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Fantasies Of Worth: Macron’s French Mission – OpEd

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The outcome of the French presidential elections did not suggest a France on the verge of rapid, vigorous renewal. It suggested the opposite, a state in atrophy, the Fifth Republic in terminal decline before unleashed historical forces.

Dejected, voters feared by way of a majority that Marine Le Pen was simply too potent to be catapulted into the Élysée Palace on May 7. A coalition of sentiment and convenience converged, giving the 39-year-old opportunist a chance to market himself as France’s saviour.

For all that, Emmanuel Macron still did not convince the twelve million who swooped to Le Pen, or the four million who preferred to destroy their ballot papers in a huff of disapproval of both candidates in the runoff election. Hardly peanuts from the perspective of voter behaviour.

And marketing himself Macron is. Essential to this campaign is an effort to link victory to a broader, European, if not global one. (When France is in internal crisis, it often looks to save the causes of others.)

“The world needs what the French have always taught. For decades France has doubted herself.” Such self-doubt can hardly be a terrible thing, putting the brake on overly patriotic, and parochial measures. But not for Macron, who promises that his mandate would give back to the French the confidence “to believe in themselves”, to effectively convince the world that French power, far from being on the decline to some retirement home of geopolitics, was on “the brink of a great renaissance.”

This hardly seemed to be the case, given the admitted fracture on the president’s part of France’s political fabric, and the state of emergency that keeps the state apparatchiks busy. Since 2015, the Fifth Republic continues to live in a state that made Macron speak of “a living fraternity” open and welcoming, rather than private and fearful. Such vague calls cry out for evidence, though Macron had better things to worry about.

He will have much convincing to do. One will be to inject his En Marche! Movement – now named République en marche – into Parliamentary elections, again humming the theme of centrist wisdom. To garner victory, he will need a majority of the 577-seat National Assembly through issuing a siren call for defections. On Monday, Macron published a list of 511 candidates for the June legislative ballot.

Short of that, the prospects of La Cohabitation with a prime minister of different political persuasion may be in order, one where the leader in the lower chamber is approved by majority. Such situations have previously led to an un-greasing of the pathway of policy reform, and stress a distribution of power away from the executive to the parliament.

So far, Macron’s man for the prime minister’s office is Édouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre and of the Les Républicains party. He has indicated that, in all manner of things, one may well lean, when required, to the left of politics or the right. (Do we sense here a French variant of the British “wobbler”?)

What matters to Philippe are issues of economic freedom and “freedom of thought, freedom of expression.”[1] He concedes to being right wing, “and yet the general interest must be to dictate the engagement of the state, of elected officials and of the citizen.”

As of Macron, Philippe was not entirely convinced prior to his appointment that the soufflé had come together quite as promised. There was little doubt, in his mind, that new President had the “power of seduction and reformist rhetoric,” but he could hardly be compared on the charm metre to a John F. Kennedy.

None of these views detract from the visible fact that Macron’s choice is very much one that seeks to court establishment values, whilst sending teasing signals to the conservatives. Bruno Retailleau of the French senate smelled an enormous rat, suggesting that Macron had moved to weaken “the right in the parliamentary elections.”

Reform, it would seem, is being promised from within the establishment, making use of traditional figures to bring about a change. Philippe’s party is that of the old guard, of Nicolas Sarkozy and failed, disgraced presidential candidate François Fillon. As Le Pen suggested, with some substance and disdain, the nomination of Philippe is telling on one level, that of a “perfect summary of the last 10 years in France”. The forces of the traditional left and right, in other words, would continue to have the dance of State.

To add some padding to these tactics, Macron is also facing a range of decisions on how to pursue the “road map” of European change with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. On the one hand, the centrist wants greater EU centralisation within the euro bloc, not to mention that headache of headaches, a budget; on the other, he wishes to quell technocratic urges and trim unneeded bureaucracy.

What, then, should this suggest? A policy of a “Europe of two circles,” one capitalising on Brexit, has been suggested by Macron’s economic aide and mastermind, Jean Pisani-Ferry, along with traditional observance of the EU-imposed public deficit limit. Given what is currently happening to the unfortunate continent, he might as well go for three, all turbulent, concentric, and in need of severe repair.

Notes:
[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2017/05/15/edouard-philippe-le-maire-les-republicains-du-havre-nomme-premier-ministre_5127912_823448.html

The post Fantasies Of Worth: Macron’s French Mission – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Pakistan, Masood Azhar And Terrorism – Analysis

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By Raj Verma*

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to Pakistan and met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on December 25, 2015 in an attempt to improve bilateral relations. But within a week, India-Pakistan relations lurched towards a crisis when India blamed the Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM/Jaish) for the attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot on January 2, 2016. As part of its response to this renewed act of terror, India put forward a proposal in February 2016 in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to designate Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the JeM, as a terrorist under the aegis of the UNSC 1267 committee.1 China intervened on Pakistan’s behest and placed a technical hold on India’s move to label Azhar as a terrorist in March 2016 and again in October 2016. It subsequently used its veto power to block the proposal in December 2016, a day before the end of the technical hold.2 China again employed a technical hold and blocked a proposal put forward by the US, UK and France on January 19, 2017 to designate Azhar as a terrorist.3 This technical hold is valid for six months (till June 2017) and can be extended again for three months. After that, China will have to resort to the use of its veto to block the proposal.

Why does Pakistan want to prevent Masood Azhar from being designated as a terrorist? Even Pakistanis are raising this question, as evident from an editorial in a leading newspaper The Nation titled ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’.4 It is not in Pakistan’s interest to label Azhar as a terrorist due to the domestic and regional (South Asia) security strategy of Pakistan. Azhar, the commander of the JeM, is invaluable for Pakistan’s military-security establishment. He is an Islamic ideologue, an excellent orator and a brilliant recruiter of jihadis. He has been engaged in an array of jihadist activities – from planning terrorist attacks to mobilising funds for jihad, among others. He has authored numerous books and is a prolific jihadist writer.5 Additionally, he is a skilled negotiator and administrator.6 Given these traits, Pakistan tried desperately to get Azhar released from Indian prison after his capture in Khanbal, Kashmir in 1994.

Several unsuccessful attempts were made by Harkat ul-Ansar (HuA) to free Azhar. The terrorist group Al Faran7, whose relationship with HuA is not exactly clear, kidnapped six Western trekkers in 1995 to seek his release. Several unsuccessful jail breaks were also attempted. He was released along with Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Omar Sheikh in 1999 in exchange for the safe release of the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814.8 Subsequent to his release, Azhar broke away from HuA and established the JeM. Azhar also developed close relations with Al-Qaeda and Taliban which further increased his importance for the military-security establishment. In the attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif on January 3, 2016, JeM terrorists left messages stating that the attack was to avenge the death of Afzal Guru. According to Bruce Riedel, Pathankot and Mazar-e-Sharif attacks were organised by Jaish.9 An Indian diplomat avers, ‘There’s no coincidence to the fact that the attack on the consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif took place at the same time as Pathankot. Someone was making a point’.10 This illustrates Azhar’s close links with the Taliban.

JeM, along with Lashkar–e-Taiba (LeT), was responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001.11 JeM had been absent in Kashmir since 200612 but it has now returned to the place where it became infamous as the most dreaded foreign terrorist organisation. Since 2011, it seems that there is a concerted attempt by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to revive JeM.13 However, according to Indian security agencies, ISI has been trying to revive JeM since 2014.14 The regrouping of Jaish’s cadres coincided with the hanging of Afzal Guru – one of the co-accused in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, in 2013.15 On January 26, 2014, Azhar delivered a venomous anti-India tirade at a rally in Muzaffarabad and extolled the people to avenge Afzal Guru’s hanging.16 Its recent activities in Kashmir started in 2014 when three JeM militants were killed in Sopore in northern Kashmir. Jaish militants were also killed by security forces in May, June and September 2014 and approximately ten were arrested till October 2016.17 In November 2015, the Indian Army also repulsed a major suicide attack on the Gorkha Rifles camp in Tangdhar. Jaish claimed responsibility but Indian security forces have rejected the claim.18 The security forces were alarmed when they recovered bags with the inscription ‘Afzal Guru Squad’ from the dead terrorists.19

JeM is being revived for three plausible reasons. First, Jaish is no longer on the list of terror organisations maintained by Punjab Police in Pakistan. This indicates that Jaish and Masood Azhar have purged all the anti-Pakistan jihadis from the organisation.20 After General Musharraf’s decision to ally with the US in the ‘global war on terror’ and act against the Taliban, a majority of the leadership in Jaish became disgruntled with Pakistan’s military establishment for abandoning their Deobandi brethren. Jaish splintered into different groups or factions and attacked the Pakistani state. Two assassination attempts on Musharraf in December 2003 were traced to Jaish. In 2007, Jaish was also involved in the log jam between the Pakistan army and the jihadists who had occupied the Lal Masjid in Islamabad.21 In 2011, according to Punjab Police records, Muhammad Haroon Akbar Khan, Mati-ur-Rahman Arain, and Muhammad Tayyab (Jaish operatives) were listed as terrorists whowere involved in terrorist strikes in Pakistan, including an attack on the Pakistan Air Force bus in 2011.22 In the aftermath of the assassination attempts, Jaish was banned. Masood Azhar and Jaish were forced to maintain a low profile and their activities were restricted to Bahawalpur.23 However, in 2008, Jaish’s activities were revived and focused on Afghanistan, although Azhar himself maintained a low profile.

