China’s Communist Party gives Xi Jinping new title,“core” of leadership, to speed economic and military reforms.

By Frank Ching*

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, already general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, president, and commander of the country’s military forces has been given another new title – “core” of the party leadership. The title, unused for the past 14 years, elevates Xi’s status to a higher level than that of his predecessor, Hu Jintao. As Xi prepares to push for tough economic and military reforms, his unchallenged position could prove to be valuable armor – or it could make a shinier target for his opponents.

Notice came in a communiqué issued at the end of a four-day session of several hundred party leaders in late October, and China watchers immediately recognized the significance of the statement urging all party members to “closely unite around the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core.”

The concept of a “core” leader was not used during the first 40 years of the People’s Republic of China. In fact, the title does not appear in the constitution of the Communist Party of China, so the rank comes with no attached power or responsibilities.

Mao Zedong, the party’s founder and chairman, never used the title ”core” though he was hailed as the great leader, great teacher, great supreme commander and great helmsman and his word was law.

Similarly, Deng Xiaoping eschewed titles as superfluous and never became the formal party leader, premier or president though he was universally described as “China’s paramount leader” and governed by force of personality.

Yet Deng invented the title “core,” bestowing it on Jiang Zemin, whom he chose as the party leader after the tumult of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and the downfall of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who had sympathized with protesting students. Because Jiang did not have the standing of an old revolutionary, Deng boosted his status by saying that just as Mao was the core of the first generation of leaders and Deng himself the core of the second generation, so Jiang was the core of the third generation.

The whole party was enjoined to rally around “the Party Central Committee with Comrade Jiang Zemin at its core.”

The title helped. It also helped that Deng lived through Jiang’s first term. Buoyed by the designation of “core” – and lingering fears about the consequences of defying the Party since Tiananmen – he pushed through major reforms of state-owned enterprises; transformed the party from a revolutionary into a governing party; and developed the theory of “the three represents,” which significantly widened the party’s base.

In selecting Jiang as the post-Tiananmen party leader, Deng at the same time chose Hu Jintao to succeed Jiang in 2002. When it came time for Jiang to step down, Deng had been dead for five years and Jiang was unwilling to raise anyone else to the level of core leader. Throughout Hu’s 10-year tenure, the expression “the party Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary” was used instead.

Of course Hu, not being a core leader, could not pass on this designation to Xi when stepping down in 2012.

So, for the first time, an existing general secretary has been elected a core leader by other party leaders rather than designated as such by a strongman. Arguably, then, Xi has more legitimacy as core leader than Jiang, who was given that status by one man, albeit a highly respected revolutionary leader. The designation certainly puts Xi on a higher level than any other Chinese leader – giving him more authority to deal with the country’s myriad problems, from the economic slowdown and corruption to internal security to the South China Sea.

Ever since he became party leader in 2012 and head of state in 2013, Xi has been concentrating power in his own hands, creating and heading institutions responsible for national security and economic reform among others.

Such activities stand in stark contrast to Deng, who spurned titles such as president, premier or party leader. The avid card-player’s only title was honorary chairman of the China Bridge Association, and the party’s decision to revive the “core” designation suggests that Xi, though powerful, may not not be in the league of Mao or Deng.

Xi can most appropriately be compared to Jiang, the only other leader to govern as core leader in the party’s 95-year history. Deng may have felt that his successor needed the core leader designation as a boost from the very start to push through needed reforms.

In 2013, at the first plenum under Xi’s watch, the party rolled out impressive reform plans that included allowing the market to play a “decisive role” in allocation of resources, safeguarding the authority of the constitution and law; improving protection of human rights, and allowing farmers the same benefits as city dwellers. But when the Chinese stock market crashed in 2015, the government intervened rather than allowing the market to decide. Non-implementation of many reforms has been attributed to opposition by vested interests, and Xi’s power grab is explained as a necessary condition for the realization of such reforms.

Now, as core leader, Xi would find it difficult to explain further delay in reforms.

At the October party meeting, it was disclosed that the anti-corruption campaign, a hallmark of the Xi administration for four years, will not be wound down after the party has been purified and insteadt will become a permanent feature. The meeting’s rhetorical emphasis was on strengthening party discipline.

This move is, at least in part, meant to remove any remaining obstacles in Xi’s path. After all, there isn’t much point in designating a core leader if party members – especially other party leaders – can flout his decisions at will. The core leader may, to some extent, function as part of a collective leadership.

Further action is likely next year, when, according to convention, Xi is expected to unveil who will govern with him during his second five-year term and who his successor will be in five years. Xi may well bend mandatory retirement rules – age 68 for top leaders and 65 for senior-level officials – to allow certain allies to remain in power. After all, these rules were set in place by Jiang in 2002 for political reasons, to ensure the removal of an opponent.

Thus, speculation is rife that Wang Qishan, who is in charge of the anti-corruption campaign but who will be 69 years old next year, will be granted an exemption from the current rules, if the rules aren’t ditched outright.

Also, Xi may delay unveiling a successor next year so as not to turn himself into a lame duck.

He may also dispense with the two-term limit imposed since Deng’s time and refuse to retire in 2022. After all, he will only be 69, relatively young as a core leader and the same age as Hillary Clinton today, who is a year younger than Donald Trump. If that happens, Xi would have cemented his status as a lasting core of the party’s leadership.

*Frank Ching is a journalist and author of Ancestors: 900 Years in the Life of a Chinese Family. Follow him on Twitter.

By Hossein Kebriaeizadeh*

One can daresay that there have been two junctures in the contemporary history of the Middle East, which have been greatly effective from various viewpoints, especially with regard to the region’s security. The first juncture was what happened in the year 2001 following terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, which caused the fight on terror to turn into the topmost security discourse in the Middle East region.

At that juncture, direct military invasion of Afghanistan and later on, Iraq, by the United States within framework of preemptive war put an end to Washington’s strategic confusion in the region, which had started since the beginning of the 1990s. In that period, the United States’ foreign policy saw some form of coherence, which led to domination of its clear and unequivocal priorities across the Persian Gulf region.

From the viewpoint of temporal conditions, that period was characterized by major changes with new actors entering the arena of regional developments, most of whom were non-state actors, which had a great impact on triggering unconventional developments across the region. During that juncture, the United States implemented its regional strategies in a unilateral manner and only minimal roles were assigned to regional actors by the hegemonic power. Under those conditions, the environment of the political game in the region changed into a forced hierarchy as a result of which not only regional actors became politically dependent on the United States, but that dependence became institutionalized from legal, normative, and ideological standpoints.

However, none of these far-reaching changes by the United States could help this superpower achieve its goals in fighting against terrorism in the Middle East. Dependent security arrangements, which were opposed by some other regional actors, including Iran, failed in less than two decades. Therefore, despite the fact that former leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was eliminated, the new arrangements failed to uproot extremism in the region.

Extremism, which seemed to have become inactive during that juncture, only waited for suitable conditions and those conditions were provided to Takfiri groups by the Arab Spring, developments in Syria and spillover of those developments to the neighboring Iraq. As a result, extremist groups like Daesh embarked on conquering land in those countries through support of certain regional actors.

Objectification of the fight against terrorism has been the most important blight, which has caused failure of all US efforts during past two decades for the reduction and control of extremism. The rising power of Daesh, its alliance with other groups and their operations in various parts of the world have raised issues related to security concerns of regional actors among which one can point to their inability to limit the theater of war, ambiguity of the threat, fluidity of the battleground, uncertainties about those involved in the war and diversity of weapons of war.

The success of Daesh during the past two years and absence of global consensus on how to defeat it clearly revealed inefficiency of regional and even global security arrangements for fighting against terrorism. In the meantime, countries which are rich, but lack enough power to defend themselves, will be facing more threats from this group. The most important examples in this regard are the littoral countries of the Persian Gulf. Although they avail themselves of a mechanism like the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, inefficiency of this mechanism has been proven beyond doubt even in classic wars. At the same time, to fight terrorism and such groups as Daesh, they need intelligence supremacy, agility and high effectiveness while these factors are lacking even in Western countries’ security arrangements.

In the meantime, the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which has such pragmatic members as Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman in its composition, will certainly not bow to Saudi Arabia’s totalitarian leadership in times of crisis and when facing overarching threats. As a result, the management method and mechanisms used by the GCC to deal with any confrontation, which have been created on the basis of imagined and intangible threats, will have to change.

In addition and from a psychological standpoint, the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, which have reached the conclusion that they will no longer have the United States’ protective umbrella as they had in the past, are not prepared to establish an effective security order by themselves.

Under these conditions, the responsibility of global community to fight Daesh seems to become more prominent. A combination of the United States’ diplomatic leverage and Europe’s pragmatism can both create necessary political and social infrastructure for fighting against Daesh in the region, and fill the void of strong security arrangements for the time being.

It must not be ignored that countries in the Persian Gulf region need to take full advantage of all their internal capacities in order to fight off Daesh-type extremism. It must also be noted that, despite all its animosity toward Tehran, Daesh has so far failed to carry out even a single suicide attack on the Iranian soil and this issue is indicative of high importance and special position of Iran in anti-Daesh security arrangements.

Since fighting Daesh in the Persian Gulf region would not be fruitful in the absence of help and cooperation from Iran, which has successful experiences in this regard, and since relations between Iran and member states of the GCC are now tense due to crisis in Tehran’s relations with Riyadh, Europe can work to provide grounds for security cooperation between Iran and the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council.

Tehran can help member states of the GCC in various fields from intelligence gathering with regard to extremist groups to formulating a strategy to fight such groups. For this reason and under conditions when the littoral states of the Persian Gulf face threats, it would be better for them to set aside differences, most of which are based on wrong mentalities, and move toward more cooperation and convergence with Iran.

Given the current conditions facing the littoral states of the Persian Gulf in the absence of effective security mechanisms in the region and in view of the sensitivity of these countries toward one another, they heed to obtain three elements of power balance, commitment to domestic reforms, and firm belief in multilateralism. Achieving this goal would need all these actors to change their attitudes and go beyond a purely realistic logic.

* Hossein Kebriaeizadeh
Expert on Middle East Issues

Climate change is currently one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, and one of the groups of animals most affected by the increase in temperature is amphibians. A team of scientists with Spanish participants studied how heat waves affect the dietary choices of three species of amphibian found on the Iberian Peninsula: the European tree frog, the Mediterranean tree frog and the Iberian painted frog.

Global warming is causing not only a general increase in temperatures, but also an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as flooding, heat waves and droughts. These environmental changes pose a challenge for many organisms, among them amphibians, who have to change their behaviour, physiology and life strategies in order to survive.

Researchers at the Universities of Lisbon (Portugal) and Uppsala (Sweden) studied the behaviour of three kinds of amphibians that inhabit the Iberian Peninsula: the European tree frog (Hyla arborea), the Mediterranean tree frog (Hyla meridionalis) and the Iberian painted frog (Discoglosus galganoi) to find out what effect heat waves can have on their diets.

As Germán Orizaola, co-author of the study published this week in the journal ‘Ecology’ and a researcher at the Swedish university, tells SINC: “Among the many challenges climate change poses to natural ecosystems, the effect it can have on the dietary preferences of living organisms is a field of study that has been attracting researchers’ attention in recent years.”

Amphibians are a group that is highly sensitive to global warming due to the permeability of their skin and their complex lifecycle, which combines an aquatic stage as larvae and a terrestrial stage when young and as adults. “In fact, they are already experiencing sharp declines in population and extinction on a global scale, and they have become the focus of several research and conservation programmes in recent decades,” the scientist explained.

A vegetable-based, animal-based or mixed diet

The researchers conducted a laboratory experiment in which they exposed the larvae of these three species to various kinds of heat waves, which varied in duration and intensity, by increasing the temperature of the water where they were growing.

“The larvae were kept in three different sets of conditions: with a solely vegetable-based diet, solely animal-based or a mixed diet. This third situation allowed us to assess whether they modified their diets towards a greater or lower percentage of vegetable matter,” Orizaola added.

