By Lisa Ferdinando

The conduct of Marines in a private social media group that shared explicit photographs of female Marines denigrates the core values of the service, and illegal behavior will be prosecuted, the service’s leaders said on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the “Marines United” Facebook group to determine whether violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice occurred, acting Navy secretary Sean J. Stackley told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. The Marine Corps is part of the Navy Department.

It is not currently known how many of the group’s reported 30,000 members were active Marines or how many participated in illicit activity, Stackley said. He described the behavior as a “cancer” that needs to be eradicated.

“Discovery and investigation these past several weeks into the toxic, predatory behavior harbored by the website Marines United has uncovered a grievous breakdown of good order and discipline, a violation of our core values and what amounts to an insider threat,” Stackley said.

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert B. Neller, and the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, Sgt. Maj. Ronald L. Green, also appeared before the panel.

‘Truly Disturbing and Unacceptable’

Members of Marines United shared explicit photos, primarily of female Marines, and made derogatory, demeaning and sometimes sexually violent comments about the women, Neller said.

“The Marine Corps I’ve served for over 40 years has a problem and we intend to fix it,” he said. The actions “pervert our culture” and are “truly disturbing and unacceptable,” he added.

The Marine Corps, at all levels, must do a better job of maintaining the transformation that happens when a civilian becomes a Marine, Neller said, while eliminating any behavior that targets an individual as less than a teammate or fellow Marine.

“We must attack any behavior that has a corrosive effect on good order and discipline of our Corps,” he said.

His message to female Marines, he said, is that he is deeply outraged about the misconduct. He encouraged those affected and others with knowledge of the activities to come forward. He and the other leaders at the hearing pledged that those who come forward will be protected.

Female Marines have served the nation honorably, the commandant said, including over the past 16 years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To current and former male Marines, he said, “I need you to ask yourselves, ‘How much more do the females of our Corps have to do to be accepted?’ before naming several female Marines who were killed in action in Iraq: Maj. Megan McClung, Capt. Jennifer Harris, and Cpls. Jennifer Parcell, Holly Ann Charette and Ramona Valdez.

“We all have to commit to getting rid of this perversion to our culture,” he said. “Enough is enough.”

Leadership ‘Outraged’ at Actions

Green, the senior noncommissioned officer in the Marine Corps, said he will do what it takes to protect not only the enlisted Marines, but also all Marines and their dependents.

“I didn’t prepare any words, but I can tell you that no one’s more outraged than the leadership you see sitting before you today,” he told the senators. “This tears at the very fibers that bond us together as we fight for the nation’s freedom and liberty.”

Possible UCMJ Violations

If a Marine shared a photo of another person that was taken without that person’s consent and under circumstances in which that other person had a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Marine may have violated Article 120c of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, by broadcast or distribution of an indecent visual recording.

In addition, a Marine “who directly participates in, encourages, or condones such actions could also be subjected to criminal proceedings or adverse administrative actions,” a previous Marine Corps statement said.

The Marine Corps leaders today stressed that support is available for affected Marines, through chaplains, counselors, victim advocates and other resources. They can also contact NCIS online or call 1-877-579-3648.

By Joyce Karam

Saudi-US relations were firmly in the spotlight Tuesday as President Donald Trump hosted Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House for their first official meeting.

The meeting was dubbed a “reset moment” in US-Saudi relations after eight years clouded with differences under the Obama administration over its handling of the Arab Spring, the Iran nuclear deal, arms sales and the war in Syria.

This potential reset is, however, seen as more “transactional” by some, as the Trump administration attempts to engage different stakeholders in the region.

Focus on Yemen

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. Photo by Mazen AlDarrab, Wikipedia Commons.

Trump’s working lunch with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also Saudi Arabia’s second deputy premier and defense minister, was in the “Old Family Dining Room” on the State Floor of the White House.

The meeting marks the first official visit to the White House by any Arab leader since Trump took office in January.

Vice President Mike Pence, chief strategist Steve Bannon, senior adviser Jared Kushner, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus were seen in photos in the Oval Office prior to the lunch, according to the White House press pool.

US sources with knowledge of the visit told Arab News that “Yemen is a primary focus” for the meetings, in gauging the Trump administration’s views and ideas for finding a settlement to the war.

Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics, told Arab News that the Saudi prince’s trip “is broad-ranging, crossing many issues and sectors” and that it sets “the next stage of the US-Saudi strategic relationship.”

Karasik noted, however, the different atmosphere and policy approaches that will face Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on this White House meeting, as compared to those under Obama.

“The Trump approach is different from that under the Obama administration, it is more aggressive and rooted in transactional foreign policy,” Karasik said. He defined the Trump style as “pushing and pulling at the stakeholders to come to some type of solution,” something that comes “with higher risk but greater payoff.”

Higher expectations are being set for US-Saudi relations under Trump, other analysts said.

Andrew Bowen, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told Arab News that the deputy crown prince’s visit to Washington marks “an opportunity to reset the relationship and put it on better footing after a rough period of relations between President Obama and Riyadh.”

Bowen anticipated a generally better road ahead for US-Saudi relations under Trump, as compared to Obama.

“Trump means business and a deal can certainly be worked out between Washington and Riyadh. Will the Saudis get everything they want? No. Will the relationship fall below their expectations? Probably,” he said.

As of this week, Hannibal Gadaffi, one of seven children of Moammar Gadaffi and his Widow Safia Farkash has spent without a scintilla of evidence that he violated any Lebanese law, nearly one and a half years wrongly incarcerated in a Beirut jail.

The Lebanese government has rejected increased local and international demands that it provide a legal justification for Hannibal’s continued imprisonment and violations of his basic human rights.

Hannibal was abducted from Syria on December 11, 2015. According to Lebanon’s Internal Security Force (ISF), investigators, Amal member Hassan Yaacoub and his brothers Ali and Hussein had orchestrated an elaborate scheme to seize Gaddafi from Syria and force him into Lebanon. They discovered that Hassan Yaacoub had worked with a woman named “Fatima” to lure Gadaffi from the coastal Syrian province of Latakia to Damascus, and on to Lebanon. Security forces arrested Hassan and Hussein Yaacoub but not Ali even though Hannibal has stated that it was Ali who beat him in the face repeatedly with a pistol.

All Hannibal wants is to return to Libya when it’s feasible. Sources close to his family and some political observers in Libya, Cairo and elsewhere believe that his brother, Seif al Islam who has recently been released into loose protective house arrest which, according to his sister and mother, Seif agrees is the safest place for him at the moment, may well be Libya’s future leader.

Seif recently declined a Putin offer of asylum in Russia and favors a UN supervised election to decide Libya’s government. Much of his time these days is reportedly spent building tribal loyalties and some suggest he sometimes coordinates with the General Khalifa Hafter’s, a former Gadaffi aide and currently a leading figure in the Tobruk based government with the support of its Parliament.

As is well known, since the 2011 revolution, Libya has been engulfed in chaos, devolving into civil war in the summer of 2014 when Libya Dawn, a coalition of Islamist and Misratan militias, captured Tripoli. Tribal forces opposing Libya Dawn have coalesced in eastern Libya around Haftar’s Libyan National Army, supporting the national parliament in Tobruk. Russia officially recognizes Tobruk, not Tripoli, as the legitimate government, even printing Tobruk’s banknotes.

In testimony before the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee on 3/10/2017, the chief of the Pentagon’s Africa command, General Thomas Waldhauser, testified that “Russia is trying to exert influence on the ultimate decision of who and what entity and individuals comprise the government inside Libya.” Asked by Russian critic Senator Lindsey Graham whether Russia was “trying to do in Libya what they are doing in Syria”, Waldhauser replied, “Yes.”

Russia appears to be seeking a future role for Seif in Libya’s government. This is relevant to the Musa Sadr case because recently Seif has been saying that “it’s time to put the Sadr case behind us” implying that he will open the Sadr case file to the public.

Seif and Hannibal’s sister Aisha, a human rights lawyer and former UN Goodwill Ambassador, also plans to return to Libya and there is a grassroots movement, especially among Libya’s tribes for the siblings to enter politics as political reformers. Support inside Libya and regionally for both Qaddafi children to return is growing according to Libyan sources.