Second, JeM is being revived under Azhar’s leadership by the ISI since 2011 (if not earlier) to rehabilitate ‘the good terrorists’ who had joined the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Punjabi Taliban. Prior to operation Zarb-e-Azab in 2014 against the TTP, Pakistan’s intelligence and military agencies tried to convince elements in the TPP to cease their fight against Pakistan’s military-security establishment and either re-join Jaish to wage jihad in Kashmir or to fight in Afghanistan to aid the Taliban. Thus, the revival of Jaish is also a strategy of transforming the ‘bad terrorists’ into ‘good terrorists’ and ensure that their guns do not attack Pakistan.24

Third, LeT, which is loyal to the ISI, has come under intense global scrutiny. Hafiz Saeed, the head of the LeT, was declared a global terrorist on December 17, 2008 after the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008. He was forced to change the name of LeT twice— to Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD) and then to Tehreek Azadi Jammu and Kashmir. Hafiz has been placed under house arrest and his actions restricted by the Nawaz Sharif government. This resulted in the waning of Saeed’s influence.25 The link between the LeT and the military-security establishment in Pakistan has also become so perceptible that the military-ISI leadership needs the JeM to create a ‘deniable proxy’.26 At the same time, the ISI also wants to reduce its dependence on LeT. According to a senior Indian intelligence official, ‘the big difference is that the Lashkar is being watched by the world, and the Jaish isn’t’.27 Jaish is openly holding rallies, recruiting cadres and raising funds in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It also seems that Azhar is outside the realm of Prime Minister Sharif’s authority.28

Masood Azhar has close links with religious organisations, radical political parties such as Jamiat-i Ulema i-Islam Fazlur Rehman faction (JUI-F) and numerous terrorist organisations operating in Pakistan such as Sipah e-Sahaba, Lashkar e-Jhangvi and Harkat ul-Mujahideen. JeM is also a member of the United Jihad Council (UJC). UJC, which is sponsored by the ISI, is an umbrella organisation of 13 to 16 militant outfits that operate in Kashmir.29 There are concerns in Pakistan that if the military-security establishment is unable to prevent Azhar’s designation as a terrorist, the host of terrorist organisations may turn their guns against the Pakistani state and might also hurt Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan. This will increase domestic turmoil and worsen the security situation in Pakistan. After the Pathankot attack in 2016, in an article in al-Qalam using his pseudonym ‘Saidi’, Masood warned the Pakistan government on taking action against Jaish. He pronounced that action against Jaish will not be good for the peace, security, unity and integrity of Pakistan.30

The revival of Jaish illustrates that Pakistan continues with its dichotomy of ‘good terrorist’ and ‘bad terrorist’ and fosters state-sponsored terrorism directed against India. Although it has suffered and continues to suffer from terrorism emanating from its soil, Pakistan will continue to utilise terrorism as an instrument to advance its geo-strategic agenda in South Asia. The aim of Pakistan’s military-security establishment is to execute a perpetual war against India and across South Asia. The resurgence of Jaish is a bad omen for India. India should continue its efforts to get Azhar designated as a terrorist under the UNSC 1267 Committee, till such time it becomes difficult for China to bail out Pakistan on this issue.

*Dr. Raj Verma is Assistant Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Jilin University, and Visiting Fellow at IDSA.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/pakistan-masood-azhar-and-terrorism_rverma_150517

  • 1. Detailed explanation of the UNSC Committee can be found at http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1267(1999); See also http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.un.org%2Fsc%2Fcommittees%2F1267%2F&date=2010-02-04
  • 2. http://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/301216/china-vetoes-proposal-at-un-to-designate-masood-azhar-a-terrorist.html
  • 3. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/India-in-talks-with-China-over-repeated-blocks-in-designating-Masood-Azhar/article17242575.ece
  • 4. http://nation.com.pk/editorials/12-Oct-2016/how-to-lose-friends-and-alienate-people
  • 5. http://www.cf2r.org/fr/foreign-analyzes/still-a-force-to-reckon-with-jaish-e-mohammad.php
  • 6. http://www.cf2r.org/fr/foreign-analyzes/still-a-force-to-reckon-with-jaish-e-mohammad.php
  • 7. It is debatable whether Al-Faran was a faction of HuA (Gus Martin (ed.), The Sage Encyclopaedia of Terrorism, Second edition, p. 251) or HuA renamed itself Al-Faran to carry out the kidnappings of the western hostages (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/who-took-me-hostage-1276790.html; http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/02/21/the-meadow-kashmir-1995-where-the-terror-began/)
  • 8. http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/in-fact-history-of-masood-azhars-jaish-the-mystery-of-its-re-emergence/
  • 9. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/blame-pakistani-spy-service-for-attack-on-indian-air-force-base/
  • 10. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/with-backing-of-isi-jaish-e-muhammad-rises-like-a-phoenix-in-pakistan/
  • 11. See http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/95?highlight=Jaysh+Rijal+al-Tariq+al+Naqshabandi for attacks by JeM in India.
  • 12. Since the two assassination attempts on General Musharraf in December 2003 which were traced to Jaish, there was a severe crackdown on Jaish by the military-security establishment in Pakistan and the organisations which splintered from Jaish. Operations by Jaish in Kashmir declined and stopped after 2006. Jaish carried its last attack in Kashmir on September 26, 2006. Jaish and Azhar went underground after the Lal Masjid operation in July 2007 in Islamabad. Since 2008, its primary focus was on Afghanistan.
  • 13. http://www.christinefair.net/pubs/Dead.pdf
  • 14. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/raheel-sharif-vs-nawaz-sharif-pakistan-army-chief-knew-about-pathankot-attack/1/562327.html
  • 15. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pakistans-isi-has-revived-masood-azhars-jaish-e-mohammad/1/563850.html
  • 16. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/mazar-e-sharif-consulate-attack-before-dying-afghan-attackers-scrawled-afzal-guru-avenged-on-walls/
  • 17. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/with-afzal-guru-suicide-squads-jem-attempts-revival-in-kashmir/story-iMf6poJJHnicIeQhhRMhMJ.html; http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-shoving-off-lashkar-jaish-becomes-the-face-of-terror-2257154; http://zeenews.india.com/news/jammu-and-kashmir/two-jaish-e-mohammad-terrorists-arrested-in-jks-baramulla-ak-47-grenades-seized_1942364.html
  • 18. http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/in-fact-history-of-masood-azhars-jaish-the-mystery-of-its-re-emergence/
  • 19. http://www.dailyo.in/politics/china-pakistan-masood-azhar-india-modi-uri-attacks-brics/story/1/13439.html
  • 20. http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/after-jamaat-ud-dawah-jud-ban-jaish-e-mohammad-takes-centrestage-in-pakistan/540688/
  • 21. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/the-making-of-jem-chief-masood-azhar/1/571981.html
  • 22. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/masood-azhar-terror-targeting-india-a-lid-on-lashkar-jaish-takes-jihadi-centrestage-in-pakistan-4511358/
  • 23. http://www.diplomaticourier.com/pakistan-army-quietly-reviving-jaish-e-mohammad/
  • 24. http://www.christinefair.net/pubs/Dead.pdf
  • 25. http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-chinas-repeated-backing-of-masood-azhar-is-a-huge-opportunity-not-setback-for-india-3272672.html
  • 26. http://www.diplomaticourier.com/pakistan-army-quietly-reviving-jaish-e-mohammad/
  • 27. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/with-backing-of-isi-jaish-e-muhammad-rises-like-a-phoenix-in-pakistan/
  • 28. http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-chinas-repeated-backing-of-masood-azhar-is-a-huge-opportunity-not-setback-for-india-3272672.html
  • 29. http://www.cf2r.org/fr/foreign-analyzes/still-a-force-to-reckon-with-jaish-e-mohammad.php
  • 30. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Action-against-Jaish-e-Mohammad-will-be-dangerous-for-Pakistan-warns-Masood-Azhar/articleshow/50583986.cms

The post Pakistan, Masood Azhar And Terrorism – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Hidden Bombshell In The Comey-Trump Story – OpEd

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How can you tell an authoritarian when you see one? We know the 20th century hallmarks — brown shirts, street rallies, and the like. But there’s an autocratic attitude, some historians suggest, that can easily be traced across the centuries.

To put it simply, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat told Democracy Now recently, “authoritarians believe that institutions should serve them, and not the other way around.”

Just ask Jim Comey — who, as recently as October, might’ve been Donald Trump’s favorite person.

Less than two weeks before the November vote, the now-former FBI director announced that he was reopening an investigation into one of Trump’s favorite subjects: Hillary Clinton’s emails. For that, Trump praised Comey’s “guts,” while Clinton now blames Comey’s announcement for costing her the election.

Trump seemed happy to accept that help. But in a twist, Comey also found the guts to investigate whether Trump accepted help from the Russians, too. For that, he was fired this month. “This Russia thing” was “a made-up story,” Trump complained by way of explanation.

All that’s explosive enough. Even more so was a subsequent revelation: That Trump had called on Comey to “let go” of an investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser who’d been ousted for lying about his own contacts with the Russians.

That little bombshell is now headline news all over. But buried in the New York Times story about that memo was another, less noticed bomblet: “Alone in the Oval Office,” the paper reported, Trump said “Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information.”

That’s right: In addition to asking Comey to stop investigating his friend Flynn, the president called on the FBI director to arrest journalists who published things Trump found unflattering. Perhaps including stories like this one.

Was this an impulsive request? Not likely. In fact, the administration appears to have been laying the groundwork for this for some time.

Take WikiLeaks. Trump once said he “loved” the group for publishing leaked Clinton campaign emails. But then it earned the White House’s enmity by also publishing details about CIA hacking.

Trump’s CIA director has since described WikiLeaks as “a hostile foreign intelligence service” and warned that “America’s First Amendment freedoms” will not “shield them from justice.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now trying to bring a case against the group’s founder, Julian Assange.

While leaking classified information may be a crime, publishing it most certainly isn’t — that’s been protected by the Supreme Court since the early 1970s. In this respect, any charges brought against WikiLeaks could equally be brought against virtually every newspaper and TV station in the country.

Which, by all appearances, is the idea. When CNN asked if the WikiLeaks case could lead to charges against other outlets, Sessions didn’t bother to deny it.

