Hasina also wanted to try some of the Pakistan army men who were engaged in brutality against the Bangladeshi people during the Liberation War.

To stop Sheikh Hasina from proceeding ahead with war crime trials, then Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari had sent his special envoy Zia Ispahani to meet her. In the meeting Sheikh Hasina however expressed her determination to complete the war crime trials which was a long-standing issue in liberated Bangladesh. After that Zia Ispahani met Khaleda Zia. Interestingly, immediately after his return there was mutiny in the para-military force Bangladesh Rifle (BDR). This mutiny is known for the brutal killings of BDR officers who were mostly from the Bangladesh army and reminded people of the brutality of Pakistani armed forces during the liberation war. It was widely believed in Bangladesh that Pakistan was behind the BDR mutiny which nearly swept away the Sheikh Hasina government.

Both BNP and Jamaat have been friendly to Pakistan and in fact during the rule of the BNP led four-party regime (2001-06) the Pakistani High Commission in Bangladesh acted as a base for the ISI. Though ISI activities in Bangladesh are still intact to a great extent, ISI does not enjoy the same freedom. Moreover, both the BNP and Jamaat have been under pressure in recent time. Top BNP leaders are being prosecuted for corruption or inciting violence. Its senior vice chairman Tarique Rahman who is also political heir to Khaleda Zia is in London facing several charges. Most of the top leaders of Jamaat were prosecuted for war crimes and hanged. With BNP and Jamaat under pressure, it is no surprise that Pakistan would have lent a hand in recent terror attacks in Bangladesh including the most sensational one that took place in a Dhaka café.

The hanging of Jamaat leaders has led to a considerable decline in Bangladesh – Pakistan relationship. Pakistan has invariably criticized every such hanging. In Bangladesh this kind of Pakistani criticism was seen as interference in the internal affairs. It also indicated that Pakistan has still not reconciled to liberation of Bangladesh. Both sides lodged complaint with High Commissioners of each other. Bangladesh even considered withdrawing its High Commissioner from Pakistan.

In Bangladesh, a Pakistani female diplomat was seen liaising with Bangladeshi terrorist groups. The role of the female diplomat became very controversial and she had to be withdrawn once her identity became public. It is hardly surprising that Pakistan has used the services of Bangladeshi extremist groups for recent terror attacks in that country. After the first Afghan War (1979-89) against the Soviet Union nearly 2000 battle hardened Bangladeshis had returned to their country. They had formed terrorist organizations like HUJI and JMB. These groups indulged in a series of terrorist attacks from 1999-2005. Militant activity of the JMB declined considerably after its top leadership was hanged by the caretaker government in 2007. Under pressure, actually a number of JMB cadres moved to Indian side of Bengal. Some of these cadres are also probably behind the recent revival of JMB in Bangladesh.

According to Hasanul Huq Inu, information minister of Bangladesh, in another wave recently 8000 Bangladeshis trained in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan have returned to Bangladesh. One can well imagine what kind of havoc these trained militants are going to cause to Bangladesh who are likely to share a close relationship with the ISI and the terror groups it supports within Pakistan.

The displeasure of Pakistan with a secular and progressive regime in Bangladesh is quite obvious. In these circumstances it would not be surprising that Pakistan would try to create political instability in Bangladesh. And the best way to do it is through the Islamist extremist groups who now claim to be aligned to al-Qaeda and ISIS. Pakistan can also subsequently use these terror groups to launch terror attacks against India without being blamed. The terror groups like Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have shown intention to attack India and Myanmar from Bangladesh. Pakistan would be only too happy to use Bangladeshi terror groups for the strategic advantage on India’s eastern border.

*Anand Kumar is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. He can be reached at: anand_rai@hotmail.com

Russia’s Major Parties Haven’t Kept Their Promises To Avoid Nationality Issues – OpEd

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Earlier this year, Russia’s major parties pledged not to exploit ethnic issues in their election campaigns, but a survey by Natalya Totskoynova and Ivan Kovalyov shows that they have not avoided them and may do so even more frequently as the campaign heats up.

The two Nazaccent portal journalists cite what they say are statements by the parties and their leaders that indicate how these parties are positioning themselves at present (nazaccent.ru/content/21346-proverka-vyborami.html).

Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) has violated its pledge most openly. It has listed among its official campaign slogans two which show where it is headed: “Stop denigrating ethnic Russians” and “For the Russian People,” although party leaders routinely insist that the LDPR “isn’t against anyone” and “doesn’t promote radical views.”

This is nothing new for Zhirinovsky’s party. His candidates ran for the sixth Duma under the slogan “LDPR is for the Ethnic Russians” and for the fourth Duma with the slogans “Russians are Tired of Waiting” and “Remember Ethnic Russians and be concerned about the poor.”

