By Samuel Morgan

(EurActiv) — The European Union enters 2017 under pressure from both external and internal forces, facing challenges on all fronts and experiencing a surge by anti-EU nationalists across the continent itself.

Who will have the biggest impact on the sequel to what has been an annus horribilis for the bloc?

These are the top 10 people that will shape the year ahead (in no particular order).

Donald Trump

Donald Trump. Photo by Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia Commons.

His win stunned Europeans already in shock after Britain’s Brexit vote to leave and inspired anti-establishment Eurosceptics everywhere. Once in the White House on 20 January, policies which reflect (or not) his campaign promises may have big effects on Europe. A US budget binge could lift business in an EU where a sluggish economy continues to generate political instability; a more protectionist trade stance risks doing the opposite.

Trump’s dim view of bankrolling NATO and his call for better ties with Russia have the EU looking to home-grown defence options.

Jarosław Kaczyński

Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński. Photo by Piotr Drabik, Wikipedia Commons.

Defying Brussels by curbing Poland’s constitutional court, the power behind the right-wing government is testing EU powers to impose its will and is widening an east-west split. The EU has given Warsaw until late February to change tune. But Kaczyński counts on allies like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to veto penalties.

Poland is the heavyweight leader of ex-communist eastern states. British diplomats are ready to play on the east-west divide in Brexit talks. Moscow is courting old Soviet allies but faces a hurdle in Kaczyński, who sees its hand in the 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed the Polish president – his identical twin.

Geert Wilders

The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. Photo by Wouter Engler, Wikipedia Commons.

Dutch voters can set the tone for Europe’s electoral year by confirming polls which show his anti-Islam Freedom Party heading to being the biggest in parliament. Multi-party coalition politics mean he is unlikely to govern but his victory could make voting for the far-right seem more palatable to the French and Germans later.

Europe will look to see how an EU founder member handles a man who wants to quit it: do they circle the mainstream wagons to keep him out of power, enhancing his maverick appeal; or let him in, to temper his rhetoric with the reality of government?

Theresa May

United Kingdom’s Theresa May. Photo US Embassy London.

“Brexit means Brexit.” The British prime minister will have to expand on her catchphrase when she sends Brussels a letter by 31 March to trigger the two-year countdown to divorce.

Keeping a poker face, she must unify her government and a country so split that bits threaten to break away and then wrangle with Europeans who fear any inch they give may drive another nail into a Union where many may be tempted to emulate any sweetheart deal for London.

Marine Le Pen

France’s Marine Le Pen. Photo by Foto-AG Gymnasium Melle, Wikipedia Commons.

None of the above may matter if the anti-EU National Front leader becomes French president on 7 May. A lack of other candidates promises her first-round victory on 23 April but many doubt she can win the majority that also eluded her father in 2002.

Yet after Brexit and Trump, no one trust the polls. And the 48-year-old has won over millions who never voted for Le Pen Senior’s overt racism and anti-Semitism. Much may depend on who she faces in the runoff. If she takes over the nation that invented the EU, it may be the end of the Union, at least as we know it.

African migrants

Irish Naval personnel from the LÉ Eithne (P31) rescuing migrants as part of Operation Triton. Photo Credit: Irish Defence Forces, Wikipedia Commons.

Any Africans hoping to sail to Italy after winter storms abate may be forced to rethink their situation. By strong-arming governments via aid budgets, beefing up policing of Libyan waters and preparing mass expulsions, the EU aims to emulate tactics that worked to hold back Syrians from Greece and tilt his risk-reward calculus. Why brave the Sahara and the sea only to be detained and sent home?

Vladimir Putin

Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Source: kremlin.ru, Wikipedia Commons.

The Kremlin leader is playing a hard-to-read tactical game to restore Moscow’s influence globally. He can make friends, or trouble, with western neighbours in many ways, from control of their gas to backing their opponents. Since he annexed Crimea in 2014, few in the EU will place bets on Putin’s next move.

By 31 July, EU leaders must renew or scrap sanctions imposed to make Putin blink over Ukraine but which some member states dislike. If Trump breaks ranks by easing US sanctions, the EU will struggle to prevent one or more members blocking renewal.

Sergio Mattarella

Italy’s Sergio Mattarella. Photo Credit: Presidency of the Italian Republic, Wikipedia Commons.

A cagey Sicilian lawyer, the 75-year-old Italian president, who entered politics when his brother was assassinated by the Mafia, is in the eye of a storm. He must cajole feuding parties to govern while they position themselves for an election to be held at a time they do not know, under rules that may yet change.

Italy’s eurozone partners are watching the heavily indebted state and its ailing banks with unease. Unlike Greece, say, or Portugal, Italy is both too big to fail, and too big to save.

Angela Merkel

Germany’s Angela Merkel. Photo by Marc Müller, Wikipedia Commons.

Set for a fourth term in September’s German parliamentary election, Europe’s leader of leaders is threatened by anger and fear since over a million asylum-seekers came to Germany since last year. Eurosceptics to the chancellor’s right should win their first seats, at the very least complicating her coalition talks.

The 62-year-old physicist from East Germany is a guarantor of her country’s long-standing attachment to the EU as the key to a stable Europe after havoc wrought from Berlin last century. But can she work miracles if her neighbours start falling apart?

The Man in Black

This man has come to hate the Europe he lives in. Islamic State, under pressure in Syria and Iraq, has fired his anger and is pushing him to act, by whatever means he has.

More broadly, he can stand for all the unknowns, the unprecedented and unpredictable events, manmade or natural, that could trigger at least fleeting jolts in public opinion and derail any of Europe’s plans and priorities for the coming year.

Margrethe Vestager

Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager. Photo by Johannes Jansson, Wikimedia Commons.

Denmark’s Vestager, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, is set to take on some of the globe’s biggest multinationals after taking Apple to task for alleged tax avoidance and warning that she has McDonald’s and Amazon in her sights next.

One of the most remarkable developments this year was the Commission’s hardline on the American tech giant and it will be interesting to see whether the Dane is allowed free reign to carry out her work in the year to come.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photo Cancillería del Ecuador, Wikipedia Commons.

Turkish President Erdoğan survived a coup attempt in July, has dealt with numerous terrorist attacks and has presided over the worst period of EU-Turkey relations in recent memory, if not ever.

The refugee deal struck between Ankara and Brussels has been constantly criticised and Erdoğan himself has threatened to revoke it if his country’s membership bid is disrupted.

Turkey is an unpredictable place currently and it seems likely that the president’s crackdown on freedom of speech, the media and anyone he believes to have assisted in the coup attempt will extend into 2017.

Mario Draghi

ECB President Mario Draghi. Photo by Photo Remy Steinegger, World Economic Forum, Wikipedia Commons.

The European Central Bank president has been quietly overseeing the eurozone’s slow recovery after the financial crisis and his “business as usual” management style looks set to continue.

Left to his own devices, the Italian has appeared capable of helming the bloc out of stagnate growth but it is not implausible that the EU will run out of patience with his slow and steady approach.

A new set of historical national accounts for Spain constructs estimates of output and expenditure from 1850 onwards, which means we can estimate the evolution of GDP per capita and labour productivity during this period. This column argues that the data demonstrates that GDP per capita captures long-run trends in welfare in Spain, but not short and medium run trends.

By Leandro Prados de la Escosura*

What does GDP really mean? Is it a measure of material welfare or simply a measure of output? A recent wave of critical publications (Coyle 2014, Masood 2016, Philipsen 2015, among others) reject any pretence that GDP captures anything other than production, which it captures incompletely. They have heightened scrutiny that goes back to the inception of national accounts (Engerman 1997, Nordhaus and Tobin 1972).

This is not a new claim. Economists have long viewed GDP as a crude measure of economic progress and an even poorer measure of welfare (Beckerman 1968, Syrquin 2016).

Those who claim that GDP is a flawed measure of economic welfare nevertheless accept that GDP per capita is highly correlated with non-monetary dimensions of well-being (Oulton 2012, Jones and Klenow 2016).

Can we, then, rely on historical estimates of GDP to assess output and material welfare in the long run? In the early days of modern economic quantification, Kuznets (1952: 16-17), noticed the “tendency to shrink from long-term estimates” on the grounds of “the increasing inadequacy of the data as one goes back in time and to the increasing discontinuity in social and economic conditions”. Cautious historians recommend we restrict the use of GDP to societies that had efficient recording mechanisms, relatively centralised economic activities, and a small subsistence sector (Hudson 2016, Deng and O’Brien 2016). But should the adequacy of data be “judged in terms of the uses of the results” (Kuznets, 1952: 17)?

A new dataset

In this context, I present a new set of historical national accounts for Spain, with GDP estimates from the demand and supply side, to investigate its modern economic growth (Prados de la Escosura 2016b).

I have reconstructed historical output and expenditure series for the century prior to the introduction of modern national accounts. The new series are built from painstaking research using highly disaggregated data.

