It happened in Britain. It happened in the U.S.

And now it’s happening in France.

A staunchly right-winged politician whose chances seemed slim when the primaries began is now in line to become the next President of France.

François Fillon, former prime minister of France and a faithful Catholic, has pulled ahead in the Republican party, shocking pundits and political commentators throughout the country and beating out the moderate former Prime Minister Alain Juppé by a wide margin.

His Catholicism is such a strong part of his character that a headline in the newspaper Libération proclaimed: “Help, Jesus has returned!”

With an active faith and conservative values, Fillon has promised to preserve traditional family values and to uphold France’s Catholic roots, and holds traditional views about marriage and abortion, though he has said he does not plan to overturn the 1975 law that legalized abortion.

“I will put the family at the heart of all public politics,” Fillon promised in a recent rally.

The family was “certainly not a place for dangerous social experimentation”, he said, referring to recently adapted adoption rights for same-sex couples.

To understand his success in a country where numbers of churchgoers have plummeted, experts point to the cultural Catholics of France – geniously dubbed les zombies catholiques (the zombie Catholics) by sociologists Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Le Bras. In their book Le mystère français, Todd and Le Bras explain that “Catholicism seems to have attained a kind of life after death. But since it is a question of a this-worldly life, we will define it as ‘zombie Catholicism.’”

Once one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, France has seen a steady decline in churchgoers over the years, with only 15 percent of the country’s 41.6 million Catholics who are considered regular or even occasional churchgoers today.

But there are still pockets in France where the social values of Catholicism have remained strong despite waning church numbers – explaining, at least in part, the success of Fillon.

“Zombie Catholics share certain symptoms: Not only do they hail from regions where resistance was greatest to the French Revolution, but they also have taken advantage of the benefits that flowed from that seismic event,” Zaretsky wrote.

“Highly educated and meritocratic, they also privilege a traditional ordering of professional and domestic duties between husbands and wives; strong attachment to social, community, and family activities; and a general wariness over the role of the state in private and community affairs, including ‘free schools’ (Catholic private schools).”

Fillon shares most of these characteristics, and was able to harness his appeal to the zombie Catholics for political gain.

Robert Zaretsky writes in Foreign Policy Magazine that Fillon has “never made any secret of his beliefs.” He hails from a deeply Catholic part of France, and goes on retreat every year.

Fillon recalls his Catholic upbringing fondly in his campaign book Faire (“To Make”), and explains how the Catholic worldview has shaped who he is as a person: “I was raised in this tradition, and I have kept this faith.”

Voters in regions considered zombie Catholic strongholds, such as the western regions of the Vendée and Brittany, turned out in strong numbers for Fillon. Areas considered more liberal – southern regions, Paris and other large cities – had lower turnout numbers overall in the primaries.

Whether his popularity and appeal will hold long enough to win him the office remains to be seen. He will run against Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, and the Socialist nominee, which will be chosen in January. Incumbent president François Hollande of the Socialist Party declined to run for another term.

The first round of the 2017 French presidential election will be held on April 23, 2017. Should no candidate win an outright majority, a second vote between the top two candidates will be held on May 7.

President-elect Donald Trump chided Boeing in a tweet, arguing that its new Air Force One design was too expensive and should be canceled. As the topic ‘trended’ on Twitter, the aerospace giant’s stock took a hit.

Boeing is currently in the process of building two specialized jets, based on the 747-800 platform, to serve the White House. On Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted that the costs of the program are “out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”

Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number,” Trump said later in the day, speaking to reporters at Trump Tower in New York. “We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”

Immediately after Trump’s tweet, Boeing’s stock fell precipitously, recovering a bit over the next couple of hours.

This is what happened to Boeing’s stock after @realDonaldTrump‘s Air Force One tweet https://t.co/MGUi8eD7ZN pic.twitter.com/HXJvhqUWpr

— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) December 6, 2016

Back in 2013, Trump boasted on Twitter of buying Boeing stock after it went down due to troubles with the 787 Dreamliner. “Great company!” he tweeted. Trump sold that stock in June 2016, his spokesman Jason Miller told reporters on Tuesday.

It is not the first time a company’s stock has slid as a result of a tweet, noted Ed Harrison. “But this is usually as a result of a stock analyst giving an opinion or breaking news revealing damaging information,” he said. “Donald Trump takes on individual companies in a way that is unprecedented for a major American political figure. We should expect more tweets targeted at specific companies.”

“Boeing has to be concerned right now, and not just because of this Air Force One contract. The airline manufacturer is also worried about Trump’s tough talk on China, which is one of Boeing’s largest and most-promising customers,” said Boom Bust co-host Ameera David. “If Trump does anything to disrupt that business relationship, we’re likely to see a much more damaging and long-lasting knock on the company’s share price.”

“We are currently under contract for $170 million to help determine the capabilities of these complex military aircraft that serve the unique requirements of the President of the United States,” Boeing said on Tuesday.

Air Force One is the call sign of any US aircraft which has the president on board. A dedicated airplane has been used for the purpose since 1945. The current Air Force One is a heavily modified Boeing 747-200, built in 1986. It has an onboard hospital, electronic countermeasures and heavy shielding to protect occupants from an electromagnetic pulse during a nuclear attack. It can also be refueled in the air, like most US military planes.

Trump himself is using a Boeing 757-200, manufactured in 1991 and heavily modified since. It is smaller, slower and has a shorter range than the existing Air Force One, but a lot leaner: it costs $8,383 an hour to operate, compared to the $179,750 per hour for the Air Force One.

During the campaign, Trump would often arrive on the stage of his rallies accompanied by the dramatic opening theme of the 1997 film “Air Force One.”

With a few notable exceptions, political leaders are chosen by political leaders, and not by electorates or community-based organizations or popular assemblies. Popular media figures and the so-called ‘pundits’, including academics and self-declared experts and ‘think-tank’ analysts reinforce and propagate these choices.

A collection of terms and pseudo concepts are essential in validating what is really an oligarchical process. These concepts are tagged onto whoever is chosen by the elite for electoral candidates or for the seizure of political power. With this framework in mind, we have to critically analyze the symbols and signs used by popular opinion-makers as they promote political elites. We will conclude by posing an alternative to the ‘propaganda of choice’, which has so far resulted in broken pre-election promises and political debacles.

Language and Pseudo-Concepts: Subterfuges for Manipulated Choices

The usual suspects in the business of mass-manipulation describe their political leaders in the same folksy or pseudo-serious terms that they attribute to themselves: Experts/ intuitive improvisers/ trial and error ‘muddlers’. The ‘experts’ often mean wrong-headed policymakers and advisers whose decisions usually reflect the demands of their current paymasters.

Their stated or unstated assumptions are rarely questioned and almost never placed in the context of the contemporary power structures. The experts determine the future trajectory for their political choices. In this way, the views expressed by ‘experts’ are primarily ideological and not some disembodied scholarly entity floating in an indeterminate space and time.
Pundits often promote ‘experience’ in describing the ‘experienced’ leader, adviser or cabinet member. They denigrate the opposition candidate adversary as ‘lacking experience’. The obvious questions to this platitude should be: ‘What kind of experience? What were the political results of this experience? Who did this experience serve?

We know that Secretaries of Defense William Gates and Donald Rumsfeld and their leading assistants, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were appointed to their high positions and praised for their ‘experience’. This ‘experience’ drove the country into repeated disastrous military engagements, political debacles and unending wars. It would be better to reject officials who are highly ‘experienced’ in creating disasters and appoint those officials experienced in conciliation and reconciliation. Unfortunately the ‘experts’ never discuss these matters in any historical context.

Many political choices are adorned with ‘titles’, such as ‘successful entrepreneur’ and/or ‘prize winning journalist’. This ignores the fact that those ‘bestowing titles’ come from a narrow band of inbred organizations with financial, military or ideological interests looking for near-future rewards from their now titled, prize winning political choice.

Highly certified candidates, we are told, are those eminently qualified to lead, whether they are university academics with prestigious degrees, or doctors, lawyers, or investors who work for leading groups. The most highly vetted officials coming from Harvard University have implemented economic policies leading to the worst crises in the shortest time in world history.

Lawrence Summers, PhD and Harvard University President-turned Treasury Secretary participated in the pillage of Russia in the 1990’s and then brought his talent for sowing international chaos home by joining Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. These two ‘experts’ promoted enormous financial swindles, which led to the worst economic crash in the US in seven decades.

Money laundering by the big banks flourished under Princeton Summa Cum Laude and US Treasury ‘Under-Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence’, Stuart Levey. Levey concentrated on implementing brutal economic sanctions against Iran shutting US businesses out of multi-billion-dollar oil deals with Tehran, promoting a huge annual $4 billion-dollar giveaway to Israel and a granting a uniquely privileged trade status for the Jewish state – which cost the US taxpayers additional billions.

Receiving ‘prestigious awards’ does not predict a successful policymaker in contemporary US politics. The underlying ideological commitments and political allegiances determine the appointment of these ‘prize-winning’ leaders. From an objective perspective, any obscure college economics graduate, eager to increase high tech US exports and sign profitable trade agreements with Iran, would have been far more successful political choice as Secretary of Treasury.

Frequently ‘identity’ colors the choice of appointees, especially favoring an ‘oppressed’ minority, even if their field of competence and their political allegiances run counter to the real interests and political needs of the vast majority of American citizens. Some ‘ethnic’ groups wear their identity on their shirt sleeves as a point of entry into lucrative or influential appointments: “Hello, I’m a Jewish graduate of Yale Law school, which makes me the best choice for an appointment to the Supreme Court … where there are already three Jews out of the ten Justices… and only an anti-Semite would consider a fourth to be an ‘over- representation’ of our tiny national minority…whereas the total absence of any WASPs (white Anglo-Protestants) on ‘The Court’ only confirms their historical degeneracy…” Who could object to that?

‘Identity’ appointees are not reluctant to employ scare tactics, including citing old historical grievances and claiming special suffering unique to their heritage, to justify their appointment to privileged, lucrative positions. Their identity also seems to insulate them from any fall-out from their policy catastrophes such as disastrous wars and economic crises, as well as providing impunity for their personal involvement in financial mega-swindles.

