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Indonesia-Australia Ties: Joint Patrols In South China Sea? – Analysis

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A proposal for “joint patrols” between Indonesia and Australia in the eastern part of the South China Sea, which was raised in October 2016, became highly publicised just before President Joko Widodo’s visit to Australia in February 2017. Notwithstanding the hype, it is in reality a distant prospect.

By Shafiah F Muhibat*

Indonesia has so far demonstrated a cautious approach to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Jakarta maintains that it is not a claimant state in the South China Sea territorial disputes, nor does it have any territorial ambition in the area. Nonetheless, it has interests at stake and Indonesia continues to advocate a united ASEAN front when dealing with China.

On the other hand, Indonesia has asserted sovereign rights over its own territorial waters, as seen particularly in its firm law enforcement when dealing with illegal fishing activities in Indonesian waters. Safeguarding territorial integrity is a specific focus of the Joko Widodo (Jokowi) presidency, and one he is very serious about. In 2016 there were three incidents of fishing vessels from China operating without permission in Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Following these, President Widodo led a high-level delegation to the Natuna Islands for a meeting of ministers and security force chiefs on an Indonesian warship watched over by air force jets. This, nonetheless, has not resulted in any visible shift in policy.

Proposal For “Joint Patrols”

In October 2016, following the “2+2” dialogue between Indonesian and Australian foreign and defence ministers, the Indonesian defence minister said he had proposed that the two countries conduct joint patrols in the eastern part of South China Sea to secure the waters. Few details were provided as to the nature of these patrols, whether they should be joint or coordinated, and the locations. News reports were blown out of proportion following comments from the two sides, thus making the idea seem more definite than it actually was.

At the time, Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop appeared to confirm that Canberra was considering joint patrols, as reflected in her comments to the media. She indicated that both sides would discuss “coordinated activities” in the South China Sea and that this would be consistent with both countries’ exercise of their right to freedom of navigation.

A few days before his visit to Australia on 25 February 2017, President Widodo, when answering persistent media questions, said such joint patrols could be carried out “only if there was no tension in the region”. This comment again raised the question of how serious the plan really was. As it turned out, after the meeting between the two leaders in Canberra, the issue was not raised at all during their joint press conference.

Not long after, the two countries seemed to have completely backtracked on the idea. Clarifying on the sidelines of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) summit in Jakarta, Foreign Minister Bishop said President Widodo never suggested joint patrols in the South China Sea. Indonesian officials never confirmed specific plans for joint patrols either.

Dubious Idea

The idea of coordinated patrols is not really new for the two countries as there have been coordinated activities along their border areas. Since 2010, the Australian Defence Force and Indonesian Armed Forces have been conducting coordinated maritime security patrols, which usually start in Kupang in eastern Indonesia and conclude in Darwin, targeting illegal activities in the two countries’ maritime zones.

In 2016, the Australian Border Force and its Indonesian counterpart, Badan Keamanan Laut, (BAKAMLA, Indonesian Maritime Security Board) conducted a maritime security patrol dubbed Operation Shearwater in the Timor Sea. Thus, joint patrols per se is not a controversial idea. However, this particular proposal was appealing to the media and wider public owing to the magnitude of the South China Sea disputes, and the fact that two big regional neighbours are involved.

The proposal itself has hardly gained domestic support both in Indonesia and Australia, with experts warning it could potentially raise tensions with China. Similar to the incidents in Natuna waters in early 2016 this is the kind of news that grabs headlines. Both Indonesia and Australia are important stakeholders in the South China Sea — the more they are involved, they more impact they bring to the disputes and prompting analyses on how much it would influence the situation in South China Sea.

Indonesia’s Greater Role in South China Sea?

There have long been calls for Indonesia to play a greater role in dispute resolution. This proposal may at first glance look like an answer to this call, but in reality it is not. There have been occasions since last year that signalled a possible shift in policy; nonetheless, aside from occasional rhetoric, there is very little evidence in terms of policy.

Therefore, it was not really a surprise that the topic did not surface during President Widodo’s Australia’s visit, as trade and investment were on top of his agenda. Bilateral security cooperation was not a matter of priority, particularly with regard to the South China Sea.

This proposal is a distant prospect even before considering the technical and operational aspects of such activity, because all the policy elements to make it probable are not there. Firstly, there is little chance there would be a dramatic change in Indonesia’s foreign policy towards the South China Sea. Indonesia’s position remains ambivalent.

Secondly, Australia’s involvement in the disputes has been relatively minimal, if any. For example, after the international arbitration ruling at The Hague, while demanding that China accepts the finding and respect international law, the Australian government declared Australia as neutral in the dispute over territories and therefore did not take sides.

Thirdly, although the two countries collaborate in maritime security activities, there still exists a trust deficit in their military cooperation. It was only during President Widodo’s visit that Indonesia and Australia restored military cooperation which was suspended over “technical reasons” believed to relate to offensive materials displayed at an Australian base.

True, Indonesia puts great importance in preserving its territorial sovereignty around the Natuna waters, and Australia has great interest in the South China Sea with regards to its trade and shipping. However, this particular proposal for joint patrols in the South China Sea is not likely to become a reality.

*Shafiah F Muhibat is a Senior Fellow with the Maritime Security Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Indonesia.


US House Intel Chairman Confirms Major Spying On Trump And Team – OpEd

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House Intel Chairman Nunes spoke to reporters when he left the briefing at The White House and had some more stunning things to say:

  • *NUNES: BRIEFED PRESIDENT ON CONCERNS OVER INCIDENTAL COLLECTION
  • *NUNES: `PRESIDENT NEEDS TO KNOW’ THESE INTEL REPORTS EXIST
  • *NUNES: SOME OF WHAT I’VE SEEN SEEMS TO BE `INAPPROPRIATE’
  • *NUNES: TRUMP, OTHERS IN TRANSITION PUT INTO INTELLIGENCE REPORT
  • *NUNES: QUESTION IS IF TRUMP SHOULD BE IN THESE `NORMAL’ REPORTS

And the punchline: there are “multiple FISA warrants outstanding against Trump” Nunes also told reporters:

As we detailed earlier, it appears Trump may have been right, yet again.

Two days after FBI director Comey shot down Trump’s allegation that Trump was being wiretapped by president Obama before the election, it appears that president Trump may have been on to something because moments ago, the House Intelligence Chairman, Devin Nunes, told reporters that the U.S. intelligence community incidentally collected information on members of President Trump’s transition team, possibly including Trump himself, and the information was “widely disseminated” in intelligence reports.

As AP adds, Nunes said that President Donald Trump’s communications may have been “monitored” during the transition period as part of an “incidental collection.”

Nunes told a news conference Wednesday that the communications appear to be picked up through “incidental collection” and do not appear to be related to the ongoing FBI investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russia.

He says he believes the intelligence collections were done legally, although in light of the dramatic change in the plotline it may be prudent to reserve judgment on how “incidental” it was.

“I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community collected information on U.S. individuals involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes told reporters.

“Details about U.S. persons involved in the incoming administration with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reports.”

The information was “legally brought to him by sources who thought we should know it,” Nunes said, though he provided little detail on the source.

The FBI is not cooperating with the House of Representatives’ investigation into the NSA’s surveillance of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, the chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), said today.

“And I’ll tell you, NSA is being cooperative,” Nunes continued, “but so far the FBI has not told us whether or not they’re going to respond to our March 15th letter, which is now a couple of weeks old.”

Nunes also reported that as of now, he “cannot rule out” President Obama ordering the surveillance.

No wonder Obama took a “vacation” by himself to the other side of the world.

UK: Five Killed, Including Suspect, In Westminster Terror Attack

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(RFE/RL) — London police say at least five people were killed in a March 22 terrorist attack at the British parliament — including a suspected attacker, a police officer stabbed by the assailant, and “three members of the public” who were struck by the assailant’s vehicle when he rammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge.

Police said they believe a lone assailant carried out attack, which left at least 20 others injured, but that they were continuing a counterterrorism investigation and had not ruled out the possibility that others may have been involved.

Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said “Islamist-related terrorism” is suspected as the motive, but he provided no details.

The attack began at 2:40 p.m. local time, when a man drove a car at a high speed across Westminster Bridge and rammed into a group of pedestrians — killing at least two people — before crashing the vehicle into a railing beside the Parliament and London’s iconic Big Ben clock-tower.

Police said the attacker then got out of the vehicle and ran inside the Parliament’s security perimeter through a vehicle entrance gate and fatally stabbed a police officer.

He was then shot by plainclothes police officers and died after being taken away for treatment.

The police officer who was stabbed died later in a hospital.

Hospital officials said several people who were struck by the assailant’s vehicle suffered “catastrophic” injuries.

One woman who fell from the bridge into the River Thames was pulled out alive by rescue workers, but was said to have suffered serious injuries.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed that three French school children, aged 15 to 16, were among those injured on Westminster Bridge.

Three London police officers and two citizens of Romania also were among the injured who were struck by the vehicle on the bridge.

Westminster Bridge spans the River Thames and is used for vehicle and pedestrian traffic. It meets the Palace of Westminster compound near its northern end.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said she was safe after the attack.

She had been in the House of Commons at the time of the attack and was quickly shuttled away by security to her office at 10 Downing Street, where she called for an emergency security meeting at her Cabinet Office Briefing Room.

A full counterterrorism investigation was launched by London Metropolitan Police.

Meanwhile, the Parliament was placed on lockdown and lawmakers were sequestered in a secure area for about four hours along with others in the compound before people were allowed to leave.

In Washington, the White House said President Donald Trump offered May the full cooperation of the United States government “in responding to the attack and bringing those responsible to justice.”

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also expressed his condolences and said Washington condemns “these horrific acts of violence, and whether they were carried out by troubled individuals or by terrorists.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The violence outside the British Parliament came on the first anniversary of three coordinated suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 victims and injured more than 300 others.

Extremists in the so-called Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks.

Authorities said later that the Brussels attacks were carried out by members of a terrorist cell that had been involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and injured 368 others.

Tillerson Urges US Senators To Approve Montenegro’s NATO Membership

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By Ivan Angelovski

Montenegro’s government is confident that NATO is closer to admitting it after Rex Tillerson urged US senators to approve the membership treaty without further delay.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has written to leaders of the US Senate, urging them to ratify Montenegro’s membership of the NATO alliance, saying it is “strongly in the interests of the United States.”

In a letter dated March 7, published on Tuesday, Tillerson argued that Montenegro’s membership of the alliance would support greater integration, democratic reform, trade, security and stability among its neighbours.

“Montenegro’s participation in the May NATO Summit as full member, not as an observer, will send a strong signal of transatlantic unity,” Tillerson wrote.

Moscow opposes any expansion of NATO to the east, including the Balkans, and the delay in US approval of Montenegro’s accession protocol had raised doubts about whether President Donald Trump’s new administration in the US was ready to stand up to Russia over the issue.