Available national accounts have been spliced through interpolation, as an alternative to conventional retropolation, to derive new continuous series for 1958-2015 (Prados de la Escosura 2014 and 2016a). The series for the ‘pre-statistical era’ have been linked to the spliced national accounts, providing yearly series for GDP and its components from 1850 until 2015. Finally, based on new population and labour force estimates, I calculated GDP per capita and labour productivity. You can access the dataset at http://espacioinvestiga.org/bbdd-chne/?lang=en)

What do the data show?

Aggregate economic activity multiplied 50 times between 1850 and 2015, at an average cumulative growth rate of 2.4% per year (Table 1). This happened in four main phases: 1850-1950 (with a shift to a lower level during the Civil War, 1936-1939), 1951-1974, 1975-2007, and 2008-2015, in which the growth trend varied significantly (Figure 1).

Table 1. GDP Growth and its Components, 1850-2015 (%)  (average yearly logarithmic rates)

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2016b)

But to what extent did more goods and services affect the living conditions of individuals? Since population trebled, real GDP per capita experienced nearly a 16-fold increase, growing at an annual rate of 1.7%. This improvement took place at an uneven pace. Per-capita GDP grew at 0.7% between 1850 and 1950, doubling its initial level. During the next quarter of a century, the ‘Golden Age’, growth was seven times as fast, so by 1974 income per capita was 3.6 times higher than in 1950. Although economic progress slowed down from 1975 onwards, and the rate of GDP per capita growth shrank to one-half that of the Golden Age, the level of GDP per capita more than doubled between 1974 and 2007. The Great Recession (2008-13) shrank per capita income by 11% but, by 2015, its level was still 83% higher than at the time of Spain’s EU accession (1985).

Figure 1. Real GDP and GDP per Head, 1850-2015 (2010=100) (logs).

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2016b)

What created such a remarkable rise? GDP per capita depends on the amount of work per capita, and how productive this effort is. GDP per capita and labour productivity (measured as GDP per hour worked) evolved together over 1850-2015. Although the amount of hours worked per capita shrank, labour productivity grew at a faster pace –it increased 23-fold against 16-fold for GDP per capita (Figure 2). The decline in hours worked per capita was driven by a reduction in hours worked per fully occupied worker, which fell from 2,800 hours per year in mid-19th century to less than 1,900 in the early 21st century. So long-run gains in output per capita are entirely attributable to productivity gains, with phases of accelerating GDP per capita, such as the 1920s or the Golden Age (1950-1974), matching those of faster labour productivity growth.

Figure 2. Per Capita GDP and its Components, 1850-2015 (2010=100) (logs).

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2016b)

A closer look at the last four decades reveals significant discrepancies, with phases of acceleration in labour productivity at the same time as GDP per capita slowdown, and vice versa (Table 1, Panel B). Thus, periods of sluggish (1975-84) or negative (2008-13) GDP per capita growth paralleled episodes of vigorous or recovering productivity growth, although in the first case, the ‘transition to democracy’ decade, labour productivity offset the sharp contraction in hours worked – largely resulting from unemployment – and prevented a decline in GDP per capita. Conversely, in the years between Spain’s accession to the European Union (1985) and the Great Recession (2007), there were substantial GDP per capita gains while labour productivity slowed down. Thus, during the three decades after Spain’s accession to the EU, in which grew at 3 per cent per year, doubling its GDP per capita, the increase in hours worked per capita contributed more than half of it. It can, then, be concluded that since the mid-1970s the Spanish economy has been unable to combine employment creation and productivity growth, with the implication that sectors that expanded and created jobs (mostly construction and services) were less successful in attracting investment and technological innovation.

Falling behind, catching up … and falling back again?

Spanish long-run growth has been like that of western nations, though Spain’s level of GDP per capita appears systematically lower (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Spain’s Comparative Real Per Capita GDP (2011 EKS $) (logs)

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2016b)

The pace of growth before 1950 was comparatively slow in Spain. Sluggish performance over 1883-1913, followed by a failure take advantage of its neutrality in World War I to catch up, partly account for it. Furthermore, the progress achieved in the 1920s was outweighed by Spain’s short-lived recovery from the Depression, which was brought to a halt by Civil War (1936-39), and by a longer and weaker post-war reconstruction than in other western European countries after 1945. Thus, Spain fell behind between 1850 and 1950.

The situation improved between 1950 and 2007. The Golden Age, especially since 1960, stands out as a period of outstanding performance and catch-up to the advanced nations. Steady, although slower, growth after the transition to democracy years (1975-84), allowed Spain to keep catching up until 2007. The Great Recession reversed the trend, although it is too soon to determine whether we are in a new phase of falling behind.

So Spain’s relative position to western countries has evolved along a wide-U shape, deteriorating to 1950 (except for the 1870s and 1920s) and recovering thereafter (except for the episodes of the transition to democracy and the Great Recession). Thus, at the beginning of the 21st century Spanish real GDP per capita represented a proportion of US and Germany’s income similar to what it was in the mid-19th century, and to that of the 1870s with regard to France and Italy, although it had significantly improved with respect to the UK.

But does GDP per capita capture welfare?

A major objection to GDP per capita is that it takes no account of income distribution. Figure 4 compares GDP per capita with the Sen welfare measure, namely, inequality-adjusted income per capita (GDP per capita, multiplied by 1 minus the Gini). Except for the early 20th century – especially the 1910s and 1920s and in the late 1940s and early mid-1950s, when the Sen welfare level fell behind GDP per capita – both measures exhibit similar long-run performance.

Figure 4. Real Per Capita GDP and Sen Welfare, 1850-2015 (2010=100) (logs)

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2017)

Another objection to GDP per capita is that it fails to incorporate non-income dimensions of well-being. Critics of GDP as a measure of welfare claim the Human Development Index as a better alternative (Coyle 2014). Similar long-run trends are observed in GDP per capita and Human Development (Figure 5), although improvements in the Historical Index of Human Development were more intense between 1880 and 1950 and slower thereafter. There is a large discrepancy between the two measures in the 1930s and 1940s, when human development thrived, driven by life expectancy gains – a result of the epidemiological transition and broadening primary education, while GDP per capita contracted as consequence of the Depression and the Civil War, and its autarchic aftermath.

Figure 5. Real Per Capita GDP (2010=100) (logs) and Historical Index of Human Development (excluding income dimension) (multiplied by 1000 and transformed into logs), 1850-2007

Source: Prados de la Escosura (2015, 2016b).

We can conclude on this evidence that that GDP per capita captures long-run trends in welfare in Spain, but not the short and medium run trends.

About the author:
* Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Professor of Economic History, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid; Research Associate, CAGE; Honorary Maddison Chair, University of Groningen; and CEPR Research Fellow

References:
Beckerman, W. (1968), An Introduction to National Income Analysis, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Coyle, D. (2014), GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Deng, K. and P. O’Brien (2016), “China’s GDP Per Capita from the Han Dynasty to Communist Times”, World Economics 17, 2: 79-123.

Engerman, S.L. (1997). “The Standard of Living Debate in International Perspective: Measure and Indicators”, in R.H. Steckel and R. Floud (eds.), Health and Welfare during Industrialization, University of Chicago Press/NBER, pp. 17-45.

Hudson, P. (2016), GDP per capita: from measurement tool to ideological construct, LSE Business Review (10 May 2016).

Jones, C.I. and P.J. Klenow (2016), “Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time”, American Economic Review 106, 9: 2426-2457.

Kuznets, S. (1952), Income and Wealth of the United States. Trade and Structure, Income and Wealth Series II, Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes.

Masood, E. (2016), The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making (and Unmaking) of the Modern World, Pegasus.

Nordhaus, W., and J. Tobin (1972), “Is Growth Obsolete?”, in National Bureau of Economic Research, Economic Growth: Fiftieth Anniversary Colloquium V, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1–80

Oulton, N. (2012), Hooray for GDP!, Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper 30 (August).

Prados de la Escosura, L. (2017), Spanish Economic Growth, 1850-2015, London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Prados de la Escosura (2016a), “Mismeasuring Long Run Growth. The Bias from Spliced National Accounts: The Case of Spain”, Cliometrica 10, 3: 251-275

Prados de la Escosura, L. (2016b), Spain’s Historical National Accounts: Expenditure and Output, 1850-2015, CEPR Discussion Paper 11524. The dataset can be accessed at http://espacioinvestiga.org/bbdd-chne/?lang=en

Prados de la Escosura, L. (2015), “World Human Development, 1870-2007”, Review of Income and Wealth 61, 2: 220-247

Prados de la Escosura, L. (2014), Mismeasuring long-run growth: The bias from spliced national accounts, VoxEU.org (27 September).

Philipsen, D. (2015), The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do about It, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Syrquin, M. (2016), “A Review Essay on GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle”, Journal of Economic Literature 254, 2: 573–588.

A recommendation by two Western experts that the three Baltic countries should prepare to fight a partisan war if Russia invades them rather than spending their limited resources on expensive weapons of modern war has attracted widespread attention not only in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius but also in Moscow.