Of course, this is all under the auspices of a candidate who called journalists “lying, disgusting people” and even wondered aloud about whether he’d kill them as president. (He ultimately said no, but seemed reluctant.) And it’s the same White House that wants to sue journalists whose reporting it disputes.

But consider that Michael S. Schmidt, the Times reporter who broke the Comey memo story, happens to be the very same person who reported on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Has anyone benefited more from that reporting than Trump?

It all depends on the headlines that come next, apparently.

They’ve surely been spotty about it, but in a democracy public institutions — from law enforcement to the free press — are supposed to serve the public, not the president. If Trump can’t accept that, maybe he’s the one who should be fired.

*Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org, where this article was published.

The post The Hidden Bombshell In The Comey-Trump Story – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Legislation Introduced To Provide Banking Services For Legal Cannabis Businesses

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US Senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to ensure that legal cannabis businesses can access banking services.

The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2017 would solve a key logistical and public safety problem in states that have legalized medicinal or recreational cannabis, according to the Senators. Oregon Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley led a bipartisan group of Senators – including Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) in introducing the legislation.

Currently, cannabis businesses operating under state laws that have legalized medicinal or recreational cannabis have been mostly denied access to the banking system because banks that provide them services can be prosecuted under federal law. Without the ability to access bank accounts, accept credit cards, or write checks, businesses must operate using large amounts of cash. This creates safety risks for businesses and surrounding communities, and makes it more difficult for local and state governments to collect taxes“Forcing legal businesses to operate in all cash is an invitation to money laundering and robbery,” said Merkley. “It’s absurd that cannabis business owners in Oregon have to shuttle around gym bags full of cash to pay their taxes or compensate their employees. This is a public safety issue, and rather than making it even harder for banks to serve these legal businesses, President Trump and Attorney General Sessions should work with us to end this unnecessary risk for communities across America.”

“Conflicting federal and state marijuana laws make it difficult for legitimate businesses to use the basic financial services they need access to and this bipartisan legislation gives them that access they need,” said Senator Gardner. “We must also take into account the risk to public safety as these businesses are being forced to carry around bags of money to pay for their employees and rent. Legal businesses should not be treated like this, and I’m glad that Republicans and Democrats are working together to address this issue.”

“Oregon legalized marijuana use for adults three years ago, yet outdated regulations leave law-abiding individuals and business owners in our state facing unequal treatment in the eyes of the federal government,” said Wyden. “The bottom line is, legal businesses in Oregon and other states should not be unjustly relegated to lugging around sacks full of cash like thieves in the night. This bill would respect the will of voters in Oregon and all the states that have legalized marijuana by lifting federal penalties defended by so-called states’ rights proponents that block marijuana businesses from going to the bank just like every other legal business.”

“The lack of access to banking services for marijuana businesses is a key issue in Colorado,” Bennet said. “It raises significant public safety concerns for both employees and customers of these businesses and creates compliance and oversight challenges. This common-sense bill would address those issues by allowing our banking system to serve marijuana businesses that are in compliance with state laws.”

“This legislation is about certainty, safety, and economic growth. Banks, credit unions and small business owners in Washington state and across the country that are licensed to participate in legal business ventures should not be treated differently and shut out from participating fully in the economy,” said Senator Murray. “As a voice for Washington state voters in Congress, I am going to keep working to give entrepreneurs and lenders the clarity and security they need to grow and to create safer conditions for legitimate businesses to thrive.”

“Forcing legitimate marijuana businesses to operate a cash-only business is dangerous. It creates unnecessary public safety issues for communities and business owners,” Warren said. “The SAFE Banking Act is a common sense bill that would advance state efforts to regulate the sale of marijuana and support businesses working to establish reliable business operations.”

“We need to put the right infrastructure in place for the marijuana industry to operate legally and securely,” Cortez Masto said. “Allowing lawful cannabis-related businesses access to the mainstream banking system will alleviate security concerns and create more regulatory certainty for Nevada dispensaries and related providers, as well as the banking system. This bill will give our economy a boost by letting local businesses thrive and will also aid in the economic development of Nevada tribes.”

The bill would prevent federal banking regulators from:

  • Prohibiting, penalizing or discouraging a bank from providing financial services to a legitimate state-sanctioned and regulated cannabis business, or an associated business (such as an lawyer or landlord providing services to a legal cannabis business);
  • Terminating or limiting a bank’s federal deposit insurance solely because the bank is providing services to a state-sanctioned cannabis business or associated business;
  • Recommending or incentivizing a bank to halt or downgrade providing any kind of banking services to these businesses; or
  • Taking any action on a loan to an owner or operator of a cannabis-related business.

The bill also creates a safe harbor from criminal prosecution and liability and asset forfeiture for banks and their officers and employees who provide financial services to legitimate, state-sanctioned cannabis businesses, while maintaining banks’ right to choose not to offer those services.

The bill would require banks to comply with current Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance, while at the same time allowing FinCEN guidance to be streamlined over time as states and the federal government adapt to legalized medicinal and recreational cannabis policies.

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GCC Foreign Ministers Prepare For Upcoming Summit With Trump

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GCC foreign ministers participated in the 143rd session of the Ministerial Council of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries on Wednesday.

Ministers discussed the ongoing preparations for the consultative meeting of the leaders of the GCC countries, the Arab Gulf Summit and the Arab-Islamic-US Summit to be hosted in Riyadh on Sunday during the visit of US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia.

The Ministers also reviewed a number of reports regarding implementation of the decisions of the Supreme Council, memos and reports submitted by the Ministerial committees and the GCC secretariat, and topics related to strategic dialogues between GCC countries and a number of other countries and the global blocs.

They also discussed the latest regional and international developments, and efforts to strengthen international counter-terrorism efforts.

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Dual Justice Separates David Boim From Rachel Corrie – OpEd

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Born only a few months apart, Rachel Corrie and David Boim were both killed by violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

Boim was 17 when he was killed on May 13, 1996, when he was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting at a bus stop near the illegal Jewish settlement where he went to school, Beit El. The settlement near Ramallah was built on lands stolen by Israel from Christians and Muslims.

Corrie was 24 when she was killed on March 16, 2003, when she was crushed by a Caterpillar D-9 tractor driven by an Israeli soldier who was destroying a Palestinian home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

Although Palestinians identified and prosecuted Boim’s killers, the Israelis did everything to protect the soldier who crushed Corrie as she screamed for help.

Both Boim’s and Corrie’s parents filed lawsuits in the US courts. Corrie’s parents also filed a lawsuit in Israel. The Boims targeted Palestinian Americans and Palestinian organizations and named as defendants Muhammad Salah plus three organizations — the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the American Muslim Society and the Qur’anic Literacy Institute.

After a highly-publicized trial covered by the mainstream American news media, the Palestinian groups were ordered in 2004 to pay the Boims $52 million for their son’s life. The federal judge in the case was not satisfied and ordered the punitive fines be tripled to $156 million.

Boim’s parents were able to use a law adopted by the US Congress to punish Arabs and Muslims, making them liable for “terrorism” committed abroad against Americans. Americans like Boim, not like Corrie.

The same American judicial system that allowed the Boim family to pursue Arab supporters of Hamas denied Corrie’s parents the right to apply the same principles against her killers.

There is no law that allows American victims of Israeli terrorism to seek compensation, as there is for Jewish victims of Arab terrorism.

So, the Corries went to Israel in 2010 and, at great expense, fought Israel’s judicial system and sued the Israeli military. Nearly 32 months later, the Israeli court system ruled Corrie’s death was an accident and that she was responsible because she put herself in a dangerous situation.

Is that not akin to Boim’s situation? David Boim also put himself in a dangerous situation — a war zone where Palestinians and Israelis continue to battle over who owns the land.

It is ironic that Boim’s killers were brought to justice by the Palestinian Authority, but that neither the US nor Israel have ever taken action against Corrie’s killer, the soldier driving the Caterpillar D-9 tractor or the armed Israeli soldiers who were nearby.

The US judicial system, the cornerstone of American democracy, is supposed to protect human rights based on principles, not politics.

But that is not what happens. Aided by the racist and discriminatory practices of the mainstream American news media, and by Israel’s subjugation of many American politicians, Israelis can commit crimes without repercussion. They can point false fingers of blame and get away with it by receiving the backing of the racist media, bought-off American elected officials and a judicial system that is rotten to the core.

Worse is that the same system can be used to bully and intimidate anyone who criticizes Israel, asserting that a feeble tie between a crime and any Palestinians can be turned into a major criminal prosecution case resulting in huge fines that thwart justice and silence legitimate protest.

The truth is that American democracy is not really honest, but a facade of distortions and politically motivated lies. There is no real freedom in America.

No one celebrates Boim’s murder, the victim of a war that has been raging in Palestine since Israel was established in 1948. Beit El was created in 1970, three years after Israel’s military occupied the West Bank and Jerusalem on land stolen by the Israeli government from the non-Jewish (Christian and Muslim) owners.

Since Boim’s murder, Israeli settlers and soldiers have murdered thousands of Palestinian teenagers, many of whom were Boim’s age.

Not surprisingly, Boim’s parents went back to the biased judicial system and filed new claims last week against more Palestinian organizations they assert are tied to the groups they sued and beat 13 years ago.

The new Boim lawsuit targets the American Muslims for Palestine group and the Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, two groups that champion the rights of Palestinians victimized by Israeli aggression. Both are based in a Chicago suburb.

The Boims enjoy the support of a biased American judicial system that is corrupt and unjust.

All Corrie’s parents have is the memory of their young daughter and the knowledge that they have the moral high ground. Clearly, in America, morals are not enough.

The post Dual Justice Separates David Boim From Rachel Corrie – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Call For Ukraine To Revoke Ban On Dozens Of Russian Web Companies

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on May 15, 2017, signed a decree banning public access to Russian social media platforms, news outlets, and a major search engine widely used in Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. Poroshenko should immediately reverse the ban, which affects such internet platforms as VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, RBC, and Yandex, and take steps to protect freedom of expression and information in Ukraine.