Tillerson’s letter also followed an acrimonious debate between Republican senators John McCain, who backs quick ratification of Montenegro’s membership, and Rand Paul, who questions the wisdom of angering Russia.

McCain said that by blocking a quick vote on Montenegro in the Senate, Paul was working for Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

Montenegro hopes the Senate will ratify its accession before the NATO summit in May, and that it will participate in the summit as a full member, Srdjan Darmanovic, Montenegro’s Foreign Minister told an Atlantic Council event in Washington on Tuesday.

“It’s very difficult for me to imagine that [the US, as the] leading country of NATO and a kind of leader of the free world is not going to finalise the [ratification] procedure before that,” he said.

The Atlantic Council event, moderated by Emily Tamkin, a journalist, included the foreign ministers of Montenegro, Croatia and Albania – Darmanovic, Davor Ivo Stier and Ditmir Bushati – debating security in Southeastern Europe.

It was held at a complicated moment for NATO. President Trump has questioned NATO’s role, also accusing member states of not paying their dues to support NATO operations.

Growing Russian influence in the Balkans is meanwhile seen as posing a security threat to Southeastern Europe.

Albanian Foreign Minister Bushati contrasted Moscow’s fierce reaction to Montenegro’s NATO accession process to its far milder reaction to Albanian and Croatian entry in 2009.

“[Now they are] much more vocal, engaging with certain actors, with religious leaders, with political parties, with media outlets,” Bushati said of the Russians.

Darmanovic repeated claims that Russia has given financial, political and propaganda support to the “anti-NATO” campaign in Montenegro, noting that Russian intelligence officers were connected to last October’s alleged anti-Western coup attempt in Podgorica.

Russia has flatly rejected claims by Montenegro that its security agencies stymied a Russian plot to overthrow the pro-Western government.

“Nobody wants to clash with Russia but we see [this support] as a kind of interference in our domestic affairs,” Darmanovic said.

Croatian Foreign Minister Stier blamed Russian intervention in the region on “the vacuum of international politics” in the Balkans created by the US and EU.

“We need to make the use of the best tool that we have – the enlargement process. If we water down that process, that will open room for others to fill in the gap,” Stier said.

Those “others”, according to all three ministers, were not only Russia but Turkey, China and the Gulf states.

“We don’t percieve ‘third actors’ as a threat per se, but we would like to see them complementary with our own trajectory, which is not always the case,” Bushati said.

Three countries recently launched the “Adriatic trilateral initiative” aimed at strengthening cooperation in integration processes and security issues in the region.

“The common philosophy is that we share the same values, we are run in the same way and we are ready to cooperate in and out of NATO in common projects,” Darmanovic said.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/montenegro-s-hopes-rise-as-us-secretary-urged-nato-addmission-03-22-2017#sthash.a924d1hD.dpuf

Heart Tissue Grown On Spinach Leaves

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Researchers face a fundamental challenge as they seek to scale up human tissue regeneration from small lab samples to full-size tissues, bones, even whole organs to implant in people to treat disease or traumatic injuries: how to establish a vascular system that delivers blood deep into the developing tissue.

Current bioengineering techniques, including 3-D printing, can’t fabricate the branching network of blood vessels down to the capillary scale that are required to deliver the oxygen, nutrients and essential molecules required for proper tissue growth.

To solve this problem, a multidisciplinary research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro have successfully turned to plants. They report their initial findings in the paper “Crossing kingdoms: Using decelluralized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds” published online in advance of the May 2017 issue of the journal Biomaterials.

“Plants and animals exploit fundamentally different approaches to transporting fluids, chemicals and macromolecules, yet there are surprising similarities in their vascular network structures,” the authors wrote. “The development of decellularized plants for scaffolding opens up the potential for a new branch of science that investigates the mimicry between plant and animal.”

In a series of experiments, the team cultured beating human heart cells on spinach leaves that were stripped of plant cells. They flowed fluids and microbeads similar in size to human blood cells through the spinach vasculature, and they seeded the spinach veins with human cells that line blood vessels. These proof-of-concept studies open the door to using multiple spinach leaves to grow layers of healthy heart muscle to treat heart attack patients.

Other decellularized plants could provide the framework for a wide range of tissue engineering technologies. “We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,” said Glenn Gaudette, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at WPI and corresponding author of the paper. “Adapting abundant plants that farmers have been cultivating for thousands of years for use in tissue engineering could solve a host of problems limiting the field.”

In addition to Gaudette, the WPI research team includes Tanja Dominko, PhD, DVM, associate professor of biology and biotechnology, who studies molecular mechanisms of human cell development; Pamela Weathers, PhD, professor of biology and biotechnology, a plant biologist; and Marsha Rolle, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering, who focuses on vasculature tissue engineering. The collaborative team also includes human stem cell and plant biology researchers at Wisconsin and Arkansas. “This project speaks to the importance of interdisciplinary research,” Gaudette said. “When you have people with different expertise coming at a problem from different perspectives, novel solutions can emerge.”

The paper’s first author is Joshua Gerslak, a graduate student in Gaudette’s lab, who helped design and conduct the experiments, and who developed an effective process for removing plant cells from spinach leaves by flowing or “perfusing” a detergent solution through the leaves’ veins. “I had done decellularization work on human hearts before and when I looked at the spinach leaf its stem reminded me of an aorta. So I thought, let’s perfuse right through the stem,” Gershlak said. “We weren’t sure it would work, but it turned out to be pretty easy and replicable. It’s working in many other plants.”

When the plant cells are washed away what remains is a framework made primarily of cellulose, a natural substance that is not harmful to people. “Cellulose is biocompatible (and) has been used in a wide variety of regenerative medicine applications, such as cartilage tissue engineering, bone tissue engineering, and wound healing,” the authors wrote.

In addition to spinach leaves, the team successfully removed cells from parsley, Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood), and peanut hairy roots. They expect the technique will work with many plant species that could be adapted for specialized tissue regeneration studies. “The spinach leaf might be better suited for a highly-vascularized tissue, like cardiac tissue, whereas the cylindrical hollow structure of the stem of Impatiens capensis (jewelweed) might better suit an arterial graft. Conversely, the vascular columns of wood might be useful in bone engineering due to their relative strength and geometries,” the authors wrote.

Using plants as the basis for tissue engineering also has economic and environmental benefits. “By exploiting the benign chemistry of plant tissue scaffolds, we could address the many limitations and high costs of synthetic, complex composite materials. Plants can be easily grown using good agricultural practices and under controlled environments. By combining environmentally friendly plant tissue with perfusion-based decellularization, we have shown that there can be a sustainable solution for pre-vascularized tissue engineering scaffolds.”

At WPI, the research continues along several lines, Gaudette said, with studies to optimize the decellularization process and further characterize how various human cell types grow while they are attached to, and are potentially nourished by, plant-based scaffolds. Also, engineering a secondary vascular network for the outflow of blood and fluids from human tissue will be explored. On April 7, 2017, Gershlak will present the technology and early results as an invited speaker at the National Academy of Inventors inaugural Student Innovation Showcase in Boston, where he will detail the work for more than 200 accomplished inventors and technology commercialization leaders.

Huns And Settlers May Have Cooperated On Frontier Of Roman Empire

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Analysis of isotopes in bones and teeth from fifth-century cemeteries suggests that nomadic Huns and Pannonian settlers on the frontier of Roman Empire may have intermixed, according to a study published March 22, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Susanne Hakenbeck from University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues.

Historians tell of Huns and other nomads attacking settlements on the edge of the Roman Empire during the fifth century. However, archaeological evidence shows high levels of hybridity among these groups of people, indicating that more complex relationships between nomads and settlers may have occurred.

To examine such relationships in the late Roman province of Pannonia, Hakenbeck and colleagues analyzed isotopes in bone collagen, dentine and tooth enamel from individuals from five fifth-century cemeteries in modern-day Hungary. Significant levels of range in strontium and oxygen isotopes could reflect a nomadic lifestyle, while nitrogen and carbon isotopes could distinguish pastoral and agricultural diets.

The researchers found that diets were highly variable both among populations and within individuals. This suggests that populations used a range of subsistence strategies, and that many individuals changed their diets significantly over their lives. Nomads may have switched to smaller herds and more farming, while settlers may have integrated animal herding.

This suggests that, rather than being characterized only by violence, the end of the Roman Empire may also have included cooperation and coexistence of people in the frontier zone.

“Written sources tell us of violence, treachery and treaties that were broken as soon as they were made, but this was not the whole story,” said Hakenbeck. “Our research gives an insight into ordinary people’s lives along the late Roman frontier, where nomadic animal herders could become farmers and farmers could become herders.”

Stolen Van Goghs Back In Amsterdam Museum 14 Years Later

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After an absence of 14 years, the two paintings by Van Gogh that were feared lost are again on display in the Van Gogh Museum. The works were stolen from the collection in 2002 by thieves who needed only a few minutes for the entire operation. The theft was a major blow to the art world.

Last September, a team from the Italian Guardia di Finanza stumbled upon the two paintings during a house search in the vicinity of Naples. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the Italian and Dutch authorities, the works could be released relatively soon and begin their journey back to the Netherlands. Starting today (March 22), they have resumed their place in the museum’s collection and are on display in the state in which they were found, without their frames, Art Daily reports.

‘The homecoming of the recovered paintings means that our collection is once again complete, and we can close the door on this particularly painful period in our history. I’ve been looking forward tremendously to the day when we could again show these two gems to our public. That day has finally come. We haven’t been able to tell their story for more than 14 years, but starting today, they again have a face and a voice! They’re home at last! Unbelievable!’ director Axel Rüger said with a broad smile.

Initial examination has shown that the works have suffered relatively little damage. Apart from a small area of visible damage to the canvas View of the Sea at Scheveningen, the Van Goghs are in reasonably good condition. The most obvious damage was caused immediately after the robbery, when one of the thieves removed the frames.

Presumably they were not tossed around very much during the years that followed. In fact, they seem to have been left in peace behind the double wall where they were found, in the house occupied by the parents of Camorra chief Raffaele Imperiale. Today the returned paintings will receive a festive welcome from the outgoing Minister of Culture, Jet Bussemaker, and museum director Axel Rüger. The works will be on display until 14 May, after which they will go to the restoration studio for examination and treatment.

Feared lost but recovered Last year members of a specialist team of the Italian Guardia di Finanza stumbled upon the two stolen works while searching one of the houses belonging to the fugitive Neapolitan Raffaele Imperiale. This put an end, in September 2016, to many years of uncertainty as to the condition and whereabouts of the paintings, which had been missing from the Van Gogh Museum since 2002.

Axel Rüger: ‘As director of the museum, I have first-hand experience of the effect that such a traumatic incident can have on the staff. In recent years I’ve been involved in the search for the works. It’s wonderful for me to get them back and to see them in our collection for the first time!’