The above photos courtesy of Libyan Justice Ministry, Tripoli 1/7/2016). Seif al-Islam Gadaffi was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli on July 28, 2015 in a mass trial of former regime figures widely criticized by human rights groups and observers. However, the verdict was nullified the next year when the Libyan government announced that Seif was included in a General Libyan Amnesty and Seif was freed freed by the Tripoli Court. But Seif is still indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and Interpol maintains a Red Notice to apprehend him should he travel abroad. Seif’s sister, Aisha Gadaffi is living temporarily in Oman with her mother and children. As with her brother Hannibal, she intends to return to Libya

As noted above, among the power brokers that would likely accept Saif, is the Putin government which is seeking a naval base in Libya as are the Iranians. The French, the UK and most of Africa as well as the several EU countries also show signs of leaning toward Saif. Some are suggesting even in the Trump Administration may not object to Seif, his siblings, and pro-Gadaffi tribes playing a major role in Libya’s future.

Meanwhile, there is growing bitterness in Libya, Lebanon and elsewhere including among a growing number of human rights organizations over the criminal kidnapping, torture and hostage taking for ransom of Hannibal, who has committed no crime. He continues being deprived of the most elementary due process including being barred from even speaking in private with his lawyers.

Those standing accused of his unlawful incarceration include certain Lebanese politicians, their 2013 al Qaeda linked Libya Dawn, interlocutors and would-be partners in Tripoli as well as elements of the Lebanese Judiciary. All, according to Hannibal’s lawyer are motivated by cash with more than one having hid the truth about the fate of Imam Musa Sadr and his companions in order to receive Libyan hush money. Indeed, some of those currently involved in Hannibal’s judicial fiasco stand accused of having known the fate of the Sadr delegation for the past nearly 39 years.

Hannibal’s lawyer among others, inside and outside Lebanon’s legal community, claim that certain politicians insist to hold Hannibal because of the more than one billion dollars that rightfully belongs to the Libyan people. Cash and gold which were reportedly deposited in half a dozen Lebanese banks years ago by aids to former Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi.

On 2/22/2017, the cousin of Hannibal’s father, Gaddaf al-Dam, with whom this observer met with in Cairo in 2013, told RIA Novosti that in 2011 the Libyan state had approximately $ 600 billion worth of assets inside and outside the country, including $ 200 billion in bank accounts abroad, along with tons of gold and silver.

According to attorney, Boursha Khalil, Hannibal’s case has “two pillars,” Political corruption and the above noted claimed billions of dollars who many want their hands on.

The Shia judges, who are supposed to be in charge of the Hannibal judicial files are under political sectarian pressure from the Amal leadership, and they are frankly not happy about it according to Hannibal’s former lawyer, Boursha Khalil. Nor is Lebanon’s judiciary pleased about the escalating gossip and angst at Lebanon’s Maison De Avocat by members of the Bar Association who object to the suspected judicial corruption in Hannibal’s case.

Lebanon’s Judiciary knows well that Lebanon is illegally holding an innocent man under the false pretense that he is “withholding information” of an event that occurred when he was two years old. And who has testified repeatedly in court that all he ever heard about the Musa Sadr case growing up, and which was not much, came from his big brother Saif and Moatassem which amounted to their repeating some rumors. Their father’s regime kept a light lid on the Sadr case not even discussing it within the family and officials who dared speculate on the case publicly were usually punished.

He testified that in his opinion his father didn’t kidnap Imam Musa Sadr and his two companions. He testified that the responsible one behind the abductions and murders was his father’s aide, Abdul Salam Jalloud. Jalloud is still alive and living in France but the politicians involved in the Sadr case have avoided talking with Jalloud. Hannibal said his father is only responsible for compensating to victims’ families because the mastermind of the kidnapping operation was a government official in his father’s regime.

In response to a question from the interrogating Judge Hamadeh: “Who knows the full story of Imam Musa Sadr?” Hannibal replied: “Three persons; Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, Moatassem Gadaffi, (another brother who was killed near Sirte Libya along with his father in October 2011) and Abdul Salam Jalloud. ” Hannibal also advised the Court that someone who needs to be interrogated is Musa Koussa, Libya’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs who is also still alive and thought might be living in London.

Hannibal elaborated that Abdul Salam Jalloud transferred Sadr to Janzour in Libya to keep him under house arrest, adding that he is not sure what happened next. Judge Hamadeh reminded him that he said in the previous session that Sadr was transferred from Janzour to political prison and then was killed. Hannibal replied that this is indeed his opinion but is not based on direct knowledge.

The above report is basically all that Hannibal has been able to contribute to the judicial inquiry. He has committed no criminal offense and justice demands his immediate release. But that would complicate certain politicians hoped for ransom money.

More than once Hannibal has told the court that he wants to cooperate to solve the case. When he was asked how he wants to do that, he said: “As soon as I would be free, I will contact the main parties in the former Libyan government and we can put an end to this case.”

Unfortunately for Hannibal, putting an end to the Sadr case is not what certain Lebanese politicians want to happen despite claiming otherwise.

As Hannibal’s spurious “withholding information” case increasingly become a charade designed to keep holding him, other false charges have been concocted. Investigative Judge Ferial Dalloul has been assigned a new double jeopardy case. Reportedly she was assigned the file because she is also the spouse of Amal member and official Haytham Joumas.

The new charge against Gadhafi is identical to the one previously dismissed, for allegedly “defaming the judiciary” during a questioning session last December. Back then, Judge Hamadeh issued an arrest warrant against Gadaffi saying the detainee made “implied threats of violence” during an interrogation over his knowledge of Sadr’s disappearance.

Gadaffi denied the charges when a hearing was held. He testified that “Judge Hamadeh provoked me when he described my father as a killer and a criminal before the open court.” Hannibal had previously claimed that his “father was innocent” and that his deputy Jalloud was responsible and he raised his index finger toward the ceiling to emphasize his point. He did not point at Judge Hamadeh according to eyewitnesses. Gadaffi’s lawyer told the presiding judge that his client “had no intention of threatening the Court in any way adding that the defendant’s remarks were not designed to insult.

Few if anyone in court that day credited this patent political charge and even the ISF Captain who escorts Hannibal to court claimed Hannibal never threatened or demeaned the court.

On January 24, 2017, Judge Ghassan Khoury correctly found Hannibal not guilty of threatening the court and seeing politics corrupting the Judiciary charged the Lebanese judiciary with contempt and ordered that all charges against Hannibal Qaddafi be revoked. He declared Hannibal was innocent of the crimes attributed to him and that he was entitled to the basic right to defend himself in court.

According to Judge Khoury, “The Lebanese government has neither provided a legitimate explanation for Hannibal’s continued imprisonment and the gross violations of Hannibal’s basic human rights” according to Judge Khoury and lawyers follow his case.

Few court observers expect the new case will also be dropped or ruled on anytime soon. Hannibal according to some must be kept locked up until ransom is paid. Hannibal will most likely remain in custody pending a verdict in the parallel false case regarding his knowledge and involvement in the 1978 disappearance of Amal Movement founder Imam Musa Sadr and two companions. That trial into Gadhafi’s involvement in Sadr’s disappearance has progressed slowly after his former lawyer, Akram Azouri, quit the case in disgust four months ago accusing certain Lebanese politicians of conspiring against and corrupting the Lebanese Judiciary.

Amal leader Nabeh Berri who is significantly engaged in Hannibal’s case has according to Hannibal’s former lawyer offered to let Hannibal walk. Berri acknowledged to Hannibal via his lawyer that he is innocent of any crime but rather is himself the victim of “a stupid, botched kidnapping and torture.”

With respect to Berri’s revealed offer to Hannibal to arrange his release, before being released, Hannibal needed to do one favor.

What Berri allegedly asked of Hannibal was for him to fire his well-known human rights lawyer Boursha Khalil who along with lawyer Aisha Gadaffi, worked together on the defense team of Saadam Hussein’s politicized and much critized November 5, 2006 trial and death sentence.

Berri’s problem with Ms. Boursha Khalil is reportedly that he also claims she blew the whistle and blocked his secret $ 200,000,000 deal with the Al-Qeada affiliated Tripoli government to extradite (sell) to them Hannibal. Berri’s alleged Tripoli based “business partners” were claimed to be elements of the Al-Qaeda linked “Libya Dawn. At that time the Tripoli based Libyan government was not recognized by the UN or most of its 193 member states as the legitimate Libya government.

Nor was Berri happy when Hannibal’s lawyer Ms. Khalil filed a motion for Berri’s friend and presiding Judge, who is a Shia Muslim as is she, Berri and most of those involved in the ransom scheme, to recuse himself. The rationale behind her recusal motion was the growing perception in some quarters that ‘Shia pressure” may compromise the Judge’s objectivity so it’s better for the Court to avoid a possible conflict of interest or the public’s perception of lack of impartiality.

Not knowing the details, according to lawyer Khalil, Hannibal acceded to Berri’s offer, adding: “But Hannibal got stiffed.”

