The Spanish government has gradually increased the budget provision for the system of study grants and aid to amount to 1.42 billion euros in 2016, the highest figure ever. The aim is to guarantee access to non-obligatory education to all students.

The Council of Ministers approved a Royal Decree establishing the thresholds for household income and capital and the amounts of study grants and aid for the academic year 2016-2017.

The acting Minister for Education, Culture and Sport, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, declared that under this regulation, “the government has enshrined the entitlement to a grant as a subjective right of students and thus meets the constitutional obligation to guarantee equality in the right to education”. Grants “guarantee access to non-obligatory levels of education to all students”, he added, and clearly manifest “the government’s commitment to the social dimension of education”.

“No-one in Spain should abandon post-obligatory studies on economic grounds. We will ensure that those who have the vocation and aptitude can develop these skills and we are making progress in terms of effort, responsibility and equal opportunities”, he stated.

Both the minister and the acting Vice-President of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, highlighted that the budget for general study grants and aid reached record highs in Spain of 1.42 billion euros in the academic year 2015-2016.

Iñigo Méndez de Vigo claimed that the royal decree approved on Friday is similar in content to the one approved last year in terms of thresholds for household income and capital, although certain changes have been introduced.

In this regard, he explained that the thresholds for capital in rural areas have been modified to deal with concerns from students who feared losing their grants as a result of the cadastral revision that took place in those areas.

Moreover, the requirements to authorise grants in the case of students who decide to change studies have been made more flexible. Similarly, the possibility has been included of students receiving grants to study complementary credits or complementary studies to official degree titles under the university system prior to the Bologna Plan. The regional governments will also be allowed to have greater powers in managing the variable part of grants.

The Minister for Education stressed that through the amount allocated by the government to grants in the General State Budget, those who are entitled to receive grants will be guaranteed to receive them. He also highlighted that in the academic year 2015-2016 “a record number of grant-holders” was recorded: 332,035 in non-university education and 323,931 in university education. A total of 655,866 students benefitted from a grant in Spain in total, he stressed. “We have tried to provide security and certainty to students and their families and we already have the legal framework in place for the next academic year” for grants to be authorised, concluded the minister.

By Sridhar Krishnaswami*

Over the next three weeks, both Republicans and Democrats will be in their final stages of an election campaign that has simply startled America and for all the wrong reasons. If the Grand Old Party finishes its show in Cleveland by July 21, the Democrats will have to wind up their four day circus in Pennsylvania on July 28. Political activists and pundits are well aware of the fact that states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania play a critical role in the Presidential sweepstakes. Traditional wisdom has it that a winner must have two out of these states if he is going to enter the White House; and a win in Ohio is almost a must for a President of the United States.

About the most striking of the Republican Party is the lack of unity from within or in any attempt to scale down the dangerous rhetoric of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Even getting into the convention centre, there is the talk that somehow delegates could be talked into voting against Trump. And the bizarre thing is that the Speaker’s schedule is almost barren—thus far, not an established Republican of high-standing.

Trump’s pick of Mike Pence as his running mate has been talked about for some time, but the manner in which he went about the announcement has also lent to a lot of criticism. Uncertainty of his pick until the very last minute, Trump is said to be introduced his running mate first in a tweet and later on very casually at an event that was supposed to be focused on Pence. Still not many in the Grand Old Party are convinced of Pence’s strength to the Trump candidacy. Worse, the Indiana Governor’s comparison of Trump to the legendary Ronald Reagan would have infuriated many—for all his simplicity of thinking in many areas, Reagan’s thinking and policies were not based on religion, gender or vitriol. Poison was not a bottom line of the Reagan era.

Pence’s contribution to the Trump presidency bid could be quite minimal other than perhaps boosting the conservative credentials of a ticket that still has a long way to go in assuring America that the basic structure and founding principles of the country is not about to be torn down if Republicans enter the White House in January 2017. It is not just about Islam, terrorism, illegals or the H1B work visa but a general fanning the flames of fear and phobias and in a phony notion that everything will be hunkydory once Trump enters 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The real baffling part of this year’s Republican race has been the non-focus on substantive issues, be it foreign or domestic. The obsessions being what they are, Trump has managed to turn every tragedy into a feast of delight to his supporters by his simplistic explanations; and the shocking aspect is that the electorate may even be listening to him and those of his ilk. The more disturbing element to the Trump candidacy is the virtual non existence of a “brains trust” in the campaign and campaign strategists. This gives rise to an uneasy feeling that just about one person determines all the parameters and in this insistence the framework being within the major thinking of the Republican candidate alone.

National Conventions are generally events that are carefully planned. The manifestos will be written in a non-dramatic fashion with Republicans and Democrats pretty much sticking to their points of views on issues that are dear to them. But the expectation is that this year’s RNC at Cleveland could be boisterous, both inside and outside the Convention Centre. With Trump basically hitting out at minorities at every opportunity, Republicans may be left with very little diversity knowing full well that African Americans and Latinos are a formidable voting force in key states.

But there is another aspect of the November 8 showdown that is of deep worry to the GOP leaders and establishment bosses—the fate of the strength in the House of Representatives and Senate. All 435 members in the former are in the fray and in the Senate 34 law makers are seeing re-election or election. Worrisome for the Republicans is that 24 of its Senators as opposed 10 Democrats are on the mat—with only three Democrats and three Republicans retiring. The GOP has now a 54-44 majority in the Senate with two Independents generally caucusing with the Democrats. Only the very optimistic will be of the view that Trump’s popularity is going to pay dividends to Republican lawmakers; but in large liberal states, Trump’s broadsides against minorities will impact Republican’s seeking re-election/election.

Foreign policy, they say, seldom plays a role in American presidential election. That said, there has rarely been an election since the 1960s in which foreign policy has not been debated seriously, be it with respect to the Vietnam War, the Cambodian sideshow, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin War, the First Gulf War, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the continuing war on terror and so on. But in the grand scheme of things of the 2016 race one wonders if anything meaningful has been discussed, except perhaps of simplistic solutions to complex problems. The fact that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are running almost even in key states is only indicative of the politics of paranoia having the upper hand at this point of time.

*Dr. Sridhar Krishnaswami is Professor and Head, Dept. of Journalism and Mass Communication of the Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University, Chennai. He can be reached at: sridhar54k@gmail.com

The present US Presidential campaign by the candidates and their followers appears to be reaching a new low everyday.

While many Americans may feel sad about the style and standards of the campaign, those abroad who admire the US for it’s freedom and progressive democracy are shocked — and they wonder whether they should reappraise their views.

Donald Trump started the vituperative campaign, which at times has looked like a hate campaign against Asians, Muslims and even women. Many justifiably thought as to how could a person aspiring to be the president of US make such observations and remarks in his speeches, which really looked like that of a lowly-rated politician. Some even suspected that Trump, a successful business man, wasn’t aware of the damage that he could inflict on his reputation by conducting such vicious campaign, and yet he persisted with such methods that drew media attention and ultimately made him the center of the campaign.

In the recent days, Trump appears to have mellowed and has made some speeches that are comparatively softer and more inclusive. However, this cannot undo the damage to the quality of campaign he already caused.

In any case, Trump has successfully defeated his rivals in the Republican party and the Republican convention, has nominated him as the Republican candidate for the Presidency.

Opponents of Trump no better

While Trump has such a record, his opponents in the Republican party and in other spheres conducted themselves no better. Trump was been heavily abused and confronted by sharp comments, liberal use of abusive language and insulted by impolite remarks by his opponents with questionable tactics. Several nicknames were given to him that did not look like healthy jokes, but only reflected hate and enmity.

US media notneutral

Additionally, the US media has not conducted itself as a neutral force, but has taken sides and several of the leading newspapers and journals have willingly, openly and readily lent their support to the hate-Trump campaign. Many newspapers in US today are no more impartial and objective in their observations, while discussing about the merits or otherwise of Presidential candidates.

