By Felix K. Chang*

(FPRI) — Economic and sovereignty interests are commonly cited as the reasons for China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. The security of China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent could be added to that list of reasons.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic, China has worried about external threats—and justifiably so. During the Cold War, it faced down both the world’s superpowers, first the United States and then the Soviet Union. Both were armed with nuclear weapons at a time when China was still developing its own arsenal.

But even after it successfully produced nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, China could not rest easy. It still had to ensure their survivability to create a credible nuclear deterrent.

China’s Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent

Early on, China understood that ballistic missiles based on land would be more vulnerable to preemptive attack than those based under the sea.  And the longer they could stay under the sea, the safer they would be.  Thus, in the late 1950s, China began to acquire the technology needed for nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), which can operate underwater for long periods, and for their associated submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).[1]

By the 1980s, China built its first SSBN, the Type 092 (or Xia-class), along with its first SLBM, the JL-1. Though only one Xia-class submarine ever became fully operational, China went to great lengths to protect it. Chinese engineers tunneled under a rocky promontory at Jianggezhuang, adjacent to the Yellow Sea, to provide the submarine with a hardened shelter. As it turned out, the Xia rarely went to sea during its service life.[2] But if it sailed into the Yellow Sea today, China might have some cause for concern, given the proximity of capable naval forces from Japan, South Korea, and the United States on the sea’s eastern edge.

China’s Southern Strategy

After the Cold War, China continued to improve its sea-based nuclear deterrent. About a decade ago, China began serial production of its second SSBN, the Type 094 (or Jin-class). So far, the Chinese navy has commissioned four Jin-class submarines; the completion of the JL-2 SLBM followed.[3] But years before the submarines entered service, China had already started construction on a new naval base for them that runs along Yalong Bay, near the South China Sea. With satellite imagery, one can see the grand scale of the new base.  (See image below.) It even features a submarine tunnel, like the one at Jianggezhuang, but with enough room for loading facilities and multiple submarines.[4]

China’s Jin-class SSBNs are now regularly seen at the base.  (See image below.)  South of it is the South China Sea—a region increasingly dotted with Chinese military outposts and airfields. It is also a region with no navies capable of directly challenging China’s. Indeed, Chinese strategists may have envisioned the South China Sea to be a naval bastion, a partially enclosed area where China’s SSBNs could safely operate under the protection of friendly air and naval forces. The Soviet navy operated in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk in much the same way during the Cold War.

To be sure, the South China Sea carries drawbacks as a naval bastion. The biggest is probably the fact that operating there would put China’s SSBNs further from potential targets in the Western Hemisphere, though future SLBMs may have longer ranges. Still, the South China Sea does enable China to disperse more widely its undersea nuclear forces, and thereby improve their survivability. If China has come to see the South China Sea as important to the security of its sea-based nuclear deterrent, then those who hope that patient economic and diplomatic engagement will persuade China to change its behavior in the region are very likely to be disappointed, as they have been to date.

About the author:
*Felix K. Chang is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also the Chief Strategy Officer of DecisionQ, a predictive analytics company in the national security and healthcare industries. He has worked with a number of digital, consumer services, and renewable energy entrepreneurs for years. He was previously a consultant in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy and Organization practice; among his clients were the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and other agencies.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China’s Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 23–125, 129–205.

[2] Stephen Saunders, ed., Jane’s Fighting Ships 2014-2015 (London: Jane’s Information Group, 2014), p. 128.

[3] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, Apr. 2016), p. 26.

[4] Richard D. Fisher, Jr., “Secret Sanya: China’s new nuclear naval base revealed,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, May 2008, pp. 50–53.

By Bhaskar Roy*

Over the decades the People’s Republic of China has sold to the world the narrative that it is a self-contained power and has no ambition of coveting territories of other nations. This is far from the truth. China in the past had tried to expand colonialism over other countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. The only problem was they were unable to hold on to the territories that they tried to colonize.

In their incursion into Vietnam in 1978 to teach Hanoi a lesson, they had to withdraw with a bloody nose. In their military excursion against India in 1962, they withdrew unilaterally behind the MacMahon Line, not in goodwill but in strategic calculations they would not succeed in holding on to those territories in Arunachal Pradesh, then NEFA, for long. They, however, projected it as a virtue.

At that time, defence was the lowest priority for the Indian government, which was upholding China’s cause universally and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was shocked at this great betrayal. Nehru was so decimated psychologically that he died soon after in 1964.

At that time China was not a powerful military state, but its army was battle tested with revolutionary zeal. It invaded Tibet, a quasi-independent country at least, in 1951.

The other narrative that China created was that unequal treaties were imposed on a weak China, and this was expanded to gradually claim historical Chinese territories, expanding deep into Soviet territories in Central Asia. China creates its own history. It had no locus standi in the demarcation of territories between Tibet and India in the 1914 Simla Accord because Tibet was not Chinese territory at that time. China had only an Amban, an ambassador in modern parlance, in Lhasa.

By its shrill and bellicose opposition to the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang and the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, and connecting this whole issue to the India-China border talks, China may have scored some negative points. It has affirmed that the Dalai Lama remains central to China’s Tibet policy, and that Tibetans do not endorse Beijing’s position on Tawang and the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

By renaming six Arunachal Pradesh towns in Chinese on the pretext of standardisation of Chinese names, Beijing has exposed its real game plan on the border issue and tried to make it a territorial issue. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the renaming “supported” China’s territorial claims – “These names reflect from another side that China’s territorial claim over South Tibet is supported by clear evidence in terms of history, culture and administration”.

This is a bizarre argument, bereft of any logic. Mompas living on both sides of the border do not prove anything for China’s arguments. It can be turned over on its head that Mompas are historically Indians and the Mompa inhabited areas held by China should be returned to India. Neither side should indulge in such type of arguments.

In ancient times tribes moved across places and regions and settled down where suitable. This does not mean that entire tribes moved. China was once ruled by the Mongols. Using twisted logic can it be argued that China belongs to Mongolia? There are numerous such examples.

The Indian foreign ministry spokesman gave a suitable reply. Changing of names in another country does not translate into ownership.

China’s extra-territorial ambitions are no longer growing – they are galloping! The official Chinese daily, the Global Times (April 20) revealed this in an article. It quoted Xu Guangyu, a senior advisor to the China Arms Control and Disarmament, saying the following: “China will build ten more bases for six aircraft carriers”, adding that they can be built around countries friendly to China, like Pakistan.

Xu’s comments are significant and demands attention. He was not talking in the air and reflected the government’s plan. One aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is already operational and taking part in exercises. A second is expected to be launched sometime this year, may be around the 19th Congress of the Communist Party. Each carrier will have a battle group, and will be placed in strategic areas where China has friendly relations. Chinese marine force is to be expanded from the current 20 thousand to 100 thousand.

The mention of “Pakistan” is an important pointer. The Gwadar deep sea port constructed by China is on 40 years management lease to a Chinese company. The company will also control other projects, Chinese aided, in Gwadar city. Gwadar is a declared defense establishment by the company. Pakistan has also set up a special naval task force for Gwadar port and strategic sea lanes where China is the main contributor of naval assets. This is also where the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) enters the sea. Naturally, this would be the first Chinese overseas base where its carrier task force will be placed. The entire project will be controlled by China. In other words, it will be China controlled territory.

Djibouti has agreed to a base for China. Beijing is also exploring similar bases in the Seychelles and Maldives. They have an eye on Myanmar and Bangladesh.

How is China viewing countries like India which are averse to such agreements? The approach will be increasingly adversarial, and pressure will be exerted in different ways, as we are witnessing on the Tawang/ Arunachal Pradesh issue.

It appears Beijing is heading towards remodelling the border issue with India into a territorial grab like they have done in the South China Sea. In course of time Beijing is likely to turn relations with India into the framework of relations with Japan (over the Senkaku islands) and other claimants to the South China Sea islands. The mantra is” keep diplomatic relations intact; trade and economic relations should continue, but also use the levers of power periodically; massive propaganda.