The reason is that because the problem for certain Lebanese politicians choreographing Hannibal’s court case is that it is not going to be easy for them to get their hands on the Gadaffi accounts. Few even question that they will keep trying.

A late development in this judicial abomination is that according to a 2/2/2017 report by Alexandra Valiente of Viva Libya! , “Hannibal’s health is deteriorating at an alarming rate.” According to lawyer Khalil, from the beatings Hannibal was subjected to during his December 2015 kidnapping and being brutally jammed into the trunk of a car, his injured back, knees and legs make walking and standing increasingly difficult and he requires specialized medical treatment and therapy. Medical attention was reportedly being denied in order to pressure him and his family into arranging ransom/extortion money. This observer does not credit the withholding of medical attention story and credits Lebanon’s Internal Security Force (ISF) denials which were expressed to him that Hannibal does indeed receive medical attention for his injuries and in fact is being well treated.

What makes Hannibal’s fake case and wrongful incarceration even more egregious is the fact that the politicians involved and certain sectarian affiliated members of Lebanon’s judiciary know, as do key Amal officials and plenty of others in this region, some since September 11, 1978 what had been the fate of the ‘vanished’ Imam and his companions. For financial but also political reasons, some played dumb and deceived their Shia community with annual fake reports that Imam Sadr was seen in various Libyan prisons. These theatrics and the annual August 31 “ Imam Sadr Commemoration” raised millions in donations as thousands of billboards and posters are still regularly plastered around Lebanon, trying to persuade the largely credulous Shia community that Musa Sadr was, yet again “ Recently seen in a Libya prison.”

To date all efforts of the Libyan Tribes, the Syrian government and the Gadaffi family members to obtain Hannibal’s release have failed. This sordid action against an innocent man is bringing other factors to light as it exposes the ignominy of the individuals and organizations behind this criminal hoax.

Social media’s wide reach and influence accentuate the negative effects of inaccurate sentiments circulated online. Building resilience is essential in maintaining Singapore’s social cohesion.

By Stephanie Neubronner*

The controversy following the uploading of a video clip depicting an imam’s religious supplication about other faiths has underscored the importance of preserving religious harmony in Singapore. Ministers and religious leaders have since re-emphasised the central need for all, including netizens, to be mindful of maintaining social cohesion in Singapore as a plural society.

The misrepresentation or misinterpretation of information, deliberate or unintended, can be amplified on social media, resulting in social divisiveness. The risk of netizens obtaining only superficial understandings of issues, the possibility of echo chambers occurring, and the threat posed by fake news underscores significant challenges for Singapore.

The Changing Definition of “News”

According to the Pew Research Centre, the number of individuals in America who consider Facebook and Twitter as credible news sources has since 2013 been on a constant incline. The shift towards utilising social media as a news and information source has also been observed in Singapore.

Studies have argued that young people are not uninformed, but are instead, “differently informed”. Challenging the perception that the younger generation is uninterested in news, scholars have contended that the younger generation favours an “a la carte” model of news gathering. Young people tend to monitor multiple media sites simultaneously, “snacking” on bite-sized pieces of news. And, rather than postponing their news requirements until a specific timing during the day, as is the case for the older generation, young people prefer instantaneous access to news sources.

The ease with which everyday gripes and grievances can be aired online has added to the volume of alternative content accessible via social media. Resulting in the rise of personal publishing and citizen journalism, the changes in the way news information is utilised has implications for the ways Singaporeans, particularly the younger generation, understand their communities and surroundings.

The Virality of Content

Unlike content published by reputable news outlets, the content individuals post and share on social media is not subject to any formal fact-checking procedures or editorial judgment. Subjective individual judgment and personal accountability are the only measures restricting the kind of content individuals share online. Yet, because interest and appeal are critical in gaining viewership and attention, the desire to share content that is up-to-date and “trending” is heightened.

Content online goes viral and gets circulated rapidly and widely when it is relatable and is of particular interest to the reader, especially over topics that affect users personally. Examples of notable viral incidents that have occurred in Singapore’s online sphere include the 2012 Amy Cheong incident and more recently, the 2016 Prima Deli issue.

In both incidents, the expression of prejudiced and disparaging remarks caused intense public outrage online. Amy Cheong posted offensive remarks about Malays on her Facebook page, which went viral and in less than 24 hours of her publishing the comments, had cost her job. The reactions to her post online also made her leave Singapore. This was despite Cheong having made repeated apologies via various media channels.

In the Prima Deli incident, a Facebook user claimed that the head of the department she was applying for a job with had made discriminatory remarks toward her and was dismissive of her abilities. The post quickly went viral and many netizens called for the company to be boycotted. Although these viral incidents did not result in social unrest, they accentuate the strains that biased narratives fueled by unsubstantiated speculations can have on Singapore’s social fabric.

Echo Chambers and “Fake News”

Social media have made it easier for people to both cause and take offence. Echo chambers occur when a network of like-minded people share information and content that is accepted as fact and is repeated back to them without hesitation. Aggregating in communities of interest, such interest groups can be used as tools to reinforce ideas, promote confirmation bias, segregation, and possibly even social polarisation.

Traditionally, “fake news” refers to the deliberate fabrication of information, with the intention to deceive. However, the Trump administration has labeled content that the mainstream media produces as “fake news”, regardless of factual integrity, simply because the news that was being reported portrayed the president in an unfavourable light.

Trump’s variety of “fake news” is quickly becoming a catchall phrase. Coupled with the increasingly widespread use of this version of the term, the resultant confusion and destabilising impact of ideas underscores the rising concerns over the influence fake news have in shaping and altering perspectives.

Credible Information and Ensuring Social Cohesion

The Singapore government has stepped up efforts to educate Singaporeans of the potential threats in cyberspace. The Better Internet Campaign, the proposed update to Singapore’s broadcasting laws, and the introduction of the Cybersecurity Professional Scheme will better prepare Singapore for the challenges that lie ahead.

However, preventing the spread of misinformation will also require understanding the effects of disseminating news or information that is not properly validated. Knowing how to discern and negotiate issues viewed online and actively engaging in fact-checking will help prevent the misalignment of perspectives, assist in impeding the spread of malicious content and also the spread of misinformation that could strain inter-racial and religious ties.

Ensuring the general public continues to accept the mainstream media as an unbiased and reliable source of information is also vital. Journalistic institutions need to continue building on their foundations as credible information platforms and uphold probity standards in a rapidly changing news landscape.

Based on the events occurring elsewhere in the world, fake news and the spread of misinformation online will continue to pose even greater challenges for Singapore. To safeguard the social cohesion Singapore currently enjoys new dialogues and the generation of more ideas addressing these issues are needed.

*Stephanie Neubronner is an Associate Research Fellow with the National Security Studies Programme in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Tropical Storm Enawo has left a death toll of 78 people with around 380,000 affected by destruction in Madagascar, according to various media reports.

Those figures are up from a report on Sunday from Madagascar’s National Bureau of Risk and Disaster Management that had placed the death toll at 50 people, with almost 250,000 people displaced, and most of those affected in the capital, Antananarivo of the island country.

According to the United Nations, the north-east of the country is the worst affected, with all of the region’s vanilla fields destroyed and 80 percent of the rice crop damaged.

By Omar Mawji

Many analysts have been critical of the US military strategy to eliminate Daesh and establish a stable Syrian government. On the other hand, Russia has been praised, often by the same critics of the U.S., as a significant presence in Syria that has made tremendous strides in fighting Daesh and propping up President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Many are very quick to compliment Russia on its Syrian policy, even suggesting that Russia was re-establishing its place as a global superpower. While there is some truth to the fact that President Vladimir Putin is feeling nostalgic and seeking to regain Russia’s past position, many are failing to factor in the financial costs that go with either deposing or supporting a regime in a geopolitical hotbed like the Syrian civil war.

Throughout history, global powers have used their economic, military, and political influence to bolster or undermine world leaders. However, few in modern history understand the financial repercussions of deposing or supporting a regime like the U.S. does. Through the 21st century, America has been involved in wars longer than any other country, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2003, at the beginning of both these wars, the defense budget for the U.S. was north of $400 billion. In 2008, the U.S. spent $195 billion on military spending in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The financial liability borne by the U.S. in its struggle to establish a functional democratic government has carried a hefty bill. Comparing and transposing US expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan with the amount spent by Russia in Syria suggests that Russia will have no alternative but to increase its own military spending in the region if it intends to re-establish the Assad regime and truly regain its former superpower status.