The article by Alexander Lanoszka of the University of London and Michael A. Hunzeker of George Mason University and the US Military Academy appeared in the RUSI Journal on November 30 (“Confronting the Anti-Access/Area Denial and Precision Strike Challenge in the Baltic Region,” available on line at rusi.org/publication/rusi-journal/confronting-anti-accessarea-denial-and-precision-strike-challenge-baltic).

This week, the Estonian section of the Baltic Delfi news agency interviewed Lanoszka; and it is his comments rather than the original article that appears to have triggered interest both across the three Baltic countries and in Moscow (rus.delfi.ee/daily/estonia/eksperty-estonii-sleduet-perejti-na-strategiyu-partizanskogo-protivostoyaniya?id=76661032).

Neither the NATO battalions now in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, nor the kind of weapons systems the three Baltic countries are likely to be able to purchase, Lanoszka says, are likely to be able to do more than serve as a trip wire if Russia decides to invade, slowing but not stopping any Russian advance.

And unless NATO significantly increases its presence in the three, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania should make plans to engage in a partisan war to raise the costs of any Russian aggression, the British analyst says. What they should not try to do because they can’t is to fight the war on Russia’s terms. They must fight it on their own.

To say this, Lanoszka continues, is not to say that the three should not invest in some modern weaponry but only that they should not put all their hopes in that – and they should understand that such purchases from Moscow’s perspective will be “viewed as a provocation” and thus may cause more problems than they are worth.

The British expert notes that all three Baltic nations resisted the Soviet occupation in the 1940s into the 1950s by creating units known generically as “the forest brothers,” that they inflicted serious casualties on the occupiers, and that their governments remember this. Indeed, Vilnus has already put out a handbook on how to form forest brother units now.

(For background on the Forest Brothers, what they achieved and what they did not, see among others the following books: Juozas Daumantas, Fighters for Freedom (1975), Dalia Kuodyte and Rokas Tracevskis, The Unknown War: Armed Anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania in 1944-1953 (2004), and Mart Laar, War in the Woods (1992).)

Soviet and Russian historians have routinely played down the significance of the Forest Brothers, and Sergey Orlov, in a commentary on the new RUSI article repeats their view. He calls such talk a provocation given that according to him Moscow has no plans to invade the Baltic countries (svpressa.ru/war21/article/163102/).

Star Wars’ actress Carrie Fisher was in critical condition Friday after suffering a “cardiac episode” during a flight from London to Los Angeles, according to airline and emergency officials.

Fisher, 60, was rushed to the hospital by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics shortly after noon, after her 11-hour flight touched down at LAX.

A source who was not authorized to discuss the incident said the actress was “in a lot of distress on the flight.”

A statement released by United Airlines said that medical personnel met Flight 935 from London on arrival after the crew reported a passenger was unresponsive.

“Our thoughts are with our customer at this time,” the statement read.

Just prior to arrival, a pilot told the control tower that passengers who were nurses were attending to another “unresponsive” passenger.”

“So they’re working on her right now,” the pilot said in a public recording of the conversation on liveatc.net.

According to the LAX Police Department, officers responded to Terminal 7 around 12:15 p.m., for a call of a female passenger in cardiac arrest. On arrival, they found paramedics performing CPR on the victim, according to Officer Alicia Hernandez.

Fisher, who rose to stardom as Princess Leia, recently published an autobiography titled the “Princess Diarist,” her eighth book.

She is the daughter of famous Hollywood couple Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

The consortium consisting of China Futures Exchange, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Pak-China Investment Company (PCIC) and Habib Bank (HBL) have reportedly submitted the highest bid of PkR28/share for the 40% strategic stake (321 million shares) of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

In the consortium, China Futures Exchange, Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange would be allotted an aggregate stake of 30% while PCIC and HBL would each be allotted 5% of the strategic stake post regulatory approvals.

At the onset, this should be positive for the Pakistan market as it should enhance the brokers’ capacity to trade (opportunity to enhance net capital balance). In this regard, the transaction should result in an inflow of PkR 8.9 billion  (US$86 million) for around 200 owners of the PSX. Leading Brokerage house, AKD Securities believes that cash proceeds from this transaction can take up to two months to move out of the escrow account.

Other benefits to accrue in the medium to long term include: 1) increase in investor base, 2) up-gradation of technological infrastructure / technology transfer, 3) liquidity inflow from the launch of new products and 4) cross listings and market access for Pakistani companies.

Analysts remain positive on the Pakistan market as the current 21% valuation discount to MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan Index is expected to narrow on the back of enhanced liquidity present in the market coupled with formal inclusion in the EM space in 2017 and improving growth rates.

Despite no known specific, credible threats, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security have warned law enforcement agencies that sympathizers of jihadist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) could strike holiday events in the US.

In a bulletin sent to US law enforcement and private security agencies, the FBI and DHS said individuals loyal to Islamic State “continue aspirational calls for attacks on holiday gatherings, including targeting churches,” CNN reported Friday.

The bulletin was sent out despite the lack of any specific, known threat, federal officials said, according to CNN. However, officials did say pro-Islamic State websites have allegedly published a list of churches in the US, according to reports, although the list was already available to the public, CNN reported.

The warning comes days after a man ran a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring dozens more. The suspect in the case, Anis Amri, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Amri was allegedly killed in Italy on Friday.

On November 28, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a student at Ohio State University, ran a car into a group of pedestrians on the school’s campus. He then exited the vehicle and attacked others with a butcher knife. He was fatally shot shortly afterwards by an Ohio State University officer.

IS took credit for the Ohio State attack, while the FBI claimed Artan was inspired by IS and the writings of Yemeni cleric and Al-Qaeda member Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US drone strike in 2011.

By Ana Maria Luca

Military prosecutors of the Romanian Supreme Court on Friday indicted former president Ion Iliescu and other former senior officials with crimes against humanity for their role in the violence in 1990 that left at least four dead and over 700 wounded in Bucharest.

Former Prime Minister Petre Roman, former Deputy Prime Minister Gelu Voican Voiculescu and the former head of Romanian Intelligence Service Virgil Măgureanu are also among those indicted for the violent crackdown on opposition protesters in Bucharest’s University Square on June 13-15, 1990.

Four people were killed, three others were shot and wounded, and over 1,000 were beaten and detained in one of the most violent episodes in Romania’s recent history, when between 10,000 and 20,000 miners from the Jiu Valley marched into Bucharest and attacked the opposition protesters.

Several institutions, including the Ministry of Interior, the headquarters of the Romanian Intelligence Service, SRI, as well as the public television, TVR, were attacked and vandalized. All broadcasts were cancelled.

“Between June 11-15, 1990, the accused decided, organized and coordinated a general and systematic attack against the civilian populations, respectively against protesters in Bucharest University Square as well as against citizens of the capital.

“They also involved the security forces of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defence as well as over 10,000 miners and other workers from several regions,” prosecutor Marian Lazar said, announcing the indictments.

The officials were first called for questioning as suspects on December 21, 2015, after the investigation was re-launched. Charges had been dropped against all suspects in 2009.

The investigation had dragged for almost 27 years and Romania had to pay damages after being ruled against in several cases at the European Court for Human Rights, ECHR.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/former-romanian-officials-indicted-with-crimes-against-humanity-for-the-1990-miners-revolt-12-23-2016#sthash.oLW44G19.dpuf

“I think it’s politics more than anything else,” says former House of Representatives Member Ron Raul (R-TX) regarding calls for an investigation of purported hacking by the Russian government influencing the United States presidential election. Interviewed Wednesday on Fox Business, Paul continues that, even if Russia did what is alleged, Paul does not think it “made any difference.”

Paul — providing perspective on the matter — notes that the US government is interfering with elections around the world “all the time.” Paul also suggests reviewing the history of US government involvement in foreign countries, including “how many countries we invaded, how many people we have killed in order to have our guy in.” Looking to this history, Paul concludes, “we don’t have much room for condemning anybody else.”

Watch here a clip from the interview, in which Paul also comments regarding the Texas member of the Electoral College who cast a vote for Paul for president on Monday:

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques that, worryingly, Donald Trump is already using.

1. Berate the media and turn the public against it. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” When Trump lies – claiming, for example, “massive voter fraud” in the election, and that he “won in a landslide” – and the media call him on those lies, Trump claims the media is lying. Even televised satires he labels “unfunny, one-sided, and pathetic.”

2. Limit media access. Trump hasn’t had a news conference since July. (His two predecessors had news conferences within days of being declared president.) He’s blocked the media from traveling with him, and even from knowing with whom he’s meeting. His phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which occurred shortly after the election, was first reported by the Kremlin.

3. Threaten the media. During the campaign, Trump threatened to sue the New York Times for libel in response to an article about two women who accused him of touching them inappropriately years ago, and then another that revealed part of his 1995 tax returns. He says he plans to “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

4. Bypass the media and communicate with the public directly. Trump tweets incessantly, issues videos, and holds large rallies – all of which further enable him to lie directly to the public with impunity.

The word “media” comes from “intermediate” between the powerful and the public. The media hold the powerful accountable by correcting their misstatements, asking them hard questions, and reporting on what they do. Apparently Trump wants to eliminate such intermediaries.