A new low

A perhaps even a new low to this campaign happened when over one hundred nude women stripped themselves and posed naked with mirrors in Cleveland, answering a photographer’s call to blend art with politics and portray Donald Trump as unfit for the White House. They gathered on the eve of the Republican National Convention that would anoint Trump as party’s nominee for President.

In this light, is it not a surprise that the Republican National Convention was off to a chaotic start as delegates opposed to Donald Trump and pressure from the Republican National Committee resulted in protests, showing that the campaign of the Republican party itself has not been on healthy lines.

Is Hillary Clinton any better?

While the above is the story of Donald Trump, the campaign of Hillary Clinton has been marked by vague views and uncertain observations that have failed to create confidence that she can be a worthy President.

Apart from her lackluster campaign style — that has not created particular enthusiasm even amongst her followers — the allegation that Saudi Arabia is a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become the next president of the US has caused deep concern for many Americans.

So far, Hillary Clinton has not convincingly denied these allegations.

Both are responsible

What is very obvious is that both Trump and Clinton have not been able to elevate their campaigns for meaningful, productive and knowledgeable discussions and themes. Today, it looks that the entire Presidential campaign is centered only on immigrantion, racism etc.

The latest is that Trump has said that if elected, he will “declare war” on the Islamic State. While there is lot of anger about the ISIS, many people are not sure about the appropriate way of neutralising iSIS. By his rhetoric, many suspect that Trump could even make the terrorist scenario more difficult and more horrendous by handling the issue without care and caution.

U S image hurt

All said and done, the chaotic Presidential campaign has certainly hurt the image of US around the world as a progressive and well-structured democratic country. The fact that the political system in America cannot throw better persons as Presidential candidates is a cause of concern for international observers.

One can only hope that both the Presidential candidates will understand that such a widespread world view about the quality of the campaign has thus far been negative, and as such they will settle down for a more proactive and civilized style in conducting their campaign in the days to come, so that the campaign that was until recently carried out may be overlooked as an aberration that does not reflect the basic conditions in the US.

The recent attacks across the world have seen a twist in the modus operandi of terrorists making prediction and prevention of terrorism extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies. So called ‘Lone Wolves’, operatives working in ones or twos, without any ostensible connection to known terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State or any prior known record of such activities suddenly seem to crawl out of the woodwork and create new and unique mayhem, adding to the list of terrorist actions which were not on the radar of any agency. The sheer lack of anticipation, or improbability, or both push these acts (increasingly so) in the category of Black Swan events, which by their very definition are deviations from the normal.

As a result, and due to the very audacity of the act, they create ruptures in the development of defence strategy against such acts in future. These unconventional strategic shocks have been classified as ‘Known Unknowns’ by veteran Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freier of the United States Army. In our ongoing analysis of these terrorist acts whether in Paris or Orlando or Istanbul or Medina, and most recently in Nice in France, it becomes critical to dwell upon certain underlying factors for accurate prediction and prevention of such acts in the future.

Why They Do It

Though the reasons may be multifarious, they share a common thread- fanatical or jihadist Islam. This in itself is a thought provoking term, since learned Muslims differ on the meaning attributed to jihad by those who choose extremist means; a growing section within Islam itself feels that the term has been abused to suit their extremist purposes and tendencies. Also, recently a debate has been initiated as to whether the right description is radicalization of Islam or Islamisation of radicals. In itself, source for a stimulating debate, albeit the end result being the same.

European states such as France have had long histories of colonial rule over large tracts of the Middle- East and North Africa, and therefore large populations of immigrants from these former colonies. These European countries are perceived as being responsible for the hopeless state of affairs in their former colonies. They have also left lasting legacies of suppression both by their armed forces and by mercenary militias. It is these former colonies where the current threat is now sprouting from, probably seen in equal measure as giving a bloody nose to their former masters as being religious in nature. The United States is viewed as being responsible for the present state of complete chaos owing its flawed policies over control of oil, a bid to foist its democratic principles, and perhaps anything else which goes wrong in the region. To add fuel to the raging fire, recent reports in the UK and the US have attributed much of the present state of affairs on the Blair and Bush administrations respectively, including certain reports that hold the US responsible for the creation of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State as a means of furthering it’s own policy in these regions. No doubt, these give sufficient ‘WHY’ to any new recruit, especially when it is spiced up by impactful images and quasi- religious and hate rhetoric.

The West is not the only one target, in fact it is any corner of the earth where signs of going against the terrorists notions of ‘unbeliever’ are evident. Or any corner where they want to impose their perception of Islam. Therefore, an act in Dhaka or in Medina is equally acceptable. Which makes it all the more difficult to ascertain where the next such act would be or who the targets would be, because the world is full of people who do not agree with their notions or live their lives in accordance to what they feel is right.

Who are they?

It could be just about anybody. Despite high terror alerts, the perpetrators still manage to get through, indicating that they exist below the threshold meriting attention by anti- terrorist agencies. Organisations seem to be tapping certain criminal underclass who may have a police record, but may not go beyond that. Or disenchanted students. Or unemployed youth. Or even educated converts for their new found religious zeal. Or attention seeking hyperactive individuals looking for their moment under the sun. Or immigrant population not having social security or identity papers. These people may be model citizens in their normal lives, could be going to work with you on the same bus or train, attending PTAs just as you do. Occasionally you may feel the lack of communication with some of them, but don’t we all attribute it to those Arab types? They cannot even be termed sleeper agents and hence be traced by reverse engineering. What they do in their private time is simply beyond the reach of investigative agencies, they may be getting indoctrinated via social media, that all pervasive new demon of our times. And then one fine day this person gets up, leaving that normal life of his behind, drives a truck over a promenade full of people or on a shooting spree at the local nightclub or theatre or makes a bomb from ingredients available at the local hardware store and decides to explode it on a busy Street.

Investigative and watch agencies simply do not have the resources to keep a check on every single individual of society, something which works very well in favour of these Lone Wolves. Technology has added to our headache; an encrypted phone is as easily available as grocery. A city has deployed anti aircraft batteries and 50 calibre machine guns on rooftops, backed up by phased array radar and F16s in near proximity, yet a postal worker managed to fly a gyro copter into these defences. The same city has deployed pathogen detectors against possible biological weapons. The city is Washington D.C. What about all the other cities around the world? It is these lacunae that are exploited by the Lone Wolf.

How do they do it?

Again, as unexpected and unanticipated as could be. While the national and financial capital is being watched with an Eagle eye, an attack takes place in Orlando. Or an attack in Nice, not in Paris. Or an attack in a little known third world capital when everyone is busy looking west. Or suddenly in Istanbul for aligning against the Islamic State.

This is probably most indicative of a deviation (Black Swan). Or even worse, you may be expecting it on Bastille Day, but not by a truck driver on a promenade in a Mediterranean city; known unknown shock at its best.

What they expect to achieve

Obviously the idea is to create an atmosphere of trepidation, uncertainty and disquietude. In using tactics of hit and run ( or hit and die!) The Lone Wolf does not expect to follow up or follow through on his actions; it is a standalone action, to be treated as such but with sufficient impact to generate palpable fear. But what it definitely achieves in addition is further alienation of immigrants and racial profiling which works in favour of the terrorists’ rhetoric. It also tends to instil a feverish pitch of activity amongst anti terrorist agencies, but usually in the wrong place and just trying to piece together the last act. Invariably this makes the next attack even more unexpected.

Since these Lone Wolves are just that, working in isolation, there is no apparent connection between one attack and another, therefore there are virtually no unravelling threads during an investigative process. Moreover since they are usually ordinary people, it leads to the question of who all should be investigated. As brought out earlier it becomes humanly impossible to probe every single individual despite all the technology at their behest. For instance it is not possible to monitor cellular conversations of an entire city of people, and if it is tried, it utilises resources from elsewhere and leaves discernible gaps that may be exploited.