Fourteen years of wondering about their condition and whereabouts It was long feared that the works had suffered considerable damage. The recovered paintings appear to be in reasonably good condition, however. The relatively minor damage is all the more remarkable given that both paintings were forcibly removed from their frames after the theft, in the course of which View of the Sea at Scheveningen was damaged by one of the thieves.

The canvas Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen seems at first glance to be unharmed, apart from slight damage to the edges in a few places and some scratches in the layer of varnish. The work View of the Sea at Scheveningen suffered more damage: a piece of the paper support – and therefore a significant part of the depiction – is missing in the lower left-hand corner. We recently learned that this piece of paper was torn off when the work was forcibly removed from its frame. Small pieces of paint have chipped off in several places along the edge. In fact, this work had already had an eventful past, marked by intensive restorations and new ‘relinings’. During the latter interventions, the work on its original paper support was ironed onto a canvas, using a paste made of wax and resin, which was applied with a great deal of heat and pressure – a technique that is no longer used.

Filling in the gaps in the story The two paintings from Van Gogh’s early period are small gems that have a lot of added value for the museum’s collection. Their return therefore fills glaring gaps in the presentation.

View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882), originally painted on paper, is one of the first works Van Gogh made without the supervision of his teacher, Anton Mauve. In the preceding years he had devoted himself almost exclusively to drawing and had done little painting. Given his still-scant experience, the canvas is strikingly forceful. Even though the brushwork is fairly coarse and the simple, drawn figures distributed rather haphazardly over the beach, the space and the approaching storm are aptly characterized.

Van Gogh painted the Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen in 1884, when he was living with his parents in Nuenen in the province of Brabant. The canvas was intended for his mother, who had broken her leg early that year. The choice of subject, the church of the Reverend van Gogh, suggests that Vincent hoped his father would take pleasure in the work as well. X-radiographs show that Van Gogh touched up the foreground and other passages too, probably a year later, in 1885. He painted figures in front of the church door and applied autumnal colours to the bare winter trees and hedges. Only the church, the sky and some of the trees remained unchanged. In the foreground Van Gogh painted women wearing long mourning shawls, perhaps a reference to his own grieving process and thus to the death of his father, who died on 26 March 1885. In addition to its art-historical importance, therefore, this work is clearly of biographical value as well.

Van Gogh bus connects Nuenen and Amsterdam To mark the return of the two Van Goghs, the organization Van Gogh Brabant and the Van Gogh Museum are introducing a bus service between Amsterdam and Nuenen. Visitors to the Van Gogh Museum can see, all on the same day, not only the paintings but also the edifice depicted, the Reformed Church in Nuenen. The bus service begins on 30 March.

Saudi-Pakistan Meet Aims At Strengthening Ties – OpEd

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By Ghazanfar Ali Khan

The Saudi-Pakistani relationship is a vast and dynamic web of cooperative linkages, age-old bonds of friendship and undertakings, dating from well before the establishment of diplomatic relations and growing continuously year-on-year. Today, the Kingdom and Pakistan maintain close and robust political, military, economic, security and cultural relations, rarely found in the history of global camaraderie.

In fact, Saudi Arabia’s long-standing and comprehensive relationship with Pakistan operates at many levels and in many areas, including trade, governance and values, health, education and culture besides politics and security. The two countries also work together extensively at the international level, within the framework of several bilateral, regional and global organizations including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Moreover, the Kingdom is the biggest exporter of oil and petroleum products to Pakistan, while Saudi Arabia has been a key market for Pakistani goods and services. No doubt, the two sides sought to develop extensive commercial, cultural, religious, political and strategic relations since the establishment of Pakistan in 1947. Pakistan affirms its relationship with Saudi Arabia as their most “important and bilateral partnership” in the current foreign policy of Pakistan, while working and seeking to further strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia, the country that hosts the two holy mosques in Makkah and Madinah.

The bilateral relationship has grown further since Pakistan joined the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT). The IMAFT, created by Saudi Arabia in December 2015 to combat Daesh and other terror groups, has 39 members, including Turkey and Malaysia with a command center in Riyadh.

All these new developments are the result of the frequent political consultations between the leaders and the high-ranking officials of the two countries, and more so between King Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The leaders of Saudi Arabia command great respect in Pakistan.

According to a survey, Pakistanis hold the most favorable perception of the Kingdom in the world, with 95 percent of the respondents viewing Saudi Arabia favorably. With one of the largest armies in the world and as the only declared nuclear power in the Muslim world, Pakistan has maintained a unique position and works closely with the Kingdom and other member states of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as the world at large.

A report released by the Pakistani Embassy said that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the leading members of the OIC. “Saudi Arabia has been one of the strongest supporters of Pakistan through the years,” said the report. Saudi Arabia has provided extensive religious and educational aid to Pakistan, being a major contributor to the construction of mosques and madrassas (religious schools) across that South Asian country, including the King Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, named after late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

Over the years, the role and the bond between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been increasingly becoming strong and complementary. The relations between the two countries also reflect widely developing economic ties. Trade between them has grown in recent years. In addition, the number of Pakistani workers in the Kingdom has increased and now stands at about 2.6 million, who remit more than $5.6 billion a year to their families in Pakistan.

In the manpower sector, Saudi Arabia remains a major destination among Pakistanis, who came to the Kingdom for employment in great numbers during the last five decades. Besides manpower, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan can also work closely within the framework of “Saudi Vision 2030.” The two countries have unexploited proven mineral resources. Thus, investment in geophysics and other mining-related disciplines will pay huge dividends in the long run.

The Saudi interest in mining industry is there to stay and Pakistan has the human resource to provide for such a demand. The Vision 2030 offers Pakistan an opportunity to upscale its manpower export to more skilled and managerial levels, inevitably boosting its foreign remittances. The close ties between Riyadh and Islamabad will provide more opportunities for cooperation within the Vision 2030.

Vision 2030 has a mandate to forge closer partnerships with foreign countries. No doubt, Pakistan has enjoyed warm relations with Saudi Arabia since the birth of the country. The relations are rooted in the centuries-old religious, cultural and commercial links between the two peoples. Moreover, the relationship is also based on shared Islamic ideals.

To this end, it is important to mention that Pakistan is the only state founded on Islamic identity, while Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) and home to the two holiest mosques of Islam. Qur’an and Sunnah play a significant role in the constitutional framework of both countries. In fact, the first “treaty of friendship” was signed by the two countries as early as 1951, laying the basis for expanding cooperation.

Over the years, the two countries succeeded in developing a unique synergy for mutual development and prosperity. Saudi Arabia has the largest number of Pakistani passport-holders. No other country has such a massive diaspora, which is composed of top-notch Pakistani professionals. Pakistani engineers and construction experts have played a crucial role in building infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Similarly, Pakistani doctors, entrepreneurs, academics and financial experts have played a premier role in developing the institutional infrastructure of the Kingdom.

Referring to the progressively growing relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Shah Faisal Kakar, a senior diplomat at the Pakistan Embassy, said: “The Kingdom and Pakistan enjoy warm and friendly relations, and the two countries have developed strong ties in different fields.”

A number of monuments in Pakistan bear testimony to the depth of bilateral relations.
The International Islamic University (IIU) in Islamabad was established with a grant of $10 million from Saudi Arabia. The third-largest city in Pakistan was renamed Faisalabad after the late King Faisal. In keeping with the high degree of mutual trust and brotherhood, there has been a regular exchange of high-level visits between the two countries.

On the commercial front, the two countries have forged closer ties. Bilateral trade has been on the rise for the past few years. The balance of trade is in favor of Saudi Arabia as Pakistan imports most of its oil from the Kingdom. A centerpiece of bilateral economic and commercial relations is the Joint Ministerial Commission (JMC) between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Several agreements provide a firm footing for bilateral relations. The two countries have in place an agreement for political consultations and air service agreement, an extradition agreement, a cultural accord, an agreement on security cooperation, an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation, and an agreement on avoidance of double taxation.


How The Government Ruined US Healthcare And What Can Be Done – OpEd

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By Alice Salles*

Government’s meddling in the healthcare business has been disastrous from the get-go.

Since 1910, when Republican William Taft gave in to the American Medical Association’s lobbying efforts, most administrations have passed new healthcare regulations. With each new law or set of new regulations, restrictions on the healthcare market went further, until at some point in the 1980s, people began to notice the cost of healthcare had skyrocketed.This is not an accident. It’s by design.

As regulators allowed special interests to help design policy, everything from medical education to drugs became dominated by virtual monopolies that wouldn’t have otherwise existed if not for government’s notion that intervening in people’s lives is part of their job.

But how did costs go up, and why didn’t this happen overnight?It wasn’t until 1972 that President Richard Nixon restricted the supply of hospitals by requiring institutions to provide a certificate-of-need.

Just a couple years later, in 1974, the president also strengthened unions for hospital workers by boosting pension protections, which raise the cost for both those who run hospitals and taxpayers in cases of institutions that rely on government subsidies. This move also helped force doctors who once owned and ran their own hospitals to merge into provider monopolies. These, in turn, are often only able to keep their doors open with the help of government subsidies.

This artificial restriction on healthcare access had yet another harsh consequence: overworked doctors.

But they weren’t the first to feel the consequences hit home. As the number of hospitals and clinics became further restricted and the healthcare industry became obsessed with simple compliance, patients were the first to feel abandoned.

According to Business Insider, the average doctor has thousands of patients, and each visit lasts less than 30 minutes. Prior to the government’s slow but absolute control of healthcare, the doctor listened to the patient — many old timers will confirm — even if they couldn’t afford it. Few were turned down. Now, doctors can hardly recall the conversations they have with the people they are supposed to be looking after.As President Barack Obama pushed further restrictions on the insurance industry by touting his Affordable Care Act as a piece of legislation that would make insurance more affordable — ignoring that insurance isn’t the same as care — the overall cost of coverage also increased over the years. And as a result, a new group of independent healthcare professionals went on to ignite one of the most liberating revolutions in recent US history.

Direct Primary Care: Removing Artificial Restrictions from the Picture

Business Insider chronicles the story behind Dr. Bryan Hill’s practice.

As a pediatrician, Hill spent most of his life dealing with insurance companies. But one day after answering an impromptu house call, he decided he had had enough.

That’s when he learned about primary care clinics. These offices remain open by giving patients memberships in exchange for a monthly fee that covers most of what the average patient requires. As a result, the patient pays the doctor directly, and neither party is forced to navigate the complicated rules imposed by insurance companies.

In September 2016, Hill opened his practice in South Carolina, and he’s not planning on going back. But he’s just one of many. As ACA became increasingly suffocating to patients and providers, many doctors ditched the system altogether while others went into the primary care business.

On average, members of these direct primary care clinics pay as little as $60 per month, with couples paying about $150. Without having to handle heavily regulated middlemen, patients have a clearer picture of how much they spend on their health by being members of such practices. They also enjoy the peace of mind of knowing their doctor.

Studies have already demonstrated that when there is good communication between doctors and patients, treatments are more efficient. This is not simply because doctors are giving patients attention, but also because they are able to tailor a certain treatment to that patient’s lifestyle, health, and activities.