According to information provided by President Putin, from September 2015 to March 2016, the time when Russia undertook its leadership role and bombing campaign to support the Assad regime, Russia spent approximately $US484 million. The millions spent by Russia in the first six months of its campaign in Syria is dwarfed the $23 billion spent by the U.S. in the first year of the Afghanistan war, and the $51 billion in the first year of the Iraq war.

Can Russia continue its leadership role as the strong ally that will re-establish the Assad government once again? Or will the financial burden of fighting back opposition groups, re-establishing Assad’s government, and re-building Syrian institutions be too much for Moscow?

Against All Odds

When the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it not only had NATO support, but also the support of several allies in the region, which helped US troops and provided strategic, tactical, and intelligence support for the US military effort.

As for Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war, there are very few allies helping out. In fact, hostility towards the re-establishment of an Assad government has unified objectives between most Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Israel. The only active ally Russia has in its ambition to establish an Assad government is the Islamic Republic of Iran (“Iran”) and its proxies in the region. This extends Russia’s commitment and, by extension, makes the cost of re-establishing an Assad government that much higher. It can be expected that Syria’s government and its Russian ally will face mounting difficulties in establishing an Assad government and keeping it in power over time.

Boots on the Ground

While the US continues to discuss the need for a troop presence in Syria in order to successfully fight Daesh, the importance of troops is even more apparent when considering Russia’s ambitions. Recall that the active role the U.S. took in establishing a central government in Afghanistan and deposing a dictator in Iraq both required a significant US troop presence.

Over 100,000 US troops were deployed in both Afghanistan and Iraq during the combat phase and then into the establishment of a new ruling regime in each of those countries. On the other hand, the Russian General Staff and the Federal Security Service have said there are only approximately 4,000 Russian troops and around 5,000 militants from the former Soviet republics in Syria. If the US experience is any guide, Russia will need to increase troops in Syria in the future to help Syria transition from war to a potentially stable Assad government.

Russia Should be Concerned

If Russia’s objective is to re-establish a sustainable Assad-led government, then it’s only in the early phases of reaching its goal. Russia is currently aiding the Syrian government in recapturing several key cities from what the Syrian government considers rebel groups and terrorist organizations. Costs are undoubtedly expected to rise as Russia attempts to re-establish Assad’s government, and costs will rise further as Russia helps rebuild Syria’s institutions and infrastructure.

If Russia opts not to rebuild the country and merely goes on sustaining an unstable Assad government with military support, the financial and geopolitical costs would still be immense. The Syrian civil war would still cost Russia tens of billions of dollars over a decade. Russia would need to keep Assad in power by suppressing minority groups including terrorist organizations and rebel groups. Russia would also have to deal with tremendous pushback from surrounding GCC countries, as well as Turkey and Israel who see Assad as a threat to their geopolitical interests in the region.

If we follow the trend of US spending in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is not out of the question to see Russia spend over $US50 billion fighting Syria’s war on behalf of the Assad regime over the next 15 years. That would still be dwarfed by the $744 billion the U.S. spent in Afghanistan and the $821 billion it spent in Iraq over a 15-year period.

The two largest factors likely to impede Russian support of an Assad government are Russia’s proposed future military spending plans and its domestic economy. In 2010, President Putin announced a $343 billion military modernization project to improve and upgrade Russia’s military hardware by 2020. To achieve President Putin’s military ambition, Russia’s defense budget would need to increase by 10% every year from 2016 onward. However, because of low oil prices, sanctions imposed on the Russian economy, and a devalued ruble, the country is struggling to sustain its current defense budget.

The other major obstacle in Russia’s plan to grow and upgrade its military is the countries reliance on natural resources, specifically, oil and petroleum products. In 2013, 54% of the value of gross export sales from Russia was from crude oil and petroleum products, and over the past 15 years there has been high positive correlation between the price of oil and Russia’s GDP.

With an economy dependent on exporting oil, there is always the threat that other major oil exporters in the region could strategically use oil as a geopolitical weapon against growing Russian influence in Syria. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“Saudi Arabia”) is the largest oil exporter in the world, and it has been openly against allowing the re-establishment of an Assad government. Saudi Arabia is the lowest cost producer of the 5 largest oil exporters around the world; therefore, Saudi Arabia is likely the best able to sustain itself at current oil prices.

Saudi Arabia may not significantly boost production to drop oil prices lower, but merely sustain enough production over time to keep oil prices in the $50 per barrel range. This will further prevent Russia’s military expansion ambitions and prevent increases in Russia’s defense budget – making it extremely costly and difficult to expand its presence in Syria in support of the Assad government.

Russia: 1990 vs. Present

For many balance of power proponents, it is exciting to see Russia re-engage in the Middle East and involve itself with geopolitical issues in the region. However, this is not 1990s and Russia is no longer a superpower. Russia has fallen from a top 3 economy in 1990 to the 6th largest economy in 2015 based on GDP.

Regional powers involved in Syria do not take Russia’s interference seriously and it seems that Russia itself does not seem to truly take that role seriously, having accepted its relegation to a regional power rather than a global one. With limited resources to expand and support the Assad regime in Syria, no strong allies in the region, and a weakened economy, Russia is a long way from its glory days of Brezhnev. In the short-term, Russia’s efforts in Syria provide plenty of Sunday news fodder. In the long run, however, Russia’s Syria policy is unsustainable.
The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published.

Without major efforts to rebuild Louisiana’s wetlands, particularly in the westernmost part of the state, there is little chance that the coast will be able to withstand the accelerating rate of sea-level rise, a new Tulane University study concludes.

The study by researchers in Tulane’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and published in the open-access journal Nature Communications shows that the rate of sea-level rise in the region over the past six to 10 years amounts to half an inch per year on average.

“In the Mississippi Delta, about 65 percent of study sites are probably still keeping pace, but in the westernmost part of coastal Louisiana, more than 60 percent of sites are on track to drown,” said Tulane geology professor Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, a co-author of the study.

Törnqvist conducted the research with lead author and PhD candidate Krista L. Jankowski and co-author Anjali M. Fernandes, a former postdoc in Törnqvist’s group who is now at the University of Connecticut.

The researchers used an unconventional method to measure sea-level change that integrated information from different data sources. They analyzed measurements of shallow subsidence rates at 274 sites across the coast and combined these with published GPS-measurements of deeper subsidence rates. Adding published satellite observations of the rise of the sea surface in the Gulf of Mexico, they were able to calculate how rapidly sea level is rising with respect to the coastal wetland surface.

“The bottom line is that in order to assess how dire the situation is in Louisiana, this new dataset is a huge step forward compared to anything we’ve done before,” Törnqvist said.

Justin Lawrence of the National Science Foundation, which provided funding for the study, agreed.

“These researchers have developed a new method of evaluating whether coastal marshes in Louisiana will be submerged by rising sea levels,” Lawrence said. “The findings suggest that a large portion of coastal marshes in Louisiana are vulnerable to present-day sea-level rise. This work may provide an early indication of what is to occur in coastal regions around the world later this century.”

To air travelers who waste precious time inflight staring blankly as your browser struggles to load a page, relief may be a quick download away.

Inspired by the notoriously turtlelike service, a team of researchers led by Northwestern Engineering’s Fabián Bustamante has developed an extension for the Google Chrome browser that drastically improves web browsing speeds at 30,000 feet.

Called ScaleUp, the solution is deceptively simple.

Most websites are crammed with images, fonts, videos, social sharing buttons, links, and more, none of which you notice while accessing the Internet from your employer’s speedy broadband connection or your favorite coffee shop’s Wi-Fi. These networks are robust enough to handle the load, and, we’ve come to expect it.

That kind of connectivity gets considerably more difficult hurtling through the air thousands of feet above the ground. Whether the plane uses satellite or cell towers, the signal latency — the time it takes to travel from your computer in seat 22B to the ground and back — increases dramatically.

Using a tool it developed called WiFly, Bustamante’s team tested the Internet connection speeds on a number of flights. Despite the premium that travelers pay for the privilege, the results were bad. Like dial-up bad.

“Travelers are paying a lot of money and getting modem-like performance,” said Bustamante, professor of computer science at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “Honestly it was a simple observation: If your performance on a web browser is going to be determined by the number of images that need to be loaded on the page, then how do you limit those images.”

The answer? As the name indicates, ScaleUp makes everything bigger. Much like a responsive website adjusts the layout to your desktop or tablet or phone, ScaleUp adapts the content by increasing the size of the images, which pushes content down the page and reduces the number of objects the browser has to handle at any one time.

ScaleUp also employs other tricks to speed up the process.

“Some websites load a lot of font types,” Bustamante said, “but that takes time.” A website is designed, if the fonts are not there, to render the page anyway and still look presentable, he said, so ScaleUp just drops the font-load request, and the website adjusts. You don’t see much difference, but it loads faster.