Lastly, alienation and racial profiling work in favour of terrorists. In the eventuality that they are able to upset the balance to such an extent that the target country decides to impose a an extended state of emergency, it serves to further existing social divides on racial and economic lines. Such a possibility is being discussed in places such as France and will only serve the interests of terrorist organisations by providing them more fertile grounds for recruitment, more number of people ready to go that extra mile for the cause.

In the same pattern of unpattern that works for a Lone Wolf no fixed time or date is a good or a bad time. It may be sometimes symbolic in nature, such as the Medina ( 4th July) or Nice (14th July or Bastille Day) or it may simply be a bolt out of the blue.

*Amitabh Hoskote, PHD, Development and Conflict Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India

The Japan-Sri Lanka Friendship Foundation has donated an ambulance worth Rs. 35 million to Sri Lanka at the President’s official residence, this past monday.

Representing the Japan-Sri Lanka Friendship Foundation Mr. Toji Eiichi handed over the ambulance symbolically to the President and subsequently the President handed over it to the Sri Lanka Police Department.

The Maha Sangha, Buddika Pathirana MP, IGP Pujith Jayasundara, Chairman of the Japan–Sri Lanka Friendship Foundation, Lal Thilakarathne and several others participated in the event.

Secretary of State John Kerry is calling on Turkey to provide hard evidence that a US-based cleric was behind a foiled coup attempt last weekend if it wants him extradited.

Kerry said Wednesday that he made clear in several phone calls with Turkey’s foreign minister that mere allegations of wrongdoing against Fethullah Gulen would not meet US extradition requirements.

“With respect to Mr. Gulen, we have consistently said to our friends in Turkey and allies in Turkey that we need evidence,” Kerry told reporters at the State Department. “We have a very strict set of requirements that have to be met for an extradition to take place.”

Speaking to Al-Jazeera channel, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “If the US does not extradite Gulen, it would be a big mistake. We are giving them all the evidence.” He said he believed some foreign countries might have been involved in last weekend’s failed coup.

Kerry said he had told Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavosoglu in several phone calls: “Please don’t send us allegations, send us evidence. We need to have evidence which we can then make a judgment about.”

Turkey’s higher education council has banned academics from work trips abroad and urged those overseas to quickly return home, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

The council asked university rectors to “urgently examine the situation of all academic and administrative personnel linked with FETO” — or the “Fethullah Terrorist Organization,” as it labels Gulen’s supporters — and report back by Aug. 5. More than 15,000 Turkish state education employees have been suspended after last week’s attempted coup. Also, the authorities have scrapped all TV and radio station licenses linked to Gulen.
The broadcasting watchdog said it had “canceled all broadcasting rights and licenses for media that had links to FETO/PDY.”

The media reports suggesting that a foreign military base was established in Azerbaijan are groundless and untrue, said Ramiz Tahirov, deputy defense minister, commander of Air Force of Azerbaijan, July 21.

He was commenting on some media reports which said that allegedly a military base of Turkish Armed Forces was created in the territory of Azerbaijan.

Tahirov said that according to the protocol earlier approved by Azerbaijan’s president, a building located in the Gyzyl Sherg military town, used since ’90s, was rented to the office of military attache of Turkey in Azerbaijan.

The protocol makes it possible for the renter to carry out repair and reconstruction works in that building, added Tahirov.

By Angshuman Choudhury*

The current narrative of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) surrounding the 1 July terror attack at Dhaka’s Gulshan area is premised on the assumption that there is no presence of the Islamic State (IS) in Bangladesh. The attack was directly claimed by the IS through its official news agency, Amaq. Attributing responsibility to ‘home-grown entities’ like the Jama’at ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansar al-Islam (affiliate of al Qaeda), GoB argues that the attacks were meant to ‘destabilise’ the sitting government. While it may be partially correct in stating the role of domestic groups, the assumption is oversimplified, which ignores vital details of the attack.

This analysis will argue that the different indicators of the Gulshan attack point towards the emergence of new tactics that could suggest an evolving dynamic of Islamist extremism in Bangladesh.

GoB’s denial of IS involvement in Bangladesh is not new, having previously gone out of its way to deny IS involvement in a series of targeted attacks against religious-sectarian minorities, foreigners and secularists, despite the fact that the group has claimed responsibility for more than 20 such killings since December 2015. Furthermore, in April 2016, IS’ monthly propaganda magazine, Dabiq, claimed the establishment of a “regional branch of the Caliphate in Bangladesh, headed by an ‘Amīr” by the name Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif. The interview with al-Hanif discussed the strategic importance of Bangladesh in expanding IS’ jihadist agenda. More crucially, Bangladesh’ foreign intelligence, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), has already stated that more than 1,000 Bangladeshi nationals have travelled to Iraq/Syria to join IS, and about 25 of them have returned to Bangladesh.

What Makes the Gulshan Attack Different?

The Gulshan attack was based on the recent Istanbul and Paris template of suicide-style attacks, as opposed to the signature modus operandi in Bangladesh, which targets one individual, and the perpetrators are intent on escaping. The only other attack that has come close in style was a suicide bombing attack, also claimed by IS, on an Ahmadi mosque in Rajshahi on 26 December 2015. By this virtue alone, the Gulshan attacks may signal the emergence of a new offensive orientation within domestic jihadist networks or the direct penetration of IS into Bangladesh.

The attack also seems to be a synthesis of older al Qaeda and newer IS tactics as the attackers singled out non-Muslims from Muslims before killing the former. This is not IS’ signature modus operandi, but is closer to the methods employed by al Qaeda (and its affiliates). The latter has repeatedly condemned the former for its wholesale mass slaughter tactics. This could point towards involvement of the locally-based Ansar.

Third, the attack was a significantly more sophisticated assault than previous attacks in Bangladesh. The use of semi-automatic AK-22 assault rifles and IEDs is unusual for Bangladesh’s terror landscape. However, while relatively sophisticated weapons were used to storm the bakery, the actual killings were done with machetes – a common thread in previous attacks in Bangladesh. Past arms seizures from JMB or Ansar in the last few years have largely been of crude weapons, with a single AK-22 featuring in a seizure on 27 April from Bogra district. Another attack, on a Shiite Mosque in the same district, claimed by the IS, involved machine guns.

Finally the fact that all the attackers came from privileged backgrounds was a significant difference from normal JMB recruits who tend to come from low-income demographics in the countryside.

A related question that arises is regarding the 7 July crude bomb and pistol attack outside a large Eid congregation in a Sunni mosque in Kishoreganj. No one claimed the attack, just like the Istanbul airport attack. Turkey too is a Sunni majority country. This fits in perfectly with IS’s targeting of ‘takfiri’ (non-believer) Sunnis and not claiming responsibility. All of this means that past operating patterns have been broken and a new synthesis of offensive patterns is emerging, which seem atypical of domestic terror groups in Bangladesh. In early 2016, intelligence agencies in Bangladesh warned of the formation of “JMB sleeper cells” with “highly educated members and technology experts” in the north of the country. These groups now somehow seem to have morphed into ‘wolf-packs’ pledging their allegiance to the IS and improvising tactics while being fundamentally domestic in nature.

Conclusion

The above analysis strengthens the criticism that the current ‘home-grown terror’ narrative of the government of Bangladesh is tunnel-visioned and reductive. The Gulshan attack, in combination with the subsequent Kishoreganj mosque attack, seems to bear a common link to a newly emerging prototype of ‘glocal’ (global + local) jihad, currently in use by the IS, which is different from the earlier tactics employed by groups like al Qaeda.