Race and claims of victimization often serves as a justification for being a political ‘chosen one’. We are told repeatedly that some appointee, even with a tangential link to skin color, must have suffered past indignities and is therefore uniquely qualified to represent the aspirations of an entire group, promising to eliminate all inequality, right injustices and promote peace and prosperity. Racial identity never prevented three of the worst Caribbean tyrants from robbing and torturing their people: The two Haitian dictators, ‘Papa Doc’ and ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier murdered tens of thousands Haitians, especially among mixed race educated elites. Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had to slaughter hundreds of Afro-Caribbean sugar workers in Santiago de Cuba before he could enter the exclusive ‘whites only’ Havana Golf and Country Club.

In the United States, it was a ‘man of color’, General Colin Powell, Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, who bombed and invaded black African Somalia and implemented the policy of invading and destroying Iraq and Afghanistan. The carefully groomed ‘First Black President-To-Be’ Barack Obama, was the protégé of a Chicago-based millionaire lobby led by the fanatical ‘Israel- First’ mob, to bring ‘identity’ to its highest level. This charade culminated in the ‘First Black President’ and promoter of seven devastating wars against the poorest people of the world receiving the Nobel Peace Prize from the hands of the King of Sweden and a committee composed of mostly white Swedish Christians. Such is the power of identity. It was of little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of Libyans and South Sahara Africans murdered, pillaged, raped and forced to flee in rotting boats to Europe, that the NATO bombs destroying their country had been sent by the ‘Historic Black US President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner’. When the
wounded captive President Libya Gadhafi, the greatest proponent of Pan-African integration, was brutalized and slaughtered, was he aware that his tormentors were armed and supported by ‘America’s First Black President’?

A video of Gadhafi’s gruesome end became a source of gleeful entertainment for the ‘Feminist’ US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who would go on to cite her ‘victory’ over the Libyan President in her bid to become ‘The First Female President of the US”.

The question is not about one’s race or identity, but whose interests are served by the Afro-American leader in question. US President Barack Obama served Wall Street and the Pentagon, whereas Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had a long and arduous history of leading peoples’ movements. MLK joined the striking Afro-American garbage workers in Memphis and the autoworkers in Detroit. Malcolm X organized and spoke for the Harlem community – while inspiring millions.

Gender labels covered the fact that a politically chosen woman ruled on behalf of a family-led tyranny, as in the case of Indira Gandhi in India. The financial lords of the City of London financiers, and the mining and factory bosses in Great Britain chose the very female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who launched multiple wars abroad and smashed trade unions at home. Madame Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who promoted seven wars resulting in the deaths, injuries, displacement and rape of 5 million African and Middle Eastern women and destruction of their families, had the unconditional support of the top 20 Wall Street banks when she ran to become the ‘First Woman President of the United States’.

In other words, political appointments chosen for their ‘gender identity’ bring no special qualities or experience that would recommend them as progressive. When political and business elites choose a female for a high political office, they do so because it serves their interests to put a progressive political gloss on their reactionary policies. The ‘gender emphasis’ is most effective on liberals and the advocates of ‘identity over class politics’. In reality it is a vacuous symbol rather than real power and highlights elite upward mobility.

Often media moguls, publicists and corporate leaders laud the ‘social background’ of a candidate. They use such criteria to groom and coopt upwardly mobile workers, trade union officials and community militants.

‘Chosen leaders’ from minority or oppressed backgrounds are put in charge of discipline, work-place speed-ups and lay-offs. They sometimes adopt ‘workers’ language, splicing rough anti-establishment curses with their abuses as they fire workers and cut wages. One’s past social background is a far less useful criterion than current social commitments. As Karl Marx long ago noted, the ruling class is not a closed caste: It is always open to co-opting bright and influential new members among upwardly mobile labor leaders and activists.

Labor leaders receive ‘special favors’, including invitations to political inaugurations and corporate meetings with all the travel and luxury accommodations paid. Elites frequently transform past militant leaders into corporate policemen, ready to identify, exclude and expel any genuine emerging local and shop floor militants. Public and private labor relations experts frequently describe a labor militant’s ascent to the elite as an ‘up by his own bootstraps operation’ – putting a virtuous gloss on the ‘self-made worker’ ready to serve the interests of the corporate elite! The primary feature that characterizes these ‘boot-strappers’ is how their sense of ‘solidarity’ turns upward and forward toward the bosses, and not backward and downward toward the working masses, as they transform into ‘boot-lickers’.

Many examples of these ‘upward and forward’-looking political choices are found among entertainment celebrities, sports heroes, media figures and pop musicians. Rap singers become ghetto millionaires. And ‘working-class hero’ rock musicians, the well-wrinkled as well as the young, charge hundreds of dollars a seat for their rasping and grasping performances while refusing to play on behalf of striking workers…

The popular music, promoted by the elite, contain country and working class lyrics, sung with phony regional twangs to entertain mass audiences even as the successful performers flaunt their Presidential awards, luxury mansions and limos. The political and corporate elite frequently choose phony working class or ethnic identity celebrities to endorse their products, as the gullible public is encouraged to purchase useless commodities, electronic gadgets and gimmicks, and to support reactionary politicians and politics.

There are a few celebrities who protest or maintain real mass solidarity but they are blacklisted, ostracized or past their peak earning power. Most celebrities prefer to shake their backsides, mouth raunchy language, snort or smoke dope and slum a bit with their bodyguards, but the political elite have chosen them to distract and depoliticize the young and discontented. They are paid well for their services.

Conclusion

The concepts, symbols and signs of the ruling class determine who will be the political ‘choices’ for leaders and officials. Political elites co-opt upwardly mobile ‘identities’, among minorities and workers, carefully assessing which of their qualities will contribute to the desired elite outcomes. This is how working class and community-based electorates are seduced into voting against their real class, national, community, gender and racial economic interests.

Renegades, demagogues, soothsayers and other charlatans of many races, ethnicities, genders and proclivities run for office and win on that basis.
The elite pay a relatively small fee for procuring the services of prestigious, certified, titled and diversified candidates to elect or appoint as leaders.

Elite power only partially depends on the mass media, money and power. It also needs the services of the concept and language masters, identity promoters and propagandists of the embellished deed.

Stripping away the phony veneer of the ‘chosen’ politicians requires a forceful critique of the signs and symbols that cloak the real identity of the makers and breakers of these leaders. And it requires that they be exposed for their proven failures and disasters, especially their role in leading America into an unending series of political, military and economic debacles.

By Italia Oggi

(EurActiv) — Sunday’s Italian referendum (4 December) ended up claiming the scalp of the peninsula’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, after he pledged to resign if the country voted no to his reforms. But what happens now?

After talking with President Sergio Mattarella, it was decided that Matteo Renzi would delay his resignation until Friday (9 December), after the country’s budget law is hopefully pushed through by the Senate.

So what happens then? It is a legitimate question, given the number of possible scenarios available following the referendum result.

One option that has been bandied around is a technocratic government, but that seems like a difficult road to go down, given the political majority needed for it to work. After the sharp contrast that emerged in Sunday’s vote, it is verging on impossible.

The other two solutions are a so-called “special purpose” government or a “techno-political” government.

In case of the first option, an institutional figure, like President of the Senate Pietro Grasso, would be asked to guide the government and push through a new electoral law, with the aim of ensuring the smooth day-to-day functioning of government and calling a new election in 2017.

The second option would be to entrust leadership to a figure close to the current government, with an emphasis on economic priorities.

That new executive would also be able to see out the current term and the name of Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan has been linked to the job.

The path chosen by Renzi pointed towards a very short period of transition, but the pros and cons of how to proceed are still being weighed up by the president’s office.

The idea is to push through the budget law as quickly as possible and for Renzi to stay at Palazzo Chigi until the green light is given, presumably on Friday (9 December).

The preferable option will be the one that minimises the impact of Renzi’s departure, particularly in terms of the financial markets. Damage as so far been negligible, given that many traders correctly predicted that the vote would go against Renzi.

What happens to the outgoing PM is also unclear, especially what role he will fulfill in his own Democratic Party (PD). Parliament sources this morning (6 December) did not rule out the idea of Renzi acting as secretary during the transition period, but the former Florentine mayor’s camp denied that this would be the path taken.

Renzi will have met with his ministers and grandees in the PD, before taking stock tomorrow afternoon (7 December); even the wing of the party led by Dario Franceschini, former national secretary of the group, has urged caution.

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards America is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter had received tacit support from certain quarters in the US; but more importantly Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous American policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking closer cooperation with Russia in the region.

To elaborate American duplicity in Syria, let us settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq?

Obviously, the US supported the Syrian opposition. And what was the composition of that so-called “Syrian opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Islamic jihadists who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by the Western powers, the Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other jihadist outfits have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Syrian regime only, while the Islamic State overstepped its mandate in Syria when it captured Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

All the Sunni jihadist groups that are operating in Syria are just as brutal as the Islamic State. The only thing that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded, and it also includes hundreds of Western citizens in its ranks who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries; a fact which has now become obvious after the Paris and Brussels bombings.

This fact explains the ambivalent policy of the US towards a monster that it had nurtured in Syria from August 2011 to June 2014, until the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the US made a volte-face on its previous regime-change policy in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

Notwithstanding, the dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and the then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the former Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in the favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states – the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however, lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani’s Erbil, as I have already mentioned.

The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate Syrian militants” will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too – in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the schemes of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their Sunni jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, although the Sunni states of the Middle East still toe the American line in the region publicly, but behind the scenes there is bitter resentment that the US has let them down by making an about-face on the previous regime change policy in Syria and the subsequent declaration of war against one group of Sunni militants in Syria, i.e. the Islamic State.

This change of policy by the US directly benefits the Iranian-led axis in the region. In the war against the Islamic State in Mosul, Turkey has also contributed troops but more than waging a war against the Islamic State the purpose of those troops is to ensure the safety of the Sunni population of Mosul against the onslaught of the Iraqi armed forces and especially the irregular Shi’a militias, which are known for committing excesses against the Sunnis in Iraq.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on the present, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of the Islamic State, for instance, the US’ policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated the sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government.