ScaleUp also increases the font size a tiny bit, which simplifies the load even further by pushing other objects down the page.

In an example on Bustamante’s website, ScaleUp drew a CNN page four times faster, saving 60 seconds. That would add up quickly during an average web browsing session.

“It wasn’t something we expected to turn out as well as it did,” said James Newman, a doctoral candidate working with Bustamante on ScaleUp. “The improvements we’re seeing are better than what you would normally see.”

Still, Bustamante says they need more data. ScaleUp will deliver much of that as more travelers use it, and Bustamante said he is also developing relationships with the inflight Internet providers.

“We need to better understand how else we can improve the web experience regardless of the conditions,” Bustamante said. “That is something that James has on his long list of things to do.”

One issue Bustamante hopes to better understand is packet loss. When transmitted, a website is broken into pieces called packets. When you visit a website, your browser loads the website by putting those packets back together. If a packet gets lost, maybe because of a connection failure, your browser asks for it again. It waits for every packet before drawing the page.

“We see high levels of packet loss inflight,” Bustamante said. “While we know some of the factors behind the loss, we need to better understand all of the reasons causing the problem.”

Bustamante sees plenty of room for study — and progress.

“We’re in this space alone. It is like a gold mine,” he said. “There’s a lot we don’t understand, and the more we learn about it, not surprisingly, the more we learn how much we don’t know. That’s the way things always go. Our list of questions is very long now.”

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have found that honeybees treated with a common antibiotic were half as likely to survive the week after treatment compared with a group of untreated bees, a finding that may have health implications for bees and people alike.

The scientists found the antibiotics cleared out beneficial gut bacteria in the bees, making way for a harmful pathogen, which also occurs in humans, to get a foothold. The research is the latest discovery to indicate overuse of antibiotics can sometimes make living things, including people, sicker.

The UT Austin team, led by professor Nancy Moran and postdoctoral researcher Kasie Raymann, found that after treatment with the common antibiotic tetracycline, the bees had dramatically fewer naturally occurring gut microbes — meaning healthy bacteria that can help to block pathogens, break down toxins, promote absorption of nutrients from food and more. They also found elevated levels of Serratia, a pathogenic bacterium that afflicts humans and other animals, in the bees treated with antibiotics, suggesting that the increased mortality might have been a result of losing the gut microbes that provide a natural defense against the dangerous bacteria.

The discovery has relevance for beekeepers and the agriculture industry. A decade ago, U.S. beekeepers began finding their hives decimated by what became known as colony collapse disorder. Millions of bees mysteriously disappeared, leaving farms with fewer pollinators for crops. Explanations for the phenomenon have included exposure to pesticides, habitat loss and bacterial infections, but the scientists now say antibiotics given to bees could also play a role.

“Our study suggests that perturbing the gut microbiome of honeybees is a factor, perhaps one of many, that could make them more susceptible to declining and to the colony collapsing,” Moran said. “Antibiotics may have been an underappreciated factor in colony collapse.”

The results are reported today in the online journal PLOS Biology.

Bees are a useful model for the human gut microbiome for several reasons. First, bees and humans both have a natural community of microbes in their guts, called a gut microbiome, which aids a number of functions including modulating behavior, development and immunity. Second, both have specialized gut bacteria — ones that live only in the host gut — that are passed from individual to individual during social interactions.

According to this study, overuse of antibiotics might increase the likelihood of infections from pathogens.

“We aren’t suggesting people stop using antibiotics,” Moran said. “Antibiotics save lives. We definitely need them. We just need to be careful how we use them.”

In large-scale U.S. agriculture, beekeepers typically apply antibiotics to their hives several times a year. The strategy aims to prevent bacterial infections that can lead to a widespread and destructive disease that afflicts bee larvae.

“It’s useful for beekeepers to use antibiotics to protect their hives from foulbrood,” said Raymann, referring to the disease. “But this work suggests that they should also consider how much and how often they’re treating hives.”

To conduct the study, researchers removed hundreds of bees from long-established hives on the rooftop of a university building and brought them into a lab where some were fed a sweet syrup with antibiotics and some were fed syrup only. The researchers painted small colored dots on the bees’ backs to indicate which had received antibiotics and which had not. After five days of daily treatment, the bees were returned to their hives. In subsequent days, the researchers collected the treated and untreated bees to count how many were still living and to sample their gut microbes.

About two-thirds of the untreated bees were still present three days after reintroduction to the hive, while only about a third of the antibiotic-treated bees were still present.

Adding further weight to the hypothesis that antibiotic-treated bees suffered a higher mortality due to a lower resistance to the pathogenic bacteria Serratia, the researchers conducted a follow-on experiment in which they exposed antibiotic-treated bees to Serratia and observed a much higher mortality than untreated bees.

“This was just in bees, but possibly it’s doing the same thing to you when you take antibiotics,” Raymann said. “I think we need to be more careful about how we use antibiotics.”

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are bringing us closer to understanding the musical experience through a novel approach to analysing a common musical effect known as vibrato.

Vibrato is the up-down oscillation in pitch introduced during instrumental or vocal performance, intended to add expressivity and to facilitate sound projection, and commonly used in opera. A well-timed and beautifully executed vibrato can greatly enhance the sound quality of a note, and induce strong emotional responses in the listener.

The new approach to vibrato analysis, published in the Journal of Mathematics and Music, describes for the first time the use of the Filter Diagonalisation Method (FDM) in music signal processing. The technique has origins in quantum physics and is employed to study molecular dynamics and nuclear magnetic resonance.

“We are now one step closer to understanding the mechanics of music communication, the nuances that performers introduce to the music, and the logic behind them,” said project supervisor and co-author Professor Elaine Chew from the Centre for Digital Music at QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

The technique’s ability to detect and estimate characteristics from very fine slivers of information comes in particularly handy in vibrato analysis and allows researchers to analyse music signals with greater precision than before.

Vibratos typically oscillate at a rate of 4-8 cycles per second, or with a period of 125-250 milliseconds per cycle. The degree to which the pitch is bent up or down can be up to half a semitone. Because vibratos happen so quickly, standard techniques which require a comparatively large window for analysing the music signal have so far struggled to accurately capture their characteristics.

“The FDM algorithm was initially developed to efficiently and effectively explore the complicated quantum dynamical resonances of atoms and molecules. Although musical signals are very different from their quantum counterparts, mathematically they share many similarities, including the characteristics of their resonances,” said Dr Khalid Rajab, project co-supervisor and co-author from QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

“In fact, we found that, because they oscillate with time, the harmonics in musical signals can be more complicated to analyse than their quantum counterparts,” he added. The research emerged from a project to model the differences between playing on violin and erhu, a two-stringed Chinese fiddle.

Professor Chew said: “When music for a folk instrument like the erhu is performed on a violin, it lacks the stylistic and expressive qualities of the original. One of the major sources of these differences lies in the way in which notes are elaborated (with vibrato) and the way in which the instrumentalists make their transitions between notes (using portamentos). We were interested in creating computing tools that can help reveal these differences.”

The research forms part of the PhD project of Luwei Yang, first author and a China Scholarship Council doctoral candidate and Research Assistant in EECS.

Yang, an avid erhu player said: “In erhu, as in violin playing, vibrato is frequently employed to mimic the liveliness and colourful expressivity of the human voice. Contemporary erhu vibrato styles were deeply influenced by violin techniques, so it is fascinating to dig deeper into characterising the differences between them.”

The researchers hope the new technique will help musicians and music teachers in their quest to achieve the perfect vibrato, assist sound artists in creating more natural sounding vibrato effects in audio production, and enable researchers to map stylistic trends in vibrato use across cultures and time.

President Donald Trump paid $38 million in taxes on more than $150 million in income in 2005, the White House said on Tuesday, March 14 responding to an MSNBC report that the network had obtained two pages of the returns, Reuters says.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said she received the documents from journalist David Cay Johnston, who said on her show that he received them in the mail.

The returns, which MSNBC posted on its website, showed Trump paid an effective federal tax rate of 25 percent in 2005 after writing off $100 million in losses.

The White House said in a statement that Trump took into account “large scale depreciation for construction.”

Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, drawing criticism throughout his campaign last year and speculation from his political rivals he was hiding something.

A New York Times report in October said Trump, a New York real estate developer, declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns. The newspaper said the large tax deduction could have allowed him to avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years.

But the returns posted by MSNBC on Tuesday showed that he did pay taxes in 2005. The returns do not indicate whether he paid taxes in other years or how much he might have paid. The Washington Post reported last year that Trump paid no federal income taxes for at least two years in the late 1970s.