For Bangladesh, the attacks signal a reorientation of extremist networks, or a form of ‘reorganised terror’ that is neither foreign nor home-grown, but rather a convenient fusion of both at a dual tactical-ideological level. Clearly, ‘home-grown terror’ is an inadequate classification for this new kind of hybrid terrorism, which demands a broader understanding of a new form of expansionist global jihad.

* Angshuman Choudhury
Research Officer, Southeast Asia Research Programme (SEARP), IPCS

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday thanked his Saudi counterpart for the close partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and reaffirmed their strong relationship, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

Carter and Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman met on the margins of a defense ministerial meeting of nations involved in the effort to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.

“This meeting provided an opportunity for the two leaders to continue discussions from their bilateral meeting held at the Pentagon in June,” Cook said. They discussed the fight against ISIL and the coalition’s recent results, Saudi Arabia’s military capability development and regional security issues, he added.

Carter underscored the U.S. commitment to the enduring defense partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the press secretary said.

By Desirée Mota and Sophie-Anne Baril*

On July 14, Brazilian Prosecutor Ivan Claudio Marx reported that the delaying of payments to banks made by President Dilma Rousseff’s administration does not constitute a crime of responsibility.[1] Marx stated that the maneuvers, known as fiscal pedaling, were “a violation of the contract between the government and the banks but not a crime.”[2] The prosecutor’s report even advised terminating the criminal case on Rousseff’s accounting practices and requested a new investigation into illegal payments made by the government without congressional approval.[3]

In 2015, Brazil Attorney General Luís Inácio Adams affirmed that delays in transfers from the National Treasury to public banks, which had to be disbursed from Brazil’s own reserves to pay for social programs, also occurred in past governments and were not considered irregular by the Union Accounts Court (TCU).[4] This action, intended to momentarily relieve the fiscal framework of the country, is one of the main accusations the opposition used to carry out the illegal impeachment against President Rousseff. The Brazilian Constitution states that an impeachment can only be carried out if the President commits crimes of responsibility, which Rousseff is not guilty of.

Marx’s report poses an obstacle to the senators and government officials supporting the impeachment. Earlier in July, a board of experts, tasked with investigating the accusations against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, found no proof of her direct involvement with the country’s fiscal budgetary maneuvers.[5] Following the release of another report absolving Rousseff, the Workers’ Party Senator Gleisi Hoffmann has filed a request to invite the Federal Prosecutor to speak in the Senate, where the impeachment process is being tried.[6] Additionally, she has asked senators to close the impeachment probe.[7] Following Congresswoman Hoffmann, Senator Lindbergh Farias, also from the Workers’ Party, stated that “this process is discredited once and for all” and further recommended the House to stop leading the impeachment forward.[8]

As evidence finding Rousseff not guilty for budget manipulations continues to be released, the international criticism on the impeachment process is mounting. Congressman Alan Grayson, who serves on the United States House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, has stated his concerns over the threats that President Rousseff’s impeachment poses to Brazilian democracy.[9] Similarly, a group of French congressmen have released a manifesto condemning the impeachment process.[10] The outcome, however, is still very much at play. As international criticism on the impeachment process increases, this new report only further affirms the illegitimate nature of the impeachment proceedings against Rousseff.

*Desirée Mota and Sophie-Anne Baril, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[1]Brazil Prosecutor Says Rousseff’s Accounting Tricks Are Not A Crime. Accessed July 18, 2016 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-14/brazil-prosecutor-says-rousseff-s-accounting-tricks-not-a-crime

[2] Brazil Senators Push to End Impeachment Against Rousseff. Telesur. Accessed July 18, 2016. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-Senators-Push-to-End-Impeachment-Against-Rousseff-20160716-0006.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] AGU Diz Que Pedaladas Fiscais Foram Adotadas Por Governos Anteriores. G1. http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/07/agu-diz-que-pedaladas-fiscais-foram-adotadas-por-governos-anteriores.html

[5] Dilma Rousseff Found Not Guilty of Budgetary Maneuvers. COHA. Accessed July 18, 2016 http://www.coha.org/dilma-rousseff-found-not-guilty-of-budgetary-maneuvers/

[6] Com Decisão do MP, Senadores vão pedir para Paralisar Impeachment. Agência Brasil 247. Accessed July 18, 2016 http://www.brasil247.com/pt/247/brasilia247/244093/Com-decis%C3%A3o-do-MP-senadores-pedir%C3%A3o-para-paralisar-impeachment.htm

[7] Ibid.

[8]Ibid.

[9] Grayson’s statement on Brazilian President’s impeachment. Congressman Grayson. Accessed July 18, 2016. http://grayson.house.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/435-grayson-s-statement-on-brazilian-president-s-impeachment

[10] Dilma Rousseff victime d’une basse manoeuvre parlementaire. Le Monde Idées. July 13, 2017. Accessed July 18, 2016. http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/07/13/dilma-rousseff-victime-d-une-basse-manoeuvre-parlementaire_4969141_3232.html

Contrary to popular belief, taking estrogen after menopause may not affect the memory and thinking abilities of healthy women no matter when the treatment is started. The research is published in the July 20, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The recent study is among the first large, long-term clinical trial to examine the cognitive effects of estradiol, a type of estrogen, on women both close to and long after menopause.

Millions of women take estrogen to treat hot flashes, night sweats and other symptoms caused by menopause. Estradiol is the main type of estrogen produced by women in their reproductive years. Previously, researchers thought estradiol benefitted memory and thinking in women soon after menopause but not later, called the “timing hypothesis”. Prior studies testing the theory have not found consistent results.

“This study fails to confirm the timing hypothesis,” said study author Victor W. Henderson, MD, MS, of Stanford University School of Medicine in California and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. “Our results suggest that healthy women at all stages after menopause should not take estrogen to improve memory. At the same time, women need not particularly be concerned about negative effects of postmenopausal estrogen supplements on memory when used for less than five years.”

For the study, 567 healthy women between the ages of 41 and 84 were classified into early and late groups. The early group was within six years of menopause and the late group was at least 10 years postmenopausal. Participants took beta-estradiol every day or a placebo pill. The women also used a progesterone vaginal gel or placebo gel, unless they had a hysterectomy. The average treatment duration was nearly five years. Cognitive tests were performed at the beginning of the trial, 2.5 years and five years to measure thinking skills including verbal memory.

The study showed that no change in cognitive ability was associated with estradiol in either early or late postmenopausal women. Compared to their starting scores, both groups of women improved in verbal memory due to practice. Scores were the same for women with and without hot flashes, and for women who had a uterus and those who had a hysterectomy.

Henderson noted that the study only addressed the effects of estradiol, just one type of estrogen, and did not examine its use in women with existing mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

Sea turtles and whales may be the charismatic critters of the sea, but the true kingpins of the ocean make up 98 percent of the ocean’s biomass — and yet individually are too small to see with the naked eye.

These are marine microbes, a diverse group of organisms that includes microalgae, viruses, bacteria and archaea. They serve as the base of the marine food chain and are responsible for controlling much of the ocean’s nutrient flow and health.

But given their prevalence, very little is known about how they interact and carry out fundamental processes in the ocean, particularly in deep, low-oxygen waters where the impacts of climate change are becoming significant. In these areas, up to half of all available nitrogen — a nutrient that is essential for all ocean life — is lost due to microbial processes on overdrive because of warmer ocean water and less circulation.

Now, a University of Washington team has shed new light on a common but poorly understood bacteria known to live in these areas. By culturing and sequencing the microbe’s entire genome, the oceanographers found that it significantly contributes to the removal of life-supporting nitrogen from the water in new and surprising ways.

“If we want to understand how the oceans are working and be able to model them in any sort of predictive way, we need to more accurately understand what the inputs and outputs are,” said senior author Robert Morris, a UW associate professor of oceanography. “This is an important organism that fixes carbon, is involved in nitrogen loss and is in parts of the ocean that are shifting due to climate change. We now have the first-ever culture in the laboratory and we can study its physiology.”