They also examined the relationship between various carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the tissue of larvae with a mixed diet and compared them with those of exclusively vegetable-based or animal-based ‘menus’. This enabled them to reconstruct the type of diet larvae exposed to a combined diet selected.

“Our results indicated first that larvae of various species have a diet adapted to the conditions under which they reproduce. The painted frog, which reproduces when it is cold, has a carnivorous diet, while the Mediterranean tree frog, which reproduces during the hottest season of the year, maintains a vegetarian diet,” the investigator noted.

The most important result is that these larvae have very flexible dietary habits. All three species increased the percentage of vegetables consumed during heat waves. By analysing these larvae’s rates of survival, growth and development, reduced effectiveness of the carnivorous diet in favour of a vegetarian diet was discovered in hot conditions.

“This phenomenon could be common to many species living in continental, aquatic environments. If so, the increased frequency and intensity of heat waves forecast by climate change models could bring about considerable changes to these environments,” Orizaola concluded.

In response to ongoing, unchecked leaks at the FBI, and what he claims is a pattern of poor judgement by FBI Director James Comey, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), said, “The continued leadership failures at the FBI are another reminder we can’t let intelligence agencies say ‘trust us’ and then give them a blank check to probe into Americans’ lives.”

Wyden’s comments come following news that the FBI is continuing its investigations into Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Wyden said that while he has argued for years that Congress must create ironclad protections for Americans’ security and privacy, “we also need vigilant oversight of agencies that have the power to deprive citizens of their liberty or change the course of an election.”

According to Wyden, “It is clear the FBI would benefit from a strong, independent inspector general, and that moves to weaken independent watchdogs like the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board only embolden leaders at FBI and elsewhere who believe the rules don’t apply to them.”

Nine journalists, staff members and executives from Turkish opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet were formally arrested pending trial, on extremism-related charges, in court Saturday, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Among those arraigned was Murat Sabuncu, the editor-in-chief, who was detained along with other staff members on Monday. The private Dogan news agency said cartoonist Musa Kart was also arrested.

The court ruling comes a day after nine members of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were arrested on a variety of terrorism-related charges, drawing stark condemnation from the European Union.

Turkey has also been throttling internet access, including to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, while mobile internet access was also restricted at times. The United States has also voiced concern about the limits on freedom of expression.

Cumhuriyet – which has continued to publish this week despite the detentions – also confirmed the arrests of its staff and leadership and ran a headline on its website saying the measures “will go down as a disgrace in history.”

European leaders and human rights groups have been critical of Turkey’s moves against the paper. Amnesty International called it “the only remaining mainstream opposition newspaper” and decried “an ongoing systematic attempt to silence all critical voices.”

Turkey has shuttered some 165 media outlets since a failed coup attempt in July. There are more than 100 journalists in jail.

The crackdown since the coup has seen some 35,000 people arrested and tens of thousands of civil servants fired.

The government says it is targeting those affiliated with Fethullah Gulen, a US-based preacher Ankara blamed for the coup attempt. Gulen was a longtime ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until the two fell out.

The Cumhuriyet executives and journalists are accused of aiding the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Gulenists, although not of being part of the networks, according to the prosecutor’s allegations.

Kurdish nationalists and the once-powerful Gulenists were at odds for years. Furthermore, the secular Cumhuriyet has a long history of being critical of both the PKK and the religious Gulenists, raising questions about the allegations.

European governments and the UN have been critical of Turkey’s vague anti-terrorism laws and their wide application.

The centre-left newspaper, founded in 1924, has staunchly denied the charges against it. It is sharply government critical.

The newspaper has been targeted by Erdogan repeatedly during the past year, especially since former editor-in-chief Can Dundar published an article revealing that the government was allegedly shipping weapons to Syrian rebels.

Dundar now lives in Germany in exile, after being sentenced along with another writer to five years in jail for their reporting. He is aiming to set up a new media outlet which will employ the many journalists who have lost their jobs recently as a result of the crackdowns.

By Shabtai Gold, original source

Indian authorities should promptly and impartially investigate the killing of eight prisoners who had escaped a high security prison in Madhya Pradesh state, Human Rights Watch said today. Contradictory reports and cell phone videos raise doubts over the police account that the prisoners were shot in an armed exchange after they resisted arrest.

Police reported that the eight prisoners escaped from prison on October 31, 2016, after killing a prison guard, were surrounded, and all fatally shot several hours later. Senior government officials in Madhya Pradesh ordered an inquiry into the prison break but refused an investigation into the killings.

“Arresting escaped prisoners is difficult and dangerous work, but the police don’t have a license to kill,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s important that the Indian authorities impartially investigate the prison break and death of a guard, but also the reasons why every single escaped prisoner was shot dead.”

The prisoners, all alleged members of the banned Students Islamic Movement in India, escaped the central prison in Bhopal city before dawn on October 31, according to police. They apparently fashioned keys out of toothbrushes and wood, and used bedsheets to scale the 30-foot walls. The Bhopal police chief initially said the prisoners were unarmed and had attacked the police with stones. He later changed his statement to say the prisoners were armed and killed in a shootout with the police. He said that three police officers were also injured “but with sharp weapons.” The state’s home minister, Bhupendra Singh, said that the men had “used jail utensils as weapons. [They] didn’t have guns, but the police had no choice but to kill them.”

Television networks broadcast two unverified videos allegedly shot at the scene of the killings. One video shows five of the escaped men standing atop a hill waving and asking to speak with the police officers while a second video shows a police officer shooting at men lying on the ground. Autopsy reports show that all of the prisoners had gunshot injuries to the chest and abdomen, suggesting that the police did not attempt to capture the prisoners alive.

The head of the Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad was quoted as saying, “These men were dreaded criminals. If the police see the possibility that such men can escape, they can use maximum force… Even if the police are not being fired at, they can use such force.”

However, under the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, police should “apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms.” Whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials “shall: (a) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved; (b) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.” Furthermore, “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

The Basic Principles further provide that, “[i]n cases of death and serious injury or other grave consequences, a detailed report shall be sent promptly to the competent authorities.”

State authorities have rejected calls for an investigation into the killings, fueling concerns that any wrongdoing by the police would go unpunished, Human Rights Watch said.

Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which governs the state of Madhya Pradesh as well as the central government, dismissed calls for an investigation. While Singh said that “there was nothing to be investigated,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, central minister for law and justice, said that some “are showing more concern for them [the killed prisoners] than for the security of Indians and India as a nation.” The state’s chief minister also announced cash rewards for all policemen involved in the operation.

A central BJP leader said that questioning the actions of security forces “lowers their morale.” Kiren Rijiju, the central government minister of state for home affairs, said, “First of all we should stop this habit of raising doubt, questioning the authorities and the police. This is not a good culture.” He later clarified on social media that while the government must be questioned in a democracy, there was less concern for “martyrs” and “more for the terrorists.”

India’s opposition parties have called for a judicial inquiry into the matter. Both the national and the state human rights commissions have sought reports from the Madhya Pradesh state government on the killings. On November 2, police in the adjoining state of Uttar Pradesh beat up members of a local rights group, Rihai Manch, who were peacefully protesting the killing of the prisoners.

Police in India often flout central and state rules and procedures for arrest and detention, and every year they kill dozens of people in what they call “encounters,” claiming they acted in self-defense or to prevent flight from arrest. The National Human Rights Commission registered 206 encounter killings by the police from October 2015 to September 2016. The police are often responsible for staging these incidents, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch research has found that such unlawful killings are also a symptom of an overburdened criminal justice system that makes every trial a lengthy, drawn-out process that can sometimes last decades, leaving police frustrated. Police inability or unwillingness to uncover evidence to secure convictions often leads to the deliberate killing of suspects or the use of torture to obtain confessions.

Despite persistent police impunity for serious rights violations, India has no mechanisms for accountability or redress to systematically address police abuse. When asked to investigate alleged abuses by their colleagues, police are rarely willing to do so.

“Policing in India needs urgent reforms that have been pending for decades,” Ganguly said. “Creating a responsive, properly trained, rights-respecting police force is the best way to improve police morale – not by sweeping abuses under the rug.”

By Dusica Tomovic

A group of Yugo-nostalgic activists said it will launch a legal challenge to senior officials over the construction of a cemetery for German soldiers killed in World War II in Montenegro.

An NGO calling itself the Consulate of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia said on Thursday that it will file criminal complaints against government officials, including the defence minister, in a bid to stop the construction of a cemetery and memorial for German soldiers killed in Montenegro during WWII.

Construction of the cemetery is entering its final phase at military air base near the capital Podgorica and the group urged the state authorities to halt the burial of the remains of the German troops.

The NGO says the plan humiliates Montenegro and belittles its anti-fascist traditions. Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945.

In 2011, Berlin and Podgorica signed an agreement on burying the remains of the German troops killed in Montenegro during World War II.

A site containing more than 400 bodies was excavated in Podgorica in 2007. Since the discovery of the bodies by construction workers, the remains have been kept at a Catholic community house near the capital.

The head of the so-called SFRJ Consulate, Marko Perkovic, told local newspaper Vijesti that charges will be filed against all signatories of the 2011 agreement – then-Prime Minister Igor Luksic and Foreign Minister Milan Rocen and current Defence Minister Milica Pejanovic Djurisic.

Perkovic claimed that the agreement was unconstitutional and illegal and that he had informed the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office.

“The agreement between the two governments has not yet passed the procedure of ratification in parliament,” Perkovic said.

“There is reasonable suspicion that it violated several laws, and that criminal offenses including ‘damaging the reputation of Montenegro’ ‘endangering [the country’s] independence’ were committed,” he added.

Around 2,000 German soldiers believed to have been killed in Montenegro during the war are still officially considered missing.

The so-called SFRJ Consulate is a non-government organisation based in the coastal town of Tivat, where it has opened a museum of the former Yugoslavia.

Visitors can see memorabilia from the former regime and some of the uniforms and vehicles owned by Yugoslavia’s long-time leader, Josip Broz Tito.

It has also issued commemorative former Yugoslav ‘passports’. Nearly 5,000 people have requested them so far.

Professor Vladislav B. Sotirović, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer of: “Middle East Studies” at the Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania; “Mediterranean Studies;” “Ethnicity, Multiculturalism and Globalisation;” “Balkan Nationalism and Ethnic Conflicts”and “Europeanisation: Process and Results.”

Prof. Dr. Sotirović is a distinguished expert on the History of the Early Byzantine Empire, 330–846”, Comparative History of Central and South Eastern Europe and Ottoman History, History of Lithuania and Ukraine. He is well known abroad for his influential books and popular lectures about Lithuania, Russian Federation, the Balkans and Baltic Nations and the Multiculturalism.

Prof. Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

Professor Sotirović has studied at the Central European Summer University, Budapest, Hungary (2002); earned his Ph. D. in Vilnius University, Faculty of Philology, Slavic Philology Department, in Vilnius, Lithuania. Has pursued graduated studes at the School of Human Rights Research, Tilburg University and Institute for Human Rights, of the Catholic University of Leuven (2001), the Netherlands and Leuven, Belgium; the Center for European Integration Studies, Bonn, Germany (2001); European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano, South Tyrol (Alto Adige), Italy, and in many other Summer Universities and post graduate programs.  The following is an extensive interview that Prof. Sotirović has provided to Foreign Policy News Journal, in Washington, DC, and which is being republished with the author’s permission.

Peter Tase: What is the historical background of the current Ukrainian conflict from the point of view of the Ukrainian statehood?