Similarly, the “war on terror” era political commentators also “generously” accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing the al Qaeda, Taliban and myriads of other Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The corporate media’s spin doctors conveniently forget, however, that the creation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the previous Bush Administration as it has been the doing of the present policy of the Obama Administration in Syria of funding, arming, training and internationally legitimizing the Sunni militants against the Syrian regime since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa region. In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and numerous other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

Sri Lanka’s diaspora-to-population ratio is known to be one of the highest in the South Asian region. Sri Lanka is now exploring ways to engage its overseas community for future growth and reconciliation. Engaging these stakeholders in development (and ultimately reconciliation) necessarily relies upon sound knowledge of who they are. However, knowledge about them is not sufficient to foster collaboration. Trust‐building is the foundation of effective engagement strategies, especially in the context of Sri Lanka.

By Amjad Mohamed-Saleem*

Introduction

With nearly three million Sri Lankan’s overseas living across the world (approximately fourteen percent of the country’s population), Sri Lanka’s diaspora-to-population ratio is known as one of the highest in the South Asian region. This ratio is the product of different waves of migrations that are mainly attributed to: post-colonial developments, the need for better economic prospects, political instability – including the JVP3 insurrection and the 30-year civil war, and education opportunities. As such, the Sri Lankan diaspora is by nature not considered to be homogenous as it represents the many social, political, ethnic and religious ideologies and experiences that exists in Sri Lanka. In recognition of these differences, this paper highlights the process facilitated by International Alert4, which has been working in the field of Sri Lankan diaspora engagement since 20105, to develop a ‘Roadmap for engagement with Overseas Sri Lankans’.

Definition of Diaspora

There are many definitions of diaspora which is defined at its simplest as the dispersal of a group of people from its original homeland6. Until recently, the term was most closely associated with the dispersion of the Jewish people, although there are extensive historiographies of the Armenian, Greek and African diasporas. Since the 1980s, the usage of the word had become increasingly widespread, so as to force a re-assessment of its meaning.7

Moreover, the lack of a common understanding regarding the term “diaspora” has been reinforced by the lack of a common definition acknowledged globally. This can be attributed to the uniqueness and differences of relationship and constituency maintained by each community with their respective homeland.8

It is evident therefore that the term ‘diaspora’ is incredibly contested within both academic and non-academic circles who attempt to deconstruct the term while constantly unearthing different meanings and connotations. Hence, it would be more sustainable to approach the concept of ‘diaspora’ as an evolving ‘process’, or a more ‘dynamic’ term rather than referring to it as a label, an individual or a group.9 For the purposes here, diaspora is considered to be “individuals with distinct links (ethnic, social, cultural, economic) to a country of heritage other than their country of residence”.10

Over the past decades, the engagement of diasporas in issues conventionally seen as relating to development has generated increasing interest among a variety of stakeholders (including among governments and multilateral institutions)11. However, the diaspora communities are unique in that they can be mobilised in a way that links, directly or indirectly, two or more countries. These potential resources, or “capitals”, are human; social; economic; cultural and political.12.

So today, the diaspora is best approached not merely as a social entity but also as a concept that helps explain the world of migration. It is an idea that is based on the three interrelated dimensions of movement, connectivity and return. As such, the diaspora communities are an important stakeholder within their host countries and their homelands. They have the ability to enhance and build relations that can either positively or negatively impact their country of origin. As a unique actor with multiple ties to the country of heritage and residence – in financial, emotional, cultural and political terms – they have the potential to play a significant role in peacebuilding, reconciliation and recovery.

However, as diaspora engagement is not done in a vacuum, their importance and contribution must be taken into consideration within the national discourse and process for development and reconciliation. Whilst the important capitals are brought by the diaspora, they cannot substitute the need to cultivate and sustain domestic capital. Thus policies and programmes that aim to engage, enable and empower the diaspora should share the objective of better harnessing these resources for peaceful development and reconciliation. In the case of Sri Lanka, it is thus useful for the diaspora to be included in the dialogue on development and peacebuilding. This is particularly true in a country that has ended a three-decade civil war and that needs to mobilise and channel all possible avenues for greater progression in every sector.

One of the caveats in this discussion, however, is the recognition that the diaspora have a strong sense of identity that is derived from internal clannishness, external rejection (by the diaspora and of the diaspora) or a combination of the two, as well as a definitive ethnic or religious identity.

These groups who have migrated over a period of time have perceptions and realities, which are conditioned by the circumstances of their departure and the ground realities at the time of migration. This has influenced their level of engagement with and support to the ‘homeland’. For most who left with unpleasant memories, they have no intention of engaging; for those who do engage, they most often do so informally. This scenario in particular is reflective of what happens in Sri Lanka as the diaspora are very diverse and often divided in terms of political ideologies, social status, ethnicity and religion13.

Challenges for Sri Lanka

One significant issue that needs to be highlighted is the terminology pertaining to diaspora. With the end of the conflict in 2009, there has been much confusion and contemplation about the term ‘Diaspora’ which was used to label a particular segment of the Sri Lankan community overseas that was perceived to be taking negative stances against the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL)14.

In labelling this particular constituency as ‘enemies of the country15’, the GoSL, along with the media, played a crucial role in changing public perceptions about the diaspora16 by portraying them as entities that were working against the interests of the country.

The fact does not refute that there are/were those elements working against the notion of sustainable peace in the country. However, the majority of those living outside the country are/were not opposed to any lasting solution for peace; provided that truth, justice and equity were observed. Despite the antagonism of the GoSL between 2009-2014 towards the diaspora, the ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC)17 identified the importance of constructively engaging with the diaspora, noting that they have the potential to ‘instigate and energise’ a movement that can potentially ignite a fragile situation. In particular, the Commission’s Report highlighted that:

“It is clear to the commission that these ‘hostile diaspora groups’ can potentially undermine the genuine efforts in Sri Lanka towards reconciliation. The Commission feels therefore that the Government together with the relevant stakeholders, especially the civil society, should keep a comprehensive approach to harness the potential of the expatriate community.”18

Thus, in needing to deal with the Sri Lankan diaspora, there is a need for the term to change in order to create a space for discussion. From the work done, it was felt that the term should be changed to ‘Overseas Sri Lankans’ (OSL) 19.

On the onset of developing this roadmap, it is important to understand the rationale for engagement for both OSL and the GoSL. Yet it is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model. Other countries that proactively engage with their diaspora, such as Bangladesh, India, and Ethiopia,20 consider their diaspora as vital for developmental activities. As such, they have developed responsive policies to engage with their diaspora21. These countries recognize the vital importance of remittances, export markets, investment, as well as, the diaspora influencing public policies and sometimes foreign policies of host countries.

For Sri Lanka, in addition to policies, what are mostly needed are actual strategies for implementation22. In the case of the OSL, a clear strategy is yet to be put in place to address the needs and expectations of what today represents fourteen percent of the population. Thus, this roadmap seeks to develop a process that will assist in developing such policy for engagement with the OSL. This engagement between the OSL and Sri Lanka is needed to positively influence and promote lasting development, as well as a sustainable reconciliation process for the country.

Developing the Roadmap

Following the change of government, in 2015 and a more favourable line taken towards the OSL23, a space has been created for positive engagement. It is therefore important to engage fully with the OSL.

The outreach for such engagement, must be from both within and outside in order to build a sustainable relationship. This relationship has to go beyond the term of the current government in order for it to get currency and acceptance amongst the wider stakeholders of the Sri Lankan society. Given the past negative perception of Sri Lanka, among the international community (especially post March 2009), it is important to rethink and rebrand Sri Lanka’s relationship with the OSL, in order for the latter to contribute towards promoting a positive perception of the country while building mutual trust.

However, if the OSL are to make meaningful changes, they must be empowered to do so and the GoSL must acknowledge them formally. There needs to be recognition of their contributions and channels created to ease the engagement process. The engagement needs to be diversified to encompass skills and knowledge transfers and networks, as well as partnership opportunities.

This does, nevertheless, raise the prospect that GoSL needs to identify its own goals in undertaking this pursuit, as well as its capacities in reaching these goals. This will allow the government to tailor-make its policy and engagement approaches. For example, if the GoSL goal is to improve Sri Lanka’s competitiveness in economic terms, its diaspora policy is more likely to emphasise the knowledge and skills that members of the diaspora can channel back to the country. It is in this context that this road map seeks to assist the GoSL, and other relevant institutions, to develop more coherent policies with regards to the OSL.

Putting the Roadmap into Practice: Recommendations and Implications

In order to address these challenges, the Roadmap has identified seven areas of engagement with the OSL, namely: 1) Social and Economic Development, 2) Skills & Knowledge Transfer, 3) Outreach & Exposure Links, 4) Media Engagement, 5) Arts & Culture, 6) Interfaith Engagement, and 7) Reconciliation. These areas were identified with the underlying understanding that any engagement with OSL should inculcate basic values that can act as the foundation for building community relations. As such, trust is factored in as one of the key values that needs to be inculcated when engaging with the OSL.

With regards to the sections on Investment, Development and Technical Expertise, the following are key recommendations to be pursued: encourage a role in addressing poverty and educational challenges, strengthen the process of remittances, encourage responsible investment by improving the general investment climate, facilitate ease of mobility for investors through special incentive schemes, enable diplomatic missions to help business linkages, open up avenues for OSL capital to fund sustainable investment, create temporary return programmes for skilled tourism, and initiate an information portal in the form of a ‘one- stop-shop’ to act as a hub for diaspora investors. In order to support the said initiatives, the section also highlights the need to take specific measures that will facilitate dialogue and amend legislations.

Analysis of outreach and exposure links led to recommendations, such as: recognizing the need to enfranchise the OSL and mobilizing them as a soft power. Further recommendations included: the establishment of a single unit / Ministry to administer policies on Diaspora which can formalize the engagement through an institutional framework. Specific initiatives (such as the ‘Meet the Ambassador forum’, or even the ‘SL Embassy open day) through which missions could enhance their reachability to the wider OSL communities and encourage greater cross- community relations are also proposed.