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) has also talked about nationality problems even though it too pledged not to do so. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, for example, in a recent speech argued that “the fifth column continues to promote Russophobia and anti-Sovietism,” implicitly linking the two.

The Rodina (“Motherland”) Party has also raised the nationality issue but largely in terms of immigration questions. Its leader Alekssey Zhuravlyev, for example, has said that “migration must serve the economic interests of the citizens of Russia rather than harm them … and foreigners must not be allowed to drive our fellow citizens from their workplaces.”

The Just Russia Party (SR) has spoken in a rather different tone that the others. Its program declares that “we are convinced opponents of racial and national exclusiveness, of any manifestations of chauvinism and xenophobia, and attempts to limit the opportunities for the development of the national culture of the peoples of Russia.”

And the ruling United Russia (ER) party has come closer to keeping its promise of not raising the nationality issue. It hasn’t talked about it at all, Tokstoynova and Kovalyev say. The only exception so far was Vladimir Putin’s remark that the party’s policies are based on “respect for the traditions, culture, and history of our multi-national people, a deep understanding of the state interests of Russia, and the ability to competently and effectively defend them.”

It is far from clear, hwoever, how much these different positions will affect the parties’ electoral outcomes even in single member districts, given the widespread use of administrative measures by the authorities to ensure that those whom the powers that be want to win in fact do so.

But the differences may matter at the margins, especially in the 26 districts where the parties are competitive (rbc.ru/politics/18/07/2016/578b94db9a7947284a4b858e?from=main). It will be interesting to see whether the parties turn to or away from the nationality question in the days ahead, and Nazaccent.ru pledges to do so.

Milestone: We’ve Just Dropped Our 50,000th Bomb On Islamic State – OpEd

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In August, 2014, the US-led “coalition” began bombing Iraq and Syria to, in the words of President Obama, “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIS.” For nearly two years — despite President Obama announcing last November that ISIS was “contained” — the bombing has continued unabated.

A milestone was reached this month, however, as the US coalition dropped its 50,000th bomb against Iraq and Syria. With each bomb costing on average somewhere around $50,000, those bombs have cost US (for the most part) taxpayers at least two and a half billion dollars. Factor in the cost of keeping the bombers in the air, the cost of training the pilots, maintenance, etc. and the cost skyrockets upward from there.

In fact, as of February of this year, the US “war on ISIS” has cost more than $6 billion, to the boundless delight of the Beltway defense contractors.

There will be plenty of money for the other contractors if the bombing finally ceases and the US reaches its real goal of overthrowing Syrian president Assad: Imagine how much damage to infrastructure, environment, etc. will have been done by 50,000 bombs. The US taxpayers will pay once to blow the place up and then pay again to build it back up. Except like in Afghanistan, nothing will actually be rebuilt. The money will just disappear.

War really is a racket.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.


A Preview Of The Coming War Between America And China – Interview

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By Maki Sunagawa and Daniel Broudy*

John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, documentary filmmaker and author. He has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism. His films have won television academy awards in Britain and the US. Two of his films, on Cambodia and East Timor, are rated with the most important of the 20th century. The Coming War Between American and China is his 60th film.

Daniel Broudy: You’re now finishing up work on your latest project the title of which, it seems, can also trigger feelings of considerable dread. The Coming War, maybe you’d agree, is pretty heavy. Can you describe the impetus for this particular look at world events, especially as you see them unfolding in East Asia?

John Pilger: The film picks up the theme of much of my work. It will set out to explain how great power imposes itself on people and disguises itself and the dangers it beckons. This film is about the United States—no longer sure of its dominance—rekindling the Cold War. The Cold War has been started again on two fronts—against Russia and against China. I’m concentrating on China in a film about the Asia-Pacific. It’s set in the Marshall Islands where the United States exploded 67 atomic bombs, nuclear weapons, between 1946 and 1958, leaving that part of the world gravely damaged—in human and environmental terms. And this assault on the Marshalls goes on. On the largest island, Kwajalein, there is an important and secretive US base called the Ronald Reagan Test Facility, which was established in the 1960s—as the archive we’re using makes clear—“to combat the threat from China.”

The film is also set in Okinawa, as you know. Part of the theme is to show the resistance to power and war by a people who live along a fence line of American bases in their homeland. The film’s title has a certain foreboding about it because it’s meant as a warning. Documentaries such as this have a responsibility to alert people, if necessary to warn, and to show the resistance to rapacious plans. The film will show that the resistance in Okinawa is remarkable, effective, and little known in the wider world. Okinawa has 32 US military installations. Nearly a quarter of the land is occupied by US bases. The sky is often crowded with military aircraft; the sheer arrogance of an occupier is a daily physical presence. Okinawa is about the size of Long Island. Imagine a bristling Chinese base right next to New York.