Vladislav B. Sotirović: The German occupation forces were those who have been the first to create and recognise a short-lived state’s independence of Ukraine in January 1918 during the time of their-own inspired and supported anti-Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917−1921. As reoccupied by the Bolshevik Red Army, the eastern and southern parts of the present-day territory of (a Greater) Ukraine joined in 1922 the USSR as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (without Crimea). Therefore, a Jew V. I. Lenin has to be considered as the real historical father of the Ukrainian statehood but also and as of the contemporary nationhood. Ukraine was the most fertile agricultural Soviet republic but particularly catastrophically affected by (Georgian) Stalin’s economic policy in the 1930s which neglected agricultural production in favour of the speed industrialisation of the country. The result was a great famine (holodomor) with around seven million people dead but majority of them were of the ethnic Russian origin. A territory of the present-day Ukraine was devastated during the WWII by the Nazi German occupation forces from 1941 to 1944 who installed in Ukraine a puppet and criminal regime of S. Bandera (1900−1959) under which a genocide on Poles, Jews and Russians was committed. For instance, the Ukrainian militia (12.000) directly participated in the 1942 holocaust of some 200.000 Volhynian Jews together with 140.000 German policemen. The Ukrainian mass killers learned their job from the Germans and applied their knowledge as well as on the Poles.

After the war, J. V. Stalin, supported by the Ukrainian party-cadre N. Khrushchev, deported about 300.000 Ukrainians from their homeland as they have been accused for the collaboration with the Nazi regime during the war and the participation in genocide done by S. Bandera’s government. However, after the war the Ukrainians have been and directly rewarded by Moscow for the collaboration with the Germans and participation in S. Bandera’s organized genocide as the lands of Transcarpathia, littoral Moldova (Bessarabia), Polish Galicia and part of Romania’s Bukovina in 1945 followed by Crimea in 1954 became annexed by the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. These territories, which never have been part of any kind of Ukraine and overwhelmingly not populated by the ethnolinguistic Ukrainians, were included into the Soviet Ukraine primarily due to the political activity by the strongest Ukrainian cadre in the USSR – N. Khrushchev, a person who inherited Stalin’s throne in Moscow in 1953. On this place, a parallel with Croatia is an absolute: for the Croat committed genocide on the Serbs, Jews and Roma by A. Pavelić’s regime (a Croat version of S. Bandera) during the WWII on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia a post-war (Socialist Republic of) Croatia was awarded by a Croat-Slovenian dictator of Yugoslavia J. B. Tito with the lands of Istria, Adriatic islands and Dubrovnik – all of them never have been in any kind of the state of Croatia before the WWII.

M. Gorbachev’s policy of deliberate dissolution of the USSR from the time of Reykjavik bilateral meeting with Ronald Reagan in 1988 caused a revival of the ethnic nationalism of the Ukrainians who proclaimed an independence on August 24^th, 1991 (confirmed on a referendum held on December 1^st, 1991 only by those who did not boycott it) in the wake of anti-Gorbachev’s military putsch in Moscow (mis)using the political situation of paralyzed central government in the country. The state’s independence of Ukraine was proclaimed and later internationally recognized within the borders of a Greater Stalin-Khrushchev’s Ukraine with at least 20% of the ethic Russian population living in a compact area in the eastern part of the country and as well as making a qualified (2/3) majority of Crimea’s population. The coming years saw the rifts with neighbouring Russia with the main political task by Kiev to commit as possible as the Ukrainization (assimilation) of ethnic Russians (similar to the policy of the Croatization of ethnic Serbs in Croatia orchestrated by the neo-Nazi government in Zagreb led by Dr. Franjo Tuđman). At the same time the Russian majority in Crimea constantly required the peninsula’s reunification with mother Russia but getting only an autonomous status within Ukraine – a country which they never considered as their natural-historical homeland. The Russians of Ukraine were becoming more and more unsatisfied with conditions in which they have been leaving from the time when in 1998−2001 the Ukrainian taxation system collapsed what meant that the central government in Kiev was not able to pay the salaries and pensions to its own citizens. A very weak Ukrainian state became in fact unable to function normally (“failed state”) and as a consequence it did not have a power to prevent a series of politically motivated assassinations followed by popular protests which had been also very much inspired by economic decline of the country.

As a matter of fact, it has to be stressed that the Ukrainian historiography on their own history of the land and the people is extremely nationalistic and in very cases not objective like many other national historiographies. It is basically politically coloured with the main task to present the Ukrainians as a natural ethnolinguistic nation who have been historically fighting to create a united independent national state and unjustifiably claiming certain territories to be ethnohistorically the “Ukrainian”. As a typical example of such tendency to rewrite history of the East Europe according to the nationalistic and politically correct framework is, for instance, the book by Serhy Jekelčyk on the birth of a modern Ukrainian nation in which, among other quasi-historical facts based on the self-interpreted events, is written that the USSR in 1939−1940 annexed from Poland and Romania the “West Ukrainian land” (Serhy Jekelčyk, Ukraina: Modernios nacijos gimimas, Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2009, 17).

However, this “Western Ukrainian Land” never was part of any kind of Ukraine before the WWII as Ukraine as a state or administrative province never existed before V. I. Lenin created in 1923 a Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine within the USSR but at that time without the “Western Ukrainian Land” as it was not a part of the USSR. Moreover, the Ukrainians were either not leaving or being just minority on this land what means that Ukraine even did not have ethnic rights over the biggest part of the “West Ukraine.”  Even today around half of Ukraine’s state’s territory is not populated by the Ukrainians as a majority of the population. Moreover, in some regions there are no Ukrainians at all. Therefore, the cardinal question is on which principle the Ukrainian borders are shaped?

As another example of the Ukrainian historiographic nationalistic misleading we can find in an academic brochure on Bukovina’s Metropolitan’s residence, published in 2007 by the National University of Chernivtsi. In the brochure is written that this university is “…one of the oldest classical universities of Ukraine” (The Architecturial Complex of Bukovynian Metropolitan’s Residence, Chernivtsi: Yuriy Fedkovych National University of Chernivtsi, 2007, 31) that is true only from the present-day rough political perspective but not and from a moral-historic point of view.  Namely, the university is located in the North Bukovina which in 1775 the Habsburg Monarchy had obtained. The land was from 1786 administrated within the Chernivtsi district of Galicia and one hundred years after the affiliation of Bukovina to the monarchy, the Franz-Josephs-Universität was inaugurated on October 4^th, 1875 (the name day of the emperor). In the other words, the university’s origin as whole Bukovina has nothing to do with any kind of both historical Ukraine and ethnic Ukrainians as before 1940 it was outside of administrative territory of Ukraine when the whole North Bukovina on August 13^th, became annexed by the USSR according to the Hitler-Stalin Pact (or the Ribbentrop-MolotovPact) signed on August 23^rd, 1939 (ibid.). Therefore, two notorious bandits (one Nazi another Bolshevik) decided to transfer the North Bukovina to the USSR and the land became after the WWII part of a Greater (Stalin’s) Ukrainian SSR. Nevertheless, while the Ukrainian nationalists claim that “Russia” (in fact anti-Russian USSR) occupied Ukraine, the annexation of the North Bukovina and other territories from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1940 are for them a legitimate act of historical justice. Here we have to notice that according to the same pact, the territories of the independent states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are as well as annexed by the USSR that is considered by their historians and politicians as “occupation”, what means (illegal) act of aggression that is breaking international law and legitimate order. Nevertheless, they never accused Ukraine of doing the same in regard to occupied lands from its three western neighbours in 1940/1944.

Political assimilation of certain separate Slavonic ethnolinguistic groups in Ukraine was and is one of the standardized instruments for the creation and maintaining of the Ukrainian national identity in the 20^th century. The most brutal case is of the Ruthenians (Rusyns) who are simply proclaimed as historical Ukrainians known under such name till the WWII. Their land, which was in the interwar period part of Czechoslovakia, that was annexed by the USSR at the end of the WWII and included into a Greater Soviet Ukraine is simply renamed from Ruthenia into the Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. However, the Ruthenians and the Ukrainians are two separate Slavonic ethnolinguistic groups as such officially recognized, for example, in Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Vojvodina where the Ruthenian (Rusyn) language is even standardized and studied together with Ruthenian philology and literature at a separate department at the University of Novi Sad. Unfortunately, the Ruthenian position in Ukraine is even worst in comparison with the Kurdish position in Turkey as the process of Ruthenian assimilation is much speeder than of the Kurdish case.

From the current perspective of the Ukrainian crisis and in general from the point of solving the “Ukrainian Question” it has to be noticed a very historical fact that a part of the present-day East Ukraine became legally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1654 as a consequence of the decision by the local hetman of Zaporozhian territory Bohdan Khmelnytsky (c. 1595−1657) based on a popular revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian (the Roman Catholic) occupation of Ukraine which broke out in 1648. It means that the core of the present-day Ukraine voluntarily joined Russia, therefore escaping from the Roman Catholic Polish-Lithuanian oppression. Subsequently, B. Khmelnytsky’s ruled territory has to be considered from a historical point of view as the motherland of all present-day Ukraine – the motherland which already in 1654 chose Russia.                   

Peter Tase: How do you see the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014?

Vladislav B. Sotirović: The current Ukrainian crisis and in fact civil war which stared at the very end of 2013 are grounded in for decades lasting internal interethnic antagonisms primarily on the Ukrainian-Russian relations including above all the “Crimean Question” as an apple of discord from 1954 between Ukraine and Russia. The crisis came from Lithuania’s capital Vilnius were in November 2013 an Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine had to be signed. Lithuania at that time (July 1^st−December 31^st, 2013) presided the European (Union) Council and formally had a full political responsibility for the breaking out of the crisis as being the host of the event on which the EU absolutely blamed only Ukraine’s President V. Yanukovych for the failure of the agreement as he simply rejected to sign it.

However, his decision was primarily based on the logic of a realpolitik as he preferred much more favourable economic-financial offer by Moscow (including and de facto legalization of stealing of the Russia’s gas to Europe that was transported via Ukraine) for the purpose to try to resolve inner economic, social and political crisis which was threatening a stability of the Ukrainian society and state from 1991. The official Kiev recognizes that for Ukraine (up to 2014) Russia was:

“…the largest trade partner and a huge market. In addition, many Ukrainians have family and friendly relations with the Russian people. In this connection, it should be noted that Europeans are actually interested in stable partnership between the two countries. Ukraine remains the major transit country for Russian natural gas transported to Europe, and it is very important for Kyiv to make sure that Europeans regard it as a reliable and predictable partner” (Ukraine. A Country of Opportunities, Kyiv: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, 2010, 6).

It was obvious that such Yanukovych’s turn toward the Russian Federation would mean and closest political ties between Kiev and Moscow in the future – a cardinal reason for the EU and USA to directly fuel a new colour revolution in Ukraine for the purpose to overthrow Yanukovych and to install instead of him their own puppet regime which will drive the country to direction of both the EU and the NATO. The Ukrainian 2013/2014 coloured revolution was committed according to the model of the first CIA’s sponsored East European colour revolution that was organized in Serbia (Belgrade) at the beginning of October 2000 (the “2000 October 5^th Revolution”). The protest of the “people” in Kiev in 2014 finally was ended by a classic street-style coup d’étatlike in Belgrade 14 years ago and installation of as well as a classic (pro-USA/EU/NATO’s) marionette regime. As it is known from any introductory course on democracy, any kind of coup d’état (putsch) is illegal and unconstitutional. As in the 2000 Belgrade Coup case, the 2014 Kiev Putsch case was formally justified as a “popular revolt” against the dictator who became ousted in February 2014. In fact, however, unlawfully removed legally and legitimately elected head of state by the USA/EU’s sponsored and supported ultranationalistic and even a neo-Nazi coloured political upheaval of the “Euromaidan” protesters in Kiev and some other bigger western Ukrainian cities (like in Lvov) directly provoked a new popular coloured revolution in the Russian speaking provinces of the East Ukraine and Crimea with a final consequence of a territorial secession of self-proclaimed Luhansk, Kharkov, and Donetsk People’s Republics and Crimea (according to Kosovo pattern from 2008).