Moreover, it was observed through our consultations that one of the greatest challenges for the OSL in terms of their engagement with Sri Lanka is the often flawed/negative perceptions of their motivations and political alliances that are reinforced through local media. The media engagement section thus focuses on the need to develop a clear communication strategy by building capacity and sharing knowledge, but also bridging information gaps via creative means, including social media and arts channels so as to promote stronger connections between Sri Lanka and overseas communities.

The remaining areas of engagement that are Arts and Culture, Interfaith Engagement, and Reconciliation mainly highlights avenues to contribute to the overall peacebuilding process in Sri Lanka. It includes recommendations such as the establishment of cultural centres, mapping exercises, an annual interfaith dialogue conference in Sri Lanka and the need to explore non-institutional level engagement while actively engaging the OSL communities in the broader reconciliation process. This framework points out a way for practical engagement that will then allow the GoSL to develop a policy for engagement after trust has been built.

Questions that arise in this framework concern the ways to engage in a qualitative and quantitative manner. The comprehensive engagement of the OSL also requires an enabling environment. In the absence of this, OSL members develop linkages and transfer resources back and forth between Sri Lanka and their countries of residence spontaneously, regardless of whether or not policy frameworks are in place to facilitate such transfers, and sometimes even in spite of the constraints they face.

However, the degree to which they can contribute is directly related to their ability to be fully engaged and enabled to serve as architects of economic and social progress, including making an informed contribution to reconciliation and other aspects of peacebuilding. Thus policies that are developed need to also bear in mind the creation of an enabling environment need to be related to integration, social protection, citizenship, and the right of vote, as well as to return and to the possibilities of building partnerships between Sri Lanka and diaspora host countries.

Lastly, in order to facilitate the transfer of skills and knowledge, OSL members who wish to engage in development will greatly benefit from programmes aiming at empowering them. These programmes facilitate the conditions that will allow OSL communities and individuals to strengthen their links and utilize the resources generated through human mobility to empower themselves, to decide about their own priorities and to contribute to their own well‐being.

Conclusion

It is not a question of whether or not OSL should be engaged in Sri Lanka, but rather when and how they should be engaged. Engaging OSL in development (and ultimately reconciliation) necessarily relies on a sound knowledge of who they are, their associations and organizations, their socio-economic characteristics, their willingness to participate in development initiatives, and the most effective outreach strategies. However, knowledge about them is not sufficient to foster collaboration. The foundation of effective engagement strategies, especially in the context of Sri Lanka, is trust‐building.

Instilling trust and gaining confidence involves the integration of Overseas Sri Lankans into the Sri Lankan framework for development and reconciliation. This allows them to share their human, social and cultural capital, as well as to foster economic growth by bridging their countries of residence and origin. Their intercultural position ensures that they are uniquely placed to adapt to, become part of and contribute to multiple communities. This, in turn, may lead to greater social cohesion and further social and economic integration so that their contributions can truly be maximized.

About the author:
*Mr. Amjad Mohamed-Saleem is Country Manager, International Alert, Sri Lanka Office. The author can be contacted at AMohamed-Saleem@international-alert.org. The author bears responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insights No. 367 (PDF). An earlier version of the paper was presented at the ISAS-organised South Asian Diaspora Convention (SADC) Diaspora and Citizenship panel discussion, which took place in Singapore on 20 July 2016.

Notes:
3. The JVP or the People’s Liberation Front is a group inspired by Marxist ideas aimed at Sinhala youth that emerged in the late seventies and eighties that eventually became a political party, (Bennet, Owen ‘The Patriotic Struggle of the JVP: A Reappraisal’, 2013, http://jvpthesis.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/9/5/26 951649/jvp_thisis_final_1.pdf ).
4. This builds on previous work done by Alert which included diaspora outreach and engagement trips between 2010 and 2014. In February 2015 Alert in partnership with the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies held a two day conference and workshop. The conference operated within the broad overview of what it means, (i.e. the contributions, challenges and limitations) for Overseas Sri Lankans (OSL) to positively interact with Sri Lanka and vice versa. Amongst the participants were Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) MP’s, OSL, members of CSO’s and members of the corporate sector. Amongst the range of other topics discussed were the need to understand and analyse the achievements and the role that can be played by OSL in engaging with Sri Lanka through avenues such as economics, education and reconciliation. Furthermore the opportunities and challenges of engaging with the diaspora in reconciliation efforts for a more open Sri Lanka, as well as the need to leverage the diaspora for investment and knowledge was discussed. In preparation for this conference, Alert held focus group discussion with recent returnees and diaspora members in December 2014 on their reasons for return, the challenges faced and what incentives and policy changes will influence professionals of Sri Lankan origin to return and contribute.
5 For further information, please see http://www.international-alert.org/tags/diaspora.
6 Cohen, Robin “Global Diasporas: An Introduction”, Routledge, Oxford, 2008, p1.
7 Kim D. Butler. “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10.2 (2001): 189-219. Project MUSE. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. https://muse.jhu.edu.
8 Key informant consultations by International Alert, August 2015.
9 Key Informant Consultations by International Alert, September 2015.
10 This is the definition that International Alert has been using in its work. See International Alert (2015), What’s Diaspora Got To Do With It? Background Paper (http://www.international-alert.org/sites/default/files/SriLa nka_DiasporaEngagement_EN_2015.pdf). This definition is also in line with the Sheffer discourse on Diaspora as defined in Box 1.
11 See IOM 2013, DIASPORAS AND DEVELOPMENT: BRIDGING BETWEEN SOCIETIES AND STATES, briefing note for the International Dialogue on Migration 2013 – Diaspora Ministerial Conference (https://www.iom.int/files/live/sites/iom/files/What-We-Do/idm/workshops/IDM- 2013-Diaspora- Ministerial-Conference/Background-Paper-2013-Diaspora-Ministerial-Conference-EN.pdf).
12 IOM 2013, DIASPORAS AND DEVELOPMENT: BRIDGING BETWEEN SOCIETIES AND STATES, briefing note for the International Dialogue on Migration 2013 – Diaspora Ministerial Conference
13 While the Sri Lankan diaspora comprises of Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and Burger ethnicities, its ethnic composition differs from country to country. For instance, the diaspora in Canada constitutes a heavily concentrated Tamil community, whilst the diaspora in Italy mostly comprises of the Sinhalese community. Sri Lankans living in Australia and the United Kingdom however tend to encompass similar concentrations of all ethnicities. Consultation conducted by International Alert (IA) with a private sector representative (October 2015) which in particular noted “that specific statistics of different diaspora ethnicities, or even the numbers of diasporas of respective host countries are not available by the respective SL missions abroad.”
14 See for example http://www.eyesrilanka.com/2014/04/28/tna-criticises-ban-on-diaspora-groups/.
15 See for example: http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=11930.
16 This has come out of the consultations conducted by IA.
17 See details of LLRC at http://www.mea.gov.lk/index.php/media/news-archive/3146-the-lessons-learnt-and-
reconciliation-commission-llrc-concludes-its-work-the-final-report-will-be-handed-over-to-the-president-on- 20-november.
18 See LLRC report at http://www.defence.lk/warcrimes/lessons_learnt_and_reconciliation_commission_f inal_report.html
19 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sri Lanka (MoFA) for their purposes have been using this term in their work (based on consultations held by IA).
20 Comparative analysis has been done on 11 countries that have signifi
cant diaspora policies (see appendix).
21 See for example ‘Institutionalising Diaspora Linkage: The Emigrant Bangladeshis in UK and USA’ prepared
by IOM and the Government of Bangladesh (2004).
22 This is one of the consistent aspects coming out of the consultations that were done in preparation for this document.
23 For example the de-proscription of certain Tamil diaspora groups by the GOSL (http://www.sundaytimes.lk/151122/news/eight-diaspora-groups-269-people-deproscribed-172578.html).

The Chinese government should immediately abolish a secretive detention system used to coerce confessions from corruption suspects, according to Human Rights Watch. The Communist Party-run system, known as shuanggui, has no basis under Chinese law but is a key component of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign.

“President Xi has built his anti-corruption campaign on an abusive and illegal detention system,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Torturing suspects to confess won’t bring an end to corruption, but will end any confidence in China’s judicial system.”

The 102-page report, “‘Special Measures’: Detention and Torture in Chinese Communist Party’s Shuanggui System,” details abuses against shuanggui detainees, including prolonged sleep deprivation, being forced into stress positions for extended periods of time, deprivation of water and food, and severe beatings. Detainees are also subject to solitary and incommunicado detention in unofficial detention facilities. After “confessing” to corruption, they are typically brought into the criminal justice system, convicted, and sentenced to often lengthy prison terms.

The report is based on 21 Human Rights Watch interviews with four former shuanggui detainees, as well as family members of detainees; 35 detailed accounts from detainees culled from over 200 Chinese media reports; and an analysis of 38 court verdicts from across the country. While there have been commentaries and analyses on the shuanggui system, the Human Rights Watch report is the first to contain firsthand accounts from detainees, as well as drawing on a wide variety of secondary, official sources.

By Valerio Dalla Torre di Sanguinetto

Following the results of the US presidential race, Europe must come to a hard realization: it is entering an era in which it must be responsible for its own security. President-elect Trump has made it clear, on multiple occasions, that the United States will not carry the burden of defending Europe. Together with the possibility of the U.S. reevaluating its security commitments to Europe, the recent demonstration of Russian military might, which saw the Russian fleet sail through the English Channel, has been the peak of increasingly strained EU-Russia relations. Russia’s foreign policy is becoming more and more unpredictable and the future of East-West relations seems to resemble a Cold War. These unfolding events should serve as a wakeup call for Europe to unite and protect its own interests.

Whatever the plan of Mr. Trump, the U.S. will not be able to abruptly end military collaboration with Europe. The process will be slow and progressive, giving Europe valuable time. On the other hand, Russian military demonstrations should be seen as mere provocations, military escalation being improbable. Unfortunately, Russia can hurt Europe immediately by other means, namely energy. Europe is heavily dependent on imports for its energy. In 2014, 53.4% of energy consumed in the EU was imported, with Russia supplying approximately one quarter of European gas demand.