Where India is concerned, China’s “Three Warfare” strategy is unfolding. This encapsulates

1. Media Warfare: which is reflected in official media articles and official statements
2. Psychological Warfare: not in full force yet but can be a double edged sword. Some of the PLA’s incursions are examples, but has been kept within limits.
3. Legal Warfare: Naming Arunachal Pradesh towns in Chinese as discussed above. This kind of warfare is still being formed, but may go up intermixed with media warfare and psychological warfare.

These are the makings of an unhappy situation – things are going to unfold gradually.

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

In space, being outshone is an occupational hazard. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a galaxy named NGC 7250. Despite being remarkable in its own right — it has bright bursts of star formation and recorded supernova explosions — it blends into the background somewhat thanks to the gloriously bright star hogging the limelight next to it.

The bright object seen in this Hubble image is a single and little-studied star named TYC 3203-450-1, located in the constellation of Lacerta (The Lizard). The star is much closer than the much more distant galaxy.

Only this way can a normal star outshine an entire galaxy, consisting of billions of stars. Astronomers studying distant objects call these stars “foreground stars” and they are often not very happy about them, as their bright light is contaminating the faint light from the more distant and interesting objects they actually want to study.

In this case, TYC 3203-450-1 is million times closer than NGC 7250, which lies more than 45 million light-years away from us. If the star were the same distance from us as NGC 7250, it would hardly be visible in this image.

Unemployment is associated with a 50% higher risk of death in patients with heart failure, according to research presented today at Heart Failure 2017 and the 4th World Congress on Acute Heart Failure.1 The observational study in more than 20 000 heart failure patients found that not being employed was linked with a greater likelihood of death than history of diabetes or stroke.

“The ability to hold a job brings valuable information on wellbeing and performance status,” said lead author Dr Rasmus Roerth, a physician at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark. “And workforce exclusion has been associated with increased risk of depression, mental health problems and even suicide.”

“In younger patients with heart failure, employment status could be a potential predictor of morbidity and mortality,” he continued. “If that was the case, employment status could help to risk stratify young heart failure patients and identify those needing more intensive rehabilitation.”

This study compared the risks of all-cause death and recurrent heart failure hospitalisation in patients with heart failure, according to whether they were employed at baseline or not. Using the unique personal identification number assigned to all residents in Denmark, individual data was linked from nationwide registries on hospitalisation, prescribed medication, education level, public welfare payments, and death.

The study included all patients of working age (18 to 60 years) with a first hospitalisation for heart failure in Denmark between 1997 and 2012. Of the 21 455 patients with a first hospitalisation for heart failure, 11 880 (55%) were part of the workforce at baseline.

During an average follow-up of 1005 days, 16% of employed and 31% of unemployed patients died, while 40% of employed and 42% of unemployed patients were rehospitalised for heart failure.

After adjusting for age, sex, education level and comorbidities, heart failure patients unemployed at baseline had a 50% increased risk of death and 12% increased risk of rehospitalisation for heart failure compared to those who were employed. Not being part of the workforce was associated with a higher likelihood of death than history of diabetes or stroke.

Dr Roerth said: “We found that heart failure patients out of the workforce at baseline had a higher risk of death. Not being part of the workforce was associated with a risk of death comparable to that of having diabetes or stroke. Those without a job also had an increased risk of recurrent heart failure hospitalisation.”

Dr Roerth said the exact mechanism on how employment status may affect mortality is complex and most likely multifactorial. “The ability to work can be seen as a measure of performance status and be interpreted as whether patients meet the physical requirements of a full time job or not,” he said.

But he added: “Employment status is more than just a physical measurement as it also has an influence on quality of life, and has been shown to be important for mental health and wellbeing. Thus, both from a physical and psychological point of view it makes sense to include employment status in the evaluation of young heart failure patients’ prognosis.”

Dr Roerth said it was perhaps not surprising that employment status has importance for prognosis. “But the observation that employment status is associated with an increased risk of death comparable to that of many other comorbidities such as diabetes and stroke is notable,” he said.

In terms of implications of the findings, Dr Roerth said workforce exclusion could be used to identify heart failure patients at risk of poor outcomes and that efforts to get patients back into work might be beneficial.

He said: “It could be highly valuable to assess employment status and actually think of workforce exclusion as a prognostic marker in line with suffering from serious chronic diseases. Knowledge on why workforce exclusion has happened for the individual patient might lead to ideas on how it can be prevented – for example with more intensive rehabilitation, physical activity, psychological treatment, or a different job.”

Japan wants to resolve a territorial row that has over-shadowed ties with Russia since World War Two, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Saturday, April 29, according to Reuters.

“A peace treaty between Japan and Russia has not been concluded yet, even after 70 years have passed since the end of World War Two,” Abe told reporters in London. “It is an extremely unusual situation. Infinite possibilities are latent in the cooperation between Japan and Russia.”

Russia and Japan did not sign a formal peace treaty at the end of World War Two because of a dispute over islands in the Western Pacific, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kuriles in Russia.

The islands were seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War Two and 17,000 Japanese residents were forced to flee.

“Russia’s constructive engagement is essential in resolving global challenges,” Abe said. “It is my intention to continue to have dialogue with President [Vladimir] Putin, so as to co-ordinate regarding these challenges.”

By Samuel Okiror*

Uganda and the United States have ended a six-year hunt for elusive warlord Joseph Kony and his notorious Lord’s Resistance Army.

But calling off the mission, focused on Central African Republic, has left the commander of Ugandan forces in the country frustrated and advocacy groups concerned that the failure to “kill or capture” Kony could see the insurgency rebound.

Uganda began withdrawing its officially 2,500 troops from their base in eastern CAR last week. The pull out of 100 US special forces, who worked alongside the Ugandan soldiers, began today.

The mission, known as the African Union Regional Taskforce (AU-RT), was almost from the start a wholly Ugandan affair.

Frustration

It was supposed to have been 5,000-strong, drawing troops from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the CAR. But the neighbouring countries, with security problems of their own, either never deployed or quickly withdrew their contingents.

The task force failed to win donor funding, and Uganda ended up footing the bill. Since 2011, armed US special forces advisors have provided intelligence and logistics support.

Colonel Richard Otto is the commander of Uganda’s contingent in the CAR. At his divisional headquarters in Uganda’s northern city of Gulu, the amiable, decorated, former senior military intelligence officer, explained the difficulty of his three-year posting.

“In CAR, the area we are operating in is almost the size of Uganda. You can imagine [the vastness], and I don’t have enough troops,” he told IRIN.

The task force was drawn from all units of the Ugandan army, but may not have exceeded 1,500 men, according to media reports.

Hiding out

CAR has been the perfect hideaway for the LRA. It has been convulsed by violence since 2013, when a predominantly Muslim coalition of rebels known as the Séléka overthrew the government. The UN mission, MINUSCA, has been unable to end ongoing violence between Christian militia and the former Séléka.

“The armed forces of CAR are yet to be organised,” said Otto, who before his deployment in CAR served as chief operations planner with African Union forces in Somalia.

“Some of them are undergoing training by [the] UN [and the] European Union Training Mission, and they are not yet deployed in the eastern part of the country.”

The lawlessness of the CAR has attracted not only “Séléka” from neighbouring Chad, but also the “Janjaweed” militia from Sudan’s Darfur region coming in to poach elephants, among other armed men.

“We have quite a number of armed groups,” said Otto. “So, when you encounter them in the jungle, sometimes it’s difficult to know whether you are fighting LRA or other [forces].”

But the Ugandan troops have recorded significant successes. Four key LRA commanders have been captured, and an insurgency of 2,000 fighters that terrorised a huge swathe of territory across central Africa has been sharply degraded.

On the run

The LRA, now believed to be down to less than 120 armed men, has splintered into small units operating in the remotest regions of eastern CAR, northeastern Congo, and Darfur.

“The enemy is permanently on the run,” said Otto, claiming that there had been a steady trickle of defections and that “over 1,000 civilians” that were abducted by the LRA had been rescued.

Kony, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has a $5 million bounty on his head. He is believed to be hiding in the Kafia-Kingi enclave, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan.

Khartoum is not a member of the regional task force and, as a historical supporter of the LRA, appears to have given Kony safe haven.

But, crucially, he no longer leads his men. “He has lost command, control, and communication,” said Otto. “For the first time, the LRA has factions. There is a group… who has decided to leave [the] LRA and operates on [its] own.”