Historically, these 4 techniques have been used by demagogues to erode the freedom and independence of the press. Donald Trump seems intent on doing exactly this.

The above is an actual TWEET of a line from a speech that Barack Obama gave at MacDill AFB on December 6th.

The reaction of the crowd was to cheer for that line, but even though even Obama can’t control what thugs applaud in his speeches, one can tell that he is proud of the fact that he has been a war criminal for all eight years of his regime.

One would think that The White House intern in charge of twittering wouldn’t tweet something that he/she thought would bring shame on POTUS–so I come to the conclusion that Obama is just as proud to be a war president as Bush was.

Then Obama went on to say, “We did not choose this fight.” Of course, the USA was an innocent bystander on September 11, 2001. It’s a given that the US only spreads goodwill and material aid around a planet that adored “The Great Satan” and on 9/11 it was attacked by rogue terrorists that only wanted to hurt the US because of its “freedom and democracy.”

Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize Winning War Criminal has bombed at LEAST seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. I would really like to know who or what chose these fights for Obama? Did some random homeless guy from Hoboken phone him up one day and say, “Hey, Prez, I choose Libya for you to destroy, next?” I more suspect the “fights” are always chosen by the Military Industrial Complex–which includes Wall Street and the fake corporate media.

What Obama is implying is that the United States of America, the Empire which spends over a trillion dollars every year to maintain the largest military force and WMD in history, is actually somehow acting in self-defense in ANY of the above countries? Interestingly enough, though, his actions over the past eight years have gone a long way to harming relations with two nations that may actually have some capacity to fight back: Russia and China.

I cannot in actual fact wait until I don’t have to regularly hear Obama’s smarmy voice anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I do want to start to hear Trump’s smarmy voice either. The thing that is the most aggravating aspect (to me) about Obama’s two terms is that he was able to (and brag about it) bomb seven countries without any large-scale opposition.

Trump has over a month left before he straps himself into the puppet strings of the x-rated (for gratuitous violence) Imperial Punch and Punch show, and he is already being opposed.

For example, Trump got every liberal all clutching their pearls with chagrin when he tweeted about prison time for flag-burners, when Hillary Clinton TWICE sponsored that same legislation (the Flag Protection Act) when she was a senator–without the same pretend vapors from the “left.”

The liberal world went “pearl clutching crazy” again this week when President Elect Donald Trump accepted a phone call from the President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen, because this is such a HUGE affront to China–when these same pearl clutchers never even blinked an eye only a few days earlier when the biggest arms dealer on the planet, Obama, closed a deal to sell 1.83 bn worth of arms to Taiwan. I suspect the newly outraged liberals had never even heard of Obama’s Asia Pivot, either.

I don’t know how to end this article, because the Ghoulish Legacy of Barack Obama will never end for the lifelong pain of those that had loved ones murdered or were maimed by his regime.

I know, because my own son was killed by an earlier version of Obama’s foreign policy that had manifested itself in George Bush and the war that Obama promised to end, but never quite did.

Because, the rivers of blood spilled and the untold number of lives ruined are Obama’s true legacy that most in this country never personally see, so they must concentrate on votes stolen by Russia or tweets tweeted by Trump.

My motto since my son was killed has ultimately become: “Never forget, but always move forward.” With the ending of another  “error,” and the beginning of the next one, I hope the integrity of the movement matures to opposition to Empire, not the fake media outrages du jour.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a chart (see above graph) showing how health-benefit costs among private employers have increased over the past decade. The chart shows health benefits increased from 6.9 percent of total compensation in September 2006 to 7.6 percent last September. The 0.7 percentage point absolute increase is a relative increase of ten percent.

The chart shades the period of the Great Recession (December 2007 through June 2009), after which health benefits as a share of total compensation really jump. This increase is counter-intuitive, because health benefits are stickier than wages, so they would normally have shrunk as a share of total compensation as wages caught up.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. It is hard to determine the ACA’s effect at any single point after that date, because its regulations dripped out over the years. The exchanges, which heavily subsidized individual health insurance, began providing coverage in January 2014. The establishment of exchanges would have encouraged employers to “dump” their employees into them.

The law inhibited such behavior through a mandate on employers of 50 or more workers to offer “affordable” health coverage. However, the Obama administration delayed enforcement of this mandate until 2015 for employers with 100 or more workers, and until 2016 for employers with 50 to 99 workers. Employers of fewer than 50 workers do not bear the mandate.

Table I (derived from the same Bureau of Labor Statistics report with the chart above) breaks down health benefits as a share of total compensation among employers of various sizes, at certain inflection points: A baseline measurement exactly four years before Obamacare was signed, the month Obamacare was signed, the month before exchange coverage began, and the latest measurement.

For small businesses that do not bear the employer mandate, health benefits as a share of total compensation climbed at a steady rate until the exchanges opened for business. Then they dropped from 6.3 percent to 6.0 percent, a relative decline of almost five percent. This decrease suggests that small businesses have had some success in socializing their employees’ health costs by sending them to the exchanges for subsidized coverage.

Overall, Obamacare appears to have increased employers’ costs, but not catastrophically. The report notes: “Private industry employer costs for health insurance have not been lower than the current 7.6 percent of total compensation since March 2011, having reached a peak of 7.9 percent of total compensation in March 2014.”

However, other sources note that total health costs have increased even more, because employers have shifted a greater share of premium to employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (which includes government and private employers in its survey), premiums have increased 58 percent from 2006 to 2016. Workers’ share increased 78 percent, while employers’ share increased just 51 percent.

In itself, this difference is not a problem, because it is a myth that employers bear any share of employees’ wages. Employees bear all the cost of their employers’ share of health benefits through foregone wages. Nevertheless, Obamacare’s failure to achieve its goal of reducing health costs is increasingly obvious from the administration’s own agencies’ data.

This article was published at The Beacon.

When George W. Bush made the case for attacking and destroying the nation of Iraq, he made claims that, if true, would have justified nothing. And he proposed as evidence for those claims fraudulent, implausible, and even ridiculous pieces of information. But he was expected to produce evidence. There was no assumption that he should simply be taken on faith.

Those standards are gone.

The common wisdom that Vladimir Putin hacked into Democratic and Republican emails and fed the Democratic ones to WikiLeaks which delegitimized an otherwise legitimate election, is not based on any public evidence, and none is asked for by most believers.

The premise that possessing weapons justifies being attacked was patently absurd in 2003. The U.S. openly possessed all the weapons it claimed Iraq had. The premise that (further) exposing a rigged primary harms, rather than facilitating, election integrity, is strictly nuts in 2016. WikiLeaks and any source(s) deserve our thanks.

But the standard of evidence has been altered. It’s certainly possible the Russian government hacked the emails. It’s even possible that Russia was the source for WikiLeaks, and that Julian Assange and Craig Murray are deluded or lying, that Bill Binney is mistaken, and that all the anomalies in the claims of Russian hacking can be explained away. But the expectation that some sort of evidence should be produced no longer exists.

One reason for this is that during the Obama years wars were launched without public debates and marketing campaigns. Continuing and escalating the war on Afghanistan was simply done, without discussion. Continuing war on Iraq — which still continues — was done without requiring any of the pretenses used to escalate it in 2003. Launching hundreds of mini-wars in the form of drone murders took public debate out of the picture by definition, just as the presidential possession of a nuclear button has aided the decades-long re-imagining of Congress as a group of court jesters.

When Obama has made unproven and implausible claims about looming massacres in Libya or Iraq, or chemical weapons use in Syria, or airplanes shot down in Ukraine, or coups in Ukraine, or “moderate” terrorists, or Iranian nukes, or drone war success in Yemen, or the nature or legality of drone murders, there has been no general request for evidence. Even with the claims about Syrian chemical weapons in 2013, the public and Congress said no to escalating the war in a visible manner, but did not focus on demanding evidence for claims.

Enter Trump, professing a desire to (continue to) “kill their families” and to “steal their oil,” and gone is any rationale for making any dubious claims in need of any evidence. If the Trumpists will believe in millions of repeat voters just because he says so, the anti-Trumpists will believe any anti-Trump-and-Russia story just because the CIA says so.

This thinking is not necessarily conscious and explicit. Those intent on taking the CIA on faith remain proud of considering the evidence of climate change. But when you combine anti-Trump with pro-Hillary plus xenophobia plus the demonization of Putin, some people lose all perspective. And when the past 13 years have been spent eroding the idea that a public case against a foreign target should include evidence, the sale is made quite easily.

So, yes, I miss the days of Dubya. I miss the days when the U.S. government pretended not to torture. The President “Elect” now promises to torture. Why? Because President Obama forbade prosecution of the crime of torture, allowed torture to continue, outsourced much of it, and replaced a lot of the torture program with a new murder program (using drones). And because the U.S. media pretended that torture had been legal under Bush and was somehow made illegal by an Obama “executive order,” which is not a law.