Funds have been allocated and projects have been put in place by the European Union in order to guarantee Europe different gas supply routes, an example being the TANAP pipeline which will bring Azeri gas to southern Europe. Nevertheless, the fruit of such programs will only be seen around 2020.  Before such plans are achieved, dependence on gas imports will increase to 65% by 2020 and to 73% by 2030. As relations with Russia worsen there is an impending need to diversify gas supplies for Europe in order to enhance security. The fastest way to do so is through U.S. LNG imports.

The United States is sitting on vast reserves of natural gas. In under a decade, the shale revolution turned the U.S. from gas importer to gas exporter. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports have become economically viable and are forecasted to increase through 2017 up to 3.1 billion cubic feet. Furthermore, the opening of US LNG exports has begun in early summer of 2016, with shipments to the TGN LNG terminal in Portugal and Spain’s Mugardos LNG terminal. Nevertheless, U.S. LNG exporters have treated Europe as a residual market favoring the more profitable Asian market, especially following the expansion of the Panama Canal.

However, things have been changing. The two main claims against shipments to the European market – lack of demand and cost effectiveness – have lost their validity. First, according to the IEA, demand for gas in Europe, contrary to general belief, will double by 2020. Second, LNG prices in the Pacific and Atlantic area have been converging, therefore reducing the cost advantage of selling to the Asian market. U.S. LNG exports would see increasing profit from European markets while at the same time helping its most important allies ensure security.

The EU and the energy community are in desperate need of LNG as domestic consumption is declining. In 2013, the EU regasification capacity utilization was at a mere 24%, hence, with the current infrastructure there would be storage capacity for U.S. LNG imports. New sources of LNG to Europe would have the positive effects of diversifying supply, helping with the integration of the markets (especially in the East and in the North-South corridor), and further European clean energy goals, as an increase in use of gas for electricity would reduce carbon emissions from coal.

Nevertheless, the EU must meet the U.S. effort by connecting the west to the east though new infrastructure, expanding storage capacity, and removing the barriers to a common energy market. In response, according to Platts, the U.S. by 2020 could be exporting to Europe over 100 Bcm/year of LNG, which would meet one quarter of the market demand. These statistics highlight how Europe could obtain higher regional and energy security.

Increased competition among LNG suppliers and Russian energy policy create uncertainty for U.S. LNG shipments to Europe. It is true, as stated previously, that shipping LNG to Europe is now economically feasible for the U.S., however, the unpredictability of Russian operations works as a deterrent. Due to increased competition of LNG suppliers to Europe (Qatar, Iran, Algeria, etc.) gas costs have decreased. If the price of gas falls below the $4 per million Btu mark, it would become unfeasible for the U.S. to ship to the continent. The price issue revolves around Russia’s capability of flooding the European market with cheap gas. If Russia decides to do so it would force its competitors out of the market. However, the question remains regarding the feasibility of Russia maintaining such operation over a prolonged period. Low oil prices, coupled with sanctions, have forced the Russian economy into a phase of stagnation. Even more, following Russia’s recent proposed budget cuts, based on a $40 a barrel oil prediction for 2017, it seems more and more unlikely that the Kremlin will be able to pursue such policy.

Under a year ago, U.S. LNG exports to Europe seemed unfeasible. Today they are a reality. Demand for gas is expected to grow in the next decade. Prices, if kept around $5 million Btu, allow for US exports and competition with Russia. Europe could gain greatly. An increase in LNG imports could provide a cushion for the next five years, while Europe, in its rush to guarantee its security, invests in pipelines, storage capacity, LNG terminals, and integrating the markets. Europe has a lot to gain from the unfolding of current events. A Trump presidency can push European institutions to begin thinking of an independent future, while the Russian threat can bring all European countries together to diversify supplies of gas and achieve energy security.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

Fifteen people who have been accused of spying for Iran were sentenced to death by the Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh, local media reported on Tuesday.

Fifteen other suspects were slapped prison terms ranging from six months to 25 years, while two of the accused were acquitted, Al-Riyadh newspaper said.

The sentencing capped 10 months of trial, which started in February, Al-Arabiya network said, adding that 160 hearings were held.

The convicts were among 32 people, including 30 Saudis, an Iranian and an Afghan, who were arrested in 2013 on spying charges, the network said.

The rulings are subject to appeal, and death sentences have to be ratified by the king.

During the hearings, prosecutors presented evidence showing that the suspects organized a spy ring, liaised and collaborated with Iranian intelligence agent and were also accused of meeting Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Many of the suspects are former employees of the Saudi defense and interior ministries, local media said. They were accused of setting up a spy ring and passing sensitive military and security information to Iran, seeking to sabotage Saudi economic interests, undermining community cohesion and inciting sectarian strife.

The charges also included supporting protests in the Shi’ite-majority region of Qatif in the Eastern Province, recruiting others for espionage, sending encrypted reports to Iranian intelligence via email and committing high treason against the king.

Among those arrested in 2013 were an elderly university professor, a pediatrician, a banker and two clerics.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have accused Iran of exporting terrorism, fomenting unrest and spreading chaos in the Middle East.

Iran has acknowledged sending troops to fight with the Assad regime in Syria and sending weapons of war to Houthis in Yemen who are seeking to overthrow the UN-recognized government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Syrian government forces today made dramatic gains in retaking the last major population center still in rebel hands, eastern Aleppo. First the Syrian army retook several neighborhoods on the eastern side of the divided city, and then late in the day they re-took the old city on the northwestern side of eastern Aleppo.

Though the BBC spin on the victory of Syrian government troops over mostly al-Qaeda forces in Aleppo is predictably biased toward the rebels, even that British government mouthpiece reported on the residents of Aleppo finally returning to their homes now that the jihadists have been routed. According to some reports, more than a thousand Aleppo residents have returned to their homes.

The rebels are confined to less than 15 percent of the territory they once controlled in Aleppo and although some have claimed they will fight to the finish, hundreds have already accepted — or are negotiating for — either amnesty or resettlement offers by the Syrian government.

Yesterday, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in Aleppo.

After more than five years of US and western regime change policy for Syria, the country is in ruins. The regime change has not succeeded, but the destruction is near total. Will Washington learn from the interventionist disasters in Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere? Will the Beltway interventionists ever apologize for the death and destruction the policies they advocate have wrought?

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

New research published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (JOEH) found that law enforcement officers who wear body armor when shot by a firearm in the torso were 77 percent less likely to die from their injuries than those who did not wear armor.

Authors WeiWei Liu and Bruce Taylor note that 12 percent of officers in the United States opt not to wear body armor, despite many law enforcement agencies have a mandatory policy to do so. This study is intended to help law enforcement agencies address weaknesses in current policies and encourage officers to wear armor.

Using data from the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) database, the authors examined the association between officers’ individual characteristics and the likelihood of wearing body armor and the conditional association between wearing body armor and the likelihood of dying from a shooting to the torso.

Liu and Taylor cite a number of factors that influence officers’ armor-wearing behavior, including age, body mass index (BMI), rank, geographic region, and type of assignment. In general, officers who are older or overweight, or who work in a region with more gun attacks against police such as the southern United States, are least likely to survive gunshot wounds. Those officers are also the least likely to wear body armor, the researchers point out.

Liu and Taylor noted, “Police agencies need to target older, overweight officers, and those assigned to detective and undercover assignments when enforcing armor related policies… Agencies in the [southern U.S.] need to pay special attention to mandatory wearing policies.”

“The investigation of factors that influence police officers’ chance of surviving a gun shooting will have important implications for policies related to sending backup officers to police shootings, emergency response, and other critical areas.”

Law enforcement agencies can use these findings to develop new programs and awareness campaigns to increase the use of body armor among officers. Agencies can also pay closer attention to officers in higher-risk groups when performing inspections for compliance with policies on wearing armor.

Poland’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, December 6 rejected a bid to extradite Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski to the United States, where he faces sentencing over a decades-old case of statutory rape, AFP reports.

The 83-year-old French-Polish national did not attend the hearing but got the news via text message from his lawyer Jerzy Stachowicz, who told reporters: “We’re very happy.”

“We hope one day it will be over in the United States,” Stachowicz added.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro had appealed to the court in May to overturn a 2015 ruling against extraditing Polanski, saying no one should be above the law.

The Supreme Court “is dismissing the appeal,” said Judge Michal Laskowski, definitively ending Poland’s part in the 1977 case.

Laskowski stressed that the Warsaw court’s role was not to rule on the merits of the case but rather to make sure due process had been followed by the lower court.

“We did not find a flagrant violation of the law,” he said alongside his two fellow judges.

He added however there were circumstances with no legal bearing that were hard to ignore completely: “More than 38 years have passed since the incident. The victim in this case publicly forgave Roman Polanski. He paid her the monetary damages she requested.”

The government appeal had appeared to be part of what the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office a year ago, touts as a moral revolution in strongly Catholic Poland.

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani sarcastically rejected $500 million in aid offered by Pakistan during the sixth Heart of Asia ministerial conference in Amritsar, India.

During his speech, President Ghani directly addressed Sartaj Aziz, an advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs, saying, “Pakistan has generously pledged 500 million dollars for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This fund, Mr. Aziz, could very well be used for containing extremism, because without peace any amount of assistance will not meet the needs of our people.”

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan were initially friendly when Ashraf Ghani first took office in late 2014. He visited the Army’s General Headquarters  in Rawalpindi; long-demanding Afghan army cadets were sent to Pakistan for training; and the heads of army and intelligence organizations exchanged numerous trips.

On the other hand, Indo-Afghan relations were not a first priority for Afghanistan, which Pakistan had always wanted. Indeed, such an unprecedented move by the Afghan president to befriend some Pakistani army generals antagonized most of his close allies and inside supporters.

Apparently, Ghani was trying a more practical approach vis-à-vis Pakistan and expected reciprocity; the biggest among other things was to bring the Taliban to negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government. Pakistan managed to do so by orchestrating the Murree meeting where some Taliban members sat and talked with Afghan government though the Taliban Doha office, although it did not formally confirm this. This was followed by a surprised announcement by the Taliban supreme leader Mohammad Omar’s demise, who passed away almost two years ago.