In regard to the 2014 Kyiv Coup, according to Paul Craig Roberts, Washington used its funded NGOs ($5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at the National Press Club in December 2013) to begin street protests when the elected Ukrainian Government turned down the offer to join the European Union.Similarly to the Ukrainian coup in 2014, the Guatemala coup in 1954, when democratically elected Government of Jacobo Arbenz became overthrown, was also carried out by the CIA. Nonetheless, following R. Reagan’s logic used in the US-led military invasion of Grenada in 1983, the Russian President could send a regular army of the Russian Federation to occupy Ukraine for the security reasons of Russia’s citizens who were studying at the universities in Kiev, Odessa or Lvov. Similar R. Reagan’s argument (to protect the US’ students in Grenada) was (mis)used, among others, and by Adolf Hitler in April 1941 to invade and occupy the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as, according to the German intelligence service, the German minority in Yugoslavia (the Volksdeutschers) were oppressed and terrorized by the new (pro-British) Government of General Dušan Simović after the coup in Belgrade committed on March 27^th, 1941.Nonetheless, a new anti-Russian government in Kiev launched a brutal linguistic and cultural policy of Ukrainization directly endangering the rights of ethnolinguistic Russians, who represent a clear majority of the population of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of the East Ukraine, Crimean Peninsula respectively but as well as and of other non-Ukrainian population who supported a pro-Russia’s course of the country.

Peter Tase: Who are the Ukrainians or what you can say on a Ukrainian identity as a very important part of the current Ukrainian conflict issue?

Vladislav B. Sotirović: Ukraine is an East European territory which was originally forming a western part of the Russian Empire from the mid-17^th century. That is a present-day independent state and separate ethnolinguistic nation as a typical example of Benedict Anderson’s theory-model of the “imagined community” – a self-constructed idea of the artificial ethnic and linguistic-cultural identity. Before 2014 Ukraine was a home of some 46 million inhabitants of whom, according to the official data, there were around 77 percent of those who declared themselves as the Ukrainians. Nevertheless, many Russians do not consider the Ukrainians or the Belarus as “foreign” but rather as the regional branches of the Russian nationality. It is a matter of fact that, differently to the Russian case, the national identity of the Belarus or the Ukrainians was never firmly fixed as it was always in the constant process of changing and evolving. The process of self-constructing identity of the Ukrainians after 1991 is basically oriented vis-à-vis Ukraine’s two most powerful neighbours: Poland and Russia. In the other words, the self-constructing Ukrainian identity (like the Montenegrin or the Belarus) is able so far just to claim that the Ukrainians are not both the Poles or the Russians but what they really are is of a great debate. Therefore, an existence of an independent state of Ukraine, nominally as a national state of the Ukrainians, is of a very doubt indeed from both perspectives: historical and ethnolinguistic.

The Slavonic term Ukraine, for instance, in the Serbo-Croat case Krajina, means in the English language a Borderland – a provincial territory situated on the border between at least two political entities: in this particular historical case, between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the Republic of Both Nations (1569−1795) and the Russian Empire (a German historical term for Ukraine would be a mark – a term for the state’s borderland which existed from the time of the Frankish Kingdom/Empire of Carl the Great).

The term is mostly used from the time of the treaty (truce) of Andrussovo in 1667 between these two states. In the other words, Ukraine and the Ukrainians as a natural objective-historical-cultural identity never existed as it was considered only as a geographic-political territory between two other natural-historical entities (Poland and Russia). All (quasi)historiographical mentioning of this land and the people as Ukraine/Ukrainians referring to the period before the mid-17^th century are quite scientifically incorrect but in majority of cases politically inspired and coloured with the purpose to present them as something crucially different from the historical process of ethnicgenesis of the Russians (see, for instance: Alfredas Bumblauskas, Genutė Kirkienė, Feliksas Šabuldo (sudarytojai), Ukraina: Lietuvos epocha, 1320−1569, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2010).

It was a Roman Catholic Vatican that was behand the process of creation of the “imagined community” of the “Ukrainian” national identity for the very political purpose to separate the people from this borderland territory from the Orthodox Russian Empire. Absolutely the same was done by Vatican’s client Austria-Hungary in regard to the national identity of Bosnian-Herzegovinian population when this province was administered by Vienna-Budapest from 1878 to 1918 as it was the Austria-Hungarian government who created totally artificial and very new ethnolinguistic identity – the “Bosnians”, just not to be the (Orthodox) Serbs (who were at that time a strong majority of the provincial population).

A creation of ethnolinguistically artificial Ukrainian national identity and later on a separate nationality was a part of a wider confessional-political project by Vatican in the Roman Catholic historical struggle against the eastern Orthodox Christianity (the eastern “schism”) and its Churches within the framework of Pope’s traditional proselytizing policy of reconversion of the “infidels”. One of the most successful instruments of a soft-way reconversion used by Vatican was to compel a part of the Orthodox population to sign with the Roman Catholic Church the Union Act recognizing at such a way a supreme power by the Pope and dogmatic filioque (“and from the Son” – the Holy Spirit proceeds and from the Father and from the Son). Therefore, the ex-Orthodox believers who now became the Uniate Brothers or the Greek Orthodox believers became in a great number later on a pure Roman Catholics but as well as changed their original (from the Orthodox time) ethnolinguistic identity. It is, for instance, very clear in the case of the Orthodox Serbs in Zhumberak area of Croatia – from the Orthodox Serbs to the Greek Orthodox, later the Roman Catholics and finally today the Croats. Something similar occurred and in the case of Ukraine. On October 9^th, 1596 it was announced by Vatican a Brest Union with a part of the Orthodox population within the borders of the Roman Catholic Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth (today Ukraine). The crucial issue in this matter is that today Ukraina’s Uniates and the Roman Catholics are most anti-Russian and of the Ukrainian national feelings. Basically, both the Ukrainian and the Belarus present-day ethnolinguistic and national identities are historically founded on the anti-Orthodox policy of Vatican within the territory of ex-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that was in essence an anti-Russian one.

The Lithuanian historiography writing on the Church Union of Brest in 1596 clearly confirms that:

“… the Catholic Church more and more strongly penetrated the zone of the Orthodox Church, giving a new impetus to the idea, which had been cherished since the time of Jogaila and Vytautas and formulated in the principles of the Union of Florence in 1439, but never put into effect – the subordination of the GDL Orthodox Church to the Pope’s rule” (Zigmantas Kiaupa et al, The History of Lithuania Before 1795, Vilnius: Lithuanian Institute of History, 2000, 288).

In the other words, the rulers of the Roman Catholic Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the GDL) from the very time of Lithuania’s baptizing in 1387−1413 by Vatican had a plan to Catholicize all Orthodox believers of the GDL among whom overwhelming majority were the Slavs. As a consequence, the relations with Moscow became very hostile as Russia accepted a role of the protector of the Orthodox believers and faith and therefore the Church Union of Brest was seen as a criminal act by Rome and its client the Republic of Two Nations (Poland-Lithuania).

Today, it is absolutely clear that the most pro-western and anti-Russian part of Ukraine is exactly the West Ukraine – the lands that was historically under the rule by the Roman Catholic ex-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the former Habsburg Monarchy. It is obvious, for instance, from the presidential voting results in 2010 as the pro-western regions voted for J. Tymoshenko while the pro-Russian regions do it for V. Yanukovych. It is a reflection of the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity dilemma between “Europe” and “Eurasia” – a dilemma that is of common nature for all Central and East European nations who historically played a role of a buffer zone between the German Mittel Europa project and the Russian project of a pan-Slavonic unity and reciprocity.

In general, the western territories of the present-day Ukraine are mainly populated by the Roman Catholics, the East Orthodox and the Uniates. This part of Ukraine is mostly nationalistic and pro-western oriented. The East Ukraine is in essence Russophone and subsequently tends to look to closer relations with Russia.

Peter Tase: Russia’s President V. Putin called a Crimean separation from Ukraine in 2014 as a legitimate act founded on the example of Kosovo separation from Serbia in 2008. Can you comment on it? 

Vladislav B. Sotirović: The revolt and colored revolution by the Russian speaking population in the East Ukraine in 2014 finally resulted in separation of Crimea from Ukraine based on the Declaration of Independence of the Crimea as a legal document followed by the people’s referendum on joining Russia based on the formal self-determination rights according to the model and practice of, for instance, the Baltic states in 1990 when they declared independence from the USSR.

It is clear from the official declaration by the Supreme Council of Crimea on peninsula’s independence that this legal and legitimate act is founded on international law and the people’s right to self-determination, but moreover, as well as based on the so-called “Kosovo precedent” – a western created “precedent” in 2008 which came as a boomerang to Ukraine six years later. Basically, “Kosovo precedent” is a clear representative example of a flagrant violation of the international law and order including above all the UN Charter and the UN 1244 Resolution on Kosovo. This “precedent” is firstly created in 1999 by a brutal NATO military aggression on the independent and sovereign state of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) without any mandate of the SC UN that was followed in February 2008 by unilateral proclamation of Kosovo independence by Kosovo parliament and its recognition by a part of the world. At such a way, the West created the “precedence” which by definition has to be a unique case of the time in the international relations and global politics what theoretically means that it cannot serve as a foundation or example for any similar case all over the world. However, this international and legal “precedent” was in 2010 internationally and legally empowered by the opinion by the UN International Court of Justice that a proclamation of Kosovo independence does not violate an international law on self-determination (independence) what is true but at the same time it violates the UN Charter on territorial integrity of the states and their domestic law what is also true.  Nevertheless, the court’s opinion is, formally, just of the advisory nature but in practice it has serious implications and consequences. The first coming one was exactly the Crimean case in 2014 that was clearly stated either by the local Crimean authorities or by Russia’s government.

Undoubtedly, “Kosovo precedent” not only shaken but even destroyed the very foundations of international law based primarily on the UN Charter and resolutions. As a direct consequence, it had direct “boomerang effect” with regard to the case of Crimean secession from Ukraine and following annexation by Russia. We have to remember that Crimea broke away relations with Ukraine calling for the same formal reasons used by the Albanians in the case of the 2008 “Kosovo precedent” and other legal arguments. Nevertheless, the western countries recognized Kosovo independence from Serbia but not Crimean, Donetsk and Luhansk separation from Ukraine regardless the fact that all of these cases are formally and officially based on the same legal and moral arguments. Moreover, differently to “Kosovo precedent”, separation cases in Ukraine are based on the results of the plebiscites.

The western policy of double standards is very visible from the following written statement on Kosovo independence by the US of April 17^th, 2009 that was submitted to the UN International Court of Justice: “Declarations of independence may, and often do, violate domestic legislation. However, this does not make them violations of international law.” Nonetheless, similar statement by the same US administration on the independence cases of the Republic of Serbian Krayina, Republic of Srpska, Republic of Transnistria, Republic of Abkhazia, Republic of South Ossetia or three separatist republics in the East Ukraine and Crimea we did not hear. Obviously, the UN International Court of Justice accepted the US statement and issued on July 22^nd, 2010 its own two that “No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to declarations of independence,” and “General international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.” According to the above statements, however, it is clear that Moscow was absolutely truthful in the case of Crimea’s secession but with one important distinction: Russia did not bomb Kiev previously!

As a matter of fact, the West did not offer to Belgrade possibility of federalization of Serbia with Kosovo as one federal unit as only the independence of Kosovo was advocated as the optimal solution. However, Moscow is advocating exactly the federalization as the best solution for the Ukrainian crisis with the East Ukrainian Russian-speaking regions as a single federal territory. Crimea, following the logic of both historical and ethnic rights, has to stay in Russia as the peninsula has nothing to do with Ukraine. Even Turkey or Greece have more rights on Crimea than Ukraine. The scenario of federalized Ukraine would surely positively influence the process of stopping already ongoing new Cold War in this case between the West (the NATO and the EU) and the bloc of the countries around Russia, China and Iran. However, if the western mentors of the Euromaidan government in Kiev will reject such Russia’s proposal it is most probably that Ukraine will be left to commit suicide as the western policy of double standards, promoted by the US and the EU in the 2008 Kosovo Case will continue to have the boomerang effect in the rest of the East Ukraine following the Odessa region as well.