By removing the government entirely from the picture and allowing patients and doctors to once again deal directly with one another, the practice of embracing primary care helps to illustrate the importance of an individual and personalized approach to healthcare.

For governments and government bureaucrats, everything is dealt with from a collective perspective — after all, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

When government gets involved in healthcare, everything looks like another number, another statistic. But what bureaucrats fail to understand is that they do not possess all the answers. Only a doctor who is paying attention will be better able to help the individual patient — not a few thousand new regulations.

In essence, what this growing movement seems to suggest is that, even if doctors and patients are unaware of the interventionist forces driving the cost of doing business and receiving medical attention, they’re still driven into the open arms of the free market at some point or another. In the end, needs speak louder than ideology.

Originally published at The AntiMedia. 

About the author:
*Alice Salles was born and raised in Brazil but has lived in America for the past ten years. She now lives in Compton, California and writes for The Advocates for Self-Government, Liberty Conservative, and Anti-Media.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Is Foreign Aid A Sacred Cow? – OpEd

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By Victor V. Claar*

In case you missed it – understandably – in the barrage of news stories and Saint Patrick’s Day posts last week, a group of 106 faith leaders have collaborated on a letter they have signed and sent to the Democrat and Republican leadership of both houses of Congress. The letter implores Congress not to reduce the size of the U.S. International Affairs Budget, and was occasioned by President Donald J. Trump’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

Since the final passage of the Budgeting and Accounting Act of 1921, the president has been charged with delivering a proposed budget to Congress no later than the first Monday in February. Far from final, this “executive budget” usually serves as a starting point for budgetary discussions and negotiations.

In Trump’s proposed budget, he asks Congress for a $10.9 billion reduction – roughly 28 percent – of the funds currently allocated to international diplomatic and aid programs, and channeled through institutions such as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Though these numbers sound large, keep in mind that the overall federal budget lies north of $3 trillion, making the share of federal budget funds devoted to international affairs – currently around $50 billion — less than one percent of total spending. Along with proposed cuts elsewhere, the suggested reduction in the portion of the budget designated for international affairs would be reallocated to Trump’s proposed increases in national defense.

The president is not the first to suggest that cuts to international affairs spending might be worth considering. Late last year the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) specifically evaluated reductions in international affairs funds as one of several options aimed at deficit reduction over the next ten years. In their proposal, international affairs funding would be reduced by 25 percent: not far off from the president’s own proposed reduction, albeit with a different goal.

In weighing costs versus benefits of such a cut, the CBO cites a June 2016 Congressional Research Service report that concluded, “In most cases, clear evidence of the success or failure of U.S. assistance programs is lacking, both at the program level and in aggregate.” The report explains why in its summary:

… historically, most aid programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their actual impact. Many programs are not even evaluated on basic performance. The purpose and methodologies of foreign aid evaluation have varied over the decades, responding to political and fiscal circumstances … Persistent challenges to effective evaluation include unclear aid objectives, funding and personnel constraints, emphasis on accountability for funds, methodological challenges, compressed timelines, country ownership and donor coordination commitments, security, and agency and personnel incentives. As a result of these challenges, aid agencies do not undertake evaluation of all foreign aid activities, and evaluations, when carried out, may differ considerably in quality.

While the Congressional Research Service and the CBO humbly confess they simply do not know whether, or to what extent, international aid results in better outcomes – either for us or for the rest of the planet’s population – the 106 faith leaders mentioned above appear quite certain in their claim that, with a mere one percent of the federal budget, “the International Affairs Budget has helped alleviate the suffering of millions; drastically cutting the number of people living in extreme poverty in half, stopping the spread of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDs and Ebola, and nearly eliminating polio.”

These are bold claims — especially given the ambivalence of the CBO and the Congressional Research Service regarding the alleged impact of initiatives like direct aid.

While many of the world’s politicians would like to take credit for cutting extreme global poverty in half in just 20 years, and the aforementioned faith leaders seem quite ready to thank politicians for their achievements, the source of this success is far simpler: economic growth. As the Economist magazine has put it, “ … the biggest poverty-reduction measure of all is liberalising markets to let poor people get richer. That means freeing trade between countries … and within them.”

It hasn’t been aid that has lifted people out of poverty, but trade and access to markets.

And such economic growth normally occurs most easily in places that possess a few essential elements that provide a fertile environment in which economic growth can take hold: rule of law; private property; free association and exchange; access to markets; a culture of trust; and a vital network of churches, communities, and cultures that encourage respect for the dignity of the human person.

This is not to say that there is no role for foreign partners, whether private or public ones, in helping the remaining “bottom billion” forge a pathway out of poverty. For example, in an NBER working paper prepared for the World Economic Forum, Elsa Artadi and Xavier Sala-i-Martin identify some of the key factors that continue to hold back many African nations, including “low levels of education, poor health, adverse geography, closed economies, too much public expenditure and too many military conflicts.” We will need to think far more creatively, and be far more patient, as we work to overcome obstacles like these that lie along the pathways out of poverty for much of Africa.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing either for or against the president’s proposals regarding international affairs. I am merely pointing out that the faith leaders’ claim that the U.S. International Affairs Budget has cut global poverty in half grossly overstates what government aid alone can accomplish.

About the author:
*Victor V. Claar
is professor of economics at Henderson State University, the public liberal arts university of Arkansas. He is a coauthor of Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy, and Life Choices, and author of the Acton Institute’s Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

Why South Korea’s Election Might Not Change North Korean Policy – OpEd

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By Mitchell Blatt*

With the dismissal of South Korea’s former president Park Geun-hye from office, a new presidential election is coming up on May 9, and a change of parties is not only expected—it is almost certain. With the liberal Democratic/Minjoo Party replacing the conservative Korean Liberty Party/Saenuri, what kind of changes can the world expect with regard to U.S.-Korean relations and policy towards North Korea?

Throughout the past year, the Minjoo Party criticized Park’s decision to deploy the U.S.-produced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The leading Minjoo Party candidate, Moon Jae-in, served as the chief of staff to the last liberal president, Roh Moo-hyun, who supported policies of engagement with North Korea. So will the next government be more open to diplomacy at this dangerous time on the Korean peninsula?

To answer these and other questions, I talked to John Lee, who is the Conservative Columnist at NK News and the writer behind The Korean Foreigner.

Lee said that because of the reality on the ground, the next president, whoever it is, will be constrained in his choices. The Minjoo Party will have to accept THAAD, because it is already a done deal. The first components of THAAD arrived at Osan Air Base, outside of Seoul, on March 6, and the system is in the process of being assembled. “By the time the elections are over, this is going to be a done deal, and they will have no choice but to accept it. They’ll just blame it on the Park administration,” Lee said.

As for possibilities of dealing with North Korea, Lee said the Minjoo Party might support engaging in talks, as China has suggested to the U.S. “Four party talks might be enticing for the next progressive government, but I think they will have a hard time juggling the economic interests of China with the military alliance of the United States. The military alliance, as much as they [the progressives] disdain it, is not something that they can just ignore. It would just be irresponsible,” he said.

Lee himself has called talks “pointless” in his NK News column, and also criticized other possible engagement strategies like reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint industrial zone operated with South Korea in the North that was started by liberal president Kim Dae-jung and then shutdown by Park in 2016 after another North Korean nuclear test.

But he would also oppose the use of military force against North Korea as well. “I think deterrence has worked for the past seventy years, and I think it can continue to work,” he said. “Strong deterrence militarily and economic sanctions, I believe will help contain the situation as much as possible, but something more kinetic would involve a lot of human lives being lost. I think that would be the absolute worst case sanctions.”

While U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments in Seoul were interpreted by many as advocating for more aggressive policies, Lee didn’t think so. Tillerson said the time for “strategic patience” had passed and that military options are “on the table.”

“It’s the same thing they’ve been saying since the Clinton administration,” Lee said. “And anytime you say, ‘All options are on the table,’ what that means is, yeah, we have options, but we haven’t picked one yet. So I think they’re just going with being ‘tough’ on North Korea as far as their rhetoric goes, but I am not convinced that their rhetoric can be backed up by any significant actions.”

While North Korea is getting all the foreign press for its half a dozen missile tests in the first three months of 2017 and its threats to test fire its first intercontinental ballistic missile (which it has not shown it has the capabilities to do, though analysts say it is close) towards the U.S., Lee said that the economy will be an even bigger issue for Korean voters.

“The biggest issue for the progressive and middle of the road voters is the economy. It’s always been the economy, and it will always be the economy. The conservatives said they would improve things. They failed. Now is the government really able to steer the economy? That’s debatable. But this is politics, so as far as performance goes, the conservatives have not lived up to the government’s expectations.”

Lee, who was born in Brunei, growing up in a country still very much influenced by British colonialism, and attended college in the U.S. before going to become a citizen of his ancestral Korea, calls himself “a foreigner in my own country.” He also had a lot to say about the political divide in Korea, the differences between conservative politics in the U.S. and Korea, Korea’s narrative of “ethnic purity,” and the legacy the Japanese occupation of Korea still weighs on Korean politics, where conservatives and liberals will trade insults of “pro-communist” and “pro-Japanese.”

Read the full interview: Interview with John Lee

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey. Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

Claims Gaza Director Of Turkish Aid Organization Diverted Funds To Hamas

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Israeli authorities on Tuesday cleared for publication details regarding the investigation and case of Muhammad Murtaja, the director of the Gaza office of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), who was detained by Israeli forces at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Feb. 13.

According to a statement from the Israeli army, Murtaja was arrested on suspicion of working for Hamas, the de facto ruling party in the Gaza Strip, which is considered to be a “terrorist organization” by the state of Israel, and that the TIKA director “falsified lists of needy Gazans, transferred aid packages, and diverted millions of shekels to the terror group.”

The army claimed that while Murtaja was traveling to receive training from TIKA, that “he also intended to acquire information that would increase the accuracy of Hamas rockets launched at Israel.”

“The Israeli Security Agency (ISA) investigation revealed that Murtaja was recruited by Hamas’s military wing in the end of 2008. By early 2009, he was already an active member of the terror group, participating in military training and exercises, manufacturing weapons and explosive devices, and digging terror tunnels. Murtaja even stored weapons, such as hand grenades and guns, in his home,” the statement said.

According to the army, Murtaja “deceived TIKA” by using resources intended for the organization and humanitarian projects in Gaza and “diverting them to Hamas’ military wing,” adding that “millions of shekels” were given to the military wing of Hamas.

The army then went on to claim that “this fraud was carried out in collusion with the senior ranks of Hamas in Gaza, headed by Ismail Haniyeh.”

“Murtaja’s interrogation revealed the depth of his collusion with Hamas. He divulged information about tunnel routes, the methods used by Hamas in digging the tunnels, action plans for fighting, and weapons manufacturing,” the statement said.