I went on to film in Jeju Island, off the southern tip of Korea where something very similar has happened. People on Jeju tried to stop the building of an important and provocative base about 400 miles from Shanghai. The South Korean navy will keep it ready for the US. It’s really a US base where Aegis Class destroyers will dock along with nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers—right next to China. Like Okinawa, Jeju has a history of invasion and suffering, and resistance.

In China, I decided to concentrate in Shanghai, which has seen so much of China’s modern history and convulsions, and modern restoration. Mao and his comrades founded the Communist Party of China there in the 1920s. Today the house where they met in secret is surrounded by the symbols of consumerism: a Starbucks is directly opposite. The ironies in China today crowd the eye.

The final chapter of the film is set in the United States, where I interviewed those who plan and “war game” a war with China and those who alert us to the dangers. I met some impressive people: Bruce Cummings, the historian whose last book on Korea is bracing secret history, and David Vine, whose comprehensive work on US bases was published last year. I filmed an interview at the State Department with the Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and the Pacific, Daniel Russell, who said that the United States “was no longer in the basing business.” The US has some 5,000 bases—4,000 in the US itself and almost a thousand on every continent. Drawing this together, making sense of it, doing everyone as much justice as possible, is the pleasure and pain of filmmaking. What I hope the film will say is that there are great risks, which have not been recognized. I must say it was almost other-worldly to be in the US during a presidential campaign that addresses none of these risks.

That’s not entirely correct. Donald Trump has taken what appears to be a serious if passing interest. Stephen Cohen, the renowned authority on Russia, has tracked this, pointing out that Trump has made clear he wants friendly relations with Russia and China. Hillary Clinton has attacked Trump for this. Incidentally, Cohen himself was abused for suggesting that Trump wasn’t a homicidal maniac in relation to Russia. For his part, Bernie Sanders has been silent; in any case, he’s on Clinton’s side now. As her emails show, Clinton appears to want to destroy Syria in order to protect Israel’s nuclear monopoly. Remember what she did to Libya and Gaddafi. In 2010, as secretary of state, she turned the regional dispute in the South China’s Sea into America’s dispute. She promoted it to an international issue, a flashpoint. The following year, Obama announced his “pivot to Asia,” the jargon for the biggest build-up of US military forces in Asia since World War Two. The current Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently announced that missiles and men would be based in the Philippines, facing China. This is happening while NATO continues its strange military buildup in Europe, right on Russia’s borders. In the US, where media in all its forms is ubiquitous and the press is constitutionally the freest in the world, there is no national conversation, let alone debate, about these developments. In one sense, the aim of my film is to help break a silence.

Daniel Broudy: It is quite astonishing to see that the two major democratic candidates have said virtually nothing of substance about Russia and China and what the US is doing, and as you said it is ironic that Trump being a businessman talking about China in this way.

John Pilger: Trump is unpredictable, but he did state clearly he had no wish to go to war with Russia and China. At one point, he said he would even be neutral in the Middle East. That’s heresy, and he backtracked on that. Stephen Cohen said that he [Cohen] had been attacked just for uttering this [Trump’s points]. I wrote something similar recently and upset a social media sub-strata. Several people suggested I supported Trump.

Maki Sunagawa: I’d like to shift gears to some of your previous work that touches upon the present. In your film, Stealing a Nation, Charlesia Alexis talks about her fondest memories of Diego Garcia, pointing out that, “We could eat everything; we never lacked for anything, and we never bought anything, except for the clothes we wore.” These words remind me of the peaceful and untouched places and cultures across the world that existed before classic colonizing techniques were applied to Indigenous peoples and environments. Could you expand a bit more on the details you uncovered during your research on Diego Garcia that illustrate facts about this insidious force we still endure today?

John Pilger: What happened to the people of Diego Garcia was an epic crime. They were expelled, all of them, by Britain and the United States. The life you have just described, Charlesia’s life, was deliberately destroyed. Since their expulsion, beginning in the 1970s, the people of the Chagos have staged an indefatigable resistance. As you suggest, their story represents that of indigenous people all over the world. In Australia, the Indigenous people have been expelled from their communities and brutalized. In North America, there is a similar history. Indigenous people are deeply threatening to settler societies; for they represent another life, another way of living, another way of seeing; they may accept the surface of our way of life, often with tragic results, but their sense of themselves isn’t captive. If we “modernists” were as clever as we believe we are, we would learn from them. Instead, we prefer the specious comfort of our ignorance and prejudice. I’ve had much to do with the Indigenous people of Australia. I’ve made a number of films about them and their oppressors, and I admire their resilience and resistance. They have a lot in common with the people of Diego Garcia.