The findings will appear July 19 in the Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology, a Nature publication.

This organism, given the name Candidatus Thioglobus autotrophicus, is present in low-oxygen waters around the world and is one of the dominant organisms in these areas — between 40 and 60 percent of all cells in some regions.

Living things use oxygen for their metabolic activities, but in low-oxygen areas, bacteria and archaea have evolved to “breathe” other elements available in seawater. One of those is a chemical called nitrate which, when respired, produces gaseous nitrogen. That gas escapes to the atmosphere, effectively leaving the ocean and removing valuable nitrogen from the water.

The bacteria grown and sequenced by the UW oceanographers have been pegged as playing a big role in removing nitrogen from the ocean, but until now scientists didn’t have a complete picture of how it happened.

“We are filling in the gaps by providing a full genome,” said lead author Vega Shah, a UW doctoral student in oceanography. “Now we can talk about both what these organisms can and can’t do.”

The research team confirmed the bacteria are contributing to nitrogen loss, but in a different way than expected. More specifically, they are responsible for a key step — converting nitrate to a similar chemical called nitrite — which then goes on to fuel other nitrogen-removal processes. Earlier research had hypothesized that these microbes also produce ammonia, another nitrogen-containing chemical. Instead, the UW team found that the microbes consume ammonia, essentially competing with other organisms for this nitrogen compound that is also important for growth and development.

At a global scale, the areas of the ocean where these bacteria live are getting bigger as climate change creates conditions that produce low-oxygen zones, including warmer ocean temperatures and less water circulation.

“In the very big picture, we know that different types of oxygen minimum zones that house these organisms are getting bigger and more persistent,” Shah said. “So, whatever influence these bugs have on water chemistry and the atmosphere is going to get more and more important — basically, their habitat is expanding.”

Growing this organism in the lab was no easy task. The UW oceanographers combined several techniques to culture the bacteria in as close as possible to their native ocean environment. It took almost a year to stabilize them to the point where researchers could start doing physiological experiments.

Even the experiments, however, took more time than usual, because these organisms grow much slower than most cultures grown in the lab.

“Most experiments lasted 10 to 15 days because they were growing so slowly. But the advantage is they are actually behaving very similarly to how they do in the ocean environment,” Morris said.

Shah collected the organism from a low-oxygen fjord off the coast of British Columbia from the R/V Thomas G. Thompson during a student research cruise. She then used these organisms to grow identical offspring in the lab.

The researchers will look next at the role this bacteria play in the ocean’s carbon and sulfur cycles. They also recently received National Science Foundation funding to study this organism and its relatives in other low-oxygen areas around the world, including off the coast of Mexico.

I didn’t plan or expect to meet Laura this time when I was in London, in fact I didn’t plan my second trip to London within a week anyway. Considering what is happening in the political circles in UK (and broadly, Europe) planning seemed to me an exercise in futility.  So when I met her in the holga-ish Cafe Nero in Buckingham Palace road after two whole days of covering the coronation of the new UK PM, I was distinctly under-dressed as a classic political correspondent with shabby army green t-shirt, jacket, scarf and jeans, increasingly aware of the uncomfortable dark moist growing patch near my armpit. Thankfully I had deospray in my laptop bag, as the person who greeted me with a copy of her first published novel was in a proper burgundy dress, smelling fresh and soinding Oirish; capable of giving a seven hour Sun-dried man enough complex for the rest of the day. We proceeded, appropriately in my opinion, to talk about her novel and lead character Lisa (a working class, domestically abused, societally neglected early teen, on her way to drugs, larceny, prostitution and “freedom”), on a day Britain had her second Conservative female Prime Minister.

Her debut novel “Taste the Bright Lights” (which I read in the next twenty four hours on my way back to Nottingham) is contemporary urban drama, tracing fourteen year old Lisa “growing up” in Northern Ireland. Imagine Chetan Bhagat’s early writing, meeting “This is England”, just more gritty, grimy, and grainy…a jarring experience, like watching a slow quaint mutiny unfolding, being shot in sepia lens. It shares occasional debut novel characteristics, like overuse of certain typical urban colloquial words, and it’s not an easy read, and not only because of the sheer powerful narrative force, but because of the moral ambiguity that reigns within.

It is in spirit of that moral ambiguity, I asked Laura these questions, published below unaltered and unabridged.

What’s your next book about, and when’s it going to be published?

I finished my second book in December 2015 and it’s currently with agents. It follows Lisa five years on from the events in Taste the Bright Lights, but is intended to be a standalone book rather than a sequel. It’s about what can happen to vulnerable young girls in care, something that is only now beginning to enter the public consciousness with stories like the grooming cases in Rotherham. Its title is Maybe Thursday You Can Sleep and it’s set in Belfast.

What made you tackle urban dramas as subjects?

I didn’t decide to write ‘urban’ fiction as such, but when I write fiction, or journalism, my starting point is always to highlight an issue. I wanted to show the lottery of life in the different upbringing between Lisa and her best friend Nicola, and I set it on a council estate in a Northern Irish town because that’s where I grew up. I think I’ll always write about ‘issues’ when writing fiction, although I do the opposite of that in my professional writing which is quite humorous.

You seemed to keep the novel (the first book) on a morally ambivalent tone. Where do you personally stand on the issue of freedom? Is a life of prostitution, even though free of societal pressures, good? How much is morality important to you?

The book could be said to be morally ambivalent, and I think that’s a big part of why traditional publishers shied away from it. One big publishing house said it was ‘extremely well-written’ but added that they could never sell it in schools [a big part of the YA market] because of the sex and drugs parts of the storyline. Lisa doesn’t die the first time she takes E – she feels great and she does it again any chance she gets. I once refused to answer questions about drugs from an author who was writing a novel about a teenager taking E – who of course died in his story. More people die in police custody than die from taking E. It might be morally ambivalent to say I just want people to be able to do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. Morals aren’t the law and vice versa. I live my life according to my own moral code  – I suppose morality is important to me, but only the (to me) obvious things like honesty, courage and kindness.

I’ve never been sure where I stand on the issue of prostitution. On the one hand, grown adult women can work as escorts and fully choose to do so (and I know a couple of them); on the other, the great majority of women working as prostitutes have been abused as girls or young women. All I can say in relation to Taste the Bright Lights is that Lisa’s situation is the absolute antithesis of free and informed consent, and that of course is repugnant. Not from Lisa’s point of view, but from the men who take fully knowledgeable advantage.

How much of your personal experiences, friends, family, youth, etc influenced you in writing this?

The first question everyone asks me after reading TTBL is ‘Is it based on your own story?’ (I’m always kind of shocked people would ask me that directly, given the graphic nature of some of the themes and scenes.) But while what happens to Lisa didn’t happen to me, the inside of her head is similar to mine at fourteen. The lonely and insecure nature of being a teenager, particularly a girl deemed unattractive in a world that values women mostly for how they look, is something that almost everyone can relate to, and something that a lot of positive feedback and reader reviews for the book has centred on. Nicola is based on my best friend at school. Like most writers, the rest of the characters are bits and pieces of people I knew when I was writing it. The character that’s most true to life is Kelly, who’s based on a girl who picked on me at school when I was about Lisa’s age.

Any advice for writers?

Stephen King says that if you want to write, you have to read. I agree – I’d advise people to read as much as they can so that their mind is always primed for storytelling, even if work or personal circumstances or anything else means they can’t actually write for a while. I’d also advise potential writers to get feedback as soon as possible so they know it’s worth going on. A creative writing class rather than a group is better I think as you’re more likely to get honest feedback. Have a plan – keep a diary or spreadsheet of what you’ve done that day to further your goal of being a writer, even if it’s just emailing an editor or writing down a short story idea.