Both countries blamed each other for leaking and making the demise public because it blocked the ongoing negotiations. Whoever did it is one issue, but the announcement was rational enough as otherwise it could also endanger the whole process. The leadership crisis among the Taliban was an example of why the announcement was kept secret.

After such a nascent attempt, no further development has been made though expectations were high for a quadrilateral coordination group (Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US).

Domestic pressure mounted, casualties of both civil and military outnumbered past figures, security situations deteriorated and Ghani’s expectations from Pakistan started withering. His actions and concessions weren’t reciprocated, but went almost unnoticed in Pakistan.

President Ghani was left alone with almost no other option. Those who had been questioning Ghani’s appeasing, or what they called ‘carrots but no stick’ approach, towards Pakistan proved to have rational and logical arguments.

It was on this backdrop that Ashraf Ghani took a tough stance and rejected Pakistan’s aid at the Heart of Asia conference, as this was an opportunity to demonstrate his disappointment and meanwhile let Pakistan to do much more to prove to be a good counterpart.

Such frustration has caused anti-Pakistan sentiment both regionally and domestically. This seems to be the reason that Ghani’s remarks and stance were applauded.

Speaker of lower house in Afghan parliament Mr. Abdul Rauf said that what President Ashraf Ghani expressed was a shared pain of all Afghans. Ex-head of Afghan intelligence also thanked Afghan president for declining what he termed “blood soaked money.”

A heated debate within Pakistan and its media is running over if it was a right decision to participate at the conference, since Afghanistan had already boycotted the SAARC summit scheduled in November in Islamabad.

Pakistan may have – at least for now- understood what President Ashraf Ghani expectations were when he first took office. Its envoy Sartaj Aziz, who participated and represented Pakistan at the conference, while criticizing the Afghan president added “His [Ashraf Ghani] statement is understandable. One can clearly understand his anxiety.”

Hazrat Bahar tweets @hazratbahar

The spiritual leader of Tibet, His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje visited Arunachal Pradesh, which is northeastern state of India, a few days back. He was accompanied by a minister of the Government of India, obviously indicating that the government of India recognizes and respects the position of 17th Karmapa and his importance.

China, which is now known for maintaining abrasive relationship and overbearing attitude towards several of it’s neighbors, objected to the visit of the Tibetan spiritual leader to Arunachal Pradesh, as China claims that Arunachal Pradesh is part of China.

China’s false claims

As in the case of China’s claims in other regions such as South China Sea and Senkaku island, China unjustifiably and unilaterally claims that Arunachal Pradesh in India is southern part of Tibet and belongs to it.

India has repeatedly rejected China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh and conveyed it’s protest on various occasions but China has persisted with it’s claim that Arunachal Pradesh is part of Tibet. This is totally unacceptable, since Arunachal Pradesh has been part of India ever since India’s independence and much before that and has not been part of Tibet.

In any case, China itself has occupied Tibet forcibly, driving many Tibetans out of Tibet and making them seek asylum in other countries and living as refugees for several decades now. The world conscience is disturbed that violence and force appear to have won as China has been occupying Tibet and it’s aggression has appeared to have paid dividend to it. Apart from the fact that China itself is a occupier of Tibet , it’s claim that Arunachal Pradesh is also a part of Tibet amounts to adding insult to injury.

Massive reception to the Karmapa

His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh was the first to the area in the past 900 years, since the third Karmapa visited it. During his first visit to Arunachal Pradesh , he toured West Kameng district and preached to the Tibetans at Gyuto Monastery at Tenzingang before leaving for Kalaktang. Massive reception was accorded to the 17th Karmapa and he spoke about the need for love and compassion.

In a typical arrogant tone that China is now known for, China has given unsolicited advice to India not to” complicate the boundary question”. China’s foreign ministry’s spokesman said with an air of false innocence that “we should ensure peace and stability of border areas and sound and steady development of bilateral relations serves the common interests of the two sides”

“Superiority complex”

In the last few decades, it appears that China has developed sort of “superiority complex” in dealing with its neighbors and it is giving an impression that it thinks that due to its massive size, population and economy, the neighbouring countries have no alternative other than bowing to the dictates of China and succumbing to it’s pressure.

China’s occupation of Tibet several decades back and many countries meekly accepting China’s aggression in Tibet as a fact of life , appears to have given China confidence that it can have it’s way everywhere and at all times. Such attitude of China has already sent alarming signal among its neighbors, who have started thinking that some concerted efforts have to be made to put China in it’s place, so that China would deal with them in an appropriate manner. One only hopes that China would read the signal properly and reshape its policies which appear to be expansionism in style and substance.

Can be a turning point

Modi government should be congratulated for standing up to China and permitting the visit of 17th Karmapa to Arunachal Pradesh and also sending a minister to accompany 17th Karmapa. This is a bold attempt by government of India to call the bluff of China and emphatically rejecting it’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh.

India’s rebuff to China by encouraging the visit of 17th Karmapa to Arunachal Pradesh can be a turning point.

By Joyce Karam

US President-elect Donald Trump has made his unpredictability a signature in both business and politics, and this unorthodox trend is now shaping his policy toward China.

Trump broke a 40-year-old tradition in a call with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen on Friday, followed by a series of tweets from the incoming president lambasting China’s monetary policy and its taxes on US exports.

While it is no surprise that Trump is setting his sights early on one of the toughest challenges for his presidency — leveling the economic and political playing field with China — his approach could offset the sensitive balance and bring unexpected economic costs to both countries.

A ‘deliberate’ call

The Trump team has gone to great lengths to play down the 10-minute call with the Taiwanese leader, with the president-elect emphasizing on Twitter that she “CALLED ME,” not vice versa. Yet experts agree that the call was unlikely a coincidence, and was a deliberate move by the Trump team.

“It probably was a deliberate move,” says Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. But even if it was planned, “it could also be a mistake.”

Kurlantzick added: “I don’t see evidence that it was done with a plan that looks at how China might respond, what kind of cascade of events would take place, and how it fits into any grander strategy.” The call also did not involve any coordination with the administration of President Barack Obama or the State Department.

The sensitivity over the call is out of fear that it could signal a departure from the One China policy instituted by then-President Richard Nixon in 1979, whereby US leaders avoid contact with Taiwan so as not to encourage its independence from China.

Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, does not see Trump’s call as a break with the One China policy. He tells Arab News: “We (the US) have our own interpretation of the One China policy that acknowledges China’s position on Taiwan but doesn’t accept it.” Blumenthal takes issue with “China pushing its view that Taiwan is already a part of it and a ‘renegade province,’ hence we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

For Trump the bargainer, the call could be an early overture from him to gain leverage over China in any forthcoming negotiations. Blumenthal sees it “as a good way to indicate that Trump will set the agenda in his relations with Taiwan and China within the framework of One China.”

However, given China’s sensitivity to the Taiwan issue and how it reacted in the past — launching military exercises in 1995 after the US granted a visa to Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui — unexpected retaliation could come now. “China is going to push back,” says Kurlantzick, even though “no coherent strategy” is in place from the Trump team yet.

Echoes of George W. Bush

Trump’s campaign rhetoric toward Beijing — lambasting the trade deficit of $366 billion, with exports from China reaching about $482 billion in goods to the US last year, while the US exported about $116 billion in goods to China in 2015 — will likely continue throughout his presidency as part of his economic message to the working-class voters who supported him in the rust-belt states.

“It’s time for more balance in the relationship, and we have a lot of strategic leverage,” says Blumenthal. While the Obama administration warned that Trump’s moves could “undermine” progress with China, Blumenthal says: “No one would characterize the relationship with Beijing as good right now.”

He describes Obama’s Asia pivot in his first term as one leading “to more assertive policies by Washington, whereby China reacted harshly.” This has “left China more emboldened and angry, while our allies and friends complain about a vacuum as we’ve been somewhat adrift.”

Kurlantzick sees echoes of Trump’s China rhetoric in the George W. Bush campaign and first term in 2000. While Bush did not criticize trade policies with China, he ran on a platform critical of Beijing. Bush said in 1999 that China would be “respected as a great power… but not unchecked,” declaring: “China is a competitor, not a strategic partner.”

A more assertive policy by a Trump administration toward Beijing seems to be in the works. “I think we should act on our interests and values as much as China does,” says Blumenthal. “Right now it’s a bit one-sided. China provokes and we react.”

However, with Trump’s promises of withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods and tension in the South China Sea, Kurlantzick sees serious room for escalation between Washington and Beijing, and ramifications on both economies.

“It all depends on whether both sides have some kind of reasonable way to continue the relationship without rapid escalation,” Kurlantzick concludes. “If it turns to tit-for-tat tariffs or other economic levers, that’s going to be a big problem for everyone.”

By Jamshed Baruah

A new survey finds that an overwhelming number of people living in countries affected by wars believe in the pressing need to impose limits on armed conflicts. Nearly half of those surveyed in conflict-affected countries are convinced that the Geneva Conventions prevent wars from getting worse.

But people in five countries that are permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council appear to be more resigned to civilian casualties and suffering as an inevitable part of warfare:

The survey titled People on War was published by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on December 5, 2016. It sought to find out how people around the world perceive a range of issues related to war.

The survey covering over 17,000 people was carried out between June and September 2016 in 16 countries. Ten of those countries were experiencing armed conflict at the time. These includ Iraq, Afghanistan and South Sudan.

The permanent member countries of the UN Security Council (P5 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were also part of what is the largest survey of its kind ever carried out by WIN/Gallup International and their partners in the respective countries on behalf of the ICRC.

Eight in ten people surveyed think combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible when attacking the enemy. The same number thinks attacking hospitals, ambulances and healthcare workers, in order to weaken an enemy, is wrong.

However, a startling 36% of respondents believe that captured enemy combatants can be tortured to obtain important military information. Only slightly less than half of the people (48%) asked this year, believe this behaviour is wrong, compared to 66% in a 1999 survey. 16% said they didn’t know.

“In such troubled times, it’s heartening to see that the vast majority of people believe that the laws of war matter. This recognition of basic human values flies in the face of the appalling violations we see on a daily basis in our work,” said ICRC President Peter Maurer.