“This is yet another example of the ease with which President Poroshenko unjustifiably tries to control public discourse in Ukraine,” said Tanya Cooper, Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Poroshenko may try to justify this latest step, but it is a cynical, politically expedient attack on the right to information affecting millions of Ukrainians, and their personal and professional lives.”

Ukrainian internet service providers would be required to block access to internet companies that are on a government sanctions list. The decree includes an appendix with a widely expanded list of individuals and companies under sanction in Ukraine. Experts said it would be hard to enforce.

The decree imposes a ban on access to popular Russian social media networks, such as VK (formerly VKontakte) and Odnoklassniki, both owned by the Mail.Ru Group. Alisher Usmanov, an oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, owns stakes in the Mail.Ru Group. As of April, 78 percent of all internet users in Ukraine, or around 20 million, had a VK account.

The decree also orders a block on public access to the Russian search engine Yandex and its various services, such as Yandex.Music, Yandex.Money, and dozens of others with .ua and .ru domains. As of March, 48 percent of internet users in Ukraine used Yandex daily.

Various software programs, such as the language processing software ABBYY and accounting software 1C, used by many Ukrainian companies, have also been banned. Other companies affected are the Russian media companies RBC, Ren-TV, TNT, NTV Plus, the 1 Channel, Zvezda, Moscow 24, a Russian state news agency Rossiya Segodnya, and internet security companies Kaspersky Lab and DrWeb. Russian banks, airlines, oil companies, defense industry companies, and Crimean businesses are also affected.

The presidential decree, which enacts a decision by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, was published on May 16, 2017. It is one in a series of measures imposing economic sanctions on individuals and legal entities with ties to the Russian government. Such sanctions include freezing of assets in Ukraine and other economic and financial restrictions; for individuals, it also means a ban on people on the sanctions list entering the country.

The decree expands the list of those under sanction in Ukraine to 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities in Russia, Russia-occupied Crimea, areas in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia-backed separatists, and other countries. The duration of sanctions varies from one to three years.

The decree assigns monitoring the sanctions to Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers, the National Security Service, and the National Bank of Ukraine.

Oksana Romaniuk, executive director of Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information, told Human Rights Watch that the government had not provided a valid justification for why such a broad ban on online companies was necessary. She also insisted that the decree would be hard to enforce without changing the law. Currently, only a court can order internet service providers to take action against a website. The head of Ukraine’s internet association, Oleksandr Fedienko, said in a media interview that Ukrainian internet service providers don’t have the technical ability to block Russian social media and news websites. He also said the ban would be ineffective due to a variety of ways to circumvent online censorship.

Ukraine is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which guarantee freedom of expression, including access to information. Only restrictions that are necessary and proportionate for a legitimate purpose may be imposed, and the ban set out in the decree does not pass that test.

In the past two years, Poroshenko has signed similar decrees introducing sanctions. In June 2016, a presidential decree banned 17 Russian journalists, editors, and media executives from traveling to Ukraine. In September 2015, the government banned several hundred Russian individuals and legal entities from entering Ukraine for a year. Among them were 41 journalists and bloggers from several countries, including Russia, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany. In May 2016, Poroshenko removed 29 people from the list of those sanctioned.

“In a single move Poroshenko dealt a terrible blow to freedom of expression in Ukraine,” Cooper said. “It’s an inexcusable violation of Ukrainians’ right to information of their choice, and the European Union and Ukraine’s other international partners should immediately call on Ukraine to reverse it.”

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Nepal: First Phase Of Local Elections Successfully Concluded – Analysis

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By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

It is to the credit of the Election Commission of Nepal that it conducted successfully the first phase of local elections on May 14 despite many hiccups and hurdles.

The election by itself was a stupendous task with nominations for 13,356 seats in 283 local units of 34 districts of three provinces- 3, 4 and 6.

In the beginning of the month, it looked as though, the government may not be able to go through the first phase of elections. It all started with the impeachment and suspension of the Chief Justice Sushila Karki, who had just two months left for retirement, followed by the RPP leaving the government and the Home Minster Bimalendu Nidhi resigning in protest. The Government briefly lost its majority.

The impeachment of the Chief Justice on flimsy charges and that too without proper discussion and debate was an affront to the separation of powers between the judiciary and the Executive. The Supreme Court rightly issued a stay order to the parliament not to move ahead with the impeachment motion. The Court observed that the move was prima facie against the spirit of the Constitution.

A few Observations on the local polls conducted are:

1. Though it is just the beginning, successful conduct of the first phase of polls puts an end to the uncertainty that was being felt so far in the conduct of the three tier elections to be concluded within the mandatory period and in the implementation of the new constitution.

2. For the first time, Nepal will really be moving into a federal form of governance. This is the first significant step in the new constitution.

3. 40 percent of the candidates were women, a step that was long over due.

4. With the firming up of elections at the local level, one can expect peace and stability at the grass roots level.

5. This election has brought out strange alliances- the Nepali Congress and the Maoist centre have formed an alliance at many places. One example is the support given to Dahal’s daughter, the mayoral candidate for Bhaktapur by the Nepali Congress. Similarly, the UML and the RPP who till now were at the opposite ends of the political spectrum have joined together in an alliance for the local polls.

6. The election was by and large peaceful. There were sporadic incidents of violence and some very close to the polling dates. IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were detonated at three places in Nawal Parasi, Makwanpur and Siraha districts on 12th of May. A cylinder bomb was discovered in Bhaktapur and the Police bomb disposal team removed it before it could be detonated. Two more IEDs were discovered in the houses of two candidates in Syangja and Sindhphuchok districts.

7. Almost after two decades, the elections to the local bodies were taking place. There was visible enthusiasm amongst the people. People are certainly looking forward to leadership roles at the grass roots level and it is hoped that the political leaders who are a problem, concede empowerment at the lowest level.

Some good news has emanated on the constitutional amendment too. The government has introduced the Constitution amendment bill today, a commitment made to the Madhesi groups.

The UML which wants to continue with its “nationalist image” is bound to oppose the bill. It is said that its chairman K. P.Oli is also for conducting the second phase of local polls earlier that the scheduled date of June 14. The UML is also expected to play the “spoil sport” in not letting the government increase the grassroots units in the Terai districts, in proportion to the population in those districts. It looks that more than anyone else, it is the UML that wants to scuttle the speedy implementation of the Constitution!

It is hoped that the Madhesi leaders who have since discarded Upendra Yadav from the Maha Gatabhandan show some flexibility in participating in the second and last phase of local elections scheduled for June 14 for provinces 1,2,5 and 7.

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NATO Military Chiefs Prepare Recommendations

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By Jim Garamone

NATO’s chiefs of defense met here today to assess the alliance’s current and future work and to form advice and recommendations for their nations’ political leaders, who will convene here next week.

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represented the United States at the meeting.

At a news conference following the meeting, Gen. Petr Pavel of the Czech army, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said the military chiefs examined the situations confronting the alliance and formulated their recommendations and guidance.

“Translating political objectives into military reality is at the core of the work we do,” Pavel said. “What is also crucial is that the military advice we provide is clear, concise and, importantly, able to deliver the desired strategic effects.”

Counter-ISIS Coalition

NATO heads of state and government – including President Donald J. Trump – will meet next week here to examine the chiefs’ recommendations. NATO already is involved in fighting terrorism. All of the NATO nations individually are members of the coalition arrayed against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Official NATO membership in the coalition fighting ISIS will be one of the key topics for the heads of state and government meeting, Pavel said.

The chiefs also examined ways to further progress on projecting stability from NATO to neighboring countries in North Africa and the Middle East. This includes moves for stability in the western Balkans and in Iraq, the general said.

The chiefs also discussed the alliance’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. The NATO commander of the mission – U.S. Army Gen. John W. Nicholson – has recommended increasing the number of NATO personnel in the train-advise-assist mission in the country in 2018 and beyond. About 13,000 alliance service members are in Afghanistan, including about 9,000 Americans.

NATO needs a flexible and conditions-based approach to military actions in Afghanistan, Pavel said. “The chiefs of defense emphasized their long-term commitment to train, advise and assist the Afghan national defense and security forces,” he said. “The Afghan forces are facing a tough security environment, and they continue to be tested, but they continue to endure. It is unquestionable that a stable Afghanistan is in everybody’s interest and not just for regional stability. NATO will continue to support all initiatives which will help to achieve these objectives.”

Changing Posture, Enhancing Capabilities

U.S. Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, said the alliance members must do more to ensure a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. The alliance is changing its posture and its mindset and is enhancing its capabilities to respond to the evolving nature of conflict, he said.

“We are adapting the alliance to respond to different approaches to modern warfare that is extremely complex, potentially vast in scale and intensity,” he said. “We continue to work as allies to achieve this transition.”

Scaparrotti emphasized the need for unity within the alliance. “National, bilateral and collective alliance efforts must be integrated and mutually reinforcing,” he said. “This is fundamental to our success.”

And the NATO nations are responding. The general ticked off a number of initiatives that show the unity of the alliance, including the enhanced forward posture units in the Baltics and Poland, the air policing effort, the very-high-readiness task force, and operations in Romania and Bulgaria as just a few examples. He also noted that NATO nations are spending more on national forces – increasing readiness and capabilities.

Long-Term View

Scaparrotti said the alliance cannot sacrifice the future for the present. “Looking forward we must maintain a strategic long-term view,” he added. “We must have a sense of urgency coupled by a sense of endurance. Simultaneously, we must find the right way to make the best use of our current capacities to secure allies for challenges we face.”

The alliance must be flexible and fast, Scaparrotti said. “Our instruments need to offer us flexibility and utility across applications is critical, and we must be based on a requirement in terms of both quality and quantity,” he said. “NATO is charged to be ready to respond to the new and continually evolving security environment. We must continue to set conditions and invest now to ensure European security in the future.”