I miss the days when lawless prisons like Guantanamo that kept people imprisoned without charge or conviction were deemed shameful and worthy of abolition. These Obama supposedly legalized with another “executive order.” Now Trump says he’ll pack the prisons.

I miss the days when unconstitutional mass surveillance, or mass deportations, or the rewriting of laws by presidents was illicit and scandalous. Now these things are generally accepted. So here’s my question to good liberal Americans:

How is not impeaching Bush working out for you?

Letting Bush’s impeachable offenses slide almost required letting Obama’s slide, as there was such overlap. But now you’ve created a presidency of truly imperial power.

The point of impeaching and removing Bush would not have been to make Dick Cheney president, any more than the point of studying history is that your school has assigned that class to the football coach.

The point of impeaching Bush would have been to create a President Cheney in fear of being impeached, followed by other presidents in fear of being impeached.

Why can basketball announcers grasp that Duke’s Allen Grayson might not be tripping opponents this year if he’d been suspended for a game or two when he did it last year, but political analysts can’t grasp that if Bush had been impeached, or even an effort made to impeach him, we might not now — like India — have a twitter-loving right-wing nationalist preparing to create Muslim registries and enforced flag worship?

So, here’s an idea. We can’t go back in time. But we can start now. Trump is going to violate the Constitutional bans on domestic and foreign presents and “emoluments” on day one, and likely begin piling up original as well as familiar impeachable offenses during his first week.

But just as the only conceivable way to get Trump into office was to nominate Hillary Clinton, the surest way to derail an impeachment campaign against Trump will be to load it down with dubious claims about Russia.

See if you can predict what the Democrats will do.

Donald Trump has spat in my face.

Not only in my own face, but in the faces of at least half the Israeli population.

He has appointed a bankruptcy lawyer named David Friedman to the job of US ambassador in Israel.

This sounds like a bad joke. But it is brutal reality. It sets a precedent unknown in the annals of international diplomacy.

First of all, it is bad practice to appoint an ambassador to a country with which he has a deep personal connection. You don’t send a Cuban-American Castro-hater to be the US ambassador in Havana. You don’t send Kuomintang Chinese from Taiwan to be US ambassador in Beijing.

True, it is not the first time an American Jew has been appointed ambassador to Israel. There have been two or three, who could just as well have served as Israeli ambassadors to Washington. But they were far less opinionated than this specimen.

An ambassador serves as the eyes and ears of the home country in a foreign state. Among his tasks is providing his superiors in the foreign office with reliable, unbiased information, on which to base policy. The ideal ambassador is a cool observer, with no strong feelings towards the country of his mission, neither positive nor negative.

This description of a diplomat is the exact opposite of this particular individual.

It would have been far more reasonable to appoint David Friedman as Israeli ambassador to the United States. Unfortunately this post is already occupied – by another American Jew. Rumor has it that he was appointed by Netanyahu at the request of Sheldon Adelson, a Jewish casino magnate, who puts his money where his mouth is – in the far-far-far Israeli right.

But even this person is a leftist compared to David Friedman.

The name, of course, is a joke in itself. Friede in German means peace, but this David is the opposite of a Man of Peace. The Biblical David, by the way, was a man of war through and through, and for this reason God decreed that only his son, Solomon, would build the First Temple.

So who is this man of peace? Since the news of his coming appointment became known, the internet has been flooded with quotations from his sayings. All of them incredible, each one more than the last.

One thing stands out even on first reading: when this future US ambassador says “we”, he means “we Israelis”. “we true Israelis”, “we Israeli patriots”. The territory of Greater Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan river (at least) is “our country”.

Friedman does not identify with all Israelis. He seems to think that most of us are blind, imbeciles, defeatists. or worse – traitors. This would set a world record: most Israelis, it appears, are traitors.

So who does Friedman really identify with? A representative sample of his utterances make this quite clear: he considers himself to belong to about 5% of the Israeli population: the settlers and the extreme Right.

Here are some of his outstanding opinions;

• The Arab citizens of Israel, some 21% percent of the population, should be stripped of their citizenship. Rather like stripping all African-Americans of their US citizenship.
• There is no “Two-State Solution”. Even mentioning such a possibility verges on treason. (Since I have been accused of having been the first to voice this solution in 1949, this is more spit I have to wipe from my face.)
• No settler must be allowed to be removed from his “home”, even if this “home” is located on the private property of Arab farmers.
• In Greater Israel, from the sea to the river, Jews constitute a majority of 65%. This is a blatant lie: In this territory, including the Gaza Strip, the Arabs already constitute a majority.
• Future President Trump should be encouraged to dismiss all State Department personnel who advocate the Two-State Solution.
• Palestinians are corrupt.
• President Barak Obama is a “blatant antisemite”.
• Bashar al-Assad and Binyamin Netanyahu should be friends. Probably including Vladimir Putin – a winsome trio, Indeed.
• We need a World War against Islamic anti-Semitism.
• American and Israeli Jews who support the Israeli peace camp are worse than Kapos. (Kapo, short for Kamp-Polizei, or “camp police”, were camp inmates enlisted by the Nazis to uphold order in the death-camps, until they themselves were put to death.) This applies specifically to the mild and inoffensive “J Street” organization.

It also, of course, includes me.

If you were inclined to laugh out loud at some of these definitions, don’t. This is no laughing matter.

David Friedman is a serious person. He is a famous bankruptcy lawyer. But he is not being sent here to deal with the bankruptcy of the Netanyahu regime. On the contrary, he is sent to facilitate the setting up of an Israel government in which Netanyahu would constitute the extreme left. And this is not even an exaggeration.

Since 1967, the Israeli peace camp has prayed for the US to save Israel from itself. Every new president has been greeted with high hopes. Here is the man who will compel the government of Israel to give up the Palestinian territories and make peace with the Palestinians and the entire Arab world.

President Obama was only the last in line. Intelligent, good-looking, a rousing orator, full of noble intentions. But the results, as far as we are concerned, were nil. Yet now we wish that he had a third term.

I was always skeptical of this approach. Why would a US president stick his neck out to save Israel from itself, if the Israelis themselves are too lazy or cowardly to do so themselves?

(I have already mentioned lately that once, at an international conference, I accused the Spanish and European statesman, Miguel Moratinos, of failing to do so. He answered angrily that it was not his duty to save us, that it was our duty to save ourselves. I could not but agree in my heart.)

I have long ago given up any hope that the American administration will assist us in making a historic peace with the Palestinian people and in trading the occupied territories for peace. We shall have to do so ourselves. There is no other solution. The alternative so-called “one state solution” promises civil war for generations to come.

Anyone who is not blinded by ultra-nationalism and/or messianic fervor must surely see that. It is so simple.

The conquest of the remaining Palestinian territories in 1967 plunged Israel into a delirium that prevents us even today from listening to reason. The US, for its own reasons, has encouraged Israel to continue on this course.

President-elect Trump is set to push Israel forwards with all his might – forwards towards its eventual disaster.

Some 2000 years ago a Jewish Rebel called Bar-Kokhba (“Son of the Stars”) rose against almighty Rome. Intoxicated by some initial victories, he cried out to God: “Don’t help us, but at least don’t help our enemies!” God didn’t listen, and the rebellion was crushed by the Romans. The Jewish population of Palestine never recovered, until recently.

I would cry out to Donald Trump: “If you don’t help us achieve peace, at least don’t send us this sworn peace-wrecker.”

By Jordy Garcia*

As of Tuesday, December 13, Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 55—formerly PEC 241—is the law of the land in Brazil. The amendment sets a cap on most federal expenditures for the next 20 years. Outlays on healthcare, education, pensions, infrastructure, and defense will only be permitted to rise with the rate of inflation inevitably decreasing real spending per capita.[i]

The vote ends a lengthy approval process in which PEC 55 had to pass in each house twice and obtain votes from at least three-fifths of both body’s congressmen. PEC 55 overcame its fourth and final hurdle passing in the Brazilian Senate by a vote of 53 to 16, just four more than was required.

The proposal passed its first test on October 11, when the Chamber of Deputies approved the measure 366 to 111.[ii] Later that month, the amendment navigated the Chamber again, this time by a slimmer margin, 359 to 116.[iii] Then, on November 29, the Senate passed PEC 55 for the first time by a margin of 61 to 14, setting the stage for the most recent and ultimate vote.[iv]

But even after its lengthy journey through the Brazilian Congress, PEC 55 (241) remains an extremely divisive measure.

Proponents of the amendment point to the need to regain market confidence and keep inflation under control to avoid a future debt crisis.[v] President Michel Temer sees capping government expenditures to reign in deficit spending as critical in achieving this goal. The need for market confidence is linked to foreign investors and their proposed ability to “generate jobs and income.”[vi] Many Brazilians would agree with economist Raul Velloso’s assessment that government expenditures have “a lot of fat” and that a spending cap will bring expenses back into line.[vii]

But the amendment has its detractors on both the right and left. Conservative critics claim that the spending cap does not safeguard against the growing deficit because it avoids Social Security, which currently covers more than 40 percent of mandatory public spending.[viii] Others see the cap as a direct subversion of the current constitution, which mandates 18 percent and 13.7 percent of annual tax revenue go to education and health. This perspective is further substantiated by the Brazilian Senate’s Legal Counsel conclusion that the amendment in unconstitutional.[ix] Lastly, many on the left worry that the amendment will do little to generate economic growth and will harm the poor, who disproportionately rely on services provided by the government.[x]

Thus PEC 55 will undoubtedly be a source of contentious debate in the years to come. But first, it is important for everyone to understand the exact contents of this important amendment. Below we provide a brief summary of each of the nine articles. The specific articles (art.) are from 101 to 109.