The army went on to point out that Murtaja’s alleged connections to the Hamas movement was “far from the first time that Hamas has recruited and exploited the positions of humanitarian workers in order to divert aid intended for Gaza’s civilians to terror,” citing the 2016 conviction of a UNDP official for using his position to provide funds and weapons to Hamas, and the allegations against World Vision employee Muhammad al-Halabi accusing him of funneling “tens of millions of dollars in charity funds to Hamas.”

TIKA, a Turkish governmental department working on development projects abroad, which according to the organization’s website, it has funded a number of medical, agricultural, and housing projects in the Gaza Strip in the past three years, was not immediately available for comment on the allegations against Murtaja.

In 2016, Israeli forces detained at least three employees of aid agencies at the Erez crossing.

The recent spate of detentions of aid workers over their alleged involvement with Hamas comes amid an already dire situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip has suffered under an Israeli military blockade since 2007, when Hamas was elected to rule the territory. Residents of Gaza suffer from high unemployment and poverty rates, as well as the consequences of three devastating wars with Israel since 2008, most recently in the summer of 2014.

The 51-day Israeli offensive, termed “Operation Protective Edge” by Israeli authorities, resulted in the killings of at least 1,462 Palestinian civilians, a third of whom were children, according to the UN.

Since then, Israel has repeatedly restricted the amount of construction material allowed into the Gaza Strip, claiming that Hamas diverted portions of it.

However, according to UN agency OCHA, “most of the previously entered shelter repair and reconstruction material has already been sold to beneficiaries.”

The UN has said that the besieged Palestinian territory could become “uninhabitable” by 2020, as its nearly two million residents remain in dire poverty due to the nearly decade-long Israeli blockade that has crippled the economy, while continuing to experience the widespread destruction wrought by the Israeli offenses, and the slow-paced reconstruction efforts aimed at rebuilding homes for some 75,000 of Palestinians who remain displaced following the last Israeli assault.

Recovery efforts have also been hindered by a severe shortage of foreign funding.

Earlier last year, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has played a leading role in rebuilding destroyed homes in the beleaguered coastal enclave, said that of the $720 million required for its emergency shelter program, donor countries had pledged only $247 million.

Is Deep State Trying To Start A Race War? – OpEd

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While watching the news unfold on the Mainstream Media (“MSM”) news networks all across the board today on March 22, 2017 (ironically enough with the cryptic dateline being “322″ for all the conspiracy theorists) relating to the new London “terrorist attacks” involving one lone nutjob who simply was armed with an “8 inch hunting knife” who insanely and bizarrely ran his car into a crowd of pedestrians, killing 1-2 people, one has to wonder why the MSM is so quick to call this a “terrorist attack” when they know only what we viewers know, that is, a whole lot of nothing, including the name, identity or religious background of the lunatic assailant.

But one must also marvel and wonder at the humongous amounts of police presence, military grade vehicles, weapons, SWAT teams, counter-terror teams, seemingly tens of millions of dollars/pounds being spent, the dragnet-like feel of the atmosphere in London, the sheer amount of vacuous “counter-terrorism talking heads” being dispatched to all of the MSM news channels freaking out and frothing at the mouth, so quick to blame this on “terrorism” rather than possibly being just some lone nutjob.

Where is the money, organization, coordination, and military/police power coming from for this?

One wonders why London could not dispatch this many police personnel, military hardware, money, and crack-unit investigatory response when they discovered the largest cache of Establishment-level pedophiles in world history, operating right out of Central London?

And why the police just simply threw up their hands, and said that they just could not either investigate, arrest, prosecute or convict THAT many global child sex predators living within their own neighborhoods because well, simply, there were just too many of them, and they did not have the resources to do so?

Or maybe was it because that all of these bastard creepy crawler pedophiles were from the Ruling Establishment Class of the City of London?

The truth of the matter is that there is another agenda at work here.

If one were to watch a steady diet of Mainstream Media News, either on FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and others, you will immediately come to the conclusion that:

(1) Muslims are terrorists;

(2) Blacks are violent criminals;

(3) Hispanics are drug dealers and rapists; and

(4) other sundry tales.

However, if you continue to watch the Mainstream Media, you will never know that statistically speaking, the majority of sex offenses are committed by Deep State white males, drug trafficking/use offenses are committed by Deep State white males, the majority of criminal acts are committed by Deep State white males, the most violent people on earth responsible for more death and destruction in global history originate with Deep State white males, the greatest genocidal mass-murderers and warmongers in history have been Deep State white males, the biggest thieves and robber barons of low and high finance are Deep State white males, the biggest con-artists are Deep State white males, etc.

The Deep State (vast majority consisting of white males) operating through the Mainstream Media are hell-bent on stoking the fires of racial hatred and animosity in their usual divide and conquer tactics, “tarring” racial and religious minorities with the “feathers” of their own historically shameful acts and behavior, pitting all of the planet’s races against each other because while the masses are busy hating/fighting/distrusting each other, they are also too busy to come after them.

Comey And Lawmakers Ignore Wikileaks Files Revealing Intel Failures – OpEd

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Monday’s House Intelligence Committee testimony by FBI Director James Comey appears to have satisfied the anti-Trump cravings of Democrats, some Republicans and the denizens of corrupted newsrooms across the nation. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the enormous number of intelligence leaks occurring as proven by international whistleblower Julian Assange.

In the midst of President Donald Trump’s allegations that his Trump Tower headquarters was the victim of covert surveillance by Obama operatives, WikiLeaks began its new series of leaks from its files on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7,” it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency, according to Assange, Wikileaks’ founder and editor.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.

The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

In the midst of the Clinton-Trump presidential race, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware.

Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary expense on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.

In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking James-Comey-Jr-1capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.

“Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the ‘Year Zero’ disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of ‘armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should analyzed, disarmed and published,” said the man who revealed the inner-workings of the corrupt political campaign run by Hillary Clinton and her minions.

According to Assange: Wikileaks has also decided to redact some identifying information in “Year Zero” for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in “Vault 7” part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

These Are The Elections That Will Decide Europe’s Fate – Analysis

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By Conn Hallinan*

Going in to the recent elections in the Netherlands, the mainstream story seemed lifted from William Butler Yeats poem, The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold — The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The right was on the march, the left at war with itself, the traditional parties adrift, and the barbarians were hammering at the gates of the European Union.

It’s a grand image, rather like Game of Thrones. But the reality is considerably more complex.

There is, of course, some truth in the apocalyptic imagery: right-wing parties in the Netherlands, France, and Germany have grown. There are indeed some sharp divisions among left parties. And many Europeans are pretty unhappy with those that have inflicted them with austerity policies that have tanked living standards for all but a sliver of the elite.

But there are other narratives at work in Europe these days besides an HBO mega series about blood, war, and treachery.

A Shot Across the Status Quo in the Netherlands

The recent election in the Netherlands is a case in point. After holding a lead over all the other parties, Geert Wilders’ right-wing, racist Party for Freedom faltered. In the end, his Islamophobes didn’t break the gates, though they did pick up five seats.

Overall it was a victory for the center, but it was also a warning for those who advocate “staying the course” politics — and, most pointedly, the consequences of abandoning principles for power.

The Left Greens did quite well by taking on Wilders’ anti-Islam agenda and challenging Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right Popular Party for Freedom and Democracy on the economic front. In one national debate, Jesse Klaver, the GreenLeft’s dynamic leader, argued that janitors should be paid more and bankers less. The election, he said, is not about “Islam and Muslims,” but about “housing, income, and health care.” The voters clearly bought it.

Rutte’s coalition partner, the center-left Labor Party, was crushed, losing 29 seats. For the past four years, the Dutch Labor Party has gone along with Rutte’s program of raising the retirement age and cutting back social spending, and voters punished them for shelving their progressive politics for a seat at the table.

Rutte’s party also lost eight seats, which probably went to centrist parties like Democrats66, suggesting that Rutte’s “business as usual” isn’t what voters want either (though it’s still the number one party in the 150-seat parliament).

There were some lessons from the Dutch elections, though not the simplistic one that the “populist” barbarians lost to the “reasonable” center.

What it mainly demonstrated is that voters are unhappy with the current situation, they are looking for answers, and parties on the left and center left should think carefully about joining governments that think it “reasonable” to impoverish their own people.

France on the Brink

Next up in the election docket is France, where polls show Marine Le Pen’s neo-Nazi National Front leading the pack in a five-way race with traditional right-wing candidate Francois Fillon, centrist and former Socialist Party member Emmanuel Macron, Socialist Party candidate Benoit Hamon, and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon.

The first round, scheduled for April 23, will eliminate all but the two top vote getters. A final round will be held May 7.

With Melenchon and Hamon running at 11.5 percent and 13.5 percent respectively, thus splitting the left vote, the race appears to be between Fillon, Macron, and Le Pen, with the latter polling slightly ahead of Macron and considerably better than Fillon.

If you’re attracted to the apocalypse analogy, France is probably your ticket.

Le Pen is running a campaign aimed against anyone who doesn’t look like Charlemagne or Joan of Arc, but her strong anti-EU positions play well with young people, in small towns, and among rural inhabitants. All three groups have been left behind by neoliberal EU policies that have resulted in de-industrialization and growing economic inequality. Polls indicate she commands 39 percent of 18-to-24 year olds, compared with 21 percent for Macron and 21 percent for Fillon.

Fillon has been wounded by the revelation that he’s been using public funds to pay family members some $850,000 for work they never did. But even before the scandal, his social conservatism played poorly with the young, and workers are alienated by his economic strategy that harkens back to that of British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, whom he greatly admires. His programs sound much like Donald Trump’s: Cut jobless benefits and social services, lay off public workers, and give tax cuts to the wealthy.

Macron, an ex-Rothschild banker and former minister of economics under Hollande, is running neck and neck with Le Pen under the slogan “En Marche” (“On Our Way”), compelling critics on the left to ask “to what?” His platform is a mix of fiscal discipline and mild economic stimulation. At 39, he’s young, telegenic, and a good speaker. But his policies are vague, and it’s not clear there’s a there there.

Most polls indicate a Le Pen vs. Macron runoff, with Macron coming out on top, but that may be dangerous thinking. Macron’s support is soft. Only about 50 percent of those who say they intend to vote for him are “certain” of their vote. In comparison, 80 percent of Le Pen’s voters are “certain” they will vote for her.

There are, as well, some disturbing polling indications for the second round. According to the IFOP poll, some 38 percent of Fillon’s supporters say they’ll jump to Le Pen — that’s 2 million voters — along with 7 percent of Hamon voters and 11 percent of Melenchon backers.

What may be the most disturbing number, however, is that 45 percent of Melenchon voters say they won’t vote at all if Macron is the anti-Le Pen candidate in the second round. Some 26 percent of Fillon’s voters and 21 percent of Hamon’s voters would similarly abstain.

Le Pen will need at least 15 million votes to win, and the Front has never won more than 6 million nationally. But if turnout is low, Le Pen’s strongly motivated voters could put her into the Elysee Palace. In this way, France most resembles Britain prior to the Brexit vote.