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Special Prosecutor Named To Probe Trump-Russia Ties

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(RFE/RL) — The U.S. Justice Department on May 17 appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team.

The move, which was welcomed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, came amid rising demands for an independent probe of alleged Russian efforts to sway the outcome of November’s presidential election in favor of Trump and against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he decided to appoint a special counsel not because he believes “crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted,” but because he believes “a special counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome” of the investigation.

“The public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command,” Rosenstein said.

A special counsel is considered independent because he has the authority to conduct an investigation with a staff of his own choosing and without any requirement to consult with or inform the Justice Department and White House about the course of his investigation. The special counsel also is authorized to prosecute any crimes unearthed by his investigation.

The possibility that the White House may have tried to influence the Justice Department’s own investigation of the Russian matter, which the FBI began last year, arose when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey a week ago.

Further questions arose on May 16 when reports surfaced that Trump had asked Comey during his first weeks in office to end an investigation into Russia’s ties with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey wrote about Trump’s request as well as other conversations he had with Trump in memos that were widely reported by media on May 16. The White House denied Comey’s account of his conversation with Trump about Flynn.

Several congressional leaders said Trump’s request to quash the Flynn investigation may have amounted to obstruction of justice — a criminal offense in the United States.

By the evening of May 17, three congressional committees had demanded to see Comey’s memos and were seeking to have Comey testify about his experiences with Trump.

After the special prosecutor was named, Trump issued a statement late on Maty 16 saying once again there were no questionable ties between Russia and his campaign.

“A thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity,” he said. “I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.”

Earlier in the day, Trump had complained about media coverage of the Russian matter, saying that “no politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly” than him.

Congressional leaders praised the decision to appoint a special counsel — something Democrats have been urging since last year, with many Republicans joining the chorus in recent days.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Mueller, who served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013 during both Republican and Democratic administrations, was the right choice for the job.

“A special counsel is very much needed in this situation and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has done the right thing,” Schumer said.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, called Mueller “a respected public servant of the highest integrity.”

She added that “a special prosecutor is the first step, but it cannot be the last. Director Mueller will still be in the chain of command under the Trump-appointed leadership of the Justice Department.”

“I believe Mueller will be independent, he will be thorough, and he will be fair and he’s not going to be easily swayed,” said Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, which is also investigating the Russian matter.

Republican Jason Chaffez, chairman of the House oversight panel, said Mueller was a “great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, whose committee is also investigating the Russian matter, said appointing a special counsel was a “good decision” that “assures the American people that there’s no undue influence” in the Russia investigation.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded earlier this year that Russia interfered in the election, and the FBI’s investigation was building on those findings. Moscow has repeatedly denied any interference.

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The Immigrants Who Made America – Analysis

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Recent empirical studies of the effects of immigration have tended to focus on short-run outcomes. This column considers the longer run by examining how mass migration at the turn of the 20th century has affected US outcomes today. Higher historical immigration between 1860 and 1920 is found to result in significantly better social and economic outcomes today. The results suggest that the long-run benefits of immigration can be large, can persist across time, and need not come at a high social cost.

By Sandra Sequeira, Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian*

The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that led the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavour and a character that make it as unmistakable and as remarkable to people today as it was to Alexis de Tocqueville in the early part of the 19th century.
John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants

Immigration is one of the most controversial policy issues in the US and Europe today. The debate mostly focuses on the short-run effects of immigration: Do immigrants take jobs away from natives? Do immigrants increase pressure on public goods? Do immigrants increase crime and reduce social capital? Many researchers have attempted to address these questions by providing empirical evidence on the short-run, immediate effects of immigration (e.g. Kerr and Kerr 2016, Peri 2012, Peri and Sparber 2009, Card 2009, 2012). While understanding the short run is important, policymakers should also consider the long-run consequences if the welfare of our children and grandchildren are to matter. And yet, we know very little about the long-run impact of immigration.

The long-run effects of immigrants can, in principle, be positive or negative. On the one hand, immigrants can supply much needed labour. They can also bring new knowledge and skills that complement the skills of native born workers. On the other hand, immigrants are often associated with social unrest and crime. This is especially worrying in cases where the flow of immigrants is large relative to the native population, or if the immigrants are from very different cultural backgrounds.  Ethnic diversity could make it harder for communities to agree on which public goods they need such as schools or roads, and thus lower the provision of public goods that are important for long-run growth. A related concern is that allowing large flows of immigrants who are relatively uneducated may reduce overall educational attainment in the region in the long run.

To study this question, in a recent paper we examine migration into the US during America’s Age of Mass Migration (from 1850–1920) and estimate the causal effect of immigrants on economic and social outcomes approximately 100 years later (Nunn et al. 2017). This period of immigration is notable for many reasons. First, this was the period in US history with the highest levels of immigration. Second, the immigrants that arrived during this time were different from previous waves of immigrants. While earlier immigrants were primarily from western Europe, the new wave also included large numbers of immigrants from southern, northern, and eastern Europe who spoke different languages and had different religious practices (Hatton and Williamson 2005: 51, Daniels 2002: 121–137, Abramitzky and Boustan 2015).

Empirically studying the long-run effects of immigration is challenging. A natural strategy is to examine the relationship between historical immigration and current economic outcomes across counties in the US However, there are important shortcomings to such an exercise. There may be persistent omitted factors that affected immigration decisions that could independently influence the outcomes of interest. It is also possible that immigrants were attracted to locations with more growth potential. Alternatively, they may have only been able to settle in more marginal locations, where land and rents were cheaper and future economic growth was lower. These concerns would cause the OLS estimates to be biased.

We attempt to overcome these challenges by developing an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that exploits two facts about immigration during this period. The first is that after arriving into the US, immigrants tended to use the newly constructed railway to travel inland to their eventual place of residence (Faulkner 1960, Foerster 1969). Therefore, a county’s connection to the railway network affected the number of immigrants that settled in the county. The second fact is that the aggregate inflow of immigrants coming to the US during this period fluctuated greatly from decade to decade.

Figure 1 Total immigrants arriving in the US by year

This fluctuation is driven, in part, by weather shocks in the origin countries of immigrants. For example, more German immigrants arrived following a drought in Germany. Holding constant the total length of time a county was connected to the railway network, if a county was connected to the railway network during periods of high aggregate immigration to the US, then the county would tend to have had more immigrant settlement during the entire period of mass migration (1860–1920).

We find that higher historical immigration (from 1860–1920) resulted in significantly higher incomes, less poverty, less unemployment, more urbanisation, and higher educational attainment today. The estimates, in addition to being statistically significant, are also economically meaningful. For example, according to the estimates for per capita income, moving a county with no historical immigration (i.e. during 1860–1920) to the 50th percentile of the sample (which is 0.049) results in a 20% increase in average per capita income today.

We also try to shed light on the mechanisms. We find that immigration resulted in an immediate increase in industrialisation.  Immigrants contributed to the establishment of more manufacturing facilities and to the development of larger facilities. We also found that immigrants contributed to increased agricultural productivity in the medium-run and to increased innovation, as measured by patenting rates of both immigrants and the native-born. These findings are consistent with a long-standing narrative in the historical literature suggesting that immigrants benefitted the economy by providing an ample supply of unskilled labour, which was crucial for early industrialisation. A smaller number of immigrants brought with them knowledge, skills, and know-how that were beneficial for industry and increased productivity in agriculture. Thus, by providing a sizeable workforce and a (smaller) number of skilled workers, immigration led to early industrial development and long-run prosperity, which continues to persist until today.

One concern is that the economic benefits to counties with a higher share of immigrants came at the cost of less economic activity in other counties. We would then be capturing the relocation of economic activity as opposed to the creation of economic activity. However, we find no evidence for this type of negative spillover. A second concern relates to potentially negative social effects associated with mass migration. The immigration backlash and the rise of social and political nativist movements at the time suggest that there may have been initial social costs to immigration. We find no evidence that these costs persisted since higher historical immigration is not associated with higher crimes, lower voter turnout or lower social capital today.

Taken as a whole, our estimates provide evidence consistent with an historical narrative that is commonly told of how immigration facilitated economic growth. Extrapolating from these historical results to the current debate on migration requires some caution. The Age of Mass Migration occurred during a period of rapid industrialisation, where both demand for labour and land availability were high. There are, however, many similarities between the period of mass migration and today. The historical immigrants were similar to today’s immigrants in being very different from the natives. New arrivals from eastern, central, northern and southern Europe spoke different languages and followed different religions. Immigrants in both contexts are comprised of largely less educated workers with a smaller fraction of highly-skilled workers. And in both cases, many of the immigrants are ‘pushed’ out of their own countries due to economic or political shocks.

According to our results, the long-run benefits of immigration can be large and realised quickly. These effects persist across time and need not come at high social cost. This suggests the importance of taking a long-run perspective on the current immigration debate. Learning from past experience can not only highlight the long-run benefits of immigration, but also remind us that our policies today will have long-standing effects for future generations.

*About the authors:
Sandra Sequeira
, Assistant Professor, London School of Economics

Nathan Nunn, Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Nancy Qian

References:
Abramitzky, R and L Platt Boustan (2016), “Immigration in American history”, Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming.

Card, D (2009), “Immigration and inequality”, Journal of the European Economic Association 99(2): 211–215.

Card, D (2012) “The elusive search for negative wage impacts of immigration”, Journal of the European Economic Association 10(1): 1–21.

Daniels, R (2002) Coming to America: A history of immigration and ethnicity in American life, New York: Harper Perennial.

Faulkner, H U (1960), American Economic History, New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

Foerster, R (1969) The American immigration collection, New York: Arno Press Inc.

Hatton, T J and J G Williamson (2005) Global migration and the world economy: Two centuries of policy and performance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kerr, S P and W R Kerr (2017) “Immigrant entrepreneurship”, in Haltiwanger, Hurst, Miranda, and Schoar (eds), Measuring entrepreneurial businesses: Current knowledge and challenges, University of Chicago Press.