Certainly, the injustice and cruelty are similar: the people of the Chagos were tricked and intimidated into leaving their homeland. In order to terrify them into leaving, the British colonial authorities killed their beloved pet dogs. Then they loaded them on to an old freighter with a cargo of bird shit, and dumped them in the slums of Mauritius and the Seychelles. This horror is described in almost contemptuous detail in official documents. One of them, written by the Foreign Office lawyer, is titled, “Maintaining the Fiction.” In other words: how to spin a big lie. The British government lied to the United Nations that the people of the Chagos were “transient workers.” Once they were expelled, they were airbrushed; a Ministry of Defence document even claimed there had never been a population.

It was a grotesque tableau of modern imperialism: a word, incidentally, almost successfully deleted from the dictionary. A few weeks ago, the Chagossians saw their appeal to Britain’s Supreme Court rejected. They had appealed a decision by the House of Lords in 2009 that refused them the right to go home—even though a series of High Court judgments had already found in their favor. When British justice is called on to adjudicate between human rights and the rights of great power, its decisions can be almost nakedly political.

Daniel Broudy: In hearing over the past couple of decades people talk about the great beauty of Diego Garcia and the amazing marine leisure activities in store for anyone fortunate enough to be stationed or temporarily assigned there, I am consistently struck by the determined ignorance of those who blithely come and go undisturbed about the history of the island. Maybe it’s the media that many people consume that serve a part in creating this detached awareness. The clear line that once traditionally separated civilian commercial advertising and military public relations seems to have effectively disappeared in these mass communications. Nowadays, civilian publications carry headlines like The Best Overseas Military Base Towns Ranked. The author of a recent article points out that service members admit to their dream of “seeing the world” as a central reason that motivates their military service. I wonder if the present system allows you, encourages you to see yourself as some sort of cosmopolitan world traveler and, thus, helps develop in you a superficial sense of the wider world, which also veils hideous realities and histories, like in Diego Garcia, lying just out of sight. Do you think perhaps the process of commercializing and glamorizing these military activities has played some part in maintaining the global system of bases?

John Pilger: Persuading young men and women to join a volunteer military is achieved by offering them the kind of security they wouldn’t get in difficult economic times and by making it all seem an adventure. Added to this is the propaganda of flag-waving patriotism. The bases are little Americas; you can be overseas in exotic climes, but not really; it’s a virtual life. When you run into the “locals,” you may assume the adventure you’re on includes a license to abuse them; they’re not part of little America, so they can be abused. Okinawans know this only too well.

I watched some interesting archive film about one of the bases on Okinawa. The wife of one of the soldiers based there said, “Oh, we try to get out once a month to have a local meal to get an idea of where we are.” In flying out of the Marshall Islands last year, my crew and I had to pass through the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Site on Kwajelein Atoll. It was a Kafkaesque experience. We were fingerprinted, our irises recorded, our height measured, our photographs taken from all angles. It was as if we were under arrest. This was the gateway to a little America with a golf course and jogging tracks and cycle lanes and dogs and kids. The people watering the golf courses and checking the chlorine in the swimming pools come from an island across the bay, Ebeye, where they’re ferried to and fro by the military. Ebeye is about a mile long and has 12,000 people crammed on it; they’re refugees from the nuclear testing in the Marshalls. The water supply and sanitation barely work. It’s apartheid in the Pacific. The Americans at the base have no idea how the islanders live. They [members of the military community] have barbecues against tropical sunsets. Something similar happened on Diego Garcia. Once the people were expelled, the barbecues and water-skiing could get under way.

In Washington, the assistant secretary of state I interviewed said that the United States was actually anti-imperialist. He was straight-faced and probably sincere, if vapid. He’s not unusual. You can say to people of academic stature in the US, “The United States has the greatest empire the world has seen, and here is why, here is the evidence.” It’s not unlikely this will be received with an expression of incredulity.

Daniel Broudy: Some of the things you are talking about remind me of something I learned from previous friends in the State Department. There is always a risk of State Department employees or people serving in the military overseas “going local,” beginning to empathize with people in the local population.

John Pilger: I agree. When they empathize, they realize that maybe the whole reason for them being there is nonsense. Some of the most effective truth-tellers are ex-military.

Daniel Broudy: Maybe the fences, more than keeping the foreigners [local people] out of that area [inside], are to remind the people within the fence line that there is a barrier and sometimes you are not permitted to cross that barrier.

John Pilger: Yes, it’s “them and us.” If you go outside the fence line, there is always the risk you’ll gain something of an understanding of another society. That can lead to questions of why the base is there. That doesn’t happen often, because another fence line runs through the military consciousness.