PEC 55 (formerly 241)

Article 101: establishes the coverage of amendments “New Tax Regime” to cover the three branches of government as well as the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office for the next 20 fiscal years.[xi]

Article 102: explicitly states the expenditure of the agencies mentioned above will be tied to 2017’s fiscal year based on 2016’s annual expenditure, the budget will then only be adjusted for inflation.[xii]

Article 103: gives the president the right to “change in the method of correction of limits by presidential mandate” after the first ten years of the amendment being enacted.[xiii]

Article 104: covers how non-compliance will be addressed which is largely through limiting the offending agencies ability to take actions, such as promotions, hiring more personnel, or financing programs, that would lead to an increase in expenses.[xiv]

Article 105: states that the “minimum applications in actions and services” for public health maintenance and development will be equal to the 2017 fiscal year expenditure.[xv]

Article 106: establishes that the affects of the amendment will be enforced from 2018 to the last financial year of the new Tax Regime (2037.[xvi])

Article 107: states that the amendment does “not constitute an obligation [of] future payment by the Union” and does not “revoke, dispense or suspend” its constitutional obligations that have “fiscal goals or expenditure ceilings.”[xvii]

Article 108: stipulates that any legislative proposal that moves to “create or alter” compulsory expenses must be accompanied by a budget and finance impact report.[xviii]

Article 109: adds to 108 by mandating a proposal that intends to increase expenses is to be suspended up to 20 days and be analyzed by a fifth of the House representatives for its compatibility with the New Tax Regime.[xix]

For a more detailed analysis read “Temer’s PEC 241 a Bold Work of Unoriginality” by Jordy Garcia.

*Jordy Garcia, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[i] Zeeshan Aleem, “Brazil just enacted the harshest austerity program in the world,” Vox, December 15, 2016. Accessed December 19, 2016. http://www.vox.com/world/2016/12/15/13957284/brazil-spending-cap-austerity

[ii] Brazil Plans to Limit Public Spending for 20 Years (La Diaria, October 12, 2016)

http://ladiaria.com.uy/articulo/2016/10/brasil-se-dispone-a-limitar-el-gasto-publico-por-20-anos/

[iii] Santos Santana, Elissandro dos. School Occupation Against PEC 241 (CubaDebate, October 31, 2016)

http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2016/10/31/ocupaciones-de-escuelas-contra-la-pec-241-en-brasil/#.WFSGdaIrKCQ

[iv]Lima, Vandson. Murakawa, Fabio. Senate Approves, by 61 o 14, PEC of Spending Ceiling in 1st Shift (Valor, November 29, 2016)

http://www.valor.com.br/politica/4791447/senado-aprova-por-61-votos-14-pec-do-teto-de-gastos-em-1-turno

[v] Fargundez, Ingrid. Approved in the Chamber, PEC 241 Goes to the Senate: Understand the Controversies of the Text (BBC, October 25, 2016)

http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-37603414

[vi] Alessi, Gil. Understand PEC 241 (or 55) and how it can affect your life (El País, December 13, 2016)

http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2016/10/10/politica/1476125574_221053.html

[vii] Fargundez

[viii] ibid.

[ix] ¿Qué es la PEC 55 y por qué genera rechazo popular? (Telesur, December 13, 2016)

http://www.telesurtv.net/news/Brasil-Que-es-la-PEC-55-y-por-que-genera-rechazo-popular-20161213-0001.html

[x] Ibid.

Fargundez

Garica, Jordy. Temer’s PEC 241 a Bold Work of Unoriginality (COHA, October 28, 2016)

http://www.coha.org/temers-pec-241-a-bold-work-of-unoriginality/

[xi] Constitutional Amendment 55 (Senado Federal, October 26, 2016) P. 1

https://www25.senado.leg.br/web/atividade/materias/-/materia/127337

[xii] Ibid. P. 1-4

[xiii] Ibid. P. 5

[xiv] Ibid. P. 5-6

[xv]Ibid. P. 6

[xvi]Ibid. P. 6-7

[xvii] Ibid. P. 7

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

By Harsh V. Pant

As the evacuation of rebel-held eastern districts of the Syrian city of Aleppo continues, a new order seems to be emerging in West Asia. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has unanimously called for UN officials and others to play a role in observing the evacuation of people from the last rebel-held slivers of eastern Aleppo. The 15-member council overcame long-held divisions — that have pitted Syrian ally Russia and China against western powers over the Syrian conflict — to adopt a French-drafted resolution calling for UN officials and others “to carry out adequate, neutral monitoring and direct observation on evacuations.”

Syrian rebel groups had set fire to a number of buses intended to evacuate residents of mostly Shia villages in Syria’s Idlib province last week and killed one bus driver. The buses were part of a deal to allow for the mutual evacuation of civilians from formerly rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo and regime-held villages in Idlib. Difficulties in implementing the deal for the evacuation of eastern Aleppo, hammered out by Turkey and Russia, led France to push for a UNSC resolution allowing international observers to monitor the evacuations.

US secretary of state John Kerry, however, had to call the Russian and Turkish foreign ministers to talk about Syria and discuss Monday’s assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey. It was the only way Washington could get an update since the two diplomats pointedly did not invite him to participate in talks being held with Iran in Moscow to hash out next steps in Syria.

The US state department put a gloss over it by suggesting that the ministers “provided the secretary a sense of how the discussions went,” but “if not having us in the room can lead to finally a cessation of hostilities that can actually matter,” then Kerry — publicly at least — is okay with that. But Washington’s exclusion is a profound rebuke after two years of American bombing, and months of fruitless diplomacy between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. It also underscores the growing irrelevance of the US in the unfolding drama in the region.

For his part, for the first time since being elected president, Donald Trump pledged to create “safe zones” in Syria for civilians. “When I look at what’s going on in Syria, it’s so sad,” he told a crowd in Pennsylvania. “It’s so sad, and we’re going to help people.” He said he would ask the Persian Gulf nations to put up money for the project, adding, “we’ll build and help build safe zones in Syria, so people will have a chance.” It is not clear if Trump plans to establish a no-fly zone in northern Syria, and if American aircraft would defend the area from Syrian and Russian airstrikes.

The presence of the Russian commandos in Aleppo shows just how important it is for Moscow to have Aleppo under the control of the Syrian government by time Trump takes office in January, when the US government is expected to move to work more closely with Moscow on a range of issues. Moscow doesn’t see any reason for Russian or Syrian forces to get engaged in any negotiations before the fall of Aleppo and it won’t be with an Obama administration, which is now in lame duck mode.

However, the new role Russia is playing in West Asia comes with a price tag. Moscow may be a new power broker in the region, but the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey has underscored the growing costs of this role.

As America’s influence has shrunk, Russia has taken the place the US long occupied in the minds of many people in West Asia: An alien imperialist power seen as waging war on Muslims and Islam. Even as protests against Washington have dwindled in West Asian capitals, thousands of protesters converged this month outside Russian missions from Istanbul to Beirut to Kuwait City — where they chanted: “Russia is the enemy of Islam.” Russian warplanes have operated with the regime in Syria to pound civilian targets — especially in Aleppo — since September 2015. It has been estimated that Russian airstrikes in and around Aleppo killed over 1,000 civilians in November alone.

Left out of the efforts by Russian and Turkish officials about fighting terrorism in Syria is any mention of the US. This week Russia, Iran and Turkey kicked off a new round of meetings in Moscow aimed at finding a resolution to the civil war in Syria. While foreign ministers from the three countries huddled in one part of the Russian capital, a separate meeting brought together defence ministers from the same trio, where Iranian defence minister Hossein Dehghan praised military cooperation between Ankara and Moscow in Syria. Iran says it’s now sharing a base with Russia in Syria. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani told Iranian media that its “advisors” in Syria are working out of a shared facility with Russia. The subject of Russian bases and Syria has been a touchy one for Iran ever since Russia’s revelation that its jets had used an airbase in Iran to support its air campaign over Syria. Iranian officials reacted strongly to the announcement, saying that the Russians violated their trust and revoking their access to the facility. But Russia and Iran continue to work together to achieve their aims in West Asia.

It is quite clear that the old order is crumbing the region. And unlike in the past when the West was the lead player in shaping the strategic environment, it is Russia which seems in the driving seat today.

This article originally appeared in the Hindustan Times.

Iran and Italy’s Eni have inked a one-year agreement for sales of 60 to 100 thousand barrels of crude oil to the European country in the year 2017.