Peter Tase: What is the way out, according to your opinion, of the current Ukrainian crisis?

Vladislav B. Sotirović: Current Ukrainian crisis can be solved according to the 1667 Andrussovo Treaty signed on February 9^th between Poland-Lithuania and Russia. According to the treaty a present-day territory of Ukraine was simply divided between two states: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Republic of Both Nations) and the Russian Empire with Dnieper river as a demarcation line. In the other words, Russia received from Poland-Lithuania territories eastward from Dnieper but with Kiev and whole Zaporozhie region (from both sides of the river). Therefore, Dnieper became a border between “Europe” and Russia with divided Ukraine into two borderlands. The Slavonic word Ukraine means in English a borderland. It is clear even from the name of the country what is going to be its ultimate destiny. Before or later, no matter. The case of the Republic of Serbian Krayina (Ukraine) proved it clearly in the 1990s – the Borderland can be only a periphery of some more natural state. It does not matter on which side of the border.

We cannot forget and a humanitarian intervention aspect of the final solution of the “Ukrainian Question”. In general, “intervention” is considered as forcible action committed by some state(s) against another one(s) but without the consent by the attacked side. Therefore, “humanitarian intervention” is a military intervention carried out by some state(s) for the sake to protect human rights (usually as a group minority rights). Speaking from the very morality point of view, a humanitarian intervention is grounded, or at least (mis)used as a formal pretext, on the notion of being “humanitarian” what means to be concerned about the interest of and benefits to mankind particularly if the suffering of someone has to be reduced. The concept of humanitarian intervention is (mis)used especially after the Cold War as in the cases of Iraq (in 1991 to create “safe havens” for the Kurds by establishing a no-fly zone policed by three NATO pact countries: the USA, UK and France), Somalia (in 1992 to create a protected environment), Haiti (in 1994 to restore order by the civil authority), Rwanda (in 1994 to create “safe zone” for the Hutu refugees), Kosovo (in 1999 to protect the Albanians from Serbia’s military and police forces), East Timor (in 1999 to prevent possible ethnic cleansing by Indonesia’s security forces) and Sierra Leone (in 2000 to protect the UK citizens at the time of the local civil war).

Peter Tase: How the concept of “humanitarian intervention” can affect the Ukrainian crisis?

Vladislav B. Sotirović: Very controversial wars of humanitarian intervention in above mentioned cases, in which participated only the western powers, were formally justified on humanitarian grounds. However, in majority of these cases the intervention had in essence very political and geopolitical real background as it clearly shows the cases of Kosovo and Sierra Leone. In Kosovo case, the intervention was committed just in a context of fears about the possibility of ethnic cleansing but not on the real ground. Following NATO airstrikes campaign for 78 days was conducted without the SC UN authorization but finally it forced Serbia to withdraw its complete military and police forces from the province. As a consequence, the province was occupied by the NATO troops with creation of huge US military base and finally separated from Serbia by proclamation and recognition of independence which was in fact a real and ultimate geopolitical goal of the formally humanitarian intervention in 1999. In Sierra Leone, after a prolonged civil war, the UK government decided to send the British military forces to the country, formally to protect the UK citizens, but in fact ultimately to support the elected government against the rebel forces that have been accused of carrying out atrocities against the civilians.

Here, we came probably to the crux of the matter of current Ukrainian crisis and most probably “Ukrainian Question” in general. It is well known that Russia’s president V. Putin is extremely counter-fascinated with the NATO 1999 Kosovo humanitarian intervention as it is seen as great humiliation of Russia and Russian national proudness. It is also well known that the Euromaidan regime in Kiev committed terrible war crimes in Donbass region which can be classified as ethnic cleansing and even form of genocide as thousands of Donbass region inhabitants are brutally killed (among them around 200 kids) and approximately one million of them became refuges in Russia. For Moscow, it is very easy formally to “prove” acts of war crimes of Kiev Euromaidan junta in Donbass region as it was, similarly, very easy for Washington formally to “prove” Serbia’s war crimes in Kosovo before NATO intervention in 1999. As a result, Moscow can launch Russia’s military humanitarian intervention in the East Ukraine with a consequence of its final separation from Kiev. A “Kosovo precedent” is still on agenda and it can be legitimized even by a very historical fact that a part of the present-day East Ukraine became legally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1654 as a consequence of the decision by the local hetman of Zaporozhian territory Bohdan Khmelnytsky (c. 1595−1657) based on a popular revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian (the Roman Catholic) occupation of Ukraine which broke out in 1648.

*Prof. Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic: Mykolas Romeris University, Faculty of Politics and Management, Institute of Political Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania; Edior-In-Chief, Global Politics www.global-politics.euglobalpol@global-politics.eu

On the heels of damning WikiLeaks revelations, the Clinton Foundation has confirmed allegations that it received a $1 million ‘gift’ from Qatar without telling the State Department, breaking a signed agreement requiring it to reveal all foreign donations.

The payment, which was first revealed in an email exchange with Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta a month ago, has just been officially confirmed by the Foundation. The check was reportedly a gift to former President Bill Clinton in 2011 for his 65h birthday. A meeting was to take place between him and Qatari officials at some point, according to an email published last month. It is not clear if this ever took place, however.

Earlier in 2009, when Clinton became Secretary of State, she had to sign an agreement to prevent any conflicts of interest which stipulated that her influential global foundation could not receive any support from foreign sources without her notifying the State Department, according to Reuters. This was intended to ensure transparency and combat public perception that US foreign policy could be dictated by foreign money.

The agreement was also designed to give the State Department time to examine donations and raise any concerns in cases when a foreign entity wanted to “increase materially” the funding for any of the Foundation’s programs.

However, Clinton kept the $1 million check from Qatar a secret. While Foundation officials declined to confirm its existence last month, with just days to go before the election, the daily WikiLeaks revelations, and the FBI’s relaunched investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server gaining momentum, its spokesman, Brian Cookstra, finally admitted to receiving the money, though he insisted that the sum did not qualify as a “material increase” in Qatari support of the foundation.

When Cookstra was asked by Reuters what the Foundation considered an increase in funding, he refused to specify, only saying that the Qatar donations were intended for “overall humanitarian work.”

For additional comments, Reuters tried to contact the Qatari embassy, the Clinton presidential campaign and Bill Clinton personally, but received no response from any.

Although Cookstra said the sum did not constitute an increase in funding, there is evidence of at least eight other countries besides Qatar whose donations can clearly be construed as an ‘increase in funding.’ This includes the UK, which tripled the sum slated for the Foundation’s health project to $11.2 million in the years 2009-2012.

When questioned by Reuters last year, Cookstra admitted that a complete list of donors hadn’t been published since 2010. In other cases, the Foundation said that there was either no increase in funding, or that a particular donation had simply slipped past unnoticed, and should have been caught earlier.

The only thing that’s certain, and spelled out on the Foundation’s website, is that it received up to $5 million from the Gulf Kingdom over the years. However, the Foundation appears to want all of this to be relegated to the past. It promised in August that, if Hillary becomes president, it will stop accepting money from all foreign governments and close down any ongoing programs sustained by those funds.

According to Foundation records and testimony, the Qatar money continued to come in at “equal or lower” levels after 2009, but it declined to specify the differences in the funding before and after that period, or if it had changed significantly after Clinton took on the post of secretary of state.

A former Foundation fundraiser details some $21 million raised for Bill Clinton’s birthday in another email.

The Foundation’s somewhat forced admission that it had received Qatari money comes shortly after a recently leaked email exchange between Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, from 2014 startlingly revealed that she was aware Qatar and Saudi Arabia are directly funding Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] terrorists.

The WikiLeaks founder points to clear evidence that Clinton knew about her donors’ questionable dealings as early as several years back. The 2014 email from Clinton to Podesta says “that ISIL, ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar – the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” according to Assange.

Assange admitted to Pilger, “I actually think this is the most significant email in the whole collection.”

“And perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the place, including into many media institutions, all serious analysts know, even the US government has mentioned or agreed with that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS, funding ISIS. But the dodge has always been, that’s… what… it’s just some rogue princes using their cut of the oil money to do what they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that – no, it is the governments of Saudi and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”

Pilger and Assange go on to discuss Clinton as a “cog” in a greater machine involving big business, banks, and “a network of relationships with particular states.” According to Assange, she is “the centralizer that interconnects all these different cogs.”

The Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held an emergency meeting Saturday at the ministerial level at the headquarters of the OIC General Secretariat in Jeddah to discuss the recent launching of a ballistic missile towards Makkah (Mecca) by Houthi and Saleh militias.

After exhaustive discussions and deliberations, OIC participants unanimously agreed, “to condemn in the strongest terms the Houthi-Saleh militias and those who support them and provide them with arms, weapons, rockets, missiles targeting Makkah as an aggression on the sanctity of holy sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a provocation of the feelings of Muslims around the world, and an evidence of their refusal to comply with the international community and its resolutions.”

In the same vein, OIC participants reiterated statements made by member and non-member States, and regional and international organizations that “strongly denounced this aggression seeking to undermine security and stability in the holy sites and thwart all efforts being made to end the conflict in Yemen peacefully,” the OIC said.

According to OIC, Member States reiterated support for Saudi Arabia in its fight against terrorism and against all those attempting to cause harm to the Kingdom or to target religious holy sites.

“It also affirmed solidarity with the Kingdom in all its efforts and measures to preserve its security and stability; and called at the same time on all Member States to stand united against this heinous aggression and against those behind it supporting its perpetrators with arms, considering that infringement upon the Kingdom’s security is also an infringement upon the security and cohesion of the Muslim world as a whole,” the OIC said.

The OIC requested all Member States and the international community to take serious and effective measures to prevent the occurrence or repetition of such aggression in the future, and to hold accountable those trafficking these arms, providing training and extending support to this rebel group.

The OIC recommended the holding of an emergency meeting of OIC Member States’ foreign ministers in Makkah within the next two weeks to consider the Houthi-Saleh militias’ targeting of Makkah.

By Tom Fletcher*

I have a confession: I’m on Donald Trump’s mailing list.

It started innocently when I took his questionnaire on media bias. I am in the statistically negligible group of people who would both take a Trump questionnaire and disagree with him on every question.

But gradually I was sucked in. Like a potential extremist being radicalized. I got several emails a day calling me his key supporter. One asked for debate advice — I suggested a greater focus on tolerance. One arrived asking how to win in November — “change the candidate,” I offered. Even so, I got invitations to meet his daughter (well, make a $3 donation to enter a ballot to meet her).

I couldn’t unsubscribe. Partly out of morbid fascination, as someone curious about political communication. I recognized something: The language I had used as a 19- year-old door-to-door salesman in Indiana. “Everyone’s buying it.” The difference was I was selling aerial photos of houses, not snake oil and anger.

I also recognized something else. Us and them. All their fault. You have a duty to defend “us.” We are the underdogs. It is not fair. The radicalization of those most vulnerable to manipulation by targeting anger at those most vulnerable. The casual lies.

I recognized this because these are also the methods used by extremists in the Middle East, where I was an Ambassador. They also attack moderation — the “grey zones” where cultures interact. They thrive on western intolerance — the Trumps, the burkini bans — in the same way western extremism thrives on their intolerance. We are surrounded by pyromaniac firemen.

Let’s be honest. Many of us — especially men — have an inner Trump. A bit of us prone to narcissism, boastfulness, and that hits out at those we think are weaker.

But the difference, for most of us, is that this is not something we’re proud of. And most people learn to contain it at some point between the ages of three and five. We evolve.