Maki Sunagawa: When you look back on your scouting locations in Okinawa or when you undertook certain shoots for this project, what are some of the more unforgettable and/or shocking memories you have? Are there any scenes or conversations that really stick with you?

John Pilger: Well, there are quite a few. I felt privileged to meet Fumiko [Shimabukuro], who is inspiring. Those who had succeeded in getting Governor Onaga elected and securing Henoko and the issue of all the bases on the Japanese political agenda are among the most dynamic people of principle I have met: so imaginative and gracious.

Listening to the mother of one of the young people who eventually died from his terrible injuries when a US fighter crashed into the school [in Ishikawa] in 1959 was a sharp reminder of the fear that people live with. A teacher told me she never stopped looking up anxiously when she heard the drone of an aircraft above her classroom. When we were filming outside Camp Schwab, we were (as well as all of the demonstrators) deliberately harassed by huge Sea Stallion helicopters, which flew in circles over us. It was a taste of what Okinawans have to put up with, day after day. There is often a lament among liberal people in comfortable societies confronted with unpalatable truths: “So, what can I do to change it”? I would suggest they do as the people of Okinawa have done: you don’t give up; you keep going.

“Resistance” is not a word you often hear in the West, or see in the media. It is considered an ‘other’ word, not used by polite people, respectable people. It’s a hard word to twist and change. The resistance I found in Okinawa is inspirational.

Maki Sunagawa: Yes, I suppose when you are a part of the resistance it isn’t so easy to see its effectiveness so well. So often, when I’m doing field research, interviewing, taking notes, and writing, it takes some time for me to take a step back and look at the details more objectively to understand the larger story I’m seeing. I wonder, during the editing process for this new film, if you can talk about any new and important insights—you’ve already gained—as the storyline has come together.

John Pilger: Well, making a film like this is really a voyage of discovery. You start off with an outline and a collection of ideas and assumptions, and you never really know where it’s going to go. I had never been to Okinawa, so here were new ideas and experiences: a new sense of people, and I want the film to reflect this.

The Marshall Islands were also new to me. Here, from 1946, the US tested the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb every day for twelve years. The Marshallese are still being used as guinea pigs. ICBMs are fired at the lagoons in and around Kwajelein Atoll from California. The water is poisoned, the fish inedible. People survive on canned processed junk. I met a group of women who were survivors of nuclear tests around Bikini and Rongelap atolls. They had all lost their thyroid glands. They were women in their sixties. They had survived, incredibly. They had the most generous characters and a dark sense of humor. They sang for us and presented us with gifts, and said they were pleased that we had come to film. They, too, are part of an unseen resistance.

*Maki Sunagawa is a post-graduate research fellow in the Graduate School of Intercultural Communication at Okinawa Christian University. She is presently developing a book based upon her research of state and corporate propaganda and their uses and effects in Okinawa since the end of World War II. Daniel Broudy is Professor of Rhetoric and Applied Linguistics at Okinawa Christian University. His research activities include critical analysis of textual and symbolic representations of power that prevail in post-industrial culture. He is a co-editor for Synaesthesia: Communication Across Cultures, a member of Veterans For Peace, and writes about contemporary discourse practices that shape the public mind.

A Coup Is Foiled in Turkey, What Next? – Analysis

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Failed coup attempt in Turkey ushers in harsh response, reducing chances for reforms.

By Marc Grossman*

The brazen, bloody, failed coup attempt burst like a lightning storm over Turkey, throwing into stark relief the challenges, contradictions, cleavages and possibilities that face this pivotal nation.

The government’s revenge promises to be harsh. Thousands of people have been detained or dismissed, including military officers, judges and policemen. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for reinstatement of the death penalty.

The urgent question for Turkey and for its neighbors, allies and friends is what will Erdoğan and his AKP party supporters do next? Will Erdoğan focus on score-settling and then accelerate the forced march to increasing authoritarianism? Is it too late for Turks to commit their nation to policies that promote tolerance, pluralism and the rule of law and the fight against extremism?

To consider these questions, it’s important to examine the context of the events of July 15.

Erdoğan’s domestic policies in recent years have sown deep division. One example: His drive for a powerful presidential system is of enormous concern not just in Turkey but among allies, including the United States.

Ankara’s foreign policy decisions left Turkey isolated internationally and in the region. Turkey’s stated policy of “zero problems with neighbors” became “problems with everyone.” The government’s fantasy that it could use ISIS for its own purposes led many in the US and Europe to fear that Turkey moved toward becoming an ISIS supporter.

More than 2.7 million Syrian refugees live in Turkey, an enormous burden on state and society. The plight of the refugees in Europe and Turkey, and the fear of more to come, have increased tensions between Turkey and the EU instead of encouraging a joint long-term vision. Turkey’s shoot down of a Russian jet fighter last November resulted in a year-long estrangement with Moscow.