Two senior LRA commanders, Bosco Kilama and Peter Ochora, who defected last month in Congo, agree with Otto’s assessment on the group’s disintegration.

“The LRA is disarray. The LRA has been completely disorganised with no central command. Kony is growing old and losing the grip on the soldiers,” Kilama told reporters at Uganda’s Entebbe airbase last week. The two men will receive a government amnesty.

Mission accomplished?

The LRA’s apparent toothlesness has allowed the Ugandan army and the US Africa Command to trumpet Kony’s irrelevance as justification for their withdrawal from the hunt.

But Otto, an Acholi from northern Uganda, the original heartland of the LRA, acknowledges that the group remains a threat.

“The will to fight and attack the security forces is not there. However, they still remain a problem to the general population,” he told IRIN.

“They are involved in looting food, looting gold, diamonds, killing elephants in [Congo’s] Garamba national park and Zemongo national park in CAR,” he said. It is a revenue stream that could keep them armed for years.

Abductions

The LRA was responsible for 563 abductions in 171 attacks in 2016, according to the LRA Crisis Tracker, a monitoring group. It’s a drop from the 737 people kidnapped in 2015 in 222 attacks, but still significant.

As of 30 March this year, they are believed to have kidnapped 147 people in 43 incidents.

“Completely abandoning the mission will create security vacuums for already extremely vulnerable communities, particularly in the Central African Republic and northeastern DRC,” said Holly Dranginis, a senior analyst at the US-based Enough Project to End Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.

“Leaving now will also dismantle key defection sites, leaving individuals with scarce options if they want to leave the LRA and reintegrate into civilian life,” she told IRIN.

Lino Owor Ogora, director of the Gulu-based Foundation for Justice and Development Initiatives, noted: “The LRA has always taken advantage of any lapses in combat to regroup and reorganise.

“People in northern Uganda have enjoyed peace for close to 10 years now, and the region is on a firm road to recovery. It would be unfortunate if the LRA returned because they were allowed too.”

There is also unease in CAR. On 16 April, civilians in Obbo town, which has been the tactical headquarters for Ugandan and US forces, demonstrated, calling for the troops to stay.

Otto, who spoke to IRIN last week, is now back in CAR finalising the return home of the last of his men.

What happens next?

But the Ugandan government has hinted that it will not step away altogether from an insurgency that began in Uganda almost three decades ago, and was then exported to its neighbours.

Richard Karemire, the military spokesman, said last week that Uganda could join the UN peacekeeping mission in CAR under a strengthened mandate to tackle the LRA.

He also suggested Uganda could support “capacity-building” of the CAR Armed Forces for “counter-LRA operations”.

Ogora, the head of the Gulu-based foundation, also favours a military option, drawing on the UN and regional armies to “neutralise” the LRA once and for all.

“Short of that, the LRA will continue roaming the jungles of Garamba at will, trading in ivory and arms, and abducting and killing civilians.”

But Phil Clark, a Great Lakes expert at SOAS, University of London, says the military option has been tried and has failed. “This requires a political solution, with amnesty at its core,” he told IRIN.

According to Dranginis, “the United States should continue supporting defection campaigns” as it has proved successful in “weakening the group and creating opportunities for fighters and abductees to leave.”

Demobilisation and reintegration is a complex process, she added, but it “can pay dividends for security in the region”.

*Samuel Okiror, a regular IRIN contributor based in Kampala

The world’s most famous climber has died in the Everest region of Nepal while preparing to climb the highest peak on the planet without the aid of oxygen.

Ueli Steck, 40, fell 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) to the foot of Mount Nuptse, a smaller peak in the Everest region, while acclimatizing ahead of his bid to traverse a new Everest route.

Everest and Nuptse share a common ridge and it was there where, according to a government official, Steck apparently slipped and fell.

“He skidded off about 1,000 meters from (Mt Nuptse) camp two early morning on Sunday. Other climbers ascending Everest saw him and asked for his rescue,”said Dinesh Bhattarai, director general at the Department of Tourism.

Nicknamed the “Swiss Machine,” Steck reached Everest’s summit without oxygen in 2012 and climbed all 82 Alpine peaks in 62 days in 2015. He came to prominence within the climbing community, aged 18, after climbing Mont Blanc’s Eiger massif.

That climb attracted the attention of sponsors and he soon became one of the most recognisable names in mountaineering.

He was known for scaling some of the planet’s most dangerous peaks, often alone and without basic safety equipment such as fixed ropes or oxygen tanks.

Steck is not without controversy, however. The climber made headlines in 2013 when he and two others became involved in a punch up with a group of Nepali sherpa guides in a row over fixing ropes.

The fracas forced the climbers off the mountain, leading Steck to swear he would never return. He kept his promise until this latest, and sadly last, attempt.

In 2016, Steck and a fellow climber, discovered the bodies of two American mountaineers in Tibet.

Alex Lowe and David Bridges had been missing since 1999 when they were swept away by an avalanche during an attempt to scale Shishapangma, the fourteenth highest peak on Earth.

Tributes to the Swiss Machine have been pouring in from climbers.

Congress ended the week by passing a continuing resolution keeping the government funded for one more week. This stopgap funding bill is designed to give Congress and the White House more time to negotiate a long-term spending bill. Passage of a long-term spending bill has been delayed over objections to Republican efforts to preserve Obamcare’s key features but give states a limited ability to opt out of some Obamacare mandates.

This type of brinkmanship has become standard operating procedure on Capitol Hill. The drama inevitably ends with a spending bill being crafted behind closed doors by small groups of members and staffers and then rushed to the floor and voted on before most members have a chance to read it. These “omnibus” spending bills are a dereliction of one of Congress’s two most important duties — allocating spending. Of course, Congress long ago abandoned another primary duty — preventing presidents from launching military attacks without first obtaining a congressional declaration of war.

The uncomfortable question raised by Congress’s abrogation of these two key functions is whether a republican form of government is compatible with a welfare-warfare state. The answer seems to be “no.”

Congress’s dysfunctional spending process is an inevitable result of the government’s growth. It is simply unrealistic to expect Congress to fund the modern leviathan via a lengthy and open process that allows individual members to have some say in how government spends their constituents’ money. The dysfunctional spending process benefits the many politicians eager to avoid accountability for government spending. The rushed process allows these politicians to say they had to vote for the spending bills. Often, these big spending bills include a promise to cut spending in the future. Like tomorrow, the promised spending cuts are always a day away.

If government continues to expand, the economy will continue to stagnate, social tensions and violence will increase, and more power will be concentrated in the hands of the president, bureaucrats, and a select few members of Congress. The only way to avoid this is for Congress to shut down most of the federal government, starting with bringing the troops home and drastically cutting the military-industrial complex’s budget. Congress must also close all unconstitutional federal agencies and programs, and wind down federal entitlement programs. A good place to start is the Department of Education. The Federal Reserve must be audited and then ended.

The root of the current crisis is neither political nor economic but philosophical. Too many have bought into the lie that government can protect us from life’s misfortunes and stamp out evil around the world without endangering our liberty, our safety, and our prosperity. Convincing a critical mass of people to reject big government is key to our success.

The breakdown of the congressional appropriations process, combined with hyper-interventionism via the Federal Reserve and foreign policy, suggest we are in the last stages of the welfare-warfare state. Whether this system’s inevitable collapse completes our descent into authoritarianism or leads to a restoration of limited, constitutional government and free markets depends on how effective those of us who know the truth are in spreading the ideas of liberty.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Dr. Subhash Kapila*

The United States and the Trump Administration reflect great naivety when publicly asserting that a China duplicitous for decades on North Korea’s nuclear adventurism will now cooperate with the United States in checkmating North Korea.

In 2017, the picture of North Korea with nuclear weapons and long range missiles presents a grim challenge to the United Sates for its own Homeland Security and more immediately to the sheet-anchors of US security in the Western Pacific, namely, Japan and South Korea. The challenge for the United States becomes more grim when China with considerable leverages on North Korea has pussy-footed all efforts by the United States that China should restrain its wayward North Korea ally.

In 2017, with the North Korea nuclear weapons threat acquiring menacing contours, any continuance of United States’ erstwhile policy of ‘Strategic Restraint’ and ‘Strategic Patience’ towards China and North Korea by President Trump could possibly push Japan and South Korea into respective nuclear weaponisation of their own, shherly for self-defence and survival.