Nunn, N, N Qian and S Sequeira (2017), “Migrants and the Making of America: The Short and Long Run Effects of Immigration During the Age of Mass Migration”, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 11899.

Peri, G (2012) “The effects of immigration on productivity: Evidence from US states”, Review of Economics and Statistics 94(1): 348–358.

Peri, G and C Sparber (2009) “Task specialization, immigration, and wages”, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(3): 135–169.

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Large Volcanic Eruption May Have Caused First Mass Extinction

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Researchers in the USA and Japan say they may have found the cause of the first mass extinction of life.

There have been five mass extinctions since the divergent evolution of early animals 600 -450 million years ago. The cause of the third and fourth was volcanic activity, while an asteroid impact led to the fifth. But triggers of the first and second mass extinctions had, until now, been unknown.

The first mass extinction occurred at the end of the Ordovician. This age is between the divergence of the Ordovician and land invasion of vascular land plant and animals. Animals in the Ordovician-Silurian comprised marine animals like corals, trilobites, sea scorpion, orthoceras, brachiopods, graptolite, crinoid and jawless fish. Approximately 80% of species disappeared at the end of the Ordovician.

A team led by Dr. David S. Jones of Amherst College and Professor Kunio Kaiho of Tohoku University, looked into possible triggers of the first mass extinction. They took sedimentary rock samples from two places – North America and southern China — and analyzed the mercury (Hg) in them. They found Hg enrichments coinciding with the mass extinction in both areas.

This, they believe, is the product of large volcanic eruptions because Hg anomaly was also observed in other large igneous province volcanisms.

Huge volcanic eruptions can produce sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere. Sulfate aerosols are strong, light-reflecting aerosols, and cause global cooling. This rapid climate change is believed to be behind the loss of marine creatures.

Kaiho’s team is now studying the second mass extinction in the hopes of further understanding the cause and processes behind it.

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Making Blood Stem Cells From Patients’ Own Cells

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Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have, for the first time, generated blood-forming stem cells in the lab using pluripotent stem cells, which can make virtually every cell type in the body. The advance, published today in the journal Nature, opens new avenues for research into the root causes of blood diseases and to creating immune-matched blood cells for treatment purposes, derived from patients’ own cells.

“We’re tantalizingly close to generating bona fide human blood stem cells in a dish,” said senior investigator George Daley, MD, PhD, who heads a research lab in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Stem Cell Program and is dean of Harvard Medical School. “This work is the culmination of over 20 years of striving.”

Although the cells made from the pluripotent stem cells are a mix of true blood stem cells and other cells known as blood progenitor cells, they proved capable of generating multiple types of human blood cells when put into mice.

“This step opens up an opportunity to take cells from patients with genetic blood disorders, use gene editing to correct their genetic defect and make functional blood cells,” said Ryohichi (Rio) Sugimura, MD, PhD, the study’s first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Daley Lab. “This also gives us the potential to have a limitless supply of blood stem cells and blood by taking cells from universal donors. This could potentially augment the blood supply for patients who need transfusions.”

Combining two approaches to achieve a breakthrough

Since human embryonic stem (ES) cells were isolated in 1998, scientists have been trying, with little success, to use them to make blood-forming stem cells. In 2007, three groups (including the Daley lab) generated the first induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from human skin cells through genetic reprogramming. iPS cells were later used to generate multiple human cell types, such as neurons and heart cells — yet blood-forming stem cells remained elusive.

Sugimura, Daley and colleagues combined two previous approaches. First, they exposed human pluripotent stem cells (both ES and iPS cells) to chemical signals that direct stem cells to differentiate into specialized cells and tissues during normal embryonic development. This generated hemogenic endothelium, an early embryonic tissue that eventually gives rise to blood stem cells, although the transition to blood stem cells had never been achieved in a dish.

In the second step, the team added genetic regulatory factors (called transcription factors) to push the hemogenic endothelium toward a blood-forming state. Starting with 26 transcription factors identified as likely candidates, they eventually came down to just five (RUNX1, ERG, LCOR, HOXA5 and HOXA9) that were both necessary and sufficient for creating blood stem cells. They delivered the factors into the cells with a lentivirus, as used in some forms of gene therapy.

Finally, they transplanted the genetically engineered hemogenic endothelial cells into mice. Weeks later, a small number of the animals carried multiple types of human blood cells in their bone marrow and blood circulation. These included red blood cell precursors, myeloid cells (precursors of monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, platelets and other cells), and T and B lymphocytes. Some mice were able to mount a human immune response after vaccination.

ES cells and iPS cells were similarly good at creating blood stem and progenitor cells when the technique was applied. But the researchers are most interested in iPS cells, which offer the added ability to derive cells directly from patients and model disease.

“We’re now able to model human blood function in so-called ‘humanized mice,'” said Daley. “This is a major step forward for our ability to investigate genetic blood disease.”

What is a blood stem cell?

The researchers’ technique produced a mixture of blood stem cells and so-called hematopoietic progenitor cells, which also give rise to blood cells. Their ultimate goal is to expand their ability to make true blood stem cells in a way that’s practical and safe, without the need for viruses to deliver the transcription factors, and to introduce gene-editing techniques like CRISPR to correct genetic defects in pluripotent stem cells before blood cells are made.

One challenge in making bona-fide human blood stem cells is that no one’s been able to fully characterize these cells.

“It’s proved challenging to ‘see’ these cells,” said Sugimura. “You can roughly characterize blood stem cells based on surface markers, but even with this, it may not be a true blood stem cell. And once it starts to differentiate and make blood cells, you can’t go back and study it — it’s already gone. A better characterization of human blood stem cells and a better understanding of how they develop would give us clues to making bona-fide human blood stem cells.”

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Chechens Displace Daghestanis In North Caucasus Muslim Hierarchy – OpEd

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The election of Chechen Mufti Salakh Mezhiyev as first deputy head of the Coordinating Center for Muslims of the North Caucasus, the super-Muslim spiritual directorate (MSD) for that region, in place of his Daghestani counterpart who has pulled out of that organization, may seem a small thing.

But because it means that the Chechens will again be the dominant player in the Coordinating Center which Ramzan Kadyrov’s father played a key role founding even though Dagehstan has more mosques and mullahs than Chechnya, the usual measure of influence in Russia’s four super-MSDs, this shift is likely to have profound consequences.

On the one hand, it means that Chechnya rather than Daghestan will be the dominant player among Muslims in the region, with the other republic MSDs playing a distinctly lesser role. Grozny will be making many of the appointments in the hierarchy and will be the primary negotiator with Moscow.

And on the other – and this is almost certainly the more important consequence — it means that the Chechen leader will be in a position to dominate the Islamic community in the North Caucasus and be in a position to mobilize that region’s Muslims against Moscow should anyone at the center try to move against him.

The complex chess game involved in the shift of the center of gravity from Daghestan to Chechnya in North Caucasus Islam, two places where Sufism is the dominant form of the faith, over the last 15 years are traced in detail by Artur Priymak in today’s issue of NG-Religii (ng.ru/ng_religii/2017-05-17/9_420_kavkaz.html).

Daghestan, it should be remembered, was the site of the North Caucasus MSD when it was established at the end of World War II, and Daghestanis by virtue of their numbers and authority have generally dominated all super-MSD efforts in the region, even when as was the case with the Coordinating Center, others took the lead in forming them.

Those moves will be of interest to a narrow group of specialists, but the political consequences of this shift should be noted even by those who have no interest in the political games within the MSDs because they significantly strengthen Kadyrov’s hand at a time when many had been projecting that Vladimir Putin might want to dispense with him.

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Burma: Hard-Line Monks Deny Involvement In Yangon Violence

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An ultra-nationalist monk organization in Myanmar on May 16 denied it was involved in a violent confrontation between Buddhists and Muslims last week in a Yangon neighborhood where monks had claimed that ethnic Rohingya Muslims were hiding illegally.

Monks from the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, also known at Ma Ba Tha, told a press conference in Yangon that the group had been falsely accused of provoking a May 9 conflict with Muslims in Mingala Taungnyunt township in the east-central part of the city, Radio Free Asia reported .

Two people were injured during the melee during which police had to fire warning shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.

“We are holding this press conference because Ma Ba Tha didn’t know or do anything regarding the incident in Mingala Taungnyunt, though some well-known people have accused us of doing it,” said Pyinnya Wara, a Ma Ba Tha leader. “[The] monks who participated in the incident said they were not from Ma Ba Tha.”

“We see that some people are trying to destroy Ma Ba Tha’s image,” he said.

A monk named Thuseitta from the Patriotic Young Monks Union told RFA on May 10 that Ma Ba Tha monks had received information that some Rohingya were hiding in apartments on two floors of a building in Mingala Taungnyunt township. They then alerted police and immigration officials who searched the premises.

After police determined that no one in the apartments was there illegally, a scuffle between the monks and Muslim residents broke out as the monks left the building.

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Exploring How European Freshwater Fish Species Have Changed

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Over time, humans have contributed to the loss of native species and have introduced non-native species throughout Europe.

A new analysis shows how European freshwater fish have changed profoundly since 1840. At the continental scale, the contemporary fauna holds net 11 more species today as exotic species introduction (26 species) exceeded native species loss (15 species). But the biggest change was made by European species introduced from one area in Europe to another (77 species), often with fatal results.

Although all 251 river areas examined in the study exhibited a net species gain, species turnover was much higher than the net gain indicates. On average, one fifth of the historic fish assemblages became reshuffled. Species gains have led to an overall increase in similarity, or “taxonomic homogenization” across Europe, both in number of shared species as well as in species composition.