Turkish economic growth has slowed and will no doubt be hurt further by near term instability. According to The Economist, terrorism and Vladimir Putin’s travel ban for Russian citizens have resulted in a 35 percent drop in foreign arrivals in the year to May, the largest drop “in decades.” The value of the Turkish lira has decreased by 70 percent since 2013 against the US dollar.

Surveying the predicament in May, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim concluded, “We’ll increase the number of friends; we’ll decrease the number of our enemies.” Indeed, some Turkish policies were being adjusted before the coup attempt. Turkey had started to work more closely with the US and its allies to fight the Islamic State – highlighted by its decision to allow allies to use the Turkish airbase at Incirlik for the air campaign. Turkey and Israel announced a restoration of diplomatic relations on June 28. The next day, Moscow and Ankara put aside their grievances after Erdoğan apologized for shooting down the Russian plane.

If it’s possible for Turkey to regain its balance as a pluralistic, rule-of-law state in the aftermath of the coup attempt, several things must happen.

First, Turkey needs to pursue domestic reconciliation – both with the millions of Turks who fear Erdoğan’s personal and political vision and with Turkey’s Kurdish population. Many Turks opposed to Erdoğan’s consolidation of power nonetheless joined the president’s supporters to oppose a military putsch. Many now wonder whether the government’s victory over the plotters will make it possible for Erdoğan and the AKP leadership to take into account their views and emotions. Regarding the future of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens, a main ISIS objective is to widen fissures between Turks and Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. Many have argued since the Istanbul airport attack that Erdoğan should restart his dialogue with the Kurds, which he abandoned as part of his 2013 election strategy.

Second, Turkey must increase cooperation with its friends and allies in the fight against the Islamic State. US Secretary of State John Kerry says he has been reassured that Turkey will remain in the fight. But will fear of outside meddling and focus on domestic retribution make it hard for Turkey to keep its commitments?

The US government was right to oppose the coup attempt, but in the fight against ISIS, a complete convergence between Ankara and Washington is still missing. Two examples of this gap are 1) Washington’s lingering worry about Turkey’s commitment to more energetically guard its border with Syria and 2) Turkey’s continuing objections to America’s military cooperation with the Iraqi Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) to combat ISIS.

Washington will continue to urge Turkey to pay more attention to its southeastern frontier. The White House, while quick to express condolences over the Istanbul airport attack, reminded Ankara that it’s in Turkey’s interest to “address our concerns about the Turkey-Syria border.” That the Istanbul airport terrorists apparently crossed that border should make this clear for Ankara.

The disagreement over US collaboration in fighting ISIS with the YPG – which the US does not label a foreign terrorist group even while acknowledging its ties to the PKK, a group the American government does list as a terror organization – remains a real point of contention. The US and Turkey must do more to resolve this challenge.

Add to these two a new, potentially explosive element: Erdoğan’s claim that the Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who has lived for many years in Pennsylvania, masterminded the coup. Erdoğan and Gulen, once allies, have been at odds for years. Indeed, the conflict between the rival factions of Turkish Islamism is one of the main motifs of Turkish politics. Gulen denies involvement in the coup attempt. Erdoğan has called on the US to extradite him.. Kerry has said Washington will review Ankara’s evidence. This case will infuse every conversation between Washington and Ankara.

Third, to reassure its neighbors, Turkey can pursue a “fewer enemies, more friends” policy in the region. If Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders reach agreement about Cyprus’s future this year, it would remove an irritant in Turkey’s relations with Greece, the EU and the US – and open the door for energy cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean’s natural gas fields, perhaps including Israel.

Relations with Russia and Israel will take time to evolve into anything mutually beneficial. Turks hope that Russian and Israeli tourists return quickly, but visitors may wait to see how the security situation plays out. Turkish-Israeli relations are subject to the emotional responses to events by both Erdoğan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Russia’s Putin is no doubt considering how to take advantage of instability in Turkey.

Finally, how will the failed coup affect Turkish-EU ties, including the deal to return and resettle refugees? Erdoğan will surely interpret the Brexit vote as evidence that Turkey is better off outside the EU even while he uses the refugee crisis to get more EU money and other benefits. EU leaders, distracted by Brexit, now unsure what to make of Turkey’s future, need an honest endgame for any negotiations with Turkey.

Is it wishful thinking, including on the part of Turkey’s friends, to believe that the coup attempt and its costly aftermath could be a catalyst for a change in course? Or, do the events of July 15 mean it is already too late to imagine a Turkey fully committed to fighting ISIS and other forms of Islamic extremism while simultaneously being fully committed to creating a tolerant, pluralistic country, connected to American and NATO allies, and seeking peace with itself and its neighborhood? Stability of the Eurasian continent hangs on the answer to these questions.