This article was published at Bombs and Dollars.

By Matt Hadro and Adelaide Mena

It merited only one paragraph in the 2016 GOP platform, but the party’s stand against pornography is drawing commendation from all sides, not only conservatives and Catholics.

“I would argue, surprisingly, that this is the most progressive piece in the platform,” Gail Dines, a professor of sociology at Wheelock College and founder of Culture Reframed, a group that educates about “pornography as a public health crisis in the digital age,” told CNA.

The 2016 GOP platform calls pornography a “menace” and a “public health crisis” that especially hurts children – language not used in the 2012 platform. It further acknowledges the link between child pornography and human trafficking, which the 2012 platform also noted.

The U.S. Catholic bishops already warned of the danger of pornography in a pastoral response issued in November, “Create In Me a Clean Heart.” They called porn a “grave sin against human dignity” and noted its recent “exponential” proliferation thanks to the internet.

“Everyone, in some way, is affected by increased pornography use in society. We all suffer negative consequences from its distorted view of the human person and sexuality,” the bishops wrote.

They pointed to such consequences as the moral degradation of persons involved in the making and selling of porn, the objectification of women and children, human trafficking, wrecked marriages, and widespread addiction.

Others are speaking out against pornography, however, and they may not be Catholic or even conservative.

Dines said that “pornography is a public health crisis of the digital age.” She said the anti-porn stance “is in keeping with the 40 years of empirical research that we have that pornography has enormous social, psychological, cognitive, and sexual effects.”

“It’s a bipartisan issue,” the National Center on Sexual Exploitation stated to CNA.

They noted that “since 2011, at least 24 studies have found that pornography has negative impacts on the brain, including decreased brain matter, as well as reduced impulse control and decision-making ability.”

Other consequences of porn use, they added, include “increased verbal and physical aggression, the incidence and severity of rape perpetrated by batters, acceptance of rape myths, risky sexual behaviors among adolescents, behaviors associated with higher incidence of STIs, and increased cases of sexual dysfunction.”

Yet, as Dines noted, “there’s a backlash against defining porn as a public health issue,” partly because some just don’t understand just how much of a problem it poses.

Studies have reported the average age of children first viewing pornography is right at the start of the teenage years, she said. “I think it’s been a mass abdication of responsibility on the part of adults who refuse to understand how pornography is harming our children. And we better get going on this, because it’s only going to get worse.”

Although the GOP laudably included this matter in its platform, it also showed “hypocrisy” in nominating a presidential candidate who has made statements of a “misogynist,” Dines said.

Trump has shown “distaste and disregard for women,” she reflected, pointing specifically to his controversial statements about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton.

“There is, absolutely, hypocrisy here, which makes those of us in the feminist anti-porn world somewhat cynical,” Dines continued.

There needs to be bipartisanship on this issue, she added, noting that Democrats “have been very quiet on this.”

“This is going to take enormous courage on the part of the politicians to go up against this multi-billion dollar industry,” she said.

Suspected Hindu extremists attacked three Christians in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on July 17.

More than 50 suspected extremists attacked college student Umesh Patel, his father Sudhama Patel and their family friend Kiran Vishwakarma for practicing Christianity, according to sources.

The attack occurred in Kamarud village, Damtari district after the student was questioned about his faith by a group of Hindus.

The Patels’ house was also trashed by the mob and the three remain in a serious condition in hospital.

Tomson Thomas, who heads the India operations of Persecution Relief, believed the assault was part of an organized strategy by Hindu hard-liners to eliminate Christianity in India.

“We keep getting several reports of assaults on poor Christians living in villages every day from different parts of the country,” Thomas told ucanews.com.

Wolves lower the risk of interacting with humans during the reproduction period –- when they are most vulnerable — and adopt some similar behaviors in their areas, from Alaska to India and Afghanistan, according to a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation, which has as its first author Víctor Sazatornil, collaborator at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Barcelona.

The wolf (Canis lupus) covers a wide area on Earth compared to most of terrestrial mammals. This fact, together with the ancestral conflict with the man and their survival capacity, makes the wolf to be considered one of the most capable animals to prosper in any kind of environment, including the human-dominated ones.

This perception is not wrong, but the wolf’s vulnerability towards men reaches a high point at some moments of its life cycle (reproduction period, etc.) according to the article by this team made up by 27 researchers from 12 countries, published in the journal Biological Conservation.

According to Víctor Sazatornil (UB), “after revising 728 breeding places from different wolf areas, we found that, in general, wolves lower the risk of interaction with humans by placing their breeding areas in places far from human activity territories, or placing them in areas with more refuge, unseen or with difficult access for the man. This behaviour seems to be more present where there is more human presence”.

When the wolf seeks refuge for the baby

The authors found general patterns in the breeding areas of wolves. Having in mind the hunting history by men in Eurasia and North America, the scientific team states that in Europe and Asia wolves are sensitive to humans when selecting the areas where to take care of their babies and they usually go for the highest and abrupt areas in their territories. However, in North America, this sensitiveness is not the same and wolves use to choose valleys and softer relief areas.

“In Eurasia there is a narrower co-existence between wolves and human activity. Therefore, by sticking in more humanized areas, they are more careful with the breeding areas to maintain the balance with the higher exposure to humans,” said Víctor Sazatornil, who is working on his doctoral thesis under the supervision of José Vicente López-Bao (University of Oviedo) and Alejandro Rodríguez (Doñana Biological Station, EBD-CSIC) and tutored by Professor Santiago Mañosa (Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio).

According to the expert José Vicente López-Bao, “one of the hypotheses we consider is that the different persecution history done in both continents can be a reason to explain the seen patterns. In Eurasia, persecution started with the appearance of farming and it got stronger gradually, while in North America they ended with the wolves in big areas some decades after colonization and with efficient means from the very first moment”.

During North America’s colonization, they had efficient means –- fire, guns, poison, etc. — to go after big mammals. For instance, the American bison population went from millions before the Europeans’ arrival to a few hundred in the late 19th century. Regarding the wolf’s case, a period of exposure to persecution different between continents could have influenced in the adaptation of the species protection in Eurasia, where the adaptation process was more gradual.

Surviving in the most humanized environments

According to the authors, the management of the habitat for wolves goes unnoticed in humanized environments –for instance, the Iberian peninsula- because they probably assume that it doesn’t affect much to the species, which has survived until now in this environment. “We should at least guarantee the presence of small areas inside those territories where there is preservation of plants offering protection and human activity is controlled during the breeding period”.

By Ravi Joshi*

The US government, despite stern warnings and threats (of dumping billions of US dollar bonds on the American market) from the Saudi Government, has finally declassified and released the now famous ’28 pages’ of the 9/11 Inquiry Commission Report that was originally published in 2004. They are available on the official website of the US House Intelligence Committee.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir, in a very prompt response to the revelations said, “the surprise in the 28 pages is that there is no surprise.” Is that really so? The fact that 15 of the 19 attackers came from Saudi Arabia, and that President Bush had personally intervened to permit airlifting of all the important members of the Saudi royalty and family members of Osama Bin Laden (OBL) living in the US, two days after 9/11 when there was a blanket ban on all aircraft movements across the US, that was a real surprise to the world. But that’s history.

A brief reminder. The first hijackers to arrive in the US were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who settled in the San Diego area in January 2000. They were followed by three hijacker-pilots, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehi and Ziad Jarrah in mid-2000 to undertake flight training in South Florida. The fourth hijacker-pilot, Hani Hanjour arrived in San Diego in December 2000. The rest of the ‘muscle hijackers’ arrived in early and mid-2001. They had already taken lessons in flying airplanes in their own country.