“The results also show that we all need to redraw a line in the sand: torture in any form is forbidden. We demonise our enemies at our own peril. Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely. Using torture only triggers a race to the bottom. It has a devastating impact on the victims, and it brutalizes entire societies for generations,” added Maurer.

The survey indicates that if people living in or near a conflict-affected country are more likely to respond humanely to questions on the laws of war. In P5 countries, however, people appear to be more resigned to civilian casualties and suffering as an inevitable part of warfare:

78% of people living in countries affected by war said it was wrong to attack enemy combatants in populated areas, knowing that many civilians would be killed. In P5 countries, only 50% of people shared that view.

26% of people in P5 countries think depriving the civilian population of essentials like food, water and medicine to weaken the enemy is just “part of war”, compared to 14% in countries affected by war.

“Faced with constant, gruesome images from the world’s frontlines, we must not lose our empathy and become numb to human suffering,” said Maurer. “But the overwhelming message from this survey is that people truly believe in the importance of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, and the protection of civilians during times of conflict.”

The four Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols seek to limit the effects of warfare on those who do not participate in hostilities, such as civilians or wounded and captured combatants.

“The effectiveness and relevance of the laws of war are being questioned perhaps more than at any time in recent history”, added Maurer. “And yet, it is clear that people do not believe in a battlefield ‘free for all’.”

According to Maurer, there is a “disconnect” between the public, who believe that targeting civilians, hospitals and humanitarian workers is unacceptable, and the policies and actions of States and armed groups who commit these acts.

By Bhaskar Roy*

Talking to The Express Tribune (Nov 25, 2016) Pakistani naval officers revealed that Chinese naval ships would be deployed at the Gwadar Sea Port to safeguard the port and trade under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

A special squadron of four to six ships would be deployed, comprising of both Chinese and Pakistani navies. The ambit of this combined naval force is not only the protection on Gwadar Port, which is designated as a defence entity, but also ensuring security of maritime trade emanating from Pakistan which will have Chinese interests. The Arabian Sea to the African coast, and of course, the Gulf would be its area of operation.

Pakistani naval officers also told the Tribune that the role of maritime forces in Pakistan had expanded since the operationalization of Gwadar Port and accelerated development of the CPEC. Gwadar is a Chinese-built and almost Chinese-owned operation. China has a lease of 40 years for operating this port and a Chinese state-owned company with military links is in charge. A decade back, with international focus on this project, the Chinese and the Pakistanis decided to hand over the running of Gwadar Port to a Singapore Company. Many including in India argued that the port had no military plans behind it, since it was being operated by a company, belonging to a third country which was neutral on these issues.

There was enough evidence in 2000-2001 to point to the fact that Gwadar deep sea port was being constructed for China-Pakistan strategic purposes, but government shot these down. In India, the policy was to watch China but not upset or provoke China. This means experts in the Indian government were discouraged to pursue these China related issues.

That China had planned to enter the Indian Ocean by around 2012 became evident from their naval planning and activities, and articles by Chinese maritime experts.

In fact, the Indian government should have been alerted in the early 1990s, when the director of General Logistics Department (GLD), of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Zhou Nanqi presented a policy paper to the Central Military Commission and the communist party’s Political Bureau, titled “Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean”. The paper got leaked to a foreign news agency.

In the mid-1990s China drew up a strategy to win over poorer nations in the Indian Ocean littorals, by giving them military and economic assistance (as outright aid or at ‘friendship’ prices) and political support. The aim was to isolate India in the Indian Ocean region. Pakistan, as always, was the fulcrum.

The Maldives was an immediate target. Between 1997 and 2001, the Maldives received a series of high level visits from China, which included Politburo Standing Committee member Li Ruihuan, Chief of General Staff of the PLA, the Quanyu and Premier Zhu Rongji.

It is another matter that the Maldives in unlikely to afford such facilities to China and get into a situation which it cannot handle internationally. It also faces serious threat from climate change, and experts have projected that this island country can go under water by 2040.

The fact is that China had indicated for a long time its intention of setting up military bases in the Indian Ocean. By 2010-11 Chinese military officers and experts began speaking and writing on the subject. Knowing how the Chinese media and professional journals operate under the party and state laws, these expositions could not be allowed unless sponsored by the authorities.

They were probing to see the reactions from the countries of the region, especially India, and from the United States, which has huge security and economic interests in this region. China would have gone ahead with its plans anyway, but may have done it after consultation with stakeholders. But they found an open field.

China is broadening its basing targets but it may fall short. It was sanguine about a naval-military base in Myanmar when the military was in total power. With Myanmar moving towards democracy and a civilian government, led by opposition NLD which is asserting decisions gradually, a Chinese base in Myanmar seems to be no longer in the horizon.

The ‘military base network in the Indian Ocean Region’ blueprint at the moment includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, the other already mentioned and Djibouti.

China has already acquired berthing, servicing and replenishment facilities in Djibouti. The reason cited by China is that their anti-piracy fleet requires these facilities in this piracy-infested waters; to safeguard international sea lanes of communication; not only for the protection of Chinese shipping but for all.

A deeper look into this argument is called for. During the recent visit (Nov. 25) of the vice-chairman of the CMC, Fan Changlong, to Djibouti, an inspection of “sailors and soldiers” on a Chinese command ship, currently in Djibouti, was carried out by him. Steps are already afoot to place soldiers in this country. This may be followed by stationing fixed wing aircraft for support role.

The discussion Chan had with the president and prime-minister of Djibouti, as reported (China Radio International, Nov. 25, 2016) reveal a quest for a much wider relationship in other fields, including military. Is this base going to be China’s arrow-head in the eastern coast of the African continent?

China’s commercial and economic (including oil) needs are growing at a rapid pace. Will Chinese troops be employed to intervene deeper into Africa if the need arises?

China had penetrated with discussions and some action for similar facilities in the Seychelles. Experts believe Chinese reconnaissance aircraft may be deployed there.

The previous president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa strongly favoured Chinese presence in the country, received aid from China, to counter India. China docked a nuclear submarine in Colombo Port in September 2014 and a diesel-powered attack submarine in November 2014. Due to strong reservations conveyed by India, such visits have not recurred.

Mr. Maithripala Sirisena, current Sri Lankan president, has balanced the situation between India and Sri Lanka. A former prime minister, Dudley Senanayake had warned his successor, that if Colombo gave base facilities to China in Trincomalee, the next India-China war would be fought in Sri Lanka.

It would be pertinent to mention that China is building the Lotus Tower in Colombo. The massive tower is funded by Chinese Exim Bank (estimated to cost US $ 103 million). Two Chinese companies are involved in the construction of defence electronic systems, and public security related to responding to international terrorism.

The involvement of these two Chinses state-owned corporations (China National Electronic Import and Export Corporation and China Aerospace Long March International Trade Corporation) in this civilian project raises serious security concerns in neighbouring countries, like India, and in the Indian Ocean region. The tower has the signature of a listening post. (See SAAG Paper No. 5911, dated 10 April, 2015).

Bangladesh is a slightly different case. China has been in quest of construction of a deep sea port on Bangladesh’s eastern coast. The government led by Prime Minister Sk Hasina is very alert to the geopolitics of the region. A deep sea port is required for the nation’s economic development, a goal in which she has made significant success (but more needs to be done). China’s strategic plan in Bangladesh will be really successful if and when the Bangladesh-Myanmar-India-China road corridor is built. China is unlikely to get an agreement from Sk. Hasina – unlike the agreement they got from Pakistan for Gwadar.

From a narrower perspective, China decided to reduce its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its vital import of gas and oil. First, the route is more expensive and second, the strait can be blockaded during a military crisis. The oil and gas pipelines from Myanmar’s east coast to China’s Yunnan province was a chosen alternative. That work is still in progress. The other route was building a transport corridor from western China’s Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, through Pakistan, to Gwadar Port (now known as CPEC). This route is partially functional.

The larger perspective, which was being worked on quietly with periodic addition of plans and strategies culminated in President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream”. By 2049, the 100th year of the People’s Republic of China, the country will be rejuvenated to its old glory, and become a fully developed country. It may seem ambitious, but very possible.

Around 2002, there was a discussion among experts in Chinese think tanks about influence overseas. One conclusion was that China must have influence from the Gulf to the Asia Pacific region (the East Line and West Line). The debate in public died down, but China’s actions since then have followed that path.

The “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) appears to be at least partially based on those strategies, of which the CPEC is a very important part.

China’s military modernization is aimed at power projection and to secure growing or rapidly expanding interests across the world. Hence the emphasis on rapid modernization of the navy.

The strategy is to make China the Central Kingdom, with tributaries who bow down to Beijing. It wants to divide the globe between itself and the United States – a bi-polar system. The two will compete in a proposed world order reflected in the concept of a “new type of relationship among great powers”. It does not consider Russia a great power any longer.

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

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

It is eight years since democracy was introduced in Bhutan. It has already had two elections at the national level, with one resulting in a change of government and two elections to the National Council. Elections were peaceful and orderly.

In the second week of May the second phase of local government elections took place successfully. Over 3391 candidates contested of whom 151 were graduates. A total of 402,149 voted in the elections- that came to 55.8 percent of the total electorate. This was creditable considering the fact that it was elections only to the local bodies. The only fault if any was that not many women candidates contested and of these only a few were elected.

For democracy to get strengthened, it is absolutely necessary to empower the lowest bodies in the government and it is very creditable for Bhutan to have conducted it very successfully. One should compare with what is happening to Nepal where for sixteen years no elections to the village or regional level have been conducted and the politicians are still fighting over the demarcation of individual units!

The second important event was the bye elections to the Thimpu North Constituency. This constituency was considered to be the stronghold of the DPT, the present opposition party and yet the ruling party, the PDP swept the polls. The PDP candidate Tshering won by a huge margin and picked up 75.5 percent of the votes as against the DPT candidate Kessang Wangmu who got only 24.5 percent of the votes.

This election of PDP Candidate in a DPT stronghold is significant in many respects. First it is a reflection of the good work being done by the present Tobgay led PDP government. Second it could be the precursor to the third National Elections that is coming in 2018. Third, though the electioneering was intense, it was peaceful throughout- there were no controversies, no mudslinging etc. Four, the election of the candidate was on performance of the ruling party- a reflection on the intelligence of the voters. But the flip side is that the opposition party will have to work harder and should not allow the ruling party to sweep the polls in future. This is in the interest of democracy itself in Bhutan.