*Marc Grossman is a vice chairman of The Cohen Group. His Foreign Service career included service as the US ambassador to Turkey and Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was recalled to the State Department to serve as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2011-2012. He was a Kissinger Senior Fellow at Yale in 2013.

Retaliation For Nice? France Bombs 120 Civilians In Syria – OpEd

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Just days after Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowded Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing at least 84, a French-led bombing attack on the Syrian villages of Tokhar and Hoshariyeh today has reportedly killed more than 120 civilians.

Mainstream media and even the rebel-friendly Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have confirmed the killings and the civilian victims.

Shortly after the Nice attack, French president Hollande vowed to retaliate by stepping up bombing in Iraq and Syria.

True to his word, Hollande has today killed more than 120 civilians in Syria (warning graphic photos) in retaliation for the actions of a French resident of Tunisian origin (who is said to not even have been a practicing Muslim).

We may be left asking the obvious couple of questions. Why do 120 innocent Syrian civilians deserve to die because 84 innocent French civilians were killed in a terrorist attack? And how does France expect to avoid further blowback for its aggressive Middle East policy if it continues to provide endless recruiting narratives?

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Amazon Could Finance Next Woody Allen Film

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Amazon Studios is taking its relationship with Woody Allen to the next level, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The streaming giant, according to sources, is in negotiations to fully finance the director’s next film, the untitled Kate Winslet-Jim Belushi starrer. The Hollywood Reporter previously reported that Amazon was negotiating to distribute the movie, which co-stars Justin Timberlake and Juno Temple, but it now appears that the deep-pocketed company is sweetening the offer significantly. An insider pegs the pic’s budget at $25 million.

By opting to have Amazon finance, Allen shut out financiers Ron Chez and Edward Walson as well as longtime producer Stephen Tenenbaum. Chez and Walson have financed the last several Allen movies including Café Society, which is said to have run $10 million over budget at $30 million. Tenenbaum’s relationship with Allen goes back even further than Walson, beginning with 2001’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

Adam Bryan Stern, who is married to Allen’s niece Erika Aronson, is running point on Allen’s career and wanted a change. Stern has been negotiating on behalf of the writer-director. ICM, which reps Allen, also is involved in the dealmaking. Though he’s out as a financier, Walson does retain an option to serve in some producing capacity on future Allen films.

It’s not the first time Allen has ended a long-term arrangement. The auteur partnered with Sony Pictures Classics on a string of films including Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine before switching to Amazon for Café Society.

The Amazon-Allen collaboration is off to a promising start. Their first movie together, the Kristen Stewart-Jesse Eisenberg starrer Cafe Society, opened Friday with $355,000 from five theaters in Los Angeles and New York for a screen average of $71,000. That per-screen figure marks a box-office high for 2016 and a personal best for Allen since 2013’s Blue Jasmine.

The new untitled film, set in Coney Island, begins shooting in the fall in New York.

In just a few short years, Amazon has begun to take shape as a studio aiming to both finance and distribute movies in the $20 million-$40 million range. Allen’s latest would join Todd Haynes’ Wonderstuck as a prestige homegrown title for the company, which already has shown muscle in the acquisitions space at festivals, nabbing such in-demand films as Manchester by the Sea at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Amazon, which paid at least $15 million and possibly up to $20 million for distribution rights to Café Society in February, also has a TV project on the horizon with Allen: an untitled Prime series in which he stars with Miley Cyrus and Elaine May.

Time For Morocco To Rejoin The African Union – OpEd

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32 years after quitting the African bloc in protest at AU decision to accept Polisario as a member, Morocco expressed its powerful wish to rejoin the African organization.

“For a long time our friends have been asking us to return to them, so that Morocco can take up its natural place within its institutional family. The moment has now come,” the monarch said in a message sent to an AU summit taking place in Kigali, the MAP Moroccan news agency reported.

Morocco quit the AU in protest in 1984 when the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was admitted as a member.

But although Morocco left the club, “it never quit Africa”, King Mohammed said in his message to AU leaders as they began a two-day meeting in the Rwandan capital.

“Through this historic act and return, Morocco wants to work within the AU to transcend divisions,” he added.

In his address to the African Union, King Mohammed urged the bloc to reconsider its position on the “phantom state” of Western Sahara, saying that a political solution was being worked on under the auspices of the UN.

“The recognition of a pseudo state is hard for the Moroccan people to accept,” he said.

The SADR is not a member of the UN or the Arab League, the king went on to note, adding that “at least 34 countries” do not recognise it.