If that comes to pass, Le Pen will push for a national referendum on the EU. There’s no guarantee the French will vote to stay in the Union. And if they leave, that will be the huge trade organization’s death knell. The EU can get along without Britain, but it could not survive a Frexit.

Surprising Strength on the German Left

Germany will hold national elections on September 24, but the story there is very different than the one playing out in France.

The German government is currently a grand coalition between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats. The alliance has been a disaster for the Social Democrats, which at one point saw its poll numbers slip below 20 percent.

But German politics has suddenly shifted. On Merkel’s left, the Social Democrats changed leaders and have broken with industrial policies that have driven down the wages of German workers in order to make the country an export juggernaut. On the chancellor’s right, the racist, neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany has drained Christian Democrat voters to support a ban on immigration and a withdrawal from the EU, although the Alternative is dropping in the polls.

The game changer has been the sudden popularity of former EU president Martin Schulz, the new leader of the Social Democrats. The party is now neck and neck with Merkel’s bloc, and some polls show Schulz actually defeating Merkel. In terms of personal popularity, Schulz is now running 16 points ahead of Merkel. While the chancellor’s Christian Democrat alliance tops the polls at 34 percent, the Social Democrats are polling at 32 percent and climbing.

Schulz has made considerable headway critiquing declining living standards. Germany has large numbers of poorly paid workers, and almost 20 percent of workers age 25-to-34 are on insecure, short-term contracts. Unemployment benefits have also been cut back, even though Germany’s economy is the most robust in Europe and the country has a $310 billion surplus.

In any case, the days when Merkel could pull down 40 percent of the vote are gone. Even if her coalition comes in number one, it may not have enough seats to govern, even if its traditional allies, the Free Democrats, make it back into the Bundestag.

That creates the possibility of the first so-called “red-red-green” national government of the Social Democrats, the left-wing Die Linke Party, and the Green Party. Die Linke and the Greens are both polling at around 8 percent. Such an alliance currently runs several major cities, including Berlin. It would not be an entirely comfortable united front: The Social Democrats and the Greens are pro-EU, while Die Linke is highly critical of the organization.

But there is a model out there that gives hope.

Portugal is currently run by a three-party center-left to left alliance. Those parties also disagree on things like the EU, the debt, and NATO membership, but for the time being they’ve decided that stimulating the economy and easing the burden of almost a decade of austerity trumps the disagreements.

An Italian Wild Card

And then there are the Italians.

While Italy hasn’t scheduled elections, the defeat of a constitutional referendum supported by Democratic Party leader and then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last December almost guarantees a vote sometime in the next six months.

Italy has one of the more dysfunctional economies in the EU, with one of the Union’s highest debt ratios and several major banks in deep trouble. It’s the EU’s third largest economy, but growth is anemic and unemployment stubbornly high, particularly among the young.

Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party still tops the polls, but only just, and it’s fallen nearly 15 points in two years. Nipping at its heels is the somewhat bizarre Five Star Party run by comedian Beppe Grillo, whose politics are, well, odd.

Five Star is strongly opposed to the EU, and allies itself with several right-wing parties in the European Parliament. It applauded the election of Donald Trump. On the other hand, it has a platform with many progressive planks, including economic stimulation, increased social services, a guaranteed income for poor Italians, and government transparency. It is also critical of NATO.

Five Star has recently taken a few poll hits, because the party’s mayor of Rome has done a poor job keeping the big, sprawling city running — in truth, even the ancient Romans found it a daunting task — and is caught up in a financial scandal. Some Democratic Party leaders are also being investigated for corruption.

The only other major parties in the mix are former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia, which is polling around 13 percent, and the racist, xenophobic Northern League at 11.5 percent.

The latter, which is based the northern Po Valley, made a recent effort to broaden its base by taking its campaign to Naples in southern Italy. The result was a riot, with protestors tossing rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails at Northern League leader Matteo Salvini.

There are informal talks going on about uniting the two right-wing parties. Berlusconi has worked with the Northern League in the past.

There are also a gaggle of smaller parties in the parliament, ranging from the Left Ecology/Greens to the Brothers of Italy, none registering over 5 percent. But since whoever comes out on top will need to form a coalition, even small parties will likely punch above their weight.

If Five Star does come in first and patches together a government, it will press for a referendum on the EU, and there is no guarantee that Italians — battered by the austerity policies of the big trade group — won’t decide to bail like the British did. An Italexit would probably be a fatal blow to the EU.

Europe’s Choice

Predicting election outcomes is tricky these days, the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump being cases in point.

The most volatile of the upcoming ballots are in France and Italy. Germany’s will certainly be important, but even if Merkel survives, the center-right will be much diminished and the left stronger. And that will have EU-wide implications.

The European left is divided, but not all divisions are unhealthy, and a robust debate is not a bad thing.

None of the problems Europe faces are simple. Is the EU salvageable? What are the alternatives to austerity? How do you tackle growing inequality and the marginalization of whole sections of society? How do you avoid the debt trap facing many countries, blocked by the EU’s economic strictures from pursuing any strategy other than more austerity?

In a recent interview, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and one of the founders of the left organization DiEM25, proposed a “New Deal” for Europe, where in “All Europeans should enjoy in their home country the right to a job paying a living wage, decent housing, high-quality health care and education, and a clean environment.”

The New Deal has five goals that Varoufakis argues can be accomplished under the EU’s current rules and without centering more power in Brussels at the expense of democracy and sovereignty. These would include “large-scale” investment in green technology, guaranteed employment with a living wage, an EU-wide anti-poverty fund, a universal basic income, and anti-eviction protections for the vulnerable.

None of those goals will be easy to achieve, but neither can Europe continue on its current path. The right-wing “populists” may lose an election, but they aren’t going away.

Almost 40 years ago, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched her conservative assault on trade union rights, health care, education, and social services with the slogan, “There is no alternative.” The world is still harvesting the bitter fruits of those years and the tides of hatred and anger they unleashed. It is what put Trump into the Oval Office and Le Pen within smelling distance of the French presidency.

But there is an alternative, and it starts with the simple idea of the greatest good to the greatest number.

*Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com.


World’s Largest Economies Lag Behind In Delivering Secure, Affordable, Sustainable Energy

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When it comes to achieving affordable, environmentally sustainable and secure energy systems, a group of small economies is quickly accelerating away from the rest of the world. The top 20 performers in the fifth annual Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2017 have achieved twice the average increase in their score compared to that of all other countries.

The report, developed in collaboration with Accenture Strategy and launched today at the European Commission, ranks 127 countries based on their ability to provide energy across three dimensions of the “energy triangle”. It finds that the highest performers, which are primarily smaller countries and advanced economies, can overcome constraints if supporting policies are in place.

According to the findings, the world’s biggest energy consumers struggle to take leading positions on the index as they grapple with inherent challenges of their large, complex energy systems and are outperformed by more nimble economies.

Overall, some of the largest consumers of energy such as China (95th), India (87th), Japan (45th), the Russian Federation (48th) and the United States (52nd) have either slipped in the rankings or experienced only marginal gains.

“We’ve seen some significant shifts in the way energy is sourced, delivered and consumed over the past five years,” said Roberto Bocca, Head of Energy and Basic Industries and Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum. “Future energy demand and unprecedented technological developments will continue to present new challenges and opportunities for countries. Now more than ever, countries must understand the performance and trajectory of their energy sectors and have a resilient approach in place to drive progress.”

The top 20 performers on the 2017 index represent a diverse mix. European countries lead the index, with Switzerland (1st) and Norway (2nd) taking the top spots. But other regions also hold high-ranking positions: Colombia (8th), Uruguay (10th) and Costa Rica (14th) are the highest-ranked Latin American nations, while New Zealand places 9th.

While many of the top performers are smaller countries, both by gross domestic product (GDP) and population, some larger countries including France (5th), the United Kingdom (15th) and Germany (19th) have effectively managed complex energy sectors alongside large economies. The presence of European nations among the top-ranking countries reflects advantages gained through a long history of coordination within the region.

“I welcome very much the World Economic Forum’s initiative of the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index (EAPI). Its objective to examine the progress of the global energy transition towards more sustainable, competitive, secure and affordable energy systems matches very well with the objectives of the Energy Union strategy. The fifth edition demonstrates well the unprecedented structural changes in the global energy system. Europe, with its clean energy transition, has embarked on an ambitious path to lead this goal” said Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of the Energy Union and launch partner of the report.

When comparing this year’s average Global Energy Architecture Performance Index to that of 2009, only a modest improvement has been made. However, a number of stand-out performers have climbed the ranks in this time frame by making significant improvements to their energy systems. These include Jamaica (116th to 92nd), Nicaragua (95th to 72nd), Tajikistan (66th to 46th), Mexico (59th to 44th), Luxembourg (37th to 23rd) and Uruguay (25th to 10th).

“Transitioning their energy system to a future state that is more affordable, environmentally sustainable and secure should be an ongoing endeavour for every country, said Muqsit Ashraf, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy – Energy. “As this landscape continues to shift, energy companies need to contribute to the change and adapt to the evolving global energy system. That means rethinking how and where they invest, and the role they play in working with governments and policy-setters.”

The report studies a selection of the top performers, as well as the biggest upward movers, and reveals three principles for generating improvements in energy sectors.

Frame the long-term direction for the energy sector, and commit to it: Governments with long-term visions provide important continuity across these extended time frames. A clear frame and long-term direction are seen to form the basis of policy goals and provide a sense of stability required to encourage investment.

Enable the energy transition with adaptable, co-designed policies: The policies most effective at advancing a country’s energy transition are those which enable solutions that best suit a country’s context. This means creating the necessary opportunities for innovation to flourish and providing flexibility for the most appropriate technologies to emerge organically.

Steward investment towards the areas with most impact: Significant investment is required to make progress on the energy transition and to meet growing demand for energy. The stability of committing to a long-term vision is a must for establishing investor confidence. Stewardship of investment then directs the capital required to support the energy transition to the right projects that will drive progress.

An OPEC Deal Extension Isn’t As Simple As It Sounds – Analysis

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By Tsvetana Paraskova

It’s been six months now that oil prices have been reacting to OPEC, first to the possibility of an agreement, and then to the production cut deal itself, forged by OPEC to rebalance the market. The deal–initially aired as ‘an agreement to agree on a deal’ in September and signed at the end of November—will likely impact the market for at least the next six months.

The agreement clearly states that it is production that OPEC producers are vowing to cut, but Iraqi oil minister Jabbar al-Luaibi has recently claimed—rather emphatically—that it is exports, not production, that serve as the baseline for the cuts. And according to Iraq, the agreed-upon cuts have been all about exports all along.