Credit goes to the King Gyalpo V too. The winning candidate Tshering pointed out that the people had rewarded his party for serving King, Country and the People- (in that order)!

The draft for the 12th five-year Plan has just been published. Compared to the 11th plan, this appears to be more ambitious with an outlay of over 332 billion Nu as against 217 in the previous plan. One important feature of this plan is that more investment is being planned for “current expenditure” than for “capital expenditure”- a departure from the previous plans where investments were more or less equal.

The key areas targeted in the plan includes- macro economic stability, reducing poverty inequality, improvement in the quality of education and improvement of skills, gender equality and finally decentralization and strengthening of democracy.

One sour note that should be made is that the present government is seriously considering the revival of the “Lottery Schemes” in a big way to make some 30 million Nu each year. Lottery schemes held earlier resulted in “scams’ that are inevitable when huge sums are involved. Secondly is there no way to earn this 30 million by other legitimate means? The Tobgay government should seriously consider all aspects being going ahead.

Outspoken leftist Slavoj Žižek recently declared The Left obsolete.i It would hard for even the biggest neoliberal apologist to disagree. Self-proclaimed progressives just got their clocks cleaned in the American presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and state legislature elections. Rather than embracing introspection and unity, the defeated Democrats are now resorting to capitulating to Trump, ignoring winnable political fights like DAPL, squabbling over who should become the new head of the Democratic National Committee and blaming Hillary Clinton’s loss on her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.

Similarly, the Labour Party has been fragmenting between radical party head Jeremy Corbyn and the centrist party establishment ever since losing to the Conservatives in last year’s Parliamentary election. Amidst this political chaos, Britain rejected the EU status quo in the Brexit referendum. Progressive Scotland must take a long look in the mirror and decide if it would rather try to secede from the United Kingdom again or join the UK in leaving the EU.

Italian PM and Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi just had to pull a David Cameron and resign after his power-grabbing referendum failed this past Sunday, thus paving the way for anti-EU forces in Italy to potentially take over the government and initiate the Quitaly referendum, a Roman version of Brexit. Italy’s Five Star Movement literally has its slogan, “Fuck Off”, so great is their contempt for neoliberal establishment in Italy and the EU as a whole.

Meanwhile, France’s Socialist Party leader and current President François Hollande is declining to run in next year’s election, what with his 4% approval rating.ii This paves far-right National Front leader and Eurosceptic champion Marine Le Pen’s way to the Élysée next May. The only person potentially keeping the female firebrand from victory is Républicain candidate François Fillon, who harbors extremely polarizing views on social issues and austerity.

By contrast, Marine Le Pen has successfully been appealing to voters beyond her non-ultraconservative base, such as the gay communityiii, and working class people who fear the specter of austerity even more than the EU. In other words, she’s adapting Donald Trump’s winning strategy: eschewing old-school social conservatism in favor of nationalistic populism. Donald Trump beat his conservative opponents in the GOP primaries by shifting the vitriol from old-school evangelical boogeymen like Social Security and the LGBT community (Trump famously waved a Rainbow Flag at a rally) to more contemporary boogeymen like immigrants and globalization. We’ll know in half a year if this formula works as well for Marine Le Pen.

In Holland, home to the EU headquarters, hardcore Eurosceptic and anti-immigration Party for Freedom candidate Geert Wilders is now the frontrunner in the country’s Parliamentary elections, to be held next March.iv Hungary’s xenophobic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has openly declared to wield, “a sword we can forge in the fight against the Brussels bureaucrats.”v Austrian nationalist candidate Norbert Hofer lost the Presidential election by just over 100,000 votes this past Sunday, winning almost half the vote as the head of a party, the FPO, that was literally founded by former high-ranking Nazis.

In Greece, the ruling Syriza party is quickly crumbling. Once hailed as the future of global Progressivism, Syriza has become a lame duck after bowing to the European establishment on crippling austerity measures and harboring 60,000 immigrants.vi People are now flocking from Syriza to the conservative New Democracy partyvii and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, whose members openly murder opponents,viii assault immigrants and rival politiciansix and riot in the streets of the world’s original democracy. Syriza’s own superstar Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, gave up on Syriza due its capitulations to the European financial elites.x

Outside of the West, progressivism has also been dying a slow death. The Arab Spring has been reduced to a rotting corpse, just like its Western antecedent, Occupy Wall St. Egypt is now controlled by a junta, Libya and Syria have been reduced to perpetual civil war and all of the ultra-conservative monarchies remain firmly in control of their kingdoms. Earth’s 12th largest country, the Philippines, elected to its Presidency a vulgar, misogynistic, anti-establishment, undiplomatic strongman named Rodrigo Duterte before Trump had even become the Republican party nominee. Brazil, the world’s 9th largest economy, this past summer impeached on dubious charges its socialist President, Dilma Rousseff, replacing her with an anti-science and pro-austerity lawyer named Michel Temer,xi whose approval rating has been frozen in the low teens throughout his tenure.xii

Neoliberals have yet to find an answer to this worldwide sea change. As long as leftists dismiss the phenomenon as nothing more than sheer racism and stupidity, they will continue to evade potential answers. Working class people from Pennsylvania to Paris are hurting due to unprecedented upward wealth redistribution, shrinking jobs in both skilled and unskilled labor, soaring costs of living, college tuition, kabuki bureaucracy and collective trauma from the Wars on Drugs and Terror. Voters aren’t stupid; they’re getting tired of the platitudes, plundering and plutocracy of the Global Gilded Age. If the status quo doesn’t come up with any solutions, the populace will seek them elsewhere…

Notes:
i. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7JgfB8PaAk
ii. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/01/the-reason-french-president-hollande-wont-seek-reelection-in-one-chart/
iii. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/how-marine-le-pen-is-winning-frances-gay-vote/
iv. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3986348/Dutch-far-right-party-led-Geert-Wilders-WIN-election-held-today-respected-poll-shows-latest-blow-EU.html
v. http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/716831/Hungary-referendum-2016-could-vote-signal-end-EU-Brussels-European-Union-Viktor-Orban
vi. http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21711069-centre-right-new-democracy-party-dull-technocratic-and-leading-polls-tired-syriza
vii. http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21711069-centre-right-new-democracy-party-dull-technocratic-and-leading-polls-tired-syriza
viii. http://www.vice.com/read/golden-dawn-accepts-political-responsibility-for-murder-876
ix. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/07/golden-dawn-tv-assault-greece
x. http://www.wsj.com/articles/greek-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-resigns-after-referendum-1436162284
xi. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/world/americas/michel-temer-brazils-interim-president-may-herald-shift-to-the-right.html
xii. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-poll-idUSKCN1241M3

For the past five months since the Council in Crete, concerns about a possible split have been making rounds around the Orthodox world.

Indeed, the opinion of the majority of the episcopate wasn’t presented at the Crete Council, as four Autocephalous Church – and inter alia the Russian Orthodox Church with the majority of Orthodox Christian believers in the world and more than one third of all Orthodox Christian bishops – didn’t consider it possible for themselves to take part in the event (at least in the one that was supposed to be held as of June 18). Delegations presented at the Council were also divided among themselves over the documents in question and on how to address the agenda. For example, about two thirds of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s delegates didn’t sign the document about the relations with Non-Orthodox Christians.

But now, finally, it has became clear that the fears were groundless. By God’s grace, the split did not happen. Moreover, the Council’s stated goals – to come together in one place, create a climate of mutual trust and express in a visible way the unity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church – were achieved at long last.

The Primates of the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Serbia, Georgia, Orthodox Churches of Cyprus, Poland, Albania, Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, Orthodox Church in America, as well as representatives of other Local Churches gathered in Moscow on November 20-22 to con-celebrate at the Divine Liturgy and congratulate His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill on his 70th birthday.

Despite the seeming prosiness of the occasion, this solemn event surely played an important role in the life of the Church. No wonder that even those Primates who were not particularly inclined to demonstrate their solidarity with the Russian Orthodox Church, namely Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria Theodore II, Archbishop of New Justiniana and All Cyprus Chrysostomos II, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland Sava, Archbishop of Tirana and All Albania Anastasios did come to Moscow. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, whose alleged rivalry with the Moscow Patriarchate is so widely spoken of, and the Romanian Patriarchate sent their representatives.

The Metropolitan of Warsaw spoke his joy or a kind of relief and said: “All the Orthodox came! If unity was broken, they would not have come here!”

And, perhaps, it doesn’t matter what was the number of the delegates and who sent them to the jubilee (for example, Patriarch Bartholomew sent one single representative, i.e. less than the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia did). What is important is that the amount of clergy and the lineup of attendees (note the number of monastic klobuks, including white metropolitan ones) indicate: all the fullness of the Church finally did get together.

“It is safe to say that these days the heart of Orthodox Christendom beats there. And this is because the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is a respected church and religious leader for the whole world,” said Metropolitan Timothy of Vostra, a representative of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said.

At the same time, in addition to solemn speeches and greetings, each of the speakers hierarchs has talked about the challenges facing the Church: secularization, ethnophyletism, divisions, attempts of external actors to disorganize the canonical structure of the Church, suffering of the people in Iraq and Syria, persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Kosovo and Metohija. They talked about things that really concern the clergy and flock of the Local Churches.

Many people were impressed by Patriarch Kirill’s speech. I was impressed by it also. First of all, with how sincere it was, from personal memories to the anguish for the Church that is being crucified by evil external forces, for the suffering of Christians in the Middle East, for the souls of all of us who are in the midst of the raging elements of our world.

I’d like to exclaim: “Thanks to God we are on the board of the Ship of Salvation, in our Orthodox Church!” Seems like precisely this joy, the joy of communal prayer and unity around the bowl with the Holy Sacraments overshadowed the gladness of the anniversary in the speech of the Russian Patriarch.

Jelena Rakocevic is a Orthodox Christian believer from Podgorica, Montenegro, and belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Rakocevic graduated from the University of Montenegro in 2013 with a Masters in International Relations.