The United States policy establishment is failing to realise that at the first instance it was China that created two nuclear monster rogue nations of North Korea and Pakistan by supplying them with nuclear weapons technology and also interlinking these two nations in terms of exchange of Chinese nuclear and long-range ballistic missiles technologies. China hoped that this recourse would provide it with plausible deniability exits from its sordid WMD proliferation.

The United States policy establishment even now in 2017 seemingly fails to realise that China’s strongest leverage card and strategic pressure point against the United States is a China-permissive strategically wayward nuclear weaponised North Korea attempting to gain missile reach to hit the West Coast of the United States. In the bargain, North Korea on China’s behalf keeps Japan and South Korea rattled.

The United States for years has nauseatingly trusted and had unrealistic expectations that China through its co-option in the Six Party Dialogue would assist the global community in restraining North Korea and prevailing over it to roll-back its nuclear weapons programme. China has expectedly failed to deliver on this account and rightly so as in Chinese perceptions North Korea is a Communist buffer state which not only shields China but also as a Chinese proxy state creates security concerns for the two most credible US Allies in the region, namely Japan and South Korea.

Has the United States policy establishment forgotten that China militarily intervened in the Korean War against the United States when US-led UN Forces were well on the way to unravel North Korea. If China in the 1950s could take on the sole nuclear power of the United States then with its primitive military power resting on mass peasant soldiery, what makes the Trump Administration to presume that the Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2017 with a colossal modernised Chinese military machine would barter away China’s strongest strategic leverage against the United States?

Does the US policy establishment seriously believe that US President Trump hosting the Chinese President at his resort in Florida could charm President Xi of China to alter China’s geopolitical course on North Korea? Rather presumptuous for a seasoned Superpower as the United States.

China is not only permissive but while retaining a plausible deniability exit encourages behind the scenes North Korea’s nuclear weapons military adventurism. China achieves three major strategic objectives in doing so. The first and immediate objective that China achieves is that Japan and South Korea are militarily under threat by China’s proxy power of North Korea. Secondly, the United States image as a credible regional nett provider of Asia Pacific security is severely dented when the United States can neither prevail over North Korea nor on China to act as a responsible stakeholder of security in the region. Lastly, China with all of the above ensures that by creating a threatening disruptive North Korea acting as its proxy, the reunification of North Korea is prevented. China is well aware that a reunified Korean Peninsula allied to the United States and with its own tremendous military might would be a game-changer at China’s door-steps.

North Korea’s might and sustainability of its disruptive strengths arise directly from the life-lines that China provides to it politically, economically and technologically in the existence of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles arsenal. Should China wisely decide to snap its lifelines to North Korea then this Chinese proxy state would collapse and so also its threat potential that it now thrives on. But the larger question is —will China do so?

Stating the obvious, China would never succumb to reduce the leverages that a wayward nuclear weaponised North Korea provides to China. The reasons have already been spelt out above. Where does this strategic ground reality imposed by China leave the United States?

The United States is faced with complex options in the situation generated by China through its proxy state of North Korea. The easiest option of avoiding conflict and presumptuous one is that China would work with the United States in de-nuclearizing North Korea. This is already ruled out in the initial discussion.

The United States thereafter is left with the uncomfortable option of resorting to a military intervention to defang North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles capabilities by either a full scale offensive or a limited military conflict to destroy North Korea’s WMD arsenal. In either case, possibilities exist of China militarily intervening to prevent collapse of North Korea.

China under the provisions of the “1961 Sino-North Korea Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation & Mutual Assistance” is obliged to militarily intervene in case of unprovoked aggression against North Korea. But in 2017, with the entire geopolitics of Asia Pacific having changed so much, it is debatable whether China would risk an all-out war with the United States. But as China’s record shows it will go to the extremist point of brinkmanship in a face-off with the United States.

United States options of diplomatic or military coercion or even UN-imposed economic sanctions will not work in the case of North Korea. Simply, because China will continue to provide North Korea with both surface and sub-surface lifelines to sustain North Korea as China’s ‘regional spoiler state’ in North East Asia. China will also find devious ways to bypass UN economic sanctions imposed on North Korea

Following from this is the major question whether the United States under President Trump who proclaims “America First” as an important tenet of his political mission would have the will to use America’s overwhelming military power to tame North Korea and checkmate China’s disruptive potential in propping rogue nuclear weapons states like North Korea and Pakistan? Or will President Trump like previous American Presidents “temporise” with China under the mistaken precepts of ‘Strategic Restraint’ and ‘Risk Aversion’?

In conclusion, it is too early to predict whether the United States opts for the required ‘hard decisions’ when it comes to North Korea and its strategic patron, China. It all depends on the United States ultimately- whether it wishes to sustain its status as the global Superpower or allow itself to slip a few notches below in deference to China. The call is on the United States and the global community is watching whether US President Trump will ‘walk the talk.’

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

By Ben Flanagan

Most Americans have scant knowledge of the Arab world, with eight in 10 unable to point out the region on a map, a wide-ranging Arab News/YouGov poll has found.

The survey of 2,057 people in the US revealed an alarmingly low level of awareness about the Middle East and North Africa, but also a desire for more media coverage of the region.

More than a fifth of respondents said Agrabah — the fictional city from “Aladdin” — is a real part of the Arab world. An even higher proportion — 38 percent — would be happy with a US travel ban on citizens of Agrabah should they be proven a threat.

The US public’s knowledge gap does, however, extend far beyond Disney fiction.

The “The Arab Image in the US” poll, conducted March 17-21, found that 65 percent of respondents admitted to knowing little about the Arab World, with 30 percent having no interest in understanding the region further.

Over three-quarters of respondents said they would not consider traveling to the Arab world, with 39 percent saying the whole region is too dangerous to visit.

The results of the poll are published today to coincide with the Arab Media Forum (AMF) in Dubai. An Arab News panel discussion on “The Arab Image in the West” will be held today, the second day of the forum, to discuss the media’s role in addressing the region’s perception problem.

This is significant as a low engagement in news about the Arab world was seen as one factor behind the vast gap in Americans’ knowledge exposed by the Arab News/YouGov poll.

Almost eight in 10 of the respondents said they follow international news, but of those only 24 percent tune into news about the Arab world. But half of the respondents said they think US media do not provide sufficient coverage of the region.

Stephan Shakespeare, the chief executive of polling firm YouGov, said the findings are significant and a cause for concern, especially at a time when President Donald Trump is ramping up the US involvement in the Arab world.

“America appears more isolationist since the advent of President Trump and yet at the same time more willing to intervene fast with military action, defying Russia with a surprise attack in Syria,” Shakespeare said.

“Whatever one’s views of these situations, everyone surely hopes for increased understanding between the peoples of the world.”

Shakespeare did, however, point to some “more hopeful” signs from the poll findings.

For example, when it comes to immigration — one of the key talking points during in last year’s US election — the results were generally positive.

The survey found that 63 percent of respondents believe Arab immigrants have made efforts to integrate themselves in US and Western societies.

And Shakespeare also pointed to the desire of US citizens to learn more about the Middle East, something on the agenda at the Arab Media Forum.

“About a third (of respondents said) they would like to see more media coverage about social, cultural and scientific aspects of the region,” Shakespeare wrote.

“There appears to be some readiness to consider broader and more positive types of news.”

After more than 100 days into his presidency, it seems fair to ask: What is Donald Trump’s governing philosophy?

He isn’t really a Republican (he didn’t join the GOP until 2012). He’s hardly a free-market conservative (he’s eager to block trade and immigration). No one would mistake him for a libertarian (he’s okay with preventing abortions and gay marriage).

So what is he?

An authoritarian.

Political scientists use this term to describe a way of governing that values order and control over personal freedom, and seeks to concentrate power in the hands of a single “strongman.”

Viewed through the lens of authoritarianism, Trump’s approach to governing is logical and coherent.

For example, an authoritarian wouldn’t follow the normal process in a constitutional democracy for disputing a judicial decision he dislikes – which is to appeal it to a higher court.

An authoritarian would instead assail judges who rule against him, as Trump has done repeatedly. He’d also threaten to hobble the offending courts, as Trump did last week in urging that the 9th Circuit (where many of these decisions have originated) be broken up.