The present revelation revolves around the following facts:

• Two Saudi nationals, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, both suspected to be Saudi Intelligence Officers provided substantial assistance to two ‘would be hijackers’ Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihadhar after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. During the same time frame, al-Bayoumi had extensive contacts with Saudi government establishments in the US and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defence. According to FBI files, al-Bayoumi received a monthly salary and this increased substantially in April 2000, two months after the hijackers arrived in San Diego. That company reportedly had ties to OBL and al-Qaida.
• According to a CIA Memo, Bassnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi government officials. He and his wife have received financial support from Saudi Ambassador to the US. A CIA report also indicates that Bassnan travelled to Houston in 2002 and met with an individual (blanked out by the Committee), and during that trip, a member of the Saudi Royal family provided Bassnan with a significant amount of cash. FBI report indicates that Bassnan is an extremist and supporter of OBL and has been connected to the Eritrean Islamic Jehad and the Blind Sheikh (Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman — responsible for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing).
• The two hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, according to FBI and CIA documents, may have been in contact with Shaykh al-Thumairy, an accredited diplomat at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and one of the ‘Imams’ at the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California. (An ‘Imam’ being sent as an accredited diplomat — that’s a surprise.) According to FBI documents, the Mosque was built in 1998 from funding provided by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdulaziz. The Mosque is reportedly attended by members of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and is widely recognised for its ant-Western views.
• In September 2001 (a few days before the attack), Saleh al-Hussayen, reportedly a Saudi Interior Ministry official, stayed at the same hotel in Herndon, Virginia where al-Hazmi was staying. While al-Hussayen claimed after September 11, not to know the hijackers, FBI agents believed he was being deceptive. He was able to depart the US despite FBI efforts to locate and re-interview him.
• Abdullah bin Laden claims to work for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, as an Administrative Officer. He is identified by the FBI as OBL’s half- brother. He is a close friend of Mohammed Quadir-Harunani, a possible associate of Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi (two other hijackers), prior to September 11.

The Joint Inquiry also found other indications that individuals connected to the Saudi Government have ties to terrorist networks, including:

i.  Both CIA and FBI have identified the Ibn Tamiyah Mosque in Culver city, California as a site of extremist-related activity. The Mosque is known to have ‘laundered money’ to non-profit organisations overseas affiliated with OBL. An FBI agent told the Committee that he believed that Saudi Government money was being laundered through the mosque.

ii.  Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal family is the subject of FBI Counter Terrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the US’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the US.

iii.  According to FBI documents, one of the phone numbers found in the phone book of Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaida operative captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was linked to the ASPCOL Corporation, located in Aspen, Colorado that manages the affairs of the Colorado residence of Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan.

The details are far more elaborate and damning to the Saudi embassy and its consulate officials in the US. It is hard to believe that they were receiving funds and were taking care of hijackers without clearance from their Ministry in Riyadh.

It must be emphasised that no intelligence agency can actually confirm some of its observations ‘from an independent agency or a third party source.’ Only those in the business know who a normal diplomat is and who an ‘intelligence official’ in the embassy or a consulate. And most of the ‘intelligence inputs’ here are corroborated with evidence of bank transfers, money receipts, statements of witnesses and at times interviews with suspects. It’s hard to dismiss their findings.

But having noted all these ‘findings’ the Joint Inquiry Committee states: “It should be clear that this Joint Inquiry has made no final determinations as to the reliability or sufficiency of the information regarding these issues we found contained in FBI and CIA documents.” That’s where the real surprise is. If anyone reads these 28 pages in conjunction with Chapters 5 to 7 of the Main Report published in 2004, the role of the helpers to the hijackers becomes critically important. The hijackers who were total strangers to the US, who spoke no English and had come here specifically to join a flight training school could not have survived a week without an infrastructure of support being already in place. That crucial gap was filled by the staff in the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in LA and the various mosques in California funded by the Saudi government and its Royal families.

The Committee also notes that “Prior to September 11, the FBI apparently did not focus investigative.. (blanked out).. Saudi nationals in the US due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American “ally”. A representative of the FBI’s.. (blanked out) testified in a closed hearing prior to September 11, the FBI received “no reporting from any member of the Intelligence Community” that there is a.. (blanked out) presence in the US.

The blanked out words could not be referring to ‘al-Qaida’ because the Counter Terrorism cell of the NSC headed by Richard Clarke had been warning of al-Qaida attacks on US interests and directly on America since January 2001 and that the Daily Presidential Briefings given by the CIA Director George Tenet to President Bush had mentioned of an imminent attack by OBL at least 40 times between February to September 2001.

Though the “System was blinking Red”, in the words of George Tenet, from July 4 onwards, no agency had focussed a torchlight on the Saudi Arabian embassy and its consular officials nor on the activities of Saudi royal families or its nationals in a coordinated manner. Had they done so, they would have probably collected a lot more specific intelligence, particularly when the hijackers started to come and join the flight training schools in different parts of California and South Florida.

These 28 pages reveal far more of Saudi involvement in assisting the hijackers than was known before. To say that — “there are no surprises” — is being less than ingenious. In this season of elections in America, both parties and their candidates have had little time to talk of it but this is not going to die so easily. There will be many who would like to resurrect it later.

*The author is Visiting Fellow at Observer Research Foundation and a retired senior official of the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.

Harvard Law School professors love to use hypotheticals in their classes. So let’s try one that they have not subjected their students to in its 200 years of storied history. What if the Law School split itself into two parts – each with different professors and students on its crowded campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts? One half would retain the name Harvard Law School, while the other half would be called Harvard Lawless School. How would the courses differ?

Well, the Harvard Law School curriculum would remain pretty much the same, accepting the law as is, working its interpretation by courts, regulators and legislatures and speculating a little about how it could be clarified and improved.

Harvard Lawless School would be more grounded in grim realities, where there are no operating laws to discipline raw power or where the laws are so violated as to be systematically inoperative over a large range of activities.

Lawlessness, the kind that is considered as factual non-compliance with existing law, is often far more widespread than the studied phenomenon known as compliance.

I am reminded of the long history of this duality by in a 1932 review by Daniel James of The Modern Corporation and Private Property – a famous book by Adolf A Berle, Jr. and Gardiner C. Means that documented the split between ownership (the shareholders) and control (by the corporate executives). He wrote then what is worse now, that “There is a paper government for corporations and there is an actual government. The one is embodied in Constitutional provisions, statutes, charters, by-laws, decisions; the other has its being in the conduct of men who control corporate activity…With them as with all human institutions there is a divergence of the intended and the realized, the ought and the is.”

The “is”, declared Mr. James, is “made up of blunt, realistic facts” which is what Harvard Lawless School would teach and take off from.

What’s all this got to do with you? Just about everything. If you cannot use the law to pursue your rights – say health coverage – under fine-print contracts or gain adequate compensation for your wrongful injuries, you are being strapped by lawlessness through the design of the power elites. They, of course, live under their own rules – monetarily greased through their plunder of the political economy – and, not surprisingly, use these special rules to their advantage in ways that disadvantage you and most other people.

Business crooks get away with over $300 billion a year just in computerized billing fraud and abuse in the healthcare industry, despite the existing laws against fraud. Starvation enforcement budgets for the federal cops on the corporate crime beat are allocated by an indentured Congress. Thus, a routinely vast area of theft and harm drives a political climate of lawlessness and exacerbates crime in the suites.

When Congress cuts the IRS’s budget year after year, the agency cannot collect what it estimates is over $450 billion a year in “uncollected taxes.” Add additional massive sums of “avoided taxes” by corporate lobbyists driven through a greased Congress, and you end up paying more taxes, or receiving fewer public services or incurring larger government deficits. Huge sums of money are outside the tax laws.

As the protections of tort law – the law of wrongful injuries – are diminished, millions of Americans are left outside the civil justice system – unable to hold perpetrators accountable. The forced under-utilization of consumer, environmental and worker protection laws by their supposed beneficiaries against violators is overwhelmingly the norm.