The White House said in a statement on Tuesday that Trump, as head of the Trump Organization, had a responsibility “to pay no more tax than legally required.”

Presidents and major candidates for the White House have routinely released their income tax returns.

Trump says he has not released his tax returns because they are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Experts say an IRS audit does not bar someone from releasing the documents.

Disney will release an Arabic edition of its latest animated musical fantasy film “Moana” that will feature dialogues in the Egyptian dialect.

Arab pop singer Carmen Soliman will sing songs for princess Moana in the movie while Luma Sabri will voice the character’s dialogues. Actor Abdullah Saad will dub for the legendary character Maui.

Soliman won the first season of Arab Idol in 2012, winning a recording contract with Platinum Records. After grueling rounds of televised eliminations, and critical evaluations by celebrity judges Ragheb Alameh, Nancy Ajram, Ahlam and Egyptian music producer Hassan El Chefai, Soliman prevailed against all other contestants to become the first winner.

Her first single, “Kalam Kalam” was released on March 4, 2013 jumping to No. 1 on the Egyptian charts, and her first album was released in January 2014. Soliman followed with numerous hit singles, including “Akhbari” and “Azama Ala Azama.”

Disney’s move is the first response to Egyptian actor Mohammad Hunaidi’s recently launched campaign “Disney in Egyptian.”

Disney recently announced that Aladdin, a Middle Eastern folk tale film will be turned into a live-action feature film with a full Middle Eastern cast.

The 1992 film was set in the fictional Arabian sultanate of Agrabah, loosely based on Baghdad, Iraq.

Myanmar’s parliament approved forming diplomatic relationships with the Vatican on March 10.

The announcement follows Archbishop Paul Tsang in-Nam, Apostolic delegate to Myanmar, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon and Father Maurice Nyunt Wai, executive secretary of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar, holding a meeting with State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb 8.

Archbishop Tsang officially submitted the Vatican’s proposal to Suu Kyi during the meeting held in Naypyidaw, the country’s capital.

The Vatican has diplomatic ties with 180 countries. On March 10, Myanmar’s parliament also approved diplomatic relationships with Liberia, Guinea, Malta, the Seychelles and Ecuador.

Long-term unemployment is one of the most persistent consequences of the Great Recession, particularly in Spain, where external factors were compounded by domestic problems. This column analyses the mechanisms that worked to create such widespread and persistent long-term unemployment. To improve the prospects of the long-term unemployed, Spain should step up its efforts to implement effective active labour market policies.

By Samuel Bentolila, Jose Ignacio García Pérez and Marcel Jansen*

One of the most tangible legacies of the Great Recession is a surge in the incidence of long-term unemployment, especially in Spain. This is not a new problem – as the title of the 1995 CEPR report, Spanish Unemployment: Is There a Solution?, attests (Andres et al. 1995) – but it is a massive challenge.

In 2016Q3, 47% of the unemployed in the European Union (EU) had been seeking work for more than one year. Long-term unemployment is a major challenge for policymakers. Since the probability of finding a job tends to drop markedly with unemployment duration, many of the affected workers may soon have very limited chances of reemployment, which entails a risk for social cohesion and may lead to high structural unemployment rates.

A recent VoxEU eBook (Bentolila and Jansen 2016) highlights the large heterogeneity in the incidence of long-term unemployment across the EU. Spain, alongside Greece, is one of the countries that stands out. In the worst moment of the crisis, the unemployment rate reached a staggering 27% of the labour force, and at its maximum point long-term unemployment comprised 62% of the unemployed. While the employment situation has improved considerably over the last three years, the share of long-term unemployed is still 57%.

The proximate causes of this dismal performance include, as in many other EU countries, the external shocks represented by the Global Crisis and the Eurozone crisis. But in the case of Spain the effects of these external shocks were compounded by the bursting of a housing bubble and a large-scale banking crisis. Furthermore, the shocks interacted with institutional factors, such as a strongly segmented labour market and a rigid system of collective bargaining, which resulted in a massive destruction of temporary jobs, especially in construction, and delays in the adjustment of negotiated wages. Taking these factors as given, in a new paper we analyse the mechanisms that fuelled the build-up, and explain the persistence of long-term unemployment (Bentolila et al. 2017).

Labour demand or supply?

The Spanish Labour Force Survey (LFS) data reveal a strong negative correlation between the exit rate from unemployment to employment and the duration of unemployment. A key question is to what degree the low outflow rates of the long-term unemployed result from the lack of demand in the crisis, through negative duration dependence (namely, that the exit rate of individual workers truly falls with spell length). Alternatively, such low rates may reflect a mismatch between the skills required by firms and the skills that the unemployed can offer.

The two mechanisms can be confounded due to dynamic selection, namely, that over time, the composition of the pool of unemployed worsens, as the most employable workers leave first. Distinguishing between the two potential causes is vital from a policy viewpoint, but far from trivial empirically (Machin and Manning 1999).

While recent US studies implement augmented search and matching models to answer this question (e.g. Kroft et al. 2016), we estimate state-of-the art duration models with individual panel data. To account for selection, we jointly estimate models for the exit from unemployment and the exit from employment that take into account unobserved heterogeneity. Moreover, to accommodate the dual nature of the labour market, we distinguish between flows involving temporary and open-ended jobs.

Our duration analysis is performed using the Continuous Sample of Working Lives, a large sample of social security records. A key advantage of using of social security data is that we are able to capture short-term worker flows that are mostly missed by the LFS. On the other hand, this source does not allow us to distinguish between unemployment and nonparticipation, but this is not an important shortcoming. There are large flows into and out of non-participation, but transition rates from employment to non-employment (i.e. unemployment plus nonparticipation) follow similar patterns as the traditional transition rates between employment and unemployment.

Since in Spain the Great Recession reduced male employment significantly more than female employment, we restrict our analysis to the population of native prime-age males. We pay special attention to the changes taking place from the expansion (2001-2007) to the recession (2008-2014).

What the individual data say

According to our empirical results, the conditional probability of entering long-term unemployment rose substantially during the crisis, to a level of around one-quarter. Moreover, conditional on entering long-term unemployment, the chances of becoming very long-term unemployed (defined as being unemployed for at least two years) are even higher, around one-half.

According to our results, advanced age, low experience, and entitlement to unemployment benefits are the three main risk factors that raise the chances of becoming long-term unemployed. The impact of low levels of educational attainment and skill is muted by the high level of turnover on temporary contracts, but once we restrict our attention to exits to jobs that last at least one month these factors are also found to raise the risk of entering long-term unemployment. Surprisingly, unemployed workers from construction do not fare worse than similar workers from other sectors. The reason seems to be their high turnover rate – almost 60% of jobs in construction last less than three months, compared to 44% for the other sectors. Thus, temporary jobs act as an informal work-sharing arrangement, allowing construction workers to find work and thus avoid entering long-term unemployment.

Aggregate demand matters, but it is no cure-all

Returning to our initial question, we find – similarly to the recent literature on long-term unemployment in the US – that duration dependence and not dynamic selection is the main source of the low job-finding rates of the long-term unemployed. During the first year in unemployment, the monthly hazard of the average individual drops by around one half, and it halves again during the second year. This points towards lack of demand as a key determinant of long-term unemployment.

Aggregate demand does, however, affect workers differently depending on their unemployment duration. Figure 1 depicts the monthly exit rate from unemployment, showing that workers who have been unemployed for one month leave 28% faster in a high-growth scenario than in a low-growth scenario, those unemployed for one year leave 12% faster, and those unemployed for 24 months leave only 8% faster. Therefore, a cyclical upturn does not help the long-term unemployed much.

Figure 1. Effect of the business cycle on the exit rates by unemployment duration

What to do

In our final estimation exercise we use a different data set, the Spanish Survey of Household Finances, to examine the wages at which unemployed workers are willing to work, over the period 2002-2011. Two salient findings from this analysis are that self-reported reservation wages are not very responsive to the worker’s own unemployment duration, whereas they do react strongly to the aggregate state of the economy. The latter result is consistent with the large fall in workers’ re-entry wages that was observed in Spain from 2010 onwards.

Our estimates are the outcome of the interplay between labour demand and labour supply, and so we cannot disentangle the effect of each, and for this reason they cannot be directly used to derive policy prescriptions. But our estimates do imply that growth alone will not suffice to significantly raise the job-finding rates of the long-term unemployed and that there is limited room for further wage adjustments. The current low exit rates from long-term unemployment therefore entail a substantial risk of social and economic exclusion.