And society also evolves to contain our Trumps. Mankind’s story is one of gradual — albeit with bad years, and sometimes bad centuries — evolution of reason over craziness, community over tyranny, and honesty over lies. As a species, our strength is that we know we are a work in progress. With great sacrifices, we built systems to restrain the dangerous individual who believes he has all the answers. And no country has done more for this noble effort than the USA. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We also know from history that empires usually fall when they are corroded from within. After economic downturns, nations turn inward at the moment they should look outward. They become nationalist when they should be internationalist. Those who close off from the world end up losing. Yet here we are again, seeing countries at risk of stumbling if they cannot contain their inner Trump.

Trump, like Brexit, is a symptom of three wider trends. First, an Age of Distrust: Iraq, the banking crisis, social media and political scandals have made authority a devalued currency, and the 20th century scaffolding is collapsing. Second, we are in the birth pangs of the political and social change that will be unleashed by the Internet. Look at the impact of the printing press and scale it up. Third, we are massively underestimating the cost of growing inequality. We better mind that gap, especially in a century of huge migration.

2016 is still not done. For first time in my life, we can take nothing about the next year for granted, let alone the next decade.

And those still proud to call themselves global citizens need to fight back. We must marshal the best instincts and values against the worst. We have to manage our inner Trumps. The world is not becoming more intolerant or isolationist. The 21st century dividing line is not between Christianity and Islam, East and West, or even between the haves and the have nots. But between those who want to live together, and those who don’t. Between coexisters and wall builders.

November is the most important election in my lifetime. We are at that dangerous point in the rise of a dictator where some start hedging, just in case. This is the moment to speak up. Even diplomats, who shouldn’t normally take sides. After Ali’s death, I asked people not to judge Trump on his tribute to Ali, but how he would have treated him as a 20 year old.

Barack Obama is a humble man with much to be arrogant about. Donald Trump is the opposite. Maybe deep down he knows that. It’s just that he never learned to restrain his inner Trump.

I hope, desperately, that America contains its inner Trump next week. But there is a bigger battle at stake here: To ensure that it is harder for the next Trump to weaponize intolerance in the way he has done.

Perhaps the greatest danger to our species is not the nuclear bomb, environmental catastrophe, the superbug, the robot age or the crazed terrorist, terrifying as they all are. It is in fact the loss of our curiosity to learn from each other, the loss of the desire to live together. The greatest danger to us is that we cannot contain our inner Trumps.

*Prof. Tom Fletcher CMG is a former UK Ambassador, who now teaches at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy and New York University, and campaigns for educational opportunity and the creative industries.

Because the United States will be distracted by its elections and their aftermath, Andrey Illarionov says, the next 30 days represent “the best situation for destabilizing” Ukraine from Moscow’s point of view. Indeed, Vladimir Putin is likely to take a variety of challenging steps there and elsewhere during that period.

Speaking on 112 Ukraina television, the Russian analyst says he has no inside information about this but does believe that Moscow is going to exploit the lack of attention American leaders are likely to be paying to the rest of the world as a result of the US elections (112.ua/obshchestvo/illarionov-noyabr-predstavlyaet-nailuchshuyu-situaciyu-dlya-destabilizacii-v-ukraine-so-storony-rf-350593.html).

And he points out that it has “already been practically declared that on November 8 will be renewed the attack on Aleppo.” That is no accident because that is election day in the United States. “What measures and methods could be applied to Ukraine is impossible to say. But the entire arsenal of both conventional and hybrid means” are well-known.”

Therefore, in the coming days, Illarionov says, “one must not exclude anything.”

Archeologists from the University of Tübingen perform excavation work just 45 kilometers from IS territory – the settlement may have been an outpost of the Akkadian Empire.

Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history.

Scientists headed by Professor Peter Pfälzner from the University of Tübingen and Dr. Hasan Qasim from the Directorate of Antiquities in Dohuk conducted the excavation work in Bassetki between August and October 2016. As a result, they were able to preempt the construction work on a highway on this land. The former significance of the settlement can be seen from the finds discovered during the excavation work. The city already had a wall running around the upper part of the town from approx. 2700 BC onwards in order to protect its residents from invaders. Large stone structures were erected there in about 1800 BC.

The researchers also found fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets dating from about 1300 BC, which suggested the existence of a temple dedicated to the Mesopotamian weather god Adad on this site. There was a lower town about one kilometer long outside the city center. Using geomagnetic resistance measurements, the archeologists discovered indications of an extensive road network, various residential districts, grand houses and a kind of palatial building dating from the Bronze Age. The residents buried their dead at a cemetery outside the city. The settlement was connected to the neighboring regions of Mesopotamia and Anatolia via an overland roadway dating from about 1800 BC.

Bassetki was only known to the general public in the past because of the “Bassetki statue,” which was discovered there by chance in 1975. This is a fragment of a bronze figure of the Akkadian god-king Naram-Sin (about 2250 BC). The discovery was stolen from the National Museum in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2003, but was later rediscovered by US soldiers. Up until now, researchers were unable to explain the location of the find. The archeologists have now been able to substantiate their assumption that an important outpost of Akkadian culture may have been located there.

Although the excavation site is only 45 kilometers from territory controlled by the IS, it was possible to conduct the archeological work without any disturbances. “The protection of our employees is always our top priority. Despite the geographical proximity to IS, there’s a great deal of security and stability in the Kurdish autonomous areas in Iraq,” said Professor Peter Pfälzner, Director of the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at the IANES of the University of Tübingen. The research team consisting of 30 people lived in the city of Dohuk, which is only 60 kilometers north of Mosul, during the excavation work.

In another project being handled by the “ResourceCultures” collaborative research center (SFB 1070), Pfälzner’s team has been completing an archeological inspection of territory in the complete area surrounding Bassetki as far as the Turkish and Syrian borders since 2013 – and 300 previously unknown sites have been discovered. The excavations and the research work in the region are due to be continued during the summer of 2017.

“The area around Bassetki is proving to be an unexpectedly rich cultural region, which was located at the crossroads of communication ways between the Mesopotamian, Syrian and Anatolian cultures during the Bronze Age. We’re therefore planning to establish a long-term archeological research project in the region in conjunction with our Kurdish colleagues,” said Pfälzner. The excavation work is being funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Aerial photographs and photogrammetry together provide an accurate 3D model, which improves the prediction of the propagation of radio waves at millimetre-wave frequencies.

The development of mobile devices has set increasingly high requirements for wireless networks and the emission of radio frequencies. Researcher Vasilii Semkin together with a research group at Aalto University and Tampere University of Technology has recently tested in their research work how aerial photographs taken using a so-called drone could be used in designing radio links.

By using both the aerial photographs taken by the drone and photogrammetry software, they were able to create highly detailed 3D models of urban environments. These models can be used in designing radio links. Photogrammetry is a technique where 3D objects can be formed from two or more photographs.

“The measurements and simulations we performed in urban environments show that highly accurate 3D models can be beneficial for network planning at millimetre-wave frequencies,” Semkin said.

Towards a more cost-efficient design process

The researchers compared the simple modelling technique that is currently popular to their photogrammetry-based modelling technique.

“With the technique used by us, the resulting 3D model of the environment is much more detailed, and the technique also makes it possible to carry out the design process in a more cost-efficient way. It is then easier for designers to decide which objects in the environment to be taken into account, and where the base stations should be placed to get the optimum coverage,” Semkin said.

In the future, it will be possible to utilize the technique in designing 5G wireless connections, among other things.

A researcher from the University of Granada (UGR) has shed new light on the lifestyle of the first communities in the Early Neolithic (7500-6800 years ago) in the Iberian Peninsula, from the study of stone bracelets.

His pioneering work is the most comprehensive study of these ornaments, and it has served to determine that they were used both by children and adults of both sexes, and they represented a chronocultural indicator of the first Neolithic communities of Iberia.

Francisco Martínez Sevilla, researcher from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Granada, has analyzed a total of 2549 objects from 126 sites such as quarries, settlements and ritual places. The absolute dating and studied stratigraphic sequences indicate that said stone bracelets were used between 5500 and 4800 cal BC, with a maximum representation from 5300/5200 cal BC on.

This temporary delimitation responds to a cultural change in the Neolithic populations of southern Iberia: bracelets appeared with the emergence of the Neolithic, consolidation and peak occurs in the Old Neolithic, and their disappearance occurs during the Late Neolithic.

The geographical distribution of the bracelets has helped define two major cultural groups traditionally known as the Andalusian and Valencian Neolithic periods. This distribution and its chronology becomes a first order cultural definer of Early Neolithic societies in the different geographical areas of Iberia. In the same way, their craftsmanship, circulation and use make the bracelets notable elements for determining the socioeconomic evolution of those first neolithic communities.

A prominent archaeological phenomenon

The use of stone bracelets is one of the most important archaeological phenomena associated with the first neolithic societies in much of the Western Mediterranean region. “In the case of Iberia, the bracelets are distributed mainly by the coastal areas, projecting inward, where the earliest and more important neolithic and cultural development in the early stages of agriculture and stock breeding occurs,” Martínez Sevilla explained.

Typological and typographic studies allowed the UGR researcher to establish, in essence, four types of bracelets: narrow, medium, wide, and decorated with parallel lines. Within each type, three groups have been defined according to the size of its inner diameter, which would be related to the individuals who used them.

Narrow bracelets are those with a more uniform geographic distribution between Andalusia and Levante (the eastern region of the Iberian Peninsula). In Andalusia, although they appear throughout the whole region, they are mainly concentrated in the Almanzora Valley and the Sierra Harana area (Granada).

Likewise, medium bracelets present a homogeneous distribution in the two geographical areas, but they are more characteristic of Levante, especially the ones with a square and flat section, which appear exclusively in said area. The wide bracelets and the ones decorated with parallel lines are characteristic of Andalusia while they have little representation in Levante.

Skin contact

Generally, those ornaments were mainly elaborated using indigenous materials, being marble the most valued lithology due to its physical qualities and distribution. Their functionality is evident in the traces left by their use and in anthropometric comparisons: they were used in contact with the skin for long enough to appear traces of use on the inside.

The narrow bracelets were repaired as articulated bracelets, and fragments were reused as pendants. In addition, traces of repairs show that the bracelets were used for a long time after repairing them.

“Repairs to the bracelets are more representative, in percentage, in Levante than in Andalusia, which makes us deduce that they had more social value in Levante, since they are pieces that, in most cases, were obtained by exchange. Said distinctive social value is also observed among different regions of Andalusia, given that the number of repaired parts is greater where that kind of bracelet was less frequent,” sayid Martínez Sevilla.

Wall Street and the Pentagon greeted the onset of 2016 as a ‘banner year’, a glorious turning point in the quest for malleable regimes willing to sell-off the most lucrative economic resources, to sign off on onerous new debt to Wall Street and to grant use of their strategic military bases to the Pentagon.

Brazil and Argentina, the most powerful and richest countries in South America and the Philippines, Washington’s most strategic military platform in Southeast Asia, were the objects of intense US political operations in the run-up to 2016.

In each instance, Wall Street and the Pentagon secured smashing successes leading to premature ejaculations over the ‘new golden era’ of financial pillage and unfettered military adventures. Unfortunately, the early ecstasy has turned to agony: Wall Street made easy entries and even faster departures once the ‘honeymoon’ gave way to reality. ; The political procurers persecuted center-left incumbents but, were soon to have their turn facing prosecution. The political prostitutes, who had decreed the sale of sovereignty, were replaced by nationalists who would turn the bordello back into a sovereign nation state.

This essay outlines the rapid rise and dramatic demise of these erstwhile ‘progeny’ of Wall Street and the Pentagon in Argentina and Brazil, and then reviews Washington’s shock and awe as the newly elected Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte embraced new ties with China while proclaiming, ‘We are no one’s ‘tuta’ (puppy dog)!’

Argentina and Brazil: Grandiose Schemes and Crapulous Outcomes

The international financial press was ecstatic over the election of President Mauricio Macri in Argentina and the appointment of former Wall Street bankers to his cabinet. They celebrated the ouster of the ‘evil populists’, accusing them of inflating economic results, reneging on debt obligations and discouraging foreign lenders and investors. Under the Macri regime all market obstacles were to be removed and all the bankers trembled with anticipation at the ‘good times’ to come.