Of course, exports are the logical ‘by-product’ of production of oil exporting nations, but each of those producers feels the weight of production cuts differently. Each OPEC nation has a specific domestic demand for oil based on population numbers and the share of oil and petroleum products in the energy mix and electricity generation. Each member has unique buyers of their crude, along with differing agendas in keeping and/or growing market shares in various corners of the world.

To cut exports rather than production would hit hard the bottom lines of those who are heavy exporters, so it’s quite clear why an oil cartel whose self-proclaimed mission is to secure “a steady income to producers” chose to cut “production” instead of “exports” in its latest supply-cut agreement.

OPEC producers—especially Saudi Arabia, which shoulders the biggest share of cuts-are desperately trying to maintain their most important market shares such as those in Asia, while measuring exports bound for other destinations in its attempt to comply with the production cuts.

The cartel would have never used the language ‘exports’ in a deal to cut supply, because cutting their exports would mean they would hold a smaller market share. Having a smaller footprint globally would, in turn, mean that OPEC would wield less influence over the price of oil. It’s doubtful OPEC would ever agree to such an unappealing scenario.

But Iraq is uniquely positioned. First, Iraq must contend with the Kurds, as well as international companies, with which it has production agreements that come with penalties for breeching. For this reason, Iraq does not have as much control over production as, say, Saudi Arabia, who deals only with state-run oil. So using export figures rather than production figures may show that Iraq is complying at a higher rate, even though exports are not entirely under their control either. The mere perception of compliance, regardless of the validity, is important as far as the market is concerned.

Another reason why Iraq may prefer to cite exports is because exports are a bit trickier to nail down. There is always conflicting loading data and shipping schedules to contend with, and it’s hard to pinpoint precisely how much oil each OPEC nation has heading out the door.

Production, on the other hand, has concise figures (two figures each, we might add) published in OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report—one direct reported figure and one secondary source figure. Exports are even less transparent, especially for Iraq, who has export figures for both the north and the south.

Data compiled by Bloomberg showed that Iraq’s February exports of 3.85 million barrels per day were, in fact, 39,000 barrels per day higher than January levels, which doesn’t seem so compliant.

In October 2016, Iraq’s oil exports were estimated to be 3.89 million barrels per day. So even if the “reference basket” that OPEC used to craft the deal was based on exports, it doesn’t look like Iraq’s compliance is particularly noteworthy—it’s just more difficult to pin down exactly how noncompliant Iraq is.

So, for OPEC, it’s about production cuts, but beyond the wording of the agreement, it’s the message – we are the ones finally doing something to bring the huge oversupply back to balance. The fine print, of course, is – we wanted the price of oil higher and stable, so that we could plug the gaps in our oil-revenue-dependent budgets.

The market bought the ‘balance’ message, and oil prices steadied at above $50 for three months. The initial surprisingly high compliance at more than 90 percent, due to Saudi Arabia going the extra mile, instilled further confidence that OPEC was following through its promised cuts. Almost every cartel producer is boasting near full or overcompliance, and those who don’t comply, notably Iraq, are claiming the deal’s baseline is about exports.

The price gains from the OPEC deal have been capped by resurging U.S. shale output at the higher oil prices. But the recent drop in the price of oil wiped out almost all the price increase that the cartel’s deal has managed to achieve.

The message to OPEC was that it may have underestimated U.S. shale resilience once again, and the cartel’s previous plans for higher prices may prove ill-conceived.

OPEC’s playbook currently is 1) urging full compliance from all signatories to the deal, 2) using Saudis to signal they may be fed up with doing the extra heavy lifting for rogue members, and 3) talking prices up from time to time with messages that the supply-cut deal may need to be extended.

Last week, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih told Bloomberg Television that OPEC would extend the deal beyond June if stockpiles were “still above the five-year average.”

According to OPEC’s own estimates from earlier this month, OECD commercial oil stocks in January were 278 million barrels above the five-year average.

OPEC’s deal now is trying to send a unified message that the members are making every effort to rebalance the market, so it’s unlikely that OPEC will correct Iraq’s insistence that the deal was forged over export figures rather than production figures.

The cartel is a diverse group of nations with various bilateral, trilateral and bloc relations among them. OPEC members rarely act in full concert, and seldom keep production-cut pledges. Their game now is playing the market with the possible extension of the cuts beyond June, and they have time until May to try to talk prices up.

If the cartel doesn’t extend the deal, the glut may not clear soon, further depressing oil prices and straining the already stretched OPEC producers’ budgets. If they decide to extend the deal, they risk losing market share and part of their power to sway oil markets and prices.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/An-OPEC-Deal-Extension-Isnt-As-Simple-As-It-Sounds.html

 

Reexamining Russia’s Past – Analysis

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Appearing in the March 15 edition of The Spectator, Matthew Dal Santo’s article “In Defence of the Romanovs: the Centenary of the February Revolution” falls short (to my liking) in expressing a good defense (pardon my American preferred English spelling) of the Russian monarchy. Excerpted from Dal Santo’s piece:

Taking its cue from such rejoicing, a new generation of Russian historians casts the February Revolution as a plot hatched in London and New York for Anglo-American world domination. Just as Russia was poised, they believe, for a crushing victory over Germany, British imperialists and American financiers conspired to decapitate the rising global colossus.

This is bad history, mixing with resentment and bitterness the events of 1917, 1945 and 1991. Among the deficiencies of Russia’s modern ‘patriots’ is their obstinate refusal to take a reasonable measure of responsibility for their own revolution.”

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That characterization is a negative oversimplification of the kind of patriotically minded views evident among present day Russians. Russia doesn’t have a monopoly on crackpot thoughts. On the subject at hand, Dal Santo has previously provided more insight as referenced from Pravoslavie.ru.

Relating to his recent piece: on the eve of WW I, there was a fairly popular consensus that Russia rebounded well from is 1905 revolution and war with Japan – added on with the view that Russia was poised for greater socioeconomic and geopolitical advances. Differing with that perspective, a number of politically left of center academics, have over the years portrayed the aforementioned 1905 as a sign of Russia’s extreme weakness. A follow-up counter can be given to that last opinion.

Great powers periodically lose wars, as evidenced by the British experience with American revolutionaries and what the US faced in Southeast Asia. The reason for such losses extends beyond extreme weakness. Like the American revolutionaries and North Vietnamese/Vietcong forces, the Japanese had geography on their side. Towards the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese were showing signs of losing steam, with the Russian government concerned with the domestic instability in its empire. These circumstances made it easier for US President Theodore Roosevelt to mediate a settlement between the two combatants.

On the domestic side, the Russian economy of this period was growing. By present standards, Russia’s 1905 revolution lacked reforms. The world was different then. At the time, America’s democracy existed with numerous shortcomings. The more reasoned of anti-Communist Russophiles maintain that the timing and manner of WW I significantly influenced how Russia changed – adding that change would’ve eventually happened without WW I – but arguably with different conditions – inclusive of a possible constitutional monarchy.

Just before WW I: Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin weren’t on the radar as prospective leaders of Russia. Military historian Max Hastings has suggested that had WW I begun in 1916 (instead of 1914), Russia’s fate might’ve turned out differently. This point leads to some other observations.

As observed by Hastings: in 1914, Russia wasn’t in a good position to launch the kind of offensive war it did against Germany. That action led to great suffering on the Russian side, which greatly contributed to the demise of the Russian Empire and the greater potential for a Communist advance. (In WW I, the Russian military engaged well against the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman forces.) It has been noted that Russia’s armaments situation was actually better in 1917. However by then, Russia’s morale had reached a low point.

In his memoirs, Alexander Kerensky quotes British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s basis for Britain’s non-support to the Russian Civil War era Whites. Kerensky references this excerpt from Lloyd George’s September 17, 1919 House of Commons speech:

Denikin and Kolchak are fighting for two main objects. The first is the destruction of Bolshevism and the restoration of good government in Russia. Upon that, they could get complete unanimity among all the forces, but the second is that they are fighting for a reunited Russia. Well, it is not for me to say whether that this is a policy which suits the British Empire. There was a very great statesman…Lord Beaconsfield, who regarded a great, gigantic, colossal, growing Russia rolling onwards towards Persia and the borders of Afghanistan and India as the greatest menace the British Empire could be confronted with.”

The Germans and Josef Pilsudski led Poles had a somewhat similar logic as well. (These and other related matters are discussed in my Strategic Culture Foundation piece of April 7, 2016, carried over to my Eurasia Review column. Included, is a reply to the inaccurate perception of heavily foreign supported Whites opposing the Reds, minus any foreign support.)

WW I arguably played a hand in how Stalin behaved before Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union). It has been said that he kept in mind what happened when Russia confronted Germany in WW I, before it was well prepared to do so.

The outcome of the Russo-Japanese War might very well have greatly influenced Stalin to position a strong Fareast military presence. Note the Red Army’s thrashing of the Japanese in the late 1930s, contrasted with the initial difficulty that Soviet forces faced with a militarily weaker (to the Japanese) Finnish side around the same point in time.

The Russian Empire had a roughly 300 year run – much longer than the Soviet period. Russia’s pre-Soviet flag and coat of arms have been readopted in post-Soviet Russia, where there’re historical differences on the matters pertaining to this essay. As is true with many other Russians, Vladimir Putin appears to seek for his country what numerous others abroad desire for their respective nation. Specifically, a careful meshing of the best past attributes that can be successfully utilized in the present and future.

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. This article initially appeared at the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website on March 22.

Impeach Trump? I Don’t Think So – OpEd

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The Left continues to relentlessly promote their lie that Trump stole the election by scheming with the Russians. Their goal is to get enough people believing Trump’s presidency is illegitimate that they can impeach him.

Folks, these people on the Left and GOP establishment still do not understand what they are dealing with. I can only imagine the fallout of reversing the will of the American people by impeaching their president. I realize I sound like a broken record repeating myself, but Trump is a phenomenon like nothing we have seen before.

A year ago, I traveled state to state campaigning for Ted Cruz. My team and I stood on street corners waving Cruz signs. Numerous obnoxious people drove by us screaming, “T-R-U-M-P-P-P!!!” Never have I seen such passion for a candidate.

Our team traveled through the heartland in an SUV. We saw “TRUMP” painted on the side of barns and rooftops; “Trump/Pence” billboards; countless hand painted “Trump” signs and a gazillion official blue and white “Trump” yard signs. Clearly, something unique was happening.

Then there were the remarkable unprecedented crowds at Trump rallies. I shared how I was given VIP passes for a Trump rally in Daytona Beach Florida. I was told the rally was at 3 p.m. and the doors opened at 9 a.m. I thought, “Why would the doors open at 9 for a 3 o’clock rally?” I arrived at 2 p.m. and was blown away. I had to park five blocks away from the convention center. Streets were blocked off with people in orange vests waving cars away. Despite my VIP pass, I could not get in. There were thousands outside the filled to capacity convention center. I thought what on earth is going on? I also could not miss the broad mix of people there excited about Trump. By the way, Trump is still drawing remarkable crowds.