“The concurrent use of multiple indices allowed us to disentangle the main components of faunal change across Europe. In contrast to the established view, it is evident that the prevention of intended or unintended species introduction will not lower the increase in similarity per se: many species actually reduce homogenization despite their range gain, but still considerably contribute to taxonomic change with potential negative effects on ecosystem functions,” said Dr. Nike Sommerwerk, lead author of the Journal of Biogeography study. “Such studies are important in identifying and implementing appropriate management strategies for species protection and biodiversity management.”

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Michael Moore, Harvey Weinstein To Team For Trump Documentary ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’

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Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein are set to reteam for the first time since 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 on a Donald Trump documentary titled Fahrenheit 11/9, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

Directed by the liberal firebrand, the film refers to Nov. 9, 2016, the date that Trump became president-elect of the United States. 11/9 also offers a palindromic bookend to 9/11, which took aim at the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War (9/11 referred to the date of the 2001 terror attacks that served as the pretext for the Iraq War).

“There is no greater part of what we can do right now than to have the power to bring Michael Moore to a mass audience,” Weinstein said Tuesday in a statement.

He added: “When we had the opportunity to work with him on Fahrenheit 9/11, we were so persistent that we ultimately had to part ways from Disney and we lost our beloved Miramax, named after our parents, because we believed so strongly in the message. The movie broke all records then, and we plan to do so again. This movie will have one of the most innovative distribution plans ever. Now more than ever, Michael’s appetite for the truth is crucial. We are ecstatic to be a part of this revolution.”

Weinstein and Moore announced the deal at Cannes, where The Weinstein Co. will be introducing the film to international buyers. The pair, both known as maestros of self-promotion, would seem well suited for a doc on Trump, another self-promotion genius.

Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the top-grossing documentary of all time, earning $222 million worldwide. But Moore’s most recent wide-release doc, Where to Invade Next, fizzled at the box office. The film, which launched amid a great deal of fanfare at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, earned just $3.8 million when it was released theatrically in February 2016.

But Trump proved to be a compelling subject in the hands of Moore, who generated positive reviews for the quickly slapped-together doc TrumpLand. He shot that film in secret one month before the election over two consecutive nights at a venue in Wilmington, Ohio, a county where Trump received four times as many votes as Hillary Clinton did in the primaries.

The 73-minute film played for one night on Oct. 19 in 51 theaters and earned $149,090. TrumpLand also sold to TV networks in 13 countries and was a hit on digital platforms.

“No matter what you throw at [Trump], it hasn’t worked,” said Moore. “No matter what is revealed, he remains standing. Facts, reality, brains cannot defeat him. Even when he commits a self-inflicted wound, he gets up the next morning and keeps going and tweeting. That all ends with this movie.”

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Activism And The State: How African Civil Society Responds To Repression – Analysis

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African citizens, activists and organisations are finding new and innovative ways to resist, organise and mobilise in the face of mounting restrictions on their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.

By David Kode and Mouna Ben Garga*

Restrictions on civic freedoms are increasing worldwide, but are being acutely felt in African countries. According to the CIVICUS Monitor – a constantly updated tool rating countries’ fundamental civic freedoms from open to closed – 43 African countries fall under the bottom three categories of closed, repressed and obstructed with only two African countries rated as open. In most African countries, freedom of expression, assembly and association are stifled by state and non-state actors through the use of restrictive legislation, policies, and judicial persecution as well as physical attacks, threats and detention of activists and journalists. While these restrictions generally occur when civil society groups speak out in direct opposition to public policy, there is strong evidence that restrictions increase during politically sensitive periods, like elections and prior to constitutional changes on term limits of political leaders.

Activists, organisations and citizens are responding to these restrictive measures by adopting innovative approaches to advocacy, such as: the formation of loose social movements, which make it difficult for the authorities to target the structure and its leaders; peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations; holding sustained protests under specific themes targeting government malpractices; focussing on groups in the diaspora; using social and alternative media; and engaging with regional and international actors in cases where freedoms are curtailed at the national level.

The following analysis provides a review of current trends across the continent that represent the most serious threats to activists and organisations in their attempt to form, operate and advocate for the issues that matter most. Select case study countries are used in the latter half of this article to highlight not just examples of restrictions but those of resistance where ordinary citizens are using unique and innovative methods to challenge the status quo. These countries include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Burundi, Uganda and Tunisia.

Repression, delegitimisation and shrinking space for civil society in Africa

The last few years have witnessed an increase in restrictions on fundamental civic freedoms in Africa. This has taken different forms. Though states remain the main perpetrators of these restrictions, increasingly non-state actors, like armed vigilante groups, terrorists organisations, offshoots of ruling political parties, corporations, and individuals have been seen to attack, threaten and target civil society organisations and human rights activists to deter them from continuing their work. In most of these cases those responsible are not held accountable and are not brought to justice and this breeds impunity, forces human rights activists to flee their countries and compels others to self-censor. These restrictions are triggered by several factors.

Challenges to formal democracy

Many recent elections held in Sub-Saharan Africa have showcased democracy at its most narrow, rather than its finest. These elections saw increased polarisation and contestation, and restrictions on civic space. There have been successes, such as a mostly peaceful election in Côte d’Ivoire in October 2015 – an achievement, given the violence that followed the 2010 election – and the peaceful change of a new democratically elected president in Nigeria, a country once notorious for its inability to pass on the reins of power peacefully. However, elections in many countries have been flawed, illegitimate, or marred by violence. Elections held in Chad in April 2016 reaffirmed President General Idriss Déby Itno’s longstanding hold on power that began in 1990. In the run-up to the election, a ban on any public activities other than electoral campaigning was introduced, denying civil society the ability to engage in debate. From February to April, a number of activists supporting the opposition were detained and remained jailed during the elections.

States often increase restrictions before, during, and after elections to intimidate supporters of opposition parties and make it difficult for citizens to access objective information and make informed choices when they reach the ballot box. In certain countries, journalists, private radio stations and human rights activists are accused of being the mouthpieces of the political opposition. Human rights defenders are attacked and subjected to judicial persecution for calling for democratic reforms or criticising the actions by incumbents to change the constitution to extend their stay in office.

Independent media outlets have been shut down and journalists attacked for reporting electoral processes, publishing information on the activities of opposition parties and candidates and covering human rights violations during elections.

In Ethiopia, a country where dissent is heavily repressed, the ruling party and its allies won every single seat in the May 2015 election. Ahead of the election several journalists were detained and there were reports of opposition candidates being attacked and killed. During the February 2016 elections in Uganda, private radio stations were shut down for hosting opposition party candidates and journalists were targeted for covering political rallies, whilst gatherings organised by opposition parties were violently disrupted. A similar approach saw Burundian journalists and media houses accused of being mouthpieces for the political opposition and for having anti-nationalist tendencies.

During election periods, civil society organisations working on electoral reforms, voter education, democracy and good governance are often forced to amend the scope of their campaigns. These groups are threatened with closure and sometimes forced to shut down their operations.

States have on several occasions refused to renew or cancelled the registration of some associations. In some countries the premises of civil society organisations have been broken into and sensitive information and reports stolen. Government officials and state media have also engaged in smear campaigns demonising civil society organisations and their representatives and accusing them of attempting to destabilise the state. While the right to assemble peacefully is enshrined in the constitutions of most African countries, in practice, this right is in many cases not respected as governments refuse to grant permission for protesters to hold peaceful demonstrations, and when protests do occur, they may be violently repressed.

Attacks on environmental and land rights activists

The super-wealthy and the companies they benefit from remain acquisitive. For this reason, among the most targeted civil society activists are those who seek to uphold land, environmental and indigenous people’s rights. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association notes that often there is a lack of legislation that recognises the traditional ownership of land, and the abuses most often come against those who are already most excluded from traditional, elite power dynamics. Processes that are highly technical and secretive around land and natural resource development lend themselves to a lack of transparency, and the potential for corruption.

Terrorism and security as a pretext for restrictions

While extremist forces such al-Shabaab and Boko Haram have had a profoundly negative impact on human rights in some parts of Africa, like many other parts of the world, states are increasingly using the justification of combating terrorism and maintaining state security to restrict civic space. The response to terrorism is often disproportionate, and its impacts on the protection of human rights are devastating.

When a particular community is the focus of anti-terrorism measures, this can create a sense of being under siege, and of being targeted on the basis of identity, which in turn can fuel extremism. In Kenya security forces have responded in heavy-handed ways, abusing particular citizens under the banner of addressing terrorism, which fuels anger and suspicion, a perfect recruiting ground for extremist groups. Further, when civil society or media expose these abuses, the response by governments is not to question the proportionality or appropriateness of the tactics, but to attack the messengers.

Challenges to ruling elites are wilfully misinterpreted as threats to the nation, and the expression of political dissent itself labelled as terrorism. In Ethiopia in August 2015, 18 people, including protesters, journalists and Islamic leaders, received lengthy sentences under the anti-terrorism law for protesting in support of religious freedom. Under the auspice of the anti-terrorism law, Ethiopia’s government maintained that its actions were justified because this law is similar to anti-terrorism laws in the UK and the USA.

In Sudan, the country’s National Intelligence and Security Service is regularly used to deal with civil society activists that the state finds troublesome. The 2010 National Security Act grants the NISS extensive powers to arrest and detain people up to four-and-half months without judicial review, and with complete impunity, as was the case when human rights defender and lawyer Amin Mekki Medani began trial at the Special Anti-Terrorism Court in 2015 for “undermining the constitutional system” and “waging war against the state.”

Quantifying civic space restrictions in Africa

The extent of these restrictions and attacks on fundamental rights in some countries on the continent is captured in the analysis and ratings by the CIVICUS Monitor, which draws civil society generated data from a range of sources through a multi-stage process of scoring and verification to establish a spectrum of five ratings for a country’s civic space conditions – open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, only Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe are open, defined as being a state that both enables and safeguards civic space for all its people. Of the 18 states across the world that are rated as closed, 9 are in Africa. Closed equates to a complete closure in law and practice on civic space, and an atmosphere of fear and violence prevails where state and non-state actors are routinely allowed to attack, detain and often assassinate people for expressing their rights to association, expression and assembly. In addition, 15 of the 34 countries across the world that are rated as repressed – where civic space is heavily constrained – are in Africa.