Expanding areas of lawlessness flow wildly from existing laws.  Criminal wars of choice, mass government surveillance, the tortures and the licenses accorded military contractors are examples of rampant lawlessness. Wars of aggression (Iraq, Libya) are not declared, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is violated routinely, torture and unlawful imprisonment (euphemistically called ‘detention’) are the stuff of media exposés that go nowhere.

Domestically, using the law itself as an instrument of oppression, prosecutorial abuses, police and prison lawlessness and entrenched procurement violations between vendors and governments are institutionalized dimensions of lawlessness. There are unconstitutional laws that need amendment or repeal.

Who enforces the legal boundaries on the Federal Reserve, whose widening unaccountable penumbras of lawless discretion are worrying Right and Left in this country. Then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson told the Washington Post that he had “no authorities” to engage in his serial bailouts of Wall Street, but somebody had to do it.

There are no international laws regarding the ongoing, growing cyberwarfare; no laws governing the tumultuous nanotechnology, few rules that can contain the spread of migrating, untested biotechnology.

When at least 250,000 Americans can die yearly (about 700 a day!) because of medical malpractice, medical error, hospital-induced infections and mis-prescription of medicines and their lethal side-effects, there clearly is no “rule of law” applicable in this realm of preventable mass violence having any quantitative significance.

This short introduction to a hypothetical curriculum at Harvard Lawless School only scratches the surface of the “blunt, realistic facts.” Students, professors and courses at this kind of law school would not be mired in what Professor Jon Hanson has called “the illusion of law.”

Hypotheticals can spark the imagination to connect law to justice in thought and practice. Who knows what the future holds for an imaginative Harvard Law(less) School?

By Denis Dzidic

Lawyers for former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic have asked for his trial to be halted and two judges removed because of the ‘systematic bias’ of the UN court in The Hague.

Mladic’s lawyers on Wednesday asked for his genocide and war crimes trial to be halted, for judges Alphons Orie and Cristoph Flugge to be removed and for new “unbiased” judges to replace them.

They said that a special UN Security Council working group of should be set up to prepare a report, within the next three months, on whether Mladic’s rights to a fair trial and presumption of innocence have been violated.

“The essence of this problem is the fact that judges Orie and Flugge have made important conclusions about the defendant previously. This jeopardises their ability to be impartial,” they said.

They claimed that both Orie and Flugge, as well as Hague Tribunal president Carmel Agius, have previously made conclusions about Mladic’s guilt, which precludes a fair trial.

They cited previous verdicts handed down by the Hague Tribunal in cases related to Srebrenica and Sarajevo in which Agius, Orie and Flugge were involved.

In the Srebrenica verdicts, Mladic was named as a member of a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to kill able-bodied Bosniak men.

The defence also objected due to the fact that Theodor Meron, the president of the Mechanism for International Tribunals, who will lead the appeals procedure in Mladic’s case, said the former Bosnian Serb general was guilty.

Mladic’s lawyers argued that Meron had said that “the Tribunal will not consider its work done until Karadzic and Mladic have been brought to justice”.

“It is clear that there is no presumption of innocence in the case of the defendant before this Tribunal. Besides the cancellation of the proceedings, the only possible solution would be to discontinue it permanently due to serious violations of human rights,” the defence said in its motion to the court.

Mladic is on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in several other municipalities, terrorising the population of Sarajevo citizens and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Also on Wednesday, the Hague Tribunal ruled that there is insufficient evidence that a member of Radovan Karadzic’s defence team, Goran Petronijevic, was guilty of contempt of court for giving confidential information to the media.

Petronijevic revealed to media that Karadzic had filed a request to be temporarily released from custody, but the Hague court said that the lawyer did not know this request was filed confidentially.

By Vijay Shankar*

When Premier Xi rubbished the 12 July 2016 verdict of the International Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague on China’s claims over most of the South China Sea, what exactly was meant? For no international justice system had thus far ever called China to order for its expansionist strategy.

What The Hague had in fact done was not only to uphold the case filed by the Philippines in 2013, after China seized a reef in the Scarborough Shoal; but also condemned China’s conduct in the South China Sea (SCS) over construction of artificial islands and setting up military infrastructure. In an unequivocal rebuke,it found China’s expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis, historical or otherwise. The verdict gives motivation to the governments of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan to pursue their maritime disputes with Beijing in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). Small wonder then is Premier Xi’s fulmination.

The central issue before the PCA was the legality of China’s claim to waters within a so-called “nine-dash line” that appears on official Chinese charts. It encircles 90 per cent of the SCS, an area of 1.9 million square kilometres approximately equal to the combined areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Myanmar put together. Philippines’ contention was that China’s claims were in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which both China and the Philippines have ratified. In its decision, the tribunal said any historic rights to the sea that China claimed “were extinguished” by the treaty. And its failure to be a party to the deliberations in no way bars the proceedings. The UNCLOS lays out rules for drawing zones of control over the world’s oceans and seas based on coastal orientation, while the concept of Historic Waters means waters that are treated as internal waters where there is no right of innocent passage.

As far as the “nine-dash line” (originally eleven-dash) is concerned; following the surrender of Japan in 1945, China produced a proprietorship chart titled “Position of the South China Sea Islands” that showed an eleven-dash line around the islands. This map was published by the Republic of China government in February 1948. It did not hold onto this position after it fled to Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party, however,persisted with this cartographic notion, modifying the 11 to 9 dashes when in 1957, China ceded Bailongwei Island in the Gulf of Tonkin to North Vietnam.

The PCA concluded that China had never exercised exclusive authority over the waters and that several disputed rocks and reefs in the SCS were too small for China to claim control of economic activities in the waters around them. As a result, it found China outside the law in as much as activities in Philippine waters are concerned. The tribunal cited China’s construction of artificial islands on the Mischief Reef and the Spratly archipelago as illegal in addition to the military facilities thereon which were all in Philippine waters.

The episode has besmirched the image of Xi Jinping, his politburo and indeed the credibility of the Communist Party of China (CPC). To lose their legal case for sovereignty over waters that they have heavily invested in must come as a rude shock to their global aspirations. A complaisant response may set into motion the unravelling of the CPC’s internal hold on the state as defence of maritime claims is central to the CPC’s narrative. Any challenge to this account is seen in Beijing as a challenge to the Party’s rule. But the die has been cast; it remains to be seen how more regions and neighbours respond to China’s unlawful claims wherever it is perceived to exist. An indication of the regional response was Vietnam’s immediate endorsement of the tribunal’s decision.

Thus far China has responded sardonically with a typical Cold War propagandist style avowal. “We do not claim an inch of land that does not belong to us, but we won’t give up any patch that is ours. The activities of the Chinese people in the South China Sea date back to over 2,000 years ago” said the front-page in the People’s Daily, which ridiculed the tribunal as a “lackey of some outside forces” that would be remembered as a “laughingstock in human history.” Such dippy doublespeak has no place in contemporary geopolitics. For China to do nothing about the matter will be difficult in the extreme. It does not take a political pundit to note that some form of immediate coercive military manoeuvre in the SCS is in the offing. Also, it would hardly be realistic to expect China to scurry away to dismantle the military infrastructure it has so far set up; more likely it is their revisionist policies that would be reviewed.

Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1976, China brought out a movie titled “Great Wall in the South China Sea;” it was not about the inward looking narrative of Chinese civilisation but of “expansive conquests that would knit together all of South East Asia.” The Hague’s verdict has grievously injured the latter strategy. And if the free world is to rein in China’s bid to rewrite the rule books, including the right to unimpeded passage in the SCS, then it would do well to convince her of the illegitimacy of her position. In the meantime, Indian diplomacy should promote the littorals of the SCS to seek arbitration for their maritime disputes with China at The Hague.

* Vijay Shankar
Former Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Forces Command of India