“On the Sahara issue, institutional Africa can no longer bear the burden of a historical error and a cumbersome legacy,” the monarch said

In this Royal message sent to an AU summit in the Rwandan capital of Kigali on Sunday, King Mohammed VI said it was time for Morocco to retake its place.,

“It is with no small measure of emotion that I am addressing our great, lofty African family today.

I am doing so as the grandson of His Majesty King Mohammed V, who was one of the emblematic figures of the development of Pan-African consciousness as well as one of the most committed architects of the historic 1961 Casablanca Conference – alongside Presidents Jamal Abdel Nasser, Ferhat Abbes, Modibo Keita, Sekou Toure and Kwame N’Kruma – a conference which heralded the advent of an emancipated Africa and which paved the way for African integration.

I am also addressing you as the son of His Majesty King Hassan II, who, that same year, convened the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of Portuguese Colonies, who patiently contributed to ensuring stability in many regions of our Continent and who strengthened the bonds of brotherhood and friendship with many African countries.

I am also speaking to you as the King of an African country – a country whose identity has been shaped as much by geography as by a common history with several defining milestones and by centuries of human intermingling, enriched by time-honored cultural and spiritual values.

Mine is a country whose commitment to just causes needs no further proof. Indeed, my country has been and always will be guided by an unshakable faith in Africa, in a Continent which derives its strength from its economic riches and potential, which is proud of its cultural and spiritual heritage, and which confidently looks to the future.

Mr. Chairman,

Distinguished Heads of State and Government,

Even when it was no longer a member of the OAU, Morocco never left Africa.

Morocco is an African nation and it always will be. And all of us, Moroccans, shall remain at the service of Africa. We shall be at the forefront of actions to preserve the dignity of African citizens and ensure respect for our Continent. These were the words of His Majesty King Hassan II, in his Message to the Twentieth OAU Summit on 12 November 1984, announcing Morocco’s withdrawal.

Those words pronounced by His late Majesty proved prophetic, and the conclusion today is obvious: Morocco has kept its promise.

Three decades later, Africa has never been so much at the heart of Morocco’s foreign policy and its international action as it is today.

My country has forged a unique, authentic and tangible South-South cooperation model which has made it possible not only to consolidate cooperation in the traditional areas of training and technical assistance, but also to engage in new, strategic sectors such as food security and infrastructure development.”

Morocco is already the second largest investor in the Continent, added the Sovereign, recalling the important involvement of Moroccan operators and their strong engagement in the areas of banking, insurance, air transport, telecommunications, housing. Morocco is also seeking to develop a strategy for tripartite cooperation channel aid funds made available in the framework of international programs for the financing of infrastructure projects or socio-economic development in African countries and to entrust those projects to Moroccan companies (consultancies, engineering companies, service providers, etc).

Morocco attaches great importance to national education by providing college scholarships to African students. More than 10,000 students pursue their studies each year in universities and schools through scholarships provided by the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (AMCI).

Morocco has initiated many African countries to triangular cooperation, rich and varied, based on a true partnership and effective solidarity, in addition to cooperation programs implemented bilaterally. It has many advantages and allows many African countries to benefit from the know-how and expertise already experienced in the land of Africa and to overcome the lack of budgetary resources.

Given the multiple benefits of triangular cooperation, Morocco considers that this type of partnership can be a vehicle for supporting the efforts of developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and expresses its readiness to invest with donors and regional donors and international collaboration seeking to achieve tripartite programs for countries in SSA.

Export Morocco spares no effort to promote exchanges between Morocco and many African countries, through participation in international fairs and exhibitions, and the organization of business missions, advising businesses, hosting meetings with economic operators, and finally by sponsoring prospective studies of areas and countries.

Morocco will continue to be present in Africa and reinforce south-south cooperation to contribute to the development of the African continent and collaborate with American and European allies to bring peace and stability to this continent.

Committed defender of African integration, Morocco is an regional economic and financial hub, a hotspot for international investment in Africa. But South-South dialogue isn’t enough in itself. African development can only prosper with a triangular co-operation model, North-South-South.

Morocco is strengthening its political, economic and spiritual presence in Africa. This royal vision will certainly contribute efficiently to a stable and prosperous africa that will become more and more economically attractive to foreign investors.

Morocco’ s political influence is growing and so is the trust of the states it is working with. The kingdom keeps defending African’s cause, either directly, thanks to its participation in different operations to maintain peace or either indirectly, supporting, in all of the international summits, sustained efforts for human and social development in the sub-Saharan area.

Morocco also relies on its spiritual diplomacy. King Mohammed VI in his capacity as Commander of the Faithful, agreed to official requests made by African countries to benefit from religious training and cooperation.

Morocco has taken an engagement not just on security issues in Africa, but on environmental issues, economic issues, social issues and education issues. Now it’s high time for Morocco to rejoin the African Union.

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