Likewise, an authoritarian has no patience for normal legislative rules – designed, as they are in a democracy, to create opportunities for deliberation.

Which is why Trump told Mitch McConnell to use the “nuclear option” against the time-honored Senate filibuster, in order to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Last week, Trump called House and Senate rules “archaic,” and urged they be abandoned. “We don’t have a lot of closers in politics, and I understand why: It’s a very rough system. It’s an archaic system,” he said.

Through the eyes of an authoritarian, rules that block what the authoritarian wants to do are always “bad for the country,” as Trump said of them.

Trump would like to get rid of the filibuster altogether. “The filibuster concept is not a good concept to start off with.”

An authoritarian also seeks to intimidate the press, in order to avoid criticism and consolidate his power.

Trump still doesn’t miss an opportunity to assail the media for publishing “fake news.” His chief of staff has revived Trump’s campaign proposal to widen libel laws so that he can sue the press for stories he doesn’t like.

Authoritarians do not tolerate other levels of government with their own powers and responsibilities. Which is why Trump wants to force states and cities to report on unauthorized immigrants, even though this violates the principle of federalism enshrined in the 10th Amendment.

Finally, authoritarians promote other authoritarians, in an effort to normalize authoritarian rule.

Last Saturday, Trump invited President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to visit the White House.

Duterte, you should know, is an authoritarian leader accused of ordering extrajudicial killings of thousands of people suspected of using or selling narcotics as well as others who may have had no involvement with drugs. He has referred to former President Barack Obama as a “son of a whore.” And he has declared open season on suspected terrorists, saying that if he were presented with a suspected terrorist, “give me salt and vinegar and I’ll eat his liver.”

Two weeks ago, Trump phoned to congratulate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for his victory in a referendum filled with voting irregularities that expanded Erdogan’s powers and has put Turkey on the road to dictatorship.

Trump also opined that the recent terrorist attack in Paris will help the right-wing extremist Marine Le Pen.

Trump has praised President Xi Jinping of China, the most authoritarian leader China has had since Mao Zedong.

Trump also hosted at the White House Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who had not been granted an invitation to the White House since seizing power in a military coup almost four years ago.

And don’t forget Trump’s vow during the presidential campaign to pursue a warmer relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. (The effort has faltered in light of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.)

Donald Trump’s authoritarianism is a consistent and coherent philosophy of governing. But it’s not America’s.

In fact, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution created separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism precisely to avoid concentrated power. Their goal was to stop authoritarians like Donald Trump.

Not long ago Trump adviser Stephen Miller declared “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton would have been appalled.

Waiting to see a doctor is frustrating, as anyone who has spent too much time flipping through old magazines or warily eyeing coughing strangers can attest. According to a new study by MIT researchers, Medicaid patients experience more of this frustration than people with private health insurance.

Consider: Medicaid recipients are 20 percent more likely to wait more than 20 minutes to begin a scheduled appointment, compared to privately insured patients. The median wait time of Medicaid enrollees is longer as well. As the findings show, much — but not all — of this disparity is because Medicaid patients tend to use providers who generally have longer wait times for their patients.

The results shed new light on the full range of experiences people have with the health care system, even apart from treatment outcomes.

“People want to focus on health care quality, but if you’ve ever had any experience with the health care system, you know there are a lot of nonhealth amenities associated with your visit,” said Amy Finkelstein, the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics at MIT and co-author of a newly published paper that details the results of the study.

The study uses the issue of wait times to compare the quality of health care access provided through public means, such as Medicaid, and through private insurance.

“It’s a different way of looking at an older problem,” said Tamar Oostrom, a doctoral candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics, who is the lead author of the new paper.

The study also uncovered a variety of new findings about differences in wait times. For instance, wait times are generally shorter in the mornings, as well as in larger medical practices. People spend less time waiting for doctors in New England than in any other region of the country. And here’s a data point that may reassure some harried parents: Young children are late for 40 percent of their medical visits.

The paper, “Outpatient Office Wait Times And Quality of Care for Medicaid Patients,” is being published today in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs. The authors are Oostrom, Finkelstein, and Liran Einav, a professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University.

The researchers examined 21.4 million anonymized records from athenahealth, the electronic records provider. The data cover all outpatient visits the firm processed in 2013, from 2,581 different medical practices. Wait time was measured based on information the athenahealth software captures showing the patient’s arrival and check-in times, the scheduled appointment time, and the time when the “intake” phase of the visit begins.

The study accounted for varying characteristics of both providers and the nature of the medical visits. This approach allowed the researchers to determine that most of the variation in waiting time, between Medicaid patients and privately insured patients, is attributable to the type of provider in question.

“Most of this difference in wait times is explained by the practices and providers Medicaid recipients see,” Oostrom said. There may be many reasons for this: For instance, Medicaid patients may be more likely to visit providers with larger loads of patients in the first place, making delays more likely.

And yet, even when adjusting for the type of provider, Medicaid patients still wait 5 percent longer than patients with private insurance, something the researchers regard as difficult to interpret. In the paper, they suggest this could reflect “triaging of patients by insurance status within an office.” Medicaid patients also face more pronounced delays in states with less extensive Medicaid reimbursement policies.

All told, the average wait times were 4.1 minutes for patients with private insurance and 4.6 minutes for patients enrolled in Medicaid. Finkelstein, for one, acknowledges she was surprised by those figures.

“My intuition, going into it, was that wait times were going to be much longer, based on my own biased recall,” she said. “We tend to remember that visit where we waited forever. A key value of measuring wait times based on information captured by office software is it doesn’t suffer from such biased recall.”

That said, Finkelstein added, she was not surprised to see some of the more specific results, such as the fact that families with young children are so frequently running late to their appointments.

In the past, Finkelstein has collaborated with several other researchers on groundbreaking studies about Medicaid, the health care insurance program that often gives coverage to low-income citizens and is funded by both the federal government and states. Her research has shown that newly enrolled Medicaid patients make more trips overall to providers after acquiring insurance, make more visits to emergency rooms, and benefit financially from having insurance, among other findings.

The current study could open up new questions about the influence of the overall experience during health care visits. Future research could explore how negative perceptions of wait times affect the willingness of patients to seek more care. And the study bears on what researchers call the “opportunity cost” of visiting the doctor — that is, the fact that patients often have to take time out from their jobs to receive health care.

“I hope this is the tip of the iceberg for us and others in trying to think about the nonhealth amenities in the health care system,” Finkelstein said.

The liberation of Mosul from Daesh militants should be completed in May, an Iraqi commander told local media on Sunday.

The fighting should end “in a maximum of three weeks” the army’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, told state-run newspaper al-Sabah, according to Reuters.

The commander’s comments come amid stiff resistance from the extremists in Mosul’s Old City, where an estimated 400,000 civilians remain trapped, with limited food, water and medical supplies.

Daesh have dug in among civilians, launching fierce counter-attacks on forces closing in on the Old City’s Grand al-Nuri mosque, where Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance in July 2014 to declare himself a self-styled “caliphate” in parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

On Monday, Iraqi warplanes renewed airstrikes on Daesh areas in Mosul, including the neighbourhoods of al-Rifai, al-Zanjali and 17 July, a local source told The New Arab. The number of civilian casualties from the airstrikes remains unclear.

Iraqi forces have made steady progress in west Mosul but, even with only a few hundred fighters left, the militants are expected to make a bloody last stand in the narrow streets of the Old City.

Most of the city has been liberated from Daesh since the offensive to recapture Mosul began in October.

The United Nations estimates that more than half a million civilians have fled Mosul since the offensive on the country’s second city began.

Original source

Americans are the most educated people in the world but the least educated about the world.

The American education gap widens when it comes to topics of the Middle East, an area they should be better informed about considering that in the past nearly two decades, more Americans were killed or injured there than in any other international region.

A new survey by YouGov in partnership with Arab News, the Middle East’s leading English-language newspaper, reports that two countries — Iraq and Saudi Arabia — stand out in Americans’ minds as being part of the Arab world.

I am sure the reasons are simple: More than 4,500 Americans have died in Iraq since the US first invaded that Arab country in 2003. Oil from the Middle East countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, fuels the cars Americans need to sustain their lifestyle.