As a result, we believe that to improve the prospects of the long-term unemployed, Spain should step up its efforts to implement effective active labour market policies. Indeed, the recent meta-analysis of Card et al. (2015a,b) indicates that active labour market policies can contribute significantly to the reduction of unemployment and, especially, of long-term unemployment. After a long period of inaction, the Spanish authorities have approved a three-year programme to offer individualised support to one million long-term unemployed. However, Spain has a poor track record in active labour market policies and its public employment services are outdated. These shortcomings need to be addressed before we can expect positive results from the new plan.

With a view to the future, intensifying early activation of the unemployed is essential. In particular, this is crucial for unemployed workers who receive benefits, so that they avoid reaching spell lengths at which, due to duration dependence, low exit rates condemn them to enter and remain in long-term unemployment.

*About the authors:
Samuel Bentolila, Professor of Economics, CEMFI; CEPR Research Fellow

Jose Ignacio García Pérez, Associate Profesor, Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide

Marcel Jansen, Associate Professor, Universidad Autonóma de Madrid

References:
Andres, J, O Blanchard, and J F Jimeno (1995), Spanish Unemployment: Is There a Solution?, CEPR Press, London.

Bentolila, S, and M Jansen (2016), Long-Term Unemployment After the Great Recession: Causes and Remedies, CEPR Press.

Bentolila, S, J I García-Pérez, and M Jansen (2017), “Are the Spanish Long-Term Unemployed Unemployable?“, CEPR Discussion Paper DP11824.

Card, D, J Kluve and A Weber (2015a), “Active Labour Market Policies and Long-Term Unemployment”, in S Bentolila and M Jansen (2016).

Card, D, J Kluve, and A Weber (2015b), “What Works? A Meta Analysis of Recent Active Labor Market Program Evaluations”, IZA Discussion Paper 9236.

Kroft, K, F Lange, M J Notowidigdo, and L Katz (2016), “Long-Term Unemployment and the Great Recession: The Role of Composition, Duration Dependence, and Nonparticipation”, Journal of Labor Economics 34(S1), S7–S54.

Machin, S, and A Manning (1999), “The Causes and Consequences of Long-Term Unemployment in Europe”, in O Ashenfelter and D Card (eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics (vol. 3), Elsevier, Amsterdam, 3085–3139.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Army colonel and chief of staff for Colin Powell at the United States Department of State, expressed this week strong criticism of the US government adding more and more nations to its enemies list.

Speaking with host Paul Jay at the Real News Network this week, Wilkerson, who is a professor at the College of William & Mary, concludes that, even with the large amount of money the US spends on the military, it is “utterly beyond our capacity to deal with all these enemies” that the US has generated.

In the interview, which is largely focused on some individuals’ effort to influence US foreign policy toward creating intensified animosity between the governments of the US and Russia, Wilkerson explains further his concern about the long list of US enemies. Wilkerson states:

What I can’t fathom right now is why anyone would want, with the situation the way it is right now in this country, another enemy. You know that old conservation of enemies theory: You don’t want any more than you can handle at any given time. Look at who we’re lining up, Paul. We’re lining up China. We’re lining up Iran and all that goes along with Iran, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. We are lining up with North Korea. We are lining up with Russia. This is absurd. John McCain and Lindsay Graham can pontificate all day long, but I’m going to tell you that they’re idiots. We do not need an enemy list that is beyond what we could even in the most wild moment contemplate handling. We don’t have the military forces to handle all these enemies, and, yet, we’re bearding them, as it were.

Watch Wilkerson’s complete interview here:

Donald Trump ran for president as a man of the people, who was going to fight for those who were left behind – but everything we’re hearing about his forthcoming federal budget says exactly the opposite: Spending that’s a great deal for big corporations that have hired armies of lobbyists, and great for the wealthiest few like himself. But leaving everyone else a lot worse off.

Here are four important early warning flares:

1. Trump’s budget will increase military spending by 10 percent (even though U.S. military expenditures already exceed the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined). And that’s frankly scary for a lot of reasons from what it signals about his foreign policy priorities to the impact of that whopping spending hike like this on other parts of the budget.

2. Trump actually plans to cut corporate taxes (even though U.S corporate profits after are higher as a percentage of the economy than they’ve been since 1947).

3. He’s going to pay for this – in part – by cutting billions of dollars from the Environmental Protection Agency (which would strip the EPA of almost all its capacity to enforce environmental laws and regulations, at a time when climate change threatens the future of the planet). This is precisely the opposite of what the United States ought to be doing.

4. Last – but by no means least – huge leaps in military spending plus tax cuts will also mean big cuts to programs like food stamps and Medicaid (at a time when the U.S. has the highest poverty rate among all advanced nations, including more than 1 in 5 American children).

This is only the first step in the budget process, but with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate these priorities have a good chance of being enacted, which is why we have to raise our voices – and push back – now.

Republicans in Congress are likely still recovering from the last recess – dubbed appropriately “Resistance Recess.” We need to take that winning spirit of resistance into the budget fight – and the time to start is right now.

So, let your members of Congress know that Trump’s budget is not your budget. Trump’s spending and tax priorities are not in the best interest of most Americans. And then let’s get to work to make sure we get a Congress in 2018 that reflects YOUR priorities.

The Lukashenka regime is reacting to the popular protests in a completely inadequate way, Dmitry Galko says. It thinks it must take steps to ward off a Ukrainian-style Maidan even though that is impossible in Belarus and as a result it is bringing closer a more horrific scenario involving “an unorganized and spontaneous popular rising.”

On the BelarusPartisan portal, the Belarusian commentator says that there are only “three variants” of a way out of the current impasse: the introduction of martial law, a real revolution, or “broad concessions to civil society … a significant transformation of the system and a transition … to dialogue” (belaruspartisan.org/politic/373488/).

Only the last of these would be something positive for Belarus, but if the authorities choose “not it but the first, then things will quickly shift to the second; and the second in turn in an attempt at occupation by the cursed ally [in this case, the Russian Federation], with all ensuring charms,” Galko says.

But the Lukashenka regime is not preparing for any of these three scenarios, he says; it is preparing for “a fourth – the repetition in Belarus of a Ukrainian Maidan,” something that Galko says “under our conditions is completely realistic.”

Many people assume that the Ukrainian Maidan was a revolution; but it wasn’t, the Belarusian analyst says. “It grew into an uprising which ended with the flight of Yanukovich and the collapse of the ruling Party of the Regions, two months after it began.”

The events lasted that long, he continues, “not because a critical mass of people” did not come into the streets capable of overthrowing the powers that be in Kyiv but rather because the Ukrainians at the Maidan did not set as their goal his overthrow.

“Despite the assertions of the opponents of the Maidan, Galko says, who insist that “it was a state overthrow, in fact, the Maidan was an instrument of pressure by the opposition on the authorities, a factor of in part public and in part behind the scenes negotiations.” And the Ukrainian opposition opposed anything more radical in order to achieve its ends.

The Ukrainian opposition “achieved a political victory with minimal costs. The political leaders of the Maidan were an opposition not in the Belarusian sense of the word, that is, not a semi-underground and permanently persecuted group of dissidents, but part of the system of power in Ukraine.”

“At a definite moment, “the opposition politicians were ready to reach an agreement with Yanukovich.” But the Ukrainian president grew frightened and fled and power passed into the hands of the crowd. When that happened, Galko says, “the Maidan began to be transformed from a factor of negotiation into an uprising.”

But in Belarus, “there will not be a Maidan because in Belarus there is no politics, no space for negotiations, no subjects for negotiation, and no one to reach agreement with.” That doesn’t mean, however, “that we will not have a revolution. Just the reverse: revolutions can occur over a few days when the moment arises.”

“It is practically impossible to struggle against a broad popular uprising,” Galko says, unless you have as many tanks as they do in China. “But for this, one must be China. And Belarus isn’t China.”

A Belarusian revolution can be forestalled “only by broad concessions to society which is simply bubbling with dissatisfaction. Using more repression won’t work. On the contrary, such a step will only accelerate things.”

According to Galko, “it would be better if the [Minsk] authorities would keep in their head a picture not from Kyiv in 2013-2014 but rather the Romanian revolution of 1989 which began more than suddenly, lasted only a week, and ended as everyone knows in ways very bad fr the ruling hierarchy.”

“Among East European countries of the socialist camp,” he continues, “Romania was the least democratic or ‘the harshest’ if one uses the terminology of the Belarusian president, with ideal order … [And] therefore the overthrow of communism became there were quick and extremely bloody.”

And he concludes: “the more ‘velvet’ were the regimes in the socialist camp, the more peaceful changes occurred in them. This is a completely logical pattern,” about which Belarusians in general and Alyaksandr Lukashenka should be thinking, especially when the population is so dissatisfied and angry.