After taking office in December 2015, President Macri unleashed the ‘animal instincts’ of the market and the carrion birds flocked in. US ‘vulture funds’ scooped up and demanded payment for on old Argentine debt ‘valued’ at $3.5 billion – constituting a 1,000% return on their initial investment. A devaluation of the peso of 50% tripled inflation and drove down wages by 20%.

Firing over 200,000 public sector employees, slapping 400% price increases on utilities and transport, driving small and medium size firms into bankruptcy and enraged consumers into the streets ended the honeymoon with the Argentine electorate quite abruptly. This initial massive dose of free enterprise ‘medicine’ was prescribed by the local and Wall Street bankers and investors who had promised a new golden era for capitalism!

Now that he had banished the ‘populists’, Macri was free to tap into the international financial markets. Argentina raised $16.5 billion from a bond sale taken up by the big bankers and speculators, mostly from Wall Street, who were eager to cash in on the high rates in the belief that there was no risk with their champion President Macri at the helm. Wall Street based its giddy predictions on a mere three-month experience with Mauricio!

But then… some of the hedge fund managers began to raise questions about the viability of Mauricio Macri’s presidency. Instead of reducing the fiscal deficit, Macri began to increase public spending to offset mass discontent over his triple digit increases in utility fees and transportation, the mass layoffs in the public sector and the slashing of pension funds.

The major banks had counted on the abrupt devaluation of the currency to invest in the export sector, but instead they were confronted with a sudden 11% appreciation of the peso and a skyrocketing inflation of 40% leading to high interest rates. As a result, the economy fell even deeper in recession exceeding minus 3% for the year.

While most Wall Street bankers still retain some faith in the Macri regime, they are not willing to fork-over the kind of cash that might allow this increasingly unpopular regime to survive. What keep Wall Street on board the sinking ship are the political and ideological commitments rather than any objective assessment of their protégée’s dismal economic performance. Wall Street counts on free market bankers appointed to the ministries, the massive purge of social services (health and education) personnel and the lucrative bond sales to cover the burgeoning deficit. They hope the vast increase in profits resulting from increased utility fees and the sharp cuts in salaries, pensions and subsidies will ultimately lead them into the promised land.

Wall Street has expressed dismay over Macri’s failure to stimulate growth – in fact GDP is falling. Furthermore, their ‘golden boy’ failed to attract productive investments. Instead thousands of Argentine small and medium businesses have ‘gone under’ as consumer spending tanked and extortionate tariffs were slapped on vital public utilities and transport – devastating profits. Inflation has undermined the purchasing power of the vast majority of households. Wall Street speculators, concentrating on fixed-rate peso denominated debt, are at risk of losing their shirts.

In other words, the administration’s ‘free enterprise’ regime is based largely on attracting foreign loans, plundering the national treasury, firing tens of thousands of public sector workers and slashing spending on social services and business-friendly subsidies. Macri has yet to generate any large-scale investment in new innovative productive sectors, which might sustain long-term growth.

Already facing growing discontent and a general strike of private and public sector workers, the ‘bankers’ regime’ lacks the political links with the trade unions to neutralize the growing opposition.

To hold back the growing tidal wave of discontent, President Macri had to betray his overseas investors by boosting fiscal spending, which has had little or no impact on the national economy.

Wall Street’s hopes that President Mauricio Macri would inaugurate a ‘golden era’ of free market capitalism lasted less than a year and is turning into a real fiasco. Rising foreign debt, economic depression and class warfare ensures Macri’s rapid demise.

Brazil: Wall Street’s Three Month ‘Whirl-Wind’ Honeymoon

Most of the current elected members of the Brazilian Congress, Senate and the recently-installed (rather than elected) President, as well as his cabinet, are in trouble: The hero, Michael Temer and his argonauts, chosen by Wall Street to privatize the Brazilian economy and usher in another ‘golden dawn’ for finance capital, now all face criminal changes, arrest and long prison sentences for money laundering, bribery, fraud, tax evasion and corruption.

In less than four months, the entire political edifice constructed to impeach the elected President Dilma Rousseff and then de-nationalize key sectors of the economy, is shaking. So much for the financial press’s proclamation of a new era of “business friendly” policies in Brazilia.

The pundits, politicians, journalists and editors, who prematurely celebrated the appointment of Michael Temer to the Presidency by legislative coup, now have to face a new reality. The key to understanding the rapid collapse of the New Right project in Brazil lies in the growing ‘rap sheets’ of the very same politicians who engineered the ouster of Rousseff.

Eduardo Cunha, the ex-president of the Congress in Brasilia, used his influence to ensure the super majority of Congressional votes for the impeachment. Cunha was godfather to ensuring the appointment of Michael Temer as interim president.

Cunha’s influence and control over the Congress was based on his wide network of bribes and corruption involving over a hundred members of congress, including the newly anointed President Temer.

Once Cunha secured the ouster of Rousseff, the Brazilian elite washed their collective hands of the ‘fixer’, overwhelmed by the stench of his corruption. In September 2016, Cunha was suspended from Congress and lost his immunity. One month later, he was arrested on over a dozen charges, including fraud and tax evasion. It was public knowledge that Cunha had squirreled away a ‘tidy nest’ of over $70 million in Swiss banks.

Cunha directed (extorted) public and private firms to finance the campaigns of many of his political colleagues. He had intervened to secure bribes for President Temer, his foreign minister and even the next presidential hopeful, Jose Serra. One of the most powerful representatives of the new regime, Moreira Franco, Grand Wizard of the Privatization Program, was ‘in hock’ to Cunha.

As all this has come to light, Cunha has been negotiating a plea bargain with the prosecutor and judges in return for his ’singing’ a few arias. He is facing over a hundred years in jail; his wife and daughter face trial; Eduardo Cunha is prepared to talk and finger political leaders to save his own neck. Most knowledgeable observers and judicial experts fully expect Cunha to bring down the Temer Administration with him and devastate the leadership of Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, as well as ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party.

The Brazilian elite, Wall Street bankers and their mass media propagandists, who wrote and directed the impeachment plot scenario are now discredited and bereft of political front men. Their expectations of a new ‘golden era of free market capitalism’ in Brazil has turned into a political mad scramble with every politico and corporate leader desperate to save his own skin and illicit fortune by denouncing each other.

With the demise of the ‘Brazilian takeover’, Wall Street and Washington are bereft of key markets and allies in Latin America.

The Philippines: The Duterte turn from the US to China

In April 2014, Washington ’secured’ an agreement granting access to five strategic military bases in the Philippines critical to its ‘pivot to target’ China. Under the outgoing President ‘Noynoy’ Aquino, Jr. the Pentagon believed it had an ‘iron-clad’ agreement to organize the Philippines as its satrap and military springboard throughout Southeast Asia. Washington even prodded the Aquino government to bring its Spratly Island dispute with China before the obscure Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. Washington anticipated using the Court’s ‘favorable’ ruling as a pretext to confront the Chinese.

All this has changed with the June 2016 ascent to the Presidency of Rodrigo Duterte: In only four months, all Washington’s imperial designs had been swept off the table. By October 21, 2016 President Duterte announced he would end military exercises with Washington because they threatened Philippine sovereignty and made his country vulnerable to a military confrontation with China. He promised to end sea patrols of disputed waters that the US uses to harass China in the South China Sea.

In advance of the Philippines President’s meeting with China, he had already declared that he would not press the Dutch-based ruling over the South China Sea island dispute against Beijing but rely on diplomacy and compromise. During the China meeting President Duterte declared that the two countries would engage in a constructive dialogue to resolve the Spratly Islands as well as other outstanding issues. The ‘agreement’ over US access to bases in the Philippines was put in doubt as the President declared “a separation from the US” and promised long-term, large scale economic and investment ties with China. Undergirding the Philippines pivot to China were 13 trade and investment agreements worth more than $20 billion, covering financing of infrastructure, transport, social projects, tourism, industry and agriculture.

The military base agreement, signed by the notoriously servile ex-President Aquino without Congressional approval, was review by the Philippine Supreme Court and can be revoked by the new President Duterte by decree.

Inside of four months, the US strategy of armed encirclement and intervention against China has been dealt a major blow. The newly emerging China-Philippines linkage strikes a fatal blow to Washington’s overtly militarist ‘pivot’ against China.

Conclusion

2016 opened with great fanfare: The defeat of the two major center-left governments (Argentina and Brazil) and the advent of hard-right US-backed regimes would inaugurate a ‘golden era of free market capitalism’. This promised to usher in a prolonged period of profit and pillage by rolling back ‘populist’ reforms and creating a bankers paradise. In Southeast Asia, US officials and pundits would proclaim another ‘golden era’, this time of rampant militarism, encircling and provoking China on its vital sea lanes, and operating from five strategic military bases obtained through a Philippine Presidential decree by an unpopular and recently replaced puppet, ‘Noynoy’ Aquino, Jr.

These dreams of ‘golden eras’ lasted a few months before objective reality intruded.

By the autumn of 2016 the rightist regimes had been replaced in the Manila by a colorful ardent nationalist, while the ‘banker boys’ in Brasilia faced prison, and the ‘Golden Boys’ of Buenos Aires were mired in deep crisis. The notion of an easy Rightist restoration was based on several profound misunderstandings:

1) The belief that the reversal of social reforms and denial of popular demands would smoothly give way to an explosion of foreign financing and investment was shattered when private bond purchases profited the financial sector but did not bring in large-scale productive investment. Devaluation of the currency was followed by skyrocketing inflation, which led to fiscal deficits and the loss of business confidence.

2) Washington’s promotion of ‘corruption investigations’ started with prosecuting democratically elected center-left politicians and ended up with the arrest of Wall Street’s own protégés encompassing the entire right-wing political class and decimating the ‘Golden’ regimes.

3) The belief that long-term hegemonic relations, based on client regimes in Asia, could resist the attraction of signing trade and investment agreements with the rising Chinese mega-economy, while sacrificing vital economic development, and relegating their masses to more stagnation and unemployment, collapsed with the massive electoral of nationalist Rodrigo Duterte as President of the Philippines.

In fact, these and other political assessments among the decision makers in Washington and on Wall Street were proven wrong leading to a strategic retreat of the empire in both Latin America and Asia. The policy failures were not merely ‘mistakes’ but the inevitable results of changing structural conditions embedded in a declining empire.

These decisions were based on a calculus of power, rooted in class and national relations that may have held true two decades ago. At the dawn of the new millennium the US still dominated Asia and China was not yet an economic alternative for its neighbors eager for investment. Washington could and did dictate policy in Southeast Asia.

Twenty years ago, the US had the economic leverage to sustain the neoliberal policies of the Washington Consensus throughout Latin America.

Today the US continues to pursue policies based on anachronistic power relations, seeming to ignore the fact that China is now a world power and a viable economic trade and investment alternative successfully competing for markets and influence in Asia. Washington is failing to compete in that marketplace and, therefore, can no longer rely on docile client state.

Washington cannot effectively control and direct large-scale capital flows to shore-up its newly installed rightist regimes in Argentina and Brazil as they crumble under their own corruption and incompetence. Meanwhile the world is watching a domestic US economy, mired in stagnation with its own political elites torn by corruption and scandals at the highest level, and staging the most bizarre presidential campaign in its history. Corruption has become the mode of governing under conditions of deregulation and rule by political warlords. Political allegiance to the empire and open doors to foreign pillage do not attract capital when those making political decisions are facing prison and the business ‘doormen’ are busy stuffing their suitcases with cash and making a mad-dash for the airports!

For Wall Street and the Pentagon, Latin America and Asia are lost opportunities – betrayals to be mourned at the officers clubs and exclusive Manhattan restaurants. For the people in mass social movements these are emerging opportunities for struggle and change.