Yet in the survey of more than 2,000 Americans by YouGov and Arab News, the gap in American knowledge about the Middle East is staggering.

A large segment of those polled, 65 percent, admitted they do not know much about the Arab world.

Nothing says that more than the fact that 21 percent of those surveyed actually identified the “Sultanate of Agrabah” as an Arab country.

Apparently, Americans were really moved by the Hollywood lyrics, “Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

Agrabah, Arabia is the “City of Mystery” located “this side of the Jordan river” that was home for Aladdin in Disney’s 1993 children’s animated movie.

It does not exist. But 38 percent said that Agrabah should be added to the US travel ban if its “citizens” pose a threat.

Why is all this important? Because the future of the Middle East is being driven by the policies made by the American administration, which is driven by the beliefs and stereotypes its 325 million population have about the Middle East.

The polling showed other startling realities of how Americans view the Arab world, such as that only 19 percent of Americans could actually identify the region on a map.

The Arab News/YouGov poll shows Americans do want more information about the Arab world, with half of the respondents blaming the US mainstream news media for not providing enough coverage.

On the one hand, the survey shows that Americans are ripe for understanding more about the Arab world. That is great for the growing English-language segment of the Arab world’s news media, like Arab News, which is growing in popularity in the US market.

But the survey also points to a fundamental problem that exists. It is not just that the Americans do not know much about the Middle East before they send their sons and daughters to fight in that region. It shows that the Arab world is not doing its part to inform Americans.

Unfortunately, the Arab governments invest little or no money in public relations and communications strategy to promote their events, culture, tourism, and more importantly, issues to the American people.

In contrast, Israel, which 36 percent of the respondents to the poll identified as being a part of the “Arab world,” spends hundreds of millions of dollars on public relations and communications campaigns, and it pays off big time.

The US Congress is planning cutbacks on funding to foreign countries. It provides $35 billion in foreign aid each year to 135 countries, including $1.5 billion to Egypt, $1 billion to Jordan, $373 million to Iraq, $210 million to Palestine, $156 million to Lebanon, $155 million to Syria, and $82 million to Yemen.

But America gives $3.1 billion a year to Israel, which engages in the oppression of Arab citizens and civilians and fuels public antagonism and perceptions against many Arab countries.

So there is little wonder that more than 54 percent of Americans sympathize with Israel in the conflict with Palestine, while only 19 percent sympathize with Palestinians, according to a 2016 PEW Research Center study. And a survey last year by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs showed that only 36 percent of American voters support allowing Syrian refugees to enter the country.

American perceptions have a direct impact on the Middle East. The YouGov and Arab News survey helps us understand why that impact has not been positive.

‘Revengeful’ and ‘regrouped’ terrorists are again on the rampage across Pakistan. During a span of just seven days (February 13, 2017 to February 19, 2017) Pakistan accounted for at least 205 fatalities [100 civilians, 21 Security Force (SF) personnel, 84 terrorists) in 22 terrorism-related incidents.

In the worst attack, on February 16, 2017, at least 88 civilians were killed and more than 343 were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a historic Sufi shrine in the Sehwan town of Jamshoro District in Sindh Province. The shrine, built in 1356, was dedicated to Syed Mohammad Usman Marwandi, better known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. This is the worst attack, in terms of civilian fatalities, recorded in Pakistan since the December 16, 2014, Peshawar Army Public School attack which resulted in 150 fatalities, including 143 civilians. Daesh (the Islamic State) claimed the attack.

On February 15, 2017, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a government office in the Ghalanai area of Mohmand Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), killing five civilians. Another attacker was killed by the guards before he could explode his suicide vest.

On February 13, 2017, at least 14 persons, including eight civilians and six policemen, were killed and another 85 were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Punjab Assembly Building on Mall Road, Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab. The attack was carried out during a protest by a large group of chemists and pharmaceutical manufacturers opposing a Government crackdown against the sale of illegal drugs. The dead included Captain (Retd.) Ahmad Mobin, Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Traffic, Lahore, and Zahid Gondal, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Operations, Punjab Police. There was a significant presence of SFs in the area to manage the protest. The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for both the February 13 and February 15 attacks.

Earlier, on January 21, 2017, in the first major attack of the year, at least 25 civilians were killed and more than 87 were injured in a bomb blast at the Sabzi Mandi (vegetable market) area of Parachinar in the FATA’s Kurram Agency. In a text message sent to journalists, the al-Alami (International) faction of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ-A) claimed that it, along with the TTP-Shehryar Mehsud group, carried out the attack. The Shehryar Mehsud group did not independently claim the bombing.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), since the beginning of 2017, at least 284 terrorism-related fatalities (141 civilians, 32 SF personnel, 111 terrorists) have been recorded across Pakistan (data till February 19, 2017). In just these 50 days, at least five suicide attacks have been executed, resulting in at least 112 fatalities.

The dramatic surge in violence during the early days of the current year is significant, given the fact that through 2016, Pakistan had managed to maintain the declining trend of overall fatalities, on year on year basis, since 2010, barring 2014. [2014 recorded 5,496 fatalities as against 5,379 fatalities in 2013]. There were 1,803 fatalities (612 civilians, 293 SF personnel, 898 terrorists) in 2016, as against 3,682 (940 civilians, 339 SF personnel, 2,403 terrorists) in 2015. The number of major attacks (involving three or more fatalities) and resultant fatalities fell from 322 and 2,923, respectively in 2015, to 172 and 1,369, respectively, in 2016. The number of sectarian attacks and related deaths also declined – 276 fatalities in 53 incidents in 2015, as against 131 fatalities in 33 incidents in 2016.

Unsurprisingly, on December 21, 2016, a buoyant Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Federal Minister of the Interior, claimed (inaccurately) that Pakistan was the only country where the terrorism graph had recorded a sharp decline. He further boasted, “I can say with complete responsibility that as of now no terrorist networks exist in Pakistan.” On the same day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had declared that there was no presence of Daesh in Pakistan. More recently, referring to Operation Zarb-e-Azb, Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council on February 13, 2017, “This comprehensive approach has succeeded in expelling terrorist organisations from our territory and greatly constrained their ability to carry out lethal attacks, as evident from the dramatic decline in the number of such attacks, despite the cowardly attack in Lahore.”

These assertions were evidently premature and imprudent. Pakistan remains an extraordinarily dangerous place. Indeed, recent incidents demonstrate that several terror networks continue to thrive across the country, prominently including Daesh, JuA, and LeJ-A, among the domestically active formations, not to mention the many state-backed terrorist groupings that operate across international borders, into Afghanistan and India.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that the large number of TTP ‘commanders’ who were operating out of the tribal areas in Pakistan when the Operation Zarb-e-Azb [Sword of the Prophet] was launched and who had managed to cross over into the bordering areas of Afghanistan, have decided to come together and form a ‘united front’, joining hands with other terrorist outfits. These ‘commanders’ of rival factions of TTP were fighting each other to establish dominance in their respective areas of influence. In November 2016, leaders of eight terrorist groups held a meeting in Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province for this purpose. Arranged by Yousaf Mansour Khurasani, chief of LeJ-A, the meeting was attended by Javaid Sawati, a close aide of former TTP ‘chief’ Mulla Fazlullah*; Wajid Mehsud of Jandullah; Maulvi Khatir of TTP-Sajna group; Shahryar Mehsud of TTP- Shahryar group; Abdul Wali of JuA; Mufti Ghufran of TTP-Khalifa Mansour group; and Mullah Daud of TTP-Qari Hussain group. On February 2, 2017, TTP-Sajna merged with the TTP-Fazlullah group.

In fact other parameters of violence registered in 2016 demonstrate that the crackdown against terrorists has failed to secure the nation beyond a point. Launched by the Pakistani forces in the aftermath of the attack on Karachi Airport on June 8-9, 2014, in which at least 33 persons, including all ten attackers, were killed, the crackdown has repeatedly been declared a success, but has also been repeatedly extended. Significantly, though overall civilian fatalities in Pakistan declined through 2016, Balochistan and KP registered increases in fatalities in this category. In the SF category, fatalities increased in the Punjab Province. The number of suicide attacks in 2016 remained the same, 19, as recorded in 2015, but the resultant fatalities recorded a sharp increase – 161 in 2015, spiking to 401 in 2016. Further, though Pakistan recorded 139 incidents of bomb blasts in 2016, as against 216 such incidents in 2015, the resultant fatalities increased from 495 in 2015 to 502 in 2016. Five suicide attacks resulting in 112 deaths have already been recorded in 2017.