Following the signing of a contract with Saras SpA of Italy for daily exports of 35 to 60 thousand barrels of crude oil, the second long-term deal for sales of Iranian oil was sealed today in Tehran.

Under the provisions of the new agreement, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) will deploy 60 to 100 thousand barrels of crude oil to the Italian giant on a daily basis as of January 1, 2017.

Deputy Head of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for Crude Oil Marketing Safarali Keramati, while confirming the signing of a one-year accord with Eni, asserted “on the basis of agreements, 14.5 percent of cargo values will be counted as Italy’s revenue for investment in Phases 1 and 2 of Darkhoin oil field.”

“The remain 85.5 per cent of shipment values will be paid to NIOC in cash,” said the official.

Executive Director for International Affairs at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Seyed Mohsen Ghamsari, while pointing to launch of oil sales to Eni in the post-JCPOA era, had said earlier that Iran has so far deployed one cargo of crude oil to the Italian firm within a short-term contract and a long-term deal will be soon inked with the European company.

By Titli Basu

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president, Japan is weighing the geopolitical and geo-economic implications of the new economic and security policies that his administration may adopt.

While the alliance with the U.S. has lain at the heart of post-war Japanese foreign and security policy, Trump’s emphasis on “America first” and his reservations with regard to alliance commitments have made Tokyo deeply anxious.

Geo-economics: TPP and beyond

Early signals indicate that the Trump administration is likely to depart from Obama’s pivot or rebalance to Asia. The most important indicator in this regard has been Trump’s description of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – often touted the economic pillar of the pivot – as a “potential disaster” and his declared intent to withdraw from it upon assuming office in January 2017. Japan is hesitant to process the harsh reality of such an impending U.S. decision, continuing to argue that the TPP is not “completely dead”.1 As the second-largest economy in the TPP after the U.S., Japan hurriedly ratified the free trade agreement in an extended session of the Diet, making it the only member country to do so. But Japan is likely to find it extremely difficult to convince other countries to ratify the TPP in its present form. Even Abe himself had earlier acknowledged that a TPP without the US market is “meaningless”.2

Whether TPP fades away or emerges in a new shape remains to be seen. But Japan cannot afford to let go of the TPP easily. Abe in particular considers TPP as an essential mechanism to capitalise on the Asia-Pacific’s growth potential and revive Japanese economic development. He considers TPP as a base for Abenomics and for his trade strategy. World Bank assessments indicate that, with TPP, Japan’s growth rate is likely to increase by an additional 2.7 per cent by 2030,3 with exports rising by USD 23.2 billion annually.4 Consequently, Abe has invested considerable political capital to overcome resistance from the farm lobby to the TPP.

Earlier in November, in an attempt to highlight the advantages of the TPP, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers pointed out that Washington would have to sacrifice significant economic gains and suffer trade diversion as well as lesser market access in comparison to China if the TPP were to be dropped. Moreover, 35 U.S. industries that export a combined USD 5.3 billion worth of goods to Japan are likely to witness a loss of market in comparison to Chinese contenders due to tariff cuts under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that is being negotiated.5 Jason Furman has argued that in a scenario where the TPP does not fructify and China manages to bring RCEP into effect, the U.S. will be adversely affected. 6

But with Trump seemingly determined to drop the TPP, Japan is being pushed into seriously reconsidering and prioritizing other opportunities including the 16-nation RCEP, and negotiating free trade agreements with other partners such as the European Union and a trilateral China–Japan–South Korea FTA. While Japan is a member of the RCEP, it has certain reservations towards this mega-regional trade deal, which lacks the “gold standards” of the TPP in protecting intellectual property rights and does not insist upon state-owned enterprises following strictly commercial practices. Even more importantly, RCEP excludes the U.S., which provides China – the world’s second largest economy – a greater role in shaping this regional trade arrangement.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, Trump is an advocate of negotiating “fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores”.7 Trump’s designate as Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, has also categorically stated in a letter to the Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso that his focus would be on strengthening bilateral economic ties. However, drawing from its own experience in the 1980s and 1990s on the size and composition of the trade deficit and issues of market barriers, Tokyo is likely to be cautious when it comes to negotiating a bilateral free-trade agreement with the U.S.

While Japan pushed hard to conclude a broad free trade agreement with the EU by 2016 in the wake of Brexit and Trump’s posture on TPP, negotiations are most likely to continue into early 2017.8 Here, it is important to note that negotiators would also have to overcome a rift concerning tariff issues and operational safety clause. Britain has until now served as Tokyo’s platform for trade and investment in the broader EU single market. With Brexit, Japan faces a new urgency in concluding a free trade agreement with the EU.

Geopolitics in the post-rebalancing era

Japan requires the U.S. alliance more than ever given the evolving regional security dynamics marked by an increasingly defiant North Korea claiming to possess miniaturised nuclear warheads and aggressive Chinese strategic ambitions in the East and South China Seas. Moreover, with the region getting engulfed in history issues and intensified nationalism, Japan is locked in sovereignty disputes with most of its neighbours including, Russia, China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Even as Japan invests energy on regional diplomacy, the Abe administration managing to bridge the trust deficit in Northeast Asia appears to be a remote possibility. With Chinese adventurism in the East China Sea, Russian deployment of the state-of-the-art anti-ship Bastion missile system and the Bal system in Etorofu and Kunashiri Islands, respectively, and a North Korean ballistic missile landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Japan is increasingly looking for reassurance from the U.S. under Article 5 of their security treaty.

While Japan seemingly prefers Republican Presidents,9 this time around it desperately hoped for a Hillary Clinton administration which would have ensured continuity instead of the uncertainties surrounding the U.S.’s Asia policy under a Trump presidency. Clinton was the key architect of the rebalancing strategy. In 2011, she had argued that the security alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand constitute the fulcrum of U.S. efforts in the Asia Pacific. In contrast, the Trump campaign had categorically articulated the candidate’s dissatisfaction with Japan on the issue of burden-sharing within the alliance.10 The Trump campaign perceived the alliance with Japan as costly and one-sided despite Tokyo reportedly sharing 48.3 per cent of the costs involved.11 The direct cost of stationing U.S. forces in Japan is valued at USD 5.47 billion for fiscal 2016. Japan shelled out USD 1.7 billion for direct sustenance of the base in fiscal 2015. Besides, Japan has decided to devote USD 3.1 billion for the relocation of 4,000 U.S. troops to Guam, accounting for 36 per cent of the estimated cost of USD 8.6 billion.

Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign was very critical of the asymmetrical partnership between the U.S. and Japan. However, campaign rhetoric does not necessarily translate into concrete policy. Candidate Trump and President Trump are unlikely to talk or act in the same manner. Be that as it may, Trump did terrify Japan when he argued that the U.S. should be “prepared to walk”12 and Tokyo consider defending itself against Pyongyang. In addition, Japan’s nuclear sensitivities and crusade against nuclear proliferation received a shock when Trump suggested that a nuclear Japan may not be a bad idea.13 This stand was contrary to the April 2015 Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee (2+2) meeting, which articulated the case of “ironclad U.S. commitment to the defense of Japan, through the full range of U.S. military capabilities, including nuclear and conventional”.14

While Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada stated during Defence Secretary Ashton Carter’s December 2016 visit that the debate should be centred on shared security capabilities rather than financial burdens, uncertainty looms large in the wake of Trump’s election. The debate on burden sharing within the alliance is hardly a new issue. Tokyo has long been pushed by the U.S. to assume a greater role within the alliance instead of being a ‘passive free rider’. For instance, the October 2000 Armitage Report pointed out that “Japan’s prohibition against collective self-defence is a constraint on alliance cooperation. Lifting this prohibition would allow for closer and more efficient security cooperation”.15

The burden sharing issue has been widely debated in the U.S. strategic community since the Cold War years. Japan opted for the Yoshida Doctrine as an effective approach to escape entrapment in the US-Cold War scheme of things. This enabled Japan to focus solely on its economic development and spend minimally on defence while relying on the U.S. security umbrella. However, with the trade wars intensifying with the U.S. and the fear of abandonment gripping the leadership, Japan has over the decades incrementally expanded its role and redefined its security identity with overseas deployment of Self Defence Force (SDF). Now with a fast altering East Asian security setting, Japan has initiated a fresh debate on the scope of Article 9 and taken definitive steps in assuming greater responsibilities with the enactment of the 2015 Legislation for Peace and Security. The year 2015 also saw Abe demonstrating willingness to accept greater responsibilities within the framework of the US-Japan security alliance by revising, after 18 years, the Guidelines for US-Japan Defence Cooperation.

Road Ahead

Japan worries that in case the U.S. refrains from playing a major role in the regional architecture building process, China will have an easier path in crafting a Sino-centric order in the Asia-Pacific.16 Such a development is likely to prove to be a monumental challenge for Japan as geopolitical and geo-economic uncertainties intensify regional complexity. With Washington opting for a more inward-looking policy, it will be increasingly problematic for U.S. allies to persuade their security provider of the need to maintain the alliance network in its existing form. While Japan’s decades-old alliance with the U.S. is likely to stand the test of time since it is mutually beneficial, Tokyo certainly will have to deliver more than it is used to in order to convince President Trump that Japan is not a liability but an asset as an ally.