The strenuous US effort to rebuild its empire in Latin America and Southeast Asia has suffered a rapid succession of blows. Washington can still seize power but it lacks the talent and the favorable conditions to hold it.

The vision of a Brazilian state, build on the edifice of the privatized oil giant, Petrobras, and the political incarceration of its left adversaries, with foreign capital attracted and seduced by political procurers, pimps and prostitutes, has ended in a debacle.

In this vacuum, it will be up to the new governments and peoples’ movements to seize the opportunity to advance their struggles and explore political and economic alternatives. The aborted rightist power grab inadvertently has done the peoples’ movements a great favor by exposing and ousting the corrupt and compromised center-left regimes opening the door for a genuine anti-imperialist transformation.

By Harsh V. Pant

As the two contenders for the world’s most powerful office in the world — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — make their closing arguments, the uncertainty surrounding the US presidential elections continues to grow by the day. Polls are tightening and Clinton’s lead, which had seemed insurmountable a few days back, is now dwindling.

Though Clinton is still favoured to win the presidency because she is currently ahead in enough states to award her 317 electoral college votes — more than the 270 she needs to win — her odds have significantly worsened in a matter of days. Her campaign was hit hard when just eleven days before elections, FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau is reviewing additional emails to see whether they are related to the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information.

The Republican nominee, meanwhile, continues to wage his battle against the media and the “mainstream” GOP, insisting that the election and polls are rigged by the “elite”. He also continues to target foreign policy — slamming the ongoing offensive against the Islamic State to take back Mosul, and predicting that Clinton’s strategy for Syria would “lead to World War III.”

Wooing India

India and Indian Americans have assumed a new salience in this strangest of US presidential elections.

In a first for a US presidential candidate, Trump attended an Indian American event organised by the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC) for Kashmiri Pundits and Bangladeshi Hindu terrorist victims a while ago. He termed India as a “key strategic ally” and promised that if voted to power, India and the US would become “best friends” and have a “phenomenal future” together.

Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for leading India to a fast-track growth path through a series of economic reforms, and reforming the bureaucracy, Trump declared himself “a big fan of Hinduism” and “a big fan of India.”

The Trump campaign’s latest advertisement featured an image of Modi and a version of his popular campaign slogan “Ab ki baar, Trump Sarkar.”

The Republican candidate’s views on India seem to have evolved considerably from 2007 when he had expressed concerns about India and China overtaking the US economy. As a businessman, Trump has been trying to gain a foothold in the Indian property market.

In 2014, Trump teamed up with local Indian property developers to launch Trump Tower Mumbai, an 800-feet skyscraper with 75 storeys.

Other aspects of Trump’s worldview are also problematic when it comes to India and Indian Americans. A crackdown on illegal immigration from Mexico through a proposed border wall and other enforcement measures is a centrepiece of his campaign. In reality, immigrants from China and India outpace Mexican arrivals in most regions of the country.

Already there are growing concerns in India about America’s decision to raise the cost of applying for H-1B and other skilled worker visas by thousands of dollars. Indian industry, especially outsourcing firms, have reacted strongly to US lawmakers’ decision to raise visa fees for highly-skilled migrant workers, calling the move “discriminatory and punitive”.

Trump’s hardline position against Pakistan and Islamist radicalism may appeal to some in India, but for a nation with the second largest Muslim population in the world, the underlying xenophobia of this view should be disconcerting. Though Trump’s opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership can be considered beneficial for India — which is not part of the pact — protectionist policies of the kind the Republican presidential nominee espouses could be disastrous for our economy in the long term.

It is not surprising, therefore, that despite an impression that Trump enjoys widespread support among the Indian-American community, recent surveys indicate that more than 67 percent of Indian Americans supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton while only a measly 7 percent voted for Trump in the primaries. Moreover, a whopping 79 percent of Indian Americans had an unfavourable view of the New York billionaire. Trump’s sexist and racist rants have also led an Indian-American monthly publication, India Currents, to endorse a US presidential candidate for the first time in three decades. It asked its readers to vote for Clinton.

She is seen as a safer bet for India and Indian Americans. Her long-standing ties with India and her role in bringing the country to the centrestage of American strategic calculus in the Indo-Pacific region as Obama’s Secretary of State have endeared her to the Indian strategic community.

But by and large, India remains nonchalant about this election.

There is less speculation this time about the future of India-US relations under the new administration than in the recent past. Partly, this is a reflection of the strength of the bilateral relationship. The ties are so strong today that no US president can single-handedly challenge its foundations.

The structural realities facing the US and India are such that these relations are bound to grow in future irrespective of who’s in power. But this is also a result of a new self-confident India, charting its own course in world politics based on its national imperatives. There is also the recognition that Trump or Clinton will neither be pro-India nor anti-India — they will be pro-US. And if Obama had to change his foreign policy world view vis-à-vis India soon after coming into office, his successor too will have no choice but to build on Obama’s legacy and strengthen ties with India, given the global strategic realities.

This article originally appeared in Bloomberg Quint, and is reprinted with permission.

By Vish Sakthivel*

(FPRI) — News articles covering public, mobilized anger at the death of fish vendor Mohcine Fikri have repeatedly, and understandably, drawn parallels between Morocco today and Tunisia (and to an extent Egypt, Syria, and Libya) in 2011. Indeed, the circumstances are eerily similar: Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi was a fruit vendor who took his life by self-immolation after his wares were confiscated by authorities, and Morocco’s Fikri was a fish seller crushed by a garbage truck while he was attempting to recover thousands of dollars’ worth of fish seized and disposed of by authorities.

In both countries, the protests were more concerned with dignity and the economic and political circumstances that led to their deaths—economic desperation and threatened livelihoods. And in both countries, their deaths served as symbols of widespread hogra: a Maghreb concept which roughly translates as elite contempt for the common man, which may, in turn, serve to render invisible or humiliate the subject. Morocco is now seeing some of its largest protests since 2011.

But Morocco is probably insulated from a mass anti-regime uprising.

In the aftermath of Tunisia’s spring, many Tunisians argued that the international media overemphasized the importance of Bouazizi’s death itself as a catalyst for protests and for President Zine Al Abedine Ben Ali’s subsequent ouster. That is, the protests and regime change that followed were attributable more to pent up desperation and long-held animosity toward the perceptibly kleptocratic Ben Ali family, whose legitimacy was widely questioned but retained power through an iron fist. This is a sharp contrast to the widespread support, even adoration, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI still enjoys, and through a much softer fist. As is arguably the case with monarchs across the region, King Mohammed VI operates as a symbol of Moroccan nationhood—to an extent, to be a Moroccan, is to be a royal subject. (In this regard, it is worth pointing out that monarchies almost always do better in times like these than republics.) This dynamic has taken years of post-colonial state consolidation to achieve and would take a great deal of time to undo, where the king also occupies the important spiritual relationship to the citizenry as “Commander of the Faithful.” And Fikri’s tragic death will not transcend this—unlike in 2011 Tunisia, no one is calling for the King’s removal. As I argued recently, Morocco’s “policy successes are attributed to royal vision and failures to a laggard parliament.” Instead of blaming the king or the monarchic system, people are blaming the parliament, ministers, political parties, and the amorphous ‘nidam’ (system).

To this end, the Moroccan regime has had the benefit of retrospection and years of experimentation with limited openness. It has learned to hedge against unrest by cosmetically addressing grievances while expanding clout through shrewd and selective employment of democratic institutions (such as nominally strengthening parliament and coopting opposition). The regime also has responded quickly to the tragedy by charging 11 individuals involved (jailing eight, including two interior ministry officials and two fisheries officials) and by launching a publicized inquiry into the incident.  With parliament, institutions, and members of his coterie as scapegoats often willing to take the bullet, publicized inquiries, firings, and perhaps some superficial and aesthetically pleasing reforms may well be the biggest drama to emerge from this incident.

Moreover, the threat of terror (real or perceived) benefits the 2016 ruler in a way it didn’t in 2011. Many Moroccans attribute their perceived inoculation against terror to their organization under the king, who promises gradual reform, which they believe has been a safer, less terror-prone bet than regime overhaul.

Moroccan opposition and protest movements are also fragmented and don’t have a specific, cohesive set of demands, unlike the 2011 Tunisian protests which uncompromisingly called for Ben Ali’s ouster. Many Moroccans see Fikri’s death as an accident, or a one-off occurrence not necessarily linked to broader phenomena of unemployment, alienation, or hogra. Those who do not share this view are calling for a hazy thing called “change.” Where some aren’t able to define the term, others don’t agree on what “change” should encompass.

As an aside, the “regional” nature of some of the protests is noteworthy. Al Hoceima, Fikri’s hometown where the tragedy occurred, is located in the Rif, the home of one of the most impoverished and marginalized communities in the country, illicit trade in various contraband (most notably Cannabis), and a complicated (violent) history with the state both during the colonial period and today. People from the Rif are majority Amazigh (Berber), speaking Tarifit. In many cases, protestors wave the Amazigh flag, lamenting the economic situation in the region and seeing Fikri’s hogra as a microcosm of Rifi and broader Amazigh suffering.

There is a reason the nationwide protests have made the authorities so nervous, and why the King has felt compelled to respond sensitively and carefully. It is a wakeup call that the status quo may be sustainable—until it simply isn’t. The public is increasingly aware of the concentration of the nation’s wealth in elite (and royal) hands. Widespread despair and anger run deep and will at some point have to be managed with more meaningful change. Nonetheless, the elements that set 2016 and 2011 apart, and that set Morocco and Tunisia apart suggest the small kingdom will not be seeing a mass uprising any time soon.

About the author:
*Vish Sakthivel is a Robert A. Fox fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East, focusing on North Africa. She is also a doctoral candidate in Modern Middle East Studies at Oxford University, where she is writing her dissertation on Islamist politics in Algeria and Morocco. Her research is based primarily on ethnographies and is supplemented by archival consultation.

Source:
This article was published at FPRI.

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace of Pakistan and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan have been awarded the 2016 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Pax Christi International said in a statement that both organizations were chosen as representatives of the nonviolent struggle of the human rights community in Pakistan.

“In a country where arbitrary detention, torture, deaths occurring while in custody, forced disappearances, institutional injustices against religious minorities, and extrajudicial execution are frequently reported, Pax Christi International honors the clear and courageous stand taken by practitioners of justice and peace against persistent patterns of violence and human rights violations,” read the statement.

The two organizations will be honored at a ceremony in Geneva at the World Council of Churches’ Chapel on Nov. 17.

Established in 1988, the award is funded by the Cardinal Bernardus Alfrink Peace Fund and honors contemporary individuals and organizations who make a stand for peace, justice and nonviolence in different parts of the world.

The German government plans to carry out security investigations of all military recruits beginning in July 2017 after its military counter-espionage service (MAD) identified 20 Islamists in the Bundeswehr, according to German media group Funke, Reuters reports.

A spokesman for the agency confirmed that number, and said 60 additional potential cases were under investigation.

Draft legislation to be considered by the German parliament in coming weeks would mandate investigations of all recruits to counter efforts by the Islamic State jihadist group to infiltrate the military and obtain weapons training, Funke Mediengruppe reported.

The MAD spokesman said recruiting offices had received an undisclosed number of queries from people who wanted to join the military for only a few months and expressed a keen interest in intensive weapons and equipment training, the spokesman said.

In a statement provided to the Funke media group, the agency said it was concerned about a July 2014 Internet posting by Islamic State in which the group urged those with military training to join its ranks, and other calls for supporters to learn to shoot and to become familiar with weapons.

German security services are on high alert after two Islamist militant attacks this summer.

Almost 900,000 migrants arrived in Germany last year and while many Germans initially welcomed them, security concerns have since increased.

Last week, German police arrested a Syrian man in Berlin on suspicion of being a member of a foreign terrorist organization.

In October, another Syrian refugee was arrested on suspicion of planning a major attack in Berlin after police discovered explosives in his apartment.