On several accounts, Operation Zarb-e-Azb has been overhyped, and only targeted a few terrorist formations that had turned ‘rogue’, while allowing a multiplicity of other terrorist formations that operate out of Pakistani soil to thrive, with the attendant problem that there is little possibility of controlling one set without constraining the other. A more serious allegation, according to Arif Jamal, a US-based expert on political Islam, is that “actually, it [Operation Zarb-e-Azb] was aimed at weakening political parties and not eliminating terrorists.”

Meanwhile, the favorable environment provided to ‘pro-Government’ terrorist formations has resulted in a further radicalization of Pakistani society, helping groups like Daesh to mobilize and recruit. Daesh’s spread, in turn, has helped rogue terrorist outfits to regain lost ground, as most of these have now established some linkages with Daesh, resulting in a measure of unity, consolidation and effective coordination.

SAIR has repeatedly highlighted the fact that the Pakistani establishment has, for long, provided open support to terrorist formations which has served its purported strategic interests. Most recently, Islamabad, in connivance with Beijing, opposed the imposition of an international ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammad ( JeM) chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, who openly operates out of Pakistan. JeM has been one of the most lethal terrorist groups operating in India, particularly in the State of Jammu & Kashmir, and has been responsible for a large number of major attacks . The group is closely allied al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, and has been notionally banned in Pakistan since 2002, though it faces no visible restraints. On the other hand, there is no conclusive proof to suggest that any action has been taken against Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban terrorists operating out of Pakistani soil and targeting the Afghan as well as Indian and other countries’ interests inside Afghanistan. Indeed, Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, Speaker of National Assembly of Afghanistan, stated on February 18, 2017,

Terrorism remains a threat to the South Asian countries, including Pakistan but unfortunately rulers of Pakistan have always supported terrorism. This policy of Pakistan is not in the interest of the South Asian region. In the future it is going to be a big threat to Pakistan.”

It is widely believed that the aid which flows from the U.S. is one of the main sources of the Pakistani establishment’s capacities to carry on its with policy of exporting of terrorism. Indeed, a report titled A New U.S. Approach to Pakistan: Enforcing Aid Conditions Without Cutting Ties released by the Hudson Institute and The Heritage Foundation in February 2017 observed,

“The new Trump Administration must review its policies toward Pakistan in order to more effectively contain, and eventually eliminate, the terrorist threats that continue to emanate from the country… Accordingly, the objective of the Trump administration’s policy toward Pakistan must be to make it more and more costly for Pakistani leaders to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies to achieve regional strategic goals… It no longer makes sense to waive the counterterrorism conditions on U.S. aid to Pakistan. The U.S. can and must better leverage U.S. military aid to encourage tougher policies against terrorists who operate from within Pakistan. While a grace period may have been merited for Pakistan seven years ago, it would be foolish to keep giving the Pakistanis a pass when it comes to taking action against terrorist groups that are directly undermining U.S. regional interests, not to mention killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Whereas U.S. government agencies were divided seven years ago over the nature and extent of Pakistan’s support to the Afghan Taliban and other terrorist and extremist groups, today no one in the U.S. government disputes that Pakistan provides such support.”

Regrettably, there is no immediate reason to believe that there has been any dramatic shift in U.S. policy towards Pakistan, though the broad theme of official pronouncements from the fledgling Trump administration suggests that such a shift is in the offing. In the absence of genuine and overwhelming international pressure, Pakistan is unlikely to alter its policy of ‘export of terror’ in its immediate and extended neighborhood, while it targets domestically active terrorist formations within Pakistan. Pakistani strategists continue to believe that such a policy has served the country’s strategic interests, and are inclined to ignore the devastating repercussions this policy has caused within the country.

The man behind three films about American presidents, Oliver Stone, says his upcoming feature about Russian President Vladimir Putin “opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard,” and could help prevent “a dangerous situation – on the brink of war.”

Academy Award-winning director and revered documentary filmmaker Stone said in interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that his new film about Putin will be released soon.

“It’s not a documentary as much as a question and answer session,” he said. “Mr. Putin is one of the most important leaders in the world and in so far as the United States has declared him an enemy – a great enemy – I think it’s very important we hear what he has to say.”

The film will present Putin’s viewpoint of political events since he was first elected president of Russia in March 2000.

“It opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard,” Stone told the newspaper, adding that his crew went to see the indefatigable Russian leader four times over the course of two years.

“I talked to him originally about the Snowden affair, which is in the film. And out of that grew, I think, a trust that he knew that I would not edit it so much,” he said, adding that Putin “talks pretty straight.”

“I think we did him the justice of putting [his comments] into a Western narrative that could explain their viewpoint in the hopes that it will prevent continued misunderstanding and a dangerous situation – on the brink of war.”

The 70-year-old director also commented the accusations of Russian influence on the US presidential elections.

“That’s a path that leads nowhere to my mind. That’s an internal war of politics in the US in which the Democratic Party has taken a suicide pact or something to blow him up; in other words, to completely de-legitimize him and in so doing blow up the US essentially.

“What they’re doing is destroying the trust that exists between people and government. It’s a very dangerous position to make accusations you cannot prove,” he added.

Stone also said does not believe claims circulating in the mainstream media that Moscow allegedly passed some classified documents to WikiLeaks in a bid to influence the November US elections.

“I hold Assange [WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange] in high regard in many issues of state. I take very seriously his statement that he received no information from Russia or any state actors,” Stone said.

WikiLeaks published over 250,000 classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010 in a move that amounted to the largest information leak in United States history. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State when WikiLeaks published ‘Cablegate’.

Assange has been stuck inside the Ecuadorian embassy since he took refuge there in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning by the authorities regarding allegations of sexual assault against two women in 2010.

“For 10 years now he’s been a beacon of integrity and honesty,” Stone noted. “He’s been very helpful to understand the world to those who pay attention.

“Unfortunately, his reports sometimes get too thick and too difficult to understand, but I don’t think the media has done him any favors really by playing along and accusing him of rape and holding him on these bogus charges. This is scary behavior but it’s also unlawful.”

We’ve long known that breathing, blood pressure, body temperature and pulse provide an important window into the complexities of human health. But a growing body of research suggests that another vital sign – how fast you walk – could be a better predictor of health issues like cognitive decline, falls, and even certain cardiac or pulmonary diseases.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to accurately monitor walking speed in a way that’s both continuous and unobtrusive. Professor Dina Katabi’s group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have been working on the problem, and believe that the answer is to go wireless.

In a new paper, the team presents “WiGait,” a device that can measure the walking speed of multiple people with 95 to 99 percent accuracy using wireless signals. The system is an update of a device that Katabi’s team presented to President Obama in 2015.

The size of a small painting, the device can be placed on the wall of a person’s house. It builds on Katabi’s previous work that analyzes wireless signals reflected off people’s bodies to measure a range of behaviors, from breathing and falling to specific emotions. (The signals emit roughly 100 times less radiation than a standard cellphone.)

“By using in-home sensors, we can see trends in how walking speed changes over longer periods of time,” said lead author and PhD student Chen-Yu Hsu. “This can provide insight into whether someone should adjust their health regimens, whether that’s doing physical therapy or altering their medications.”

WiGait is also 85 to 99 percent accurate at measuring a person’s stride length, which could allow researchers to better understand conditions like Parkinson’s disease that are characterized by reduced step size.

Hsu and Katabi developed WiGait in collaboration with CSAIL PhD student Zachary Kabelac and master’s student Rumen Hristov, alongside undergraduate Yuchen Liu from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and assistant professor Christine Liu from the Boston University School of Medicine. The team will present their paper in May at ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Colorado.

How it works

Today walking speed is measured by physical therapists or clinicians using a stopwatch. Wearables like FitBit can only roughly estimate your speed based on your step count; GPS-enabled smartphones are similarly inaccurate and can’t work indoors; and cameras are intrusive and can only monitor one room at a time. The only method that’s comparably accurate is VICON motion-tracking, which isn’t widely available enough to be practical for monitoring day-to-day health changes.