Since the Asia-Pacific region is emerging as the epicentre of economic growth, Trump is likely to remain invested in the region. While the U.S. will continue to work closely with its long term partners in the region, Trump may reorient the nature of the asymmetrical alliance partnerships in Asia. Besides, what shape other important bilateral relations such as the U.S.-China, U.S.-Russia, U.S.-Korean Peninsula and U.S.-ASEAN relations take under President Trump will also determine the U.S.’s overall approach towards this region. As Japan adapts to the new geo-strategic and geo-economic realities in the midst of profound changes unfolding in the global power structure, its strategic choices in turn will play a crucial role in shaping the East Asian security environment.

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/japan-trump-dilemma_tbasu_20122016

• 1. Hugh Stephens, ‘The Demise of the TPP, Japanese Ambivalence and What Canada Needs to Do Now’, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, November 29, 2016,
• 2. ‘Abe says TPP ‘meaningless’ without U.S. as Trump nixes pact’, The Associated Press, November 22, 2016,
• 3. William Mauldin, ‘Pacific Trade Pact Set to Give Big Boost to Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia’, The Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2016
• 4. ‘World Bank says Japan will enjoy 23% export boost from TPP’, The Japan Times, January 15, 2016
• 5. ‘Industries And Jobs At Risk If The Trans-Pacific Partnership Does Not Pass’, Council of Economic Advisers Issue Brief, November 2016
• 6. William Mauldin, ‘TPP’s Failure Would Hand U.S. Business in Japan to China, White House Says’, The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2016
• 7. Charlie Campbell, ‘Donald Trump’s Pledge to Withdraw U.S. From TPP Opens the Door for China’, Time, November 22, 2016
• 8. Japan-EU free trade deal unlikely this year, NHK, December 17, 2016
• 9. Hisayoshi Ina, ‘Why Japan’s leaders prefer US Republicans’, Nikkei, February 3, 2014
• 10. Jesse Johnson, ‘Trump rips U.S. defense of Japan as one-sided, too expensive’, The Japan Times, August 6, 2016; ‘Trump urges Japan to pay more to maintain U.S. military bases here’, KYODO, May 5, 2016
• 11. Reiji Yoshida, ‘Trump remarks prompt debate over cost of Japan-U.S. defense ties’, The Japan Times, May 16, 2016
• 12. Philip Bump, ‘Donald Trump’s explanation of when he’ll walk away from military partners, annotated’, The Washington Post, July 26, 2016
• 13. ‘Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views’, The New York Times, March26, 2016
• 14. ‘Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee: A Stronger Alliance for a Dynamic Security Environment The New Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation’, Media Note Office of the Spokesperson, Washington, DC, April 27, 2015
• 15. Institute for National Strategic Studies, ‘The United States and Japan: Advancing toward a mature partnership’, Special Report, 11 October 2000
• 16. Yoichi Funabashi, ‘A message from the Asia-Pacific to President-elect Trump’, East Asia Forum, 24 November, 2016

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to “burn down” the United Nations headquarters in New York, in response to mounting international criticism over his bloody crackdown on suspected drug dealers.

“You go and file a complaint in the United Nations, I will burn down the United Nations if you want,” Duterte said, as quoted by the New York Times.

“I will burn it down if I go to America,” he added, while speaking at an army base in the country’s southern city of Zamboanga.

On Thursday, the Philippines leader called Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, a top UN official, an “idiot” and “son of a bitch” after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights suggested launching an investigation into Duterte’s own accounts of killings when he was mayor of Davao City, and the “shocking” number of deaths during the ongoing anti-drug war.

This guy [Zeid] is ever the joker or crazy,” Duterte said during a televised speech, repeatedly calling him “stupid.”

“You UN officials, sitting there on your asses, we pay you your salaries. You idiot, do not tell me what to do… Who gave you the right?” he said, according to Reuters.

“Please shut up because your brain is lacking there,” he told Zeid.

“Go back to school. You United Nations, you do not know diplomacy. You do not know how to behave to be an employee of the United Nations.”

“You do not talk to me like that, you son of a bitch,” he added.

In September, the outspoken Philippines leader refused to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and even threatened to leave the UN after it criticized his ‘War on Drugs.’

A UN official told Reuters it was “basically unheard of” for a leader to be too busy to meet the secretary-general.

Duterte’s controversial methods of cracking down on illegal drugs appear to stem from his 22 years as mayor of Davao City. There have been an estimated 2,400 deaths related to the war on drugs since May, when Duterte was inaugurated as president, Reuters said, citing police reports.

The youngest person on the list was a five-year-old girl who was killed during a police raid in the city of Dagupan, located north of the capital Manila.

Last week, Duterte admitted he personally killed suspected criminals during his time as mayor of Davao City (the third most populous metropolitan area in the Philippines with more than 1.6 million inhabitants), patrolling the streets on a motorcycle.

“In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [the police] that if I can do it, why can’t you,” Duterte said, as quoted by AFP.

He added that he would “go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”

In this week’s address, US President Barack Obama and the First Lady wished all Americans a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. They reflected on the honor of serving the American people as President and First Lady over the past eight years and the progress that has been made.

The President and the First Lady recognized US troops and their families for their service, and they encouraged everyone to visit JoiningForces.gov to find out how to support service members, veterans, and military families in your community.

Remarks of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as Delivered

THE PRESIDENT: Merry Christmas everybody! One of the best parts of the holiday season is spending time with the special people in your life. And for me, that means getting some help from my best friend for our annual Christmas Weekly Address.

THE FIRST LADY: Given how our first Christmas Weekly Address went, I realized that Barack needed all the help he could get.

[PAUSE]

THE FIRST LADY: Celebrating the holidays in the White House over these past eight years has been a true privilege. We’ve been able to welcome over half a million guests… our outstanding pastry chefs have baked 200,000 holiday cookies… and Barack has treated the American people to countless dad jokes.

THE PRESIDENT: Although a few got a…Frosty reception.

THE FIRST LADY: This year’s White House holiday theme is “The Gift of the Holidays,” and our decorations reflect some of our greatest gifts as a nation: from our incredible military families, to the life-changing impact of a great education.

THE PRESIDENT: And the greatest gift that Michelle and I have received over the last eight years has been the honor of serving as your President and First Lady. Together, we fought our way back from the worst recession in 80 years, and got unemployment to a nine-year low. We secured health insurance for another twenty million Americans, and new protections for folks who already had insurance. We made America more respected around the world, took on the mantle of leadership in the fight to protect this planet for our kids, and much, much more.

By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we first got here. And I’m hopeful we’ll build on the progress we’ve made in the years to come.

Tomorrow, for the final time as the First Family, we will join our fellow Christians around the world to rejoice in the birth of our Savior. And as we retell His story from that Holy Night, we’ll also remember His eternal message, one of boundless love, compassion and hope.

THE FIRST LADY: The idea that we are our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper. That we should treat others as we would want to be treated. And that we care for the sick… feed the hungry… and welcome the stranger… no matter where they come from, or how they practice their faith.

THE PRESIDENT: Those are values that help guide not just my family’s Christian faith, but that of Jewish Americans, and Muslim Americans; nonbelievers and Americans of all backgrounds. And no one better embodies that spirit of service than the men and women who wear our country’s uniform and their families.

THE FIRST LADY: As always, many of our troops are far from home this time of year, and their families are serving and sacrificing right along with them. Their courage and dedication allow the rest of us to enjoy this season. That’s why we’ve tried to serve them as well as they’ve served this country. Go to JoiningForces.gov to see how you can honor and support the service members, veterans and military families in your community – not just during the holidays, but all year round.

THE PRESIDENT: So as we look forward to the New Year, let’s resolve to recommit ourselves to the values we share. And on behalf of the all the Obamas – Michelle, Malia, Sasha, Bo, and that troublemaker Sunny – Merry Christmas, everybody.

THE FIRST LADY: And we wish you and your family a happy and healthy 2017… thanks, and God bless.

A new study shows that regular use of social networking such as Facebook can negatively affect your emotional well-being and satisfaction with life.

But you don’t have to quit Facebook altogether; simply changing your social networking behavior and taking an occasional break from Facebook may lift your spirits, according to the study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In the article “The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being,” Morten Tromholt, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, describes an experiment in which he gave more than 1,000 participants a pretest and then randomly assigned them to one of two conditions: continue using Facebook as usual; or stop using Facebook for a week. He reports on the negative effects of Facebook use on overall well-being, based on life satisfaction and emotions.

After one week without Facebook, the treatment group showed statistically significant improvement in well-being, with gains varying depending on the amount of time they previously spent on Facebook and whether or not they were passive users and tended to envy others on Facebook.

“Confirming previous research, this study found that ‘lurking’ on Facebook may cause negative emotions. However, on the bright side, as previous studies have shown, actively connecting with close friends, whether in real life or on Facebook, may actually increase one’s sense of well-being,” said Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.