By Eleanor Rose

In an escalation of the bitter row between the Netherlands and Turkey, Tayyip Recep Erdogan accused the Dutch of responsibility for the massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in 1995.

Turkish president Recep Tayip Erdogan blamed the Dutch for the Srebrenica massacres during a live televised address on Tuesday, causing outrage in the Netherlands.

“We know the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre. We know how rotten their character is from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there,” Erdogan said in the speech.

Dutch premier Mark Rutte hit back at Erdogan’s accusation in an interview broadcast by Dutch broadcaster RTL Z on Tuesday afternoon, calling the comments a “disgusting distortion of history”.

After Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian in July 1995, several hundred Bosniaks sought refuge inside the UN peacekeepers’ base in nearby Potocari, but were handed to the Serbs by Dutch peacekeepers and subsequently killed.

Serb forces then executed over 7,000 more Bosniak men and boys in massacres that have been defined as genocide by international court rulings.

Erdogan’s accusation was the latest escalation in a high-level diplomatic spat between Turkey and the Netherlands, which provoked the Turkish premier’s ire at the weekend by banning his foreign minister and family affairs minister from attending rallies in the country.

The ministers had planned to join rallies attempted to convince Turks living in the Netherlands to vote for the president’s powers to be expanded in a referendum on April 16.

In response to the ban, Erdogan has suspended high-level relations between the two countries and accused the Dutch of behaving like Nazis.

In July 2014, the District Court in The Hague ruled that the Dutch peacekeepers had failed to protect the Bosniaks who sought refuge in Potocari, and ordered the Netherlands to pay compensation to hundreds of victims.

However, in August 2015, a Dutch military appeals court ruled that the commanders of the UN peacekeeping mission in Srebrenica could not be prosecuted.

Hasan Nuhanovic, a Srebrenica survivor and former translator for the UN peacekeepers, and the family of Rizo Mustafic, who was killed by Serb forces, had appealed against a decision not to charge three former ‘Dutchbat’ peacekeepers with war crimes.

The US debt approaches $20 trillion and the Republican-controlled US Congress must agree to lift debt ceiling to avoid default.

By David Dapice*

The United States has reached its self-imposed statutory debt limit and the US Treasury must start taking “extraordinary measures,” including putting a stop to issuing some securities.

Last October, US Congress suspended the US federal debt limit of $18.4 trillion until March 15, 2017. The old debt limit goes into effect once again – even though the actual debt now approaches $20 trillion. The US Treasury could buy a few months by shifting around various accounts. But by September, unless the Republican Congress suspends the debt limit again or increases the ceiling, the United States will no longer pay all of its debts.

The debt is now the responsibility of Republicans who resisted deficit spending when Barack Obama was president. The Republicans hold a solid majority in the House of Representatives and a lean majority in the Senate.

The Republican Congress and President Donald Trump hope to cut income and business taxes, increase defense spending and begin building an expensive southern border wall and invest in large infrastructure investments. But the deficit will rise and add to current debt levels. Interest rates are likely to increase several times this year, adding to interest expenses and pushing the 2017 deficit higher. Cuts in welfare and other discretionary spending or a possible border tax may lessen the pressures, but cannot offset them. Despite unclear plans, various groups, including conservative think tanks, have all concurred that the tax plans would add from $2.8 trillion to $10 trillion in debt over the next decade, even if growth were plausibly higher.

If all Republicans voted together, they could easily pass a debt limit increase without the Democrats.

But the party’s deficit hawks, especially the Tea Party Caucus from 2010 or the Freedom Caucus since 2014, have taken uncompromising stands against increased deficits. As J. Ragusa and A. Gaspar noted in Political Research Quarterly, 2016: “Although the Tea Party is not a party in the classic sense of the word, research has shown that members of the Tea Party Caucus vote like a third party in Congress.” Voters may not have forgotten why they sent deficit hawks to Congress and follow the debt limit talks closely.

If conservatives maintain their anti-deficit stance, they could strengthen the Democrats’ ability to block tax cuts and increases in defense spending.

Here are some possible scenarios:

• Conservative caucuses continue to resist deficit spending and force mainstream Republicans to cut a deal with at least some Democrats.  In the House, 218 votes are needed to pass a debt limit increase, so the 190 Republican members not affiliated with either the Tea Party or the Freedom Caucus may need nearly 30 Democrat votes in the House.
• Conservative caucuses and mainstream Republicans agree on some combination of tax cuts and spending increases, with some offsetting cuts, acceptable to Trump.  This option suggests reluctance to raise deficits very much.
• Conservative caucuses fold, and the US spending spree with tax cuts continues. Deficits rise sharply.
• Conservative caucuses hold fast, but the remaining Republicans fail to attract enough Democrat votes to raise the debt ceiling. The country cannot pay for all of its spending, and decisions must be made by Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and others about who gets paid first.

Remember that the existing debt ceiling has already been breached. The choices are to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, suspend it again for a period of time, or raise it and go through the same round of negotiation again later. In addition, the aging US population is already pushing deficits higher – up to about 5 percent of GDP in 10 years under existing laws, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Adding net spending or tax cuts would push these already worrisome deficits even higher, possibly leading to much higher interest rates and debt financing costs. Most economists do not expect real GDP growth can exceed 3 percent a year for any sustained period, so even “dynamic scoring” – allowing for the expansionary impact of loose fiscal policy – does not solve the problem. This is crunch time. Either the deficit hawks file their claws or a centrist compromise is required if the bills of Uncle Sam are to be paid.

Democrats may be considering what to demand if they do get a chance to provide crucial votes. Do they insist on keeping Medicaid expansion intact, as many Republican governors also want? Do they push for a carbon tax with rebates, and so offset much of the deregulation meant to support greater fossil fuel production? This has been suggested by conservative economists worried about climate change. Do they insist on minimum average tax rates for upper-income groups, the so-called “Buffet Rule” so that payroll taxes like Social Security and Medicare plus income taxes are no lower for the rich?

The economics and politics are complicated, and the Democrats may be no more united than the Republicans as many regions and special interests have a range of priorities.

Likewise, it will not be easy for the Republicans to reach agreement and bypass any need to reach across the aisle. The deficit hawks bitterly opposed small incremental spending of high priority by former President Obama without offsets – even $1.8 billion for Zika research and control was defeated.  Money had to be transferred from Ebola budgets to gather a fraction of what was requested to deal with a potentially severe public health problem. If Republican legislators give the go-ahead for an unproductive southern wall costing billions or needed infrastructure that they opposed when Obama was president or tax cuts favoring upper-income groups that blow up the deficit, they will have some explaining to do to voters although wealthy donors may accept deficits as the price of tax cuts.

Comfortable with debt: The US deficit has represented a relatively consistent percentage of the gross domestic product with two exceptions – the surplus during the Bill Clinton administration and the deficit spike at the start of the Barack Obama administration

Mainstream Republicans have had less trouble fighting deficits when the spending involved Democrat priorities while they tend to allow deficits for tax cuts and Republican priorities while promising growth and trickle-down benefits. Former President George W. Bush added $3 trillion in debt during his eight years by cutting taxes while waging wars, approving a huge bank bailout and pushing through an expensive drug plan for the elderly. Bush had inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor, Bill Clinton, but left Obama with a huge deficit, nearly 10 percent of GDP, in his first year.

So far, Trump does not appear to be a deficit hawk, although some members of his cabinet may be more fiscally conservative. Even so, it’s all but impossible to combine his promised extension of existing pension and health benefits for the elderly and veterans with substantial tax cuts and large increases in other spending. There are simply not enough plausible offsets from discretionary spending, already hit hard by past cuts.

Republicans are completely accountable, and it’s unlikely that they wish to shut down the government or block the government from paying bills. They know lifting the debt ceiling, combined with more spending and tax cuts, is likely to raise interest rates and the cost of financing the nation’s $20 trillion in government debt.

Some deal will likely emerge, but its shape and supporters are not easy to predict. The Republican Party has been a party of opposition, adopting scorched-earth policies against even vital and sensible spending, whether Zika research or repair of crumbling bridges. We will learn whether insurgents can govern. Government needs funds to operate and if Republicans lack the will, flexibility or imagination to find a workable compromise – chaos will ensue.

*David Dapice is the economist of the Vietnam Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

NATO said Wednesday that it does not recognize the election held on March 12 in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia.

This election does not contribute to a lasting settlement of the situation in Georgia, NATO said in a statement.

“NATO Allies do not recognize the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia as independent states,” the NATO statement said, adding, “The Alliance reiterates its full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders.”