Meanwhile, WiGait measures walking speed with a high level of granularity, without requiring that the person wear or carry a sensor. It does so by analyzing the surrounding wireless signals and their reflections off a person’s body. Also, the team’s algorithm can distinguish walking from other movements, such as cleaning the kitchen or brushing one’s teeth.

According to Katabi, the device could help reveal a wealth of important health information, particularly for the elderly: a change in walking speed, for example, could mean an injury or that the person is at an increased risk of falling.

“Many avoidable hospitalizations are related to issues like falls, congestive heart disease, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which have all been shown to be correlated to gait speed,” Katabi said. “Reducing the number of hospitalizations, even by a small amount, could vastly improve healthcare costs.”

The team developed WiGait to be more privacy-minded than cameras, showing you as nothing more than a moving dot on a screen. In the future they hope to train it on people with walking impairments like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or MS, to help physicians accurately track disease progression and adjust medications.

“The true novelty of this device is that it can map major metrics of health and behavior without any active engagement from the user, which is especially helpful for the cognitively impaired,” said Ipsit Vahia, a geriatric clinician at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research. “Gait speed is a proxy indicator of many clinically important conditions, and down the line this could extend to measuring sleep patterns, respiratory rates, and other vital human behaviors.”

Facebook has come under fire after leaked documents revealed the social media site has been targeting potentially vulnerable children, The Independent reports.

The allegations suggest the company is gathering information on young people who “need a confidence boost” to facilitate predatory advertising practices.

Confidential documents obtained by The Australian reportedly show how Facebook can exploit the moods and insecurities of teenagers using the platform for the benefit of advertisers.

By monitoring posts, the newspaper said Facebook could determine when users as young as 14 feel “defeated”, “overwhelmed”, “stressed”, “anxious”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “silly”, “useless” or a “failure”.

This information, which Facebook calls “sentiment analysis” could be used by advertisers to target young teenager when they are potentially more vulnerable.

The company has since issued an apology and said an investigation would be launched into the matter.

Facebook – one of the largest companies to dominate the advertising industry alongside Google – has been at the centre of internet privacy concerns in previous years, with many suspecting the company to be capable of using personal data in this way.

Spain posted a deficit equivalent to 0.49% of GDP to month-end March, 0.41 points lower than the deficit of the same period in 2016 and significantly below the previous month’s figure (0.97% of GDP).

According to the Spanish Ministry of the Treasury and Public Function, in the first quarter of the year, the State posted a deficit of 5.66 billion euros, 43.8% less than in the same quarter of the previous year. This is equivalent to 0.49% of GDP, almost halving February’s figure (0.97% of GDP).

If accrued interest is excluded , which at month-end March 2017 amounted to 6.31 billion euros, 10.2% lower than the previous year’s figure, the State obtained a primary surplus of 651 million versus the primary deficit of 3.05 billion in the same period of 2016.

In the first quarter of the year, non-financial State revenue grew by 1.6% year-on-year to 41.4 billion.

This result is mainly due to the performance of tax revenue which represents 89.7% of total revenue, totaling 37.14 billion, up by 3.2%.

Taxes on production and imports grew by 4.1% to 26.04 billion, of which 20.37 billion corresponds to VAT. This represents an increase to month-end March of 5.2%. Other taxes under this heading have grown by 0.3%, largely due to 1.7% growth in revenue from the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons. Tax revenue from electrical energy production and from insurance premiums is also up, by 18.4% and 7.5%, respectively. Conversely, revenue from the Tax on Tobacco Products fell by 8.8%.

Current taxes on income, equity, etc. grew by 1.3% to 11.07 billion euros, of which 9.79 billion corresponds to Personal Income Tax (Spanish acronym: IRPF), up by 2.7%. Revenue from Corporate Income Tax shrank by 29.7% to a total of 598 million, while non-resident income tax increased by 25% to 674 million euros.

Other non-financial revenue totalled 2.53 billion euros, a drop of 15.6%, mainly driven by lower dividends from the Bank of Spain and, conversely, an increase in interest. The Bank of Spain’s profits were 519 million lower than those of the previous year, while interest income increased by 19.6%, driven by higher accrued interest from the Regional Government Financing Fund and the Local Authority Financing Fund, which together increased to 270 million euros in 2017, while in 2016 the figure stood at 64 million euros.

To month-end March, the State’s non-financial expenditure stood at 47.06 billion euros, 7.4% lower than the in same period of 2016.

Although most headings show signs of a downward trend, expenditure reduction has to a great extent been due to lower current transfers between public authorities (down by 6.3%). The largest decrease was in transfers to Social Security Funds, 1.67 billion less. Meanwhile transfers to the State Public Employment Service (Spanish acronym: SEPE) in 2016 amounted to 980 million euros, with no corresponding figure for the same period in 2017 due to the favourable performance of the job market, while transfers to the Social Security system are down by 591 million. Transfers to regional governments, amounting to17.65 billion euros in the period, grew by 0.5% due to the increase of interim payments made by the financing system.

Contributions to the EU for VAT and GNI resources also dropped significantly, by 35.3%, from 3.59 billion in 2016 to 2.32 billion in 2017. Interest is down by 10.2%, spending on intermediate consumption by 3%, and remuneration of employees by 0.3%. The reduction posted under other current expenditure, down by 82.9%, is due to lower spending to cover the electricity deficit, which in the first quarter of 2016 amounted to 212 million, with no corresponding amount in 2017.

Expenses which have increased include spending on social benefits other than social transfers in kind which is up by 3.6% to 3.24 billion, of which 2.94 billion corresponds to civil service pensions, 3.9% higher than the in same period of 2016. At month-end March, investment subsidies amounted to 292 million euros versus 158 million in 2016, due to the contribution made to the ADIF-high speed train programme totalling 187 million euros, with no corresponding amount in 2016.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena said the largely attended and successful May Day rally at Gatambe in Kandy has given a boost to the victorious forward march of the SLFP-led leftist progressive forces in the country. He vowed to transform the SLFP into a pure, corrupt-free, progressive and democratic political force that could emerge victorious. He pointed out that the SLFP was burdened with corruption and malpractices and faced electoral defeats in 2015.

“You placed your trust in me as the President of the SLFP. The people placed their trust in me as the common candidate at the Presidential Election in 2015,” said Siresena, adding, “I did not take the chairmanship of the SLFP by force. The central committee of the party invited me. “In the last two years, I succeeded in gradually transforming it to a pure democratic party and I thank the senior leaders who extended support to me in this endeavour”.

Siresenasaid that as the trade union leaders pointed out the working class received many benefits and privileges during the last two years and added that the SLFP is a political party that always listen to the genuine demands of the workers as a party that represents the working class of the this country. “The SLFP policy is to strengthen indigenous producers, workers, peasants, fishermen and other sections of the working class,” Siresena said.

“Today the word labourer is not used. Instead, we call the skilled workers. Today the skilled workforce is an important asset of any developed country,” Siresena said. The government is fully aware of the importance of the people who serve the nation with their labour and is fully committed to ensure their welfare, he said.

Emphasizing the need for communal amity and harmony, President Sirisena said, “We cannot build a peaceful country by suppressing other communities.If somebody thinks about his own community, forgetting the other communities, this country cannot be built as a prosperous and peaceful country. How much of our unique Sri Lankan feeling was beautifully displayed in the 1940s when we fought for independence? Our Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim leaders fought against the British rule and won the freedom with unity with each other. But after that they separated for power”.

Siresena pointed out that intelligence, knowledge, ability, creativity and skilled workforce needed to develop a country and stated that “our country has all these elements which needed to develop a country.”

“Even though some section of the society blamed that the politicians and the political parties are using the May Day, I believe that the workers and the politicians are not two separate entities,and always the politicians should listen to the voices of the working class,” Siresena said.

“Today, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s Youth Front could fulfill its duties and responsibilities in an independent and free environment,” he said and added that there are no ‘princes’ or ‘madams’ and all are equal.

The Government has declared as a policy to introduce 84 days of maternity leave which is currently given to public servants should also be extended to the private sector as well as female shop employees, the President said.