Another first I noticed was supermarket tabloids trashing a democrat with headlines like, “Crooked Hillary.” Trump’s TV show was on for 11 years. Millions knew he was about winning and getting things done.

Even in the conservative circles in which I functioned as an activist, all I heard was Trump is a rude crude clown who will be humiliated by Hillary. I believed they were wrong. While mainstream media and political experts viewed Trump as the not-ready-for-prime-time candidate, the American people obvious saw something different.

Americans saw a straight-talking non-political-speak guy who understood their frustration with nonsensical liberal governing — ignoring our borders, ignoring our Constitution, the ObamaCare fiasco, rewarding our enemies and purposely orchestrating the decline of our country.

When my guy, Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, I immediately jumped aboard the Trump Train. Why? Because I knew Hillary in power would be a nightmare; continuing Obama’s putting America last; using government to bully Americans — forcing the far-left-radical agenda down our throats.

Little did I know then that Trump would prove to be God’s perfect choice for such a time as this. While I love Cruz, I do not believe Cruz or any professional politician could successfully take on Washington, challenging the status quo the way Trump is doing.

The arrogant fake news media had a cow over Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer boldly confronting their lies, distortions and blatant hypocrisy. “Oh, how rude! This Trump Administration is so uncouth!”

Meanwhile, the American people are standing up and cheering: “It’s about time someone got into these jerks’ faces, calling them out!” As I said, mainstream media and political establishment simply do not know who and what they are dealing with.

To this day, I suspect some politically sophisticated conservatives are so embarrassed by Trump and protective of the political status quo that they secretly wish Hillary won and hope Trump is impeached. It amazes me that anti-Trump conservatives and Republicans do not realize the bullet in the heart of freedom America dodged by choosing Trump.

I spoke and sang at one of the national “March 4 Trump” rallies in Orlando. Trumpmania is as high as ever. Attendees were happy, excited, upbeat, enthusiastic, and highly motivated in their support for our new president.

Clearly, we are engaged in an epic battle: the fake news media, Hollywood, and the Washington DC establishment versus Trump and We the People. I cannot imagine the American people tolerating the impeachment of Trump, their president.

Will Washington Risk WW3 To Block Emerging EU-Russia Superstate – OpEd

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“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new Asia.’” -— Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russia and the changing world”, February 2012

The relentless demonization of Vladimir Putin is just one part of Washington’s multi-pronged strategy to roll-back Russian power in Central Asia and extinguish Putin’s dream of a “Greater Europe”. Along with the attempt to smear the Russian president as a “KGB thug” and “dictator”, the media has also alleged that Moscow intervened in the US presidential elections and that Russia is a serial aggressor that poses a growing threat to European and US national security. The media onslaught, which has greatly intensified since the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, has been accompanied by harsh economic sanctions, asymmetrical attacks on Russia’s markets and currency, the arming and training of Russian adversaries in Ukraine and Syria, the calculated suppression of oil prices, and a heavy-handed effort to sabotage Russia’s business relations in Europe.  In short, Washington is doing everything in its power to prevent Russia and Europe from merging into the world’s biggest free trade zone that will be the center of global growth and prosperity for the next century.

This is why the US State Department joined with the CIA to topple the elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Washington hoped that by annexing a vital landbridge between the EU and Asia, US powerbrokers could control critical pipeline corridors that are drawing the two continents closer together into an alliance that will exclude the United States. The prospect of Russia meeting more of the EU’s growing energy needs, while China’s high-speed railway system delivers more low-cost manufactured goods, suggests that the world’s center of economic gravity is shifting fast increasing the probability that the US will continue on its path of irreversible decline. And when the US dollar is inevitably jettisoned as the primary means of exchange between trade partners in the emerging Asia-EU free trade zone, then the recycling of wealth into US debt will drop off precipitously sending US markets plunging while the economy slips into a deep slump. Preventing Putin from “creating a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok” is no minor hurtle for the United States.  It’s a matter of life and death.

Remember the Wolfowitz Doctrine:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Washington’s relations with Russia will always be fractious because Russia poses a perennial threat to US ambitions to rule the world. Geography is fate, and Russia’s geography contains massive oil and gas reserves that Europe needs to heat its homes and fuel its businesses. The symbiotic relationship between supplier and end-user will eventually lead to the lifting of trade barriers, the lowering of tariffs, and the smooth melding together of national economies into a region-wide common market.  This may be Washington’s biggest nightmare, but it’s also Putin’s top strategic priority. Here’s what he said:

“We must consider more extensive cooperation in the energy sphere, up to and including the formation of a common European energy complex. The Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea are important steps in that direction. These projects have the support of many governments and involve major European energy companies. Once the pipelines start operating at full capacity, Europe will have a reliable and flexible gas-supply system that does not depend on the political whims of any nation. This will strengthen the continent’s energy security not only in form but in substance. This is particularly relevant in the light of the decision of some European states to reduce or renounce nuclear energy.”

If Europe wants a reliable partner that can meet its energy needs, then Russia fits the bill.  Unfortunately, the US has repeatedly tried to sabotage both pipelines in order to undermine EU-Russia relations. Washington would prefer that Europe either dramatically curtail its use of natural gas or find other more expensive alternatives that don’t involve Russia. In other words, Europe’s material needs are being sacrificed for Washington’s geopolitical objectives, the primary goal of which is to prevent the forming of Greater Europe.

Washington’s war against Russia is becoming increasingly militarized.  Recently the Pentagon deployed more combat troops to Syria and Kuwait suggesting that US warplanners intend to shift from the current strategy of arming jihadist militias (to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad), to a more direct use of martial force to seize-and-hold territory in East Syria.  There are signs of an uptick in the violence in Ukraine too, as President Trump appears only-too-eager to use a more iron-fisted approach in settling regional disputes than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Also, NATO has deployed troops and weaponry to Russia’s western flank while the US has spread its military bases across Central Asia. NATO has continued to push eastward ever since the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.  The steady buildup of hostile armies on Russia’s western perimeter has been a source of growing concern in Moscow and for good reason. Russians know their history.

At the same time the US is building a ground-based missile defense system in Romania (Star Wars) that integrates the US nuclear arsenal at a site that is just 900 miles from Moscow. The US missile system which was “certified for operation” in May 2016, cancels-out Russia’s nuclear deterrents and destroys the strategic balance of power in Europe.   Putin has responded by ordering appropriate countermeasures.  Here are Putin’s comments on the subject:

“It seems that NATO countries, and especially the United States, have developed a peculiar understanding of security which is fundamentally different from our own. The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ‘absolute invulnerability’ for themselves… But absolute invulnerability for one nation means absolute vulnerability for everybody else. We cannot agree to this.”

In the last week, the Trump administration announced that it will deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea citing a need to respond to provocations by North Korea. In truth, Washington is using the North as a pretext for its plan to hem in Russia and China at “axial ends” of the Eurasian heartland as a means of containing the vast landmass that Sir Halford Mackinder called the “pivot area… stretching from the Persian Gulf to China’s Yangtze River.”

Washington hopes that by controlling critical sea lanes, encircling the region with military bases, and aggressively inserting itself where necessary, it can prevent the emergence of an economic colossus that will diminish the United States role as global superpower.  America’s future rests on its ability to derail economic integration at the center of the world and prevail in the Great Game where others have failed. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Alfred W. McCoy titled  The Geopolitics of American Global Decline” which helps to shed light on the struggle  that is now taking place for control over the so called “world island”:

Following World War II the US became  “the first power in history to control the strategic axial points “at both ends of Eurasia” … With fears of Chinese and Russian expansion serving as the “catalyst for collaboration,” the U.S. won imperial bastions in both Western Europe and Japan. With these axial points as anchors, Washington then built an arc of military bases that followed Britain’s maritime template and were visibly meant to encircle the world island….

“Having seized the axial ends of the world island from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945, for the next 70 years the United States relied on ever-thickening layers of military power to contain China and Russia inside that Eurasian heartland. Stripped of its ideological foliage, Washington’s grand strategy of Cold War-era anticommunist “containment” was little more than a process of imperial succession. …

By the Cold War’s end in 1990, the encirclement of communist China and Russia required 700 overseas bases, an air force of 1,763 jet fighters, a vast nuclear arsenal, more than 1,000 ballistic missiles, and a navy of 600 ships, including 15 nuclear carrier battle groups — all linked by the world’s only global system of communications satellites….(“The Geopolitics of Global Decline”, Alfred W. McCoy)

For the last 70 years the imperial strategy has worked without a hitch, but now Russia’s resurgence and China’s explosive growth are threatening to break free from Washington’s stranglehold. The Asian allies have begun to crisscross Central Asia and Europe with pipelines and high-speed rail that will gather together the far-flung statelets scattered across the steppe, draw them into a Eurasian Economic Union, and link them to an expansive and thriving superstate, the epicenter of global commerce and industry.  Grand Chessboard brain-trust Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the importance of Central Asia in his 1997 classic stating:

“Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. ….About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, p.31)

A new global empire is gradually emerging in Central Asia,  and while the transformative impact of economic integration has not yet been realized, US efforts to block the embryonic alliance are getting weaker and more desperate all the time.  The hyperbolic propaganda about the alleged  “Russia hacking” of the presidential election is just one example of this, while the arming of Nazi militants in Kiev is another.

The bottom line is that both Russia and China are using markets, development and raw ingenuity to beat Washington, while Washington relies almost exclusively on deception, covert activity and hard power.  In other words, the former communists are beating the capitalists at their own game. Here’s more from McCoy:

“China is reaching deep within the world island in an attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global power. It is using a subtle strategy that has so far eluded Washington’s power elites….

The initial step has involved a breathtaking project to put in place an infrastructure for the continent’s economic integration.  By laying down an elaborate and enormously expensive network of high-speed, high-volume railroads as well as oil and natural gas pipelines across the vast breadth of Eurasia, China may realize Mackinder’s vision in a new way.  For the first time in history, the rapid transcontinental movement of critical cargo — oil, minerals, and manufactured goods — will be possible on a massive scale, thereby potentially unifying that vast landmass into a single economic zone stretching 6,500 miles from Shanghai to Madrid. In this way, the leadership in Beijing hopes to shift the locus of geopolitical power away from the maritime periphery and deep into the continent’s heartland….” (Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing”, TomDispatch)

Washington is not going to let the Russo-China plan go forward without a fight. If economic sanctions, covert activity and financial sabotage don’t work, then US powerbrokers will implement more lethal strategies. The recent deployment of troops to the Middle East suggests that policymakers believe that a direct military confrontation might be the best available option, after all, a shooting war with Russia in Syria or Ukraine would not necessarily escalate into a full-blown nuclear conflagration. No one wants that. But if the fighting can be contained within Syria’s borders, then it would be a practical way to rally the EU allies, torpedo Russia’s “economic integration” plan, and draw Moscow into a long, resource-draining quagmire. Is that what US war-planners have in mind?

It’s a risky plan, but one that Washington would eagerly pursue if it helped to reinforce America’s global supremacy.

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