Despite these restrictions, civil society groups working on different issues continue to operate in these countries, sometimes at great risk, in order to promote and protect human rights and human rights defenders.

Pushing back on restrictions

Across the world, including across the continent, activists, human rights defenders, and the organisations that support them have found creative ways to tackle the legal and social obstacles set before them by the state, corporations and individuals seeking to maintain the status quo. Through the use of alternative outlets and social media, alliance building, the forming of social movements, and advocacy at the legislative level, communities, individuals, and organisations have found ways to circumvent restrictions of their fundamental, civic freedoms. Despite facing oppressive elites in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Burundi, Uganda, or Tunisia, activists continue to fight.

Movements and activism in the DRC

As some governments continue to target civil society activists and use different methods to restrict associational rights, one response has been the emergence of new or rejuvenated youth movements to call for reforms. In the case of the DRC, the LUCHA movement was formed in June 2012, in Goma, North Kivu. The loose structure of the movement, and the spread of its membership in the different parts of the DRC, is aimed at circumventing government actions that target formal civil society organisations, their members and their legal status using restrictive policies and actions. LUCHA advocates for non-violence, denounces the use of arms to attain its goals and uses different methods to call for democratic reforms, social justice and the respect for the rule of law. Some of these include peaceful sit-ins in front of government buildings and other significant sites, use of social media, meetings with government representatives to make their requests known, mass mobilisations of communities and the use of symbolic gestures during peaceful protests.

The response of the authorities to LUCHA’s actions has been disproportionate. They have arrested movement members during peaceful protests, detained them, labelling LUCHA an illegitimate movement and accusing it of attempting to destabilise the country. On 21 December 2016, several LUCHA activists organised a peaceful sit-in at the offices of the governor of Goma to denounce the decision of President Joseph Kabila to stay beyond his constitutionally mandated term. They held signs calling for the respect of the constitution and the rule of law, and asking President Kabila to vacate office.

In response, the authorities arrested and detained 20 activists. LUCHA has established good relationships with regional and international human rights networks and works closely with them to exert pressure on the Congolese authorities to release activists whenever they are arrested.

Activism beyond borders in Eritrea

For well over a decade authorities in Eritrea have sustained one of the worst crackdowns on civil liberties ever documented. Eritrean human rights activists and citizens in the diaspora have created forums and networks through which they engage in advocacy. Given that it is impossible to obtain information on Eritrea from abroad, these activists rely on those who successfully flee from the country for the most recent information. These networks and activists use this information to raise awareness at regional and international human rights institutions and mechanisms. These mechanisms use this information to develop reports used by the international community to exert pressure on the government of Eritrea for reforms. Eritrean human rights networks in the diaspora also collaborate with regional and international human rights organisations to lobby for resolutions on Eritrea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

While the severe restrictions on the right to peacefully organise and assemble in Eritrea mean that much resistance is led from outside its borders, seeking to leave Eritrea also bears considerable risk. For example, Eritrean Forum Radio, an opposition radio station operating in exile, reported on the arrests of two journalists working for the state-owned Eritrean Radio and Television Agency on 19 February 2017. The two journalists were detained on suspicion that they were attempting to flee the country, considered by Eritrean authorities as an act of treason, punished with indefinite imprisonment and forced labour.

Alliance building in Burundi

Civic space in Burundi deteriorated in April 2015 following protests by citizens and civil society organisations denouncing a decision by the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza to amend the constitution and extend his stay in power beyond his mandated term in office. The government responded with violence, destroying independent media houses, carrying out arbitrary arrests of citizens, extrajudicial killings and threatening anyone with contrary views against the government. Most human rights activists and journalists fled Burundi to avoid being targeted by the authorities.

Like Eritrea, most of the Burundian activists have created forums and networks and engage in advocacy and activism with partners with an interest in Burundi and with regional and international human rights institutions and mechanisms. These networks release reports on a regular basis informing the international community of ongoing violence targeting perceived opponents of the government and representatives of civil society organisations.

Creative responses to restrictive policies in Uganda

In Uganda, activists have confronted restrictions on civic freedoms with creative acts of defiance. In the aftermath of the 2016 elections held in February, the government used violence to disperse peaceful protests. To circumvent the government’s restrictions, academic Stella Nyanzi has used taboo subjects, like sex and menstruation, creative language and profanity to challenge conservatism and raise awareness about the actions of the government and issues affecting Ugandans. More recently Nyanzi has attracted the ire of Ugandan President Museveni by calling him a “pair of buttocks.” This led to her arrest on 7 April after an event on menstruation and schooling for girls in Uganda.

Nyanzi’s activism has also inspired responses from Uganda’s burgeoning arts scene; including an exhibition from Ugandan artist Collin Sekajugo titled “the Fist of Stella Nyanzi.” In response to Sekajugo’s paintings Nyanzi said, “In the fight against one’s oppression by agents embedded within powerful systemic structures we use whatever we have at our exposure to fight for our humaneness. Use what you have to fight. Fight to win.”

Uganda’s LGBTIQ community have also successfully skirted intimidation by authorities. Their creative responses have included hosting a combination of both open and secret events during Pride Week. Some events have welcomed international media as a way to safeguard against government restrictions. Others, such as the annual Pride March, have been held in relative secrecy to avoid harassment from authorities. It should be noted that while Ugandan activists have successfully used international scrutiny to challenge government restrictions on civic freedoms, some other international actors in Uganda have sought to influence government policies against civic freedoms, including LGBTIQ rights.

Innovative methods in Tunisia

Since the 2011 uprising, Tunisians have been taking to the streets, using social media, and demonstrating their capacity to engage government on issues including LGBTIQ rights, women’s rights, and regional inequality. However, ordinary citizens and civil society organisations have faced significant resistance from political parties and government that have curtailed their ability to successfully advocate on the issues that matter most to them. These types of violations of freedom of speech, assembly and association are not exclusive to Tunisia, but can be seen across the continent and increasingly, around the world.

In Tunisia, government has been seen to engage in a number of tactics to prevent dissenting citizens and organisations from voicing their opposition. The post-revolution decree, Decree Number 88 of 2011, broadly protects all organisations’ freedom of association and supports their right to speak out, organise and take action. This law on associations also includes provisions for public funding and prohibits state interference in organisations’ operations.

After the wave of terrorist attacks in 2015, the government froze the activities of 38 organisations suspected of having provided direct or indirect support to terrorist entities. Now, the Assembly of the Representatives of the People and the current government are working on amending the existing Law on Associations to enhance oversight and control of entities that receive foreign funding.

The demonisation of national and international groups continues under the pretext of combating the financing of terrorism, an excuse used to expedite the modification of this Law of Associations and prevent citizens and organisations from playing their pivotal role in supporting the democratic transition. For more than two years, civil society organisations have been mobilising to face any potential threat to this decree and the freedom of association in Tunisia.

LGBTIQ organisations have also been a primary subject of the state’s legal harassment and an easy target in the state’s mounting crackdown against a growing opposition. Authorities can force citizens to undergo “anal testing” if they suspect that a person is homosexual under the auspice that this can scientifically provide evidence of a person’s sexual orientation. The National Council of the Medical Order called for doctors to stop carrying out these anal exams without patients’ consent and the LGBTIQ community and human rights organisations are campaigning to end this inhumane practice.

While the repression of social movements, groups, and organisations has been trending for more than two years, a new leaked recording exposed a plan by Tunisian television station, Nessma, to intimidate an anti-corruption Tunisian watchdog, iWatch. In this video, Nessma directors can be heard issuing threats of violence against individuals and slander to damage the reputation of iWatch and its members. This has, incidentally, strengthened the mobilisation against corrupt tycoons in Tunisia and the use of media to delegitimise social movements and civil society.

Tunisian citizens and organisations have shifted tactics and are moving away from protesting to influencing by increasing dialogue with government officials and legislators. Social media serves as a first step to raise awareness of ongoing attacks, including those against citizens’ and organisations’ abilities to organise, assemble, and speak freely. This is also a means of circumventing the alternative facts espoused by state-owned and private media entities.

Some of the most important work however, occurs through alliance building between non-governmental organisations, international organisations and social movements and the power of these alliances to speak directly with policy makers to impact the legislation that affects them and their work. Some of these alliances have been able to successfully form campaigns, like that of the 2016 campaign against a draft law restricting access to information formed by civil society organisations and launched on social media.

Fighting back and fighting to win

All over Africa activists and organisations are fighting back. New innovative methods of challenging the state and other repressive non-state actors can be seen in countries across the continent. In DRC, youth and social movements have grown and are ever expanding, connecting with the global Congolese diaspora.

Awareness raising and alliance building at the regional and international levels by those in exile or those who have fled the country have successfully drawn attention to the current and ongoing crises in Eritrea and Burundi. Art and creative campaigning has seen success in Uganda and reaching out to politicians directly has been one avenue pursued to expand and exercise civic freedoms in Tunisia.

As Stella Nyanzi states, Africans across the continent are using whatever they have to fight. And they are fighting to win.

* David Kode from Cameroon is Senior Policy and Research Officer at CIVICUS (David.Kode@civicus.org) and Mouna Ben Garga from Tunisia is Innovation for Change Programme Officer (mouna.bengarga@civicus.org). CIVICUS is a global alliance of more than 3,600 civil society organizations and activists. Innovation for Change, a CIVICUS project, is a regional network of online and physical centers aimed at supporting and connecting civil society across the globe.

References

CIVICUS Alliance. The CIVICUS Monitor. www.monitor.civicus.org

CHAN08. Stella Nyanzi Excited about her Protest Art Exhibition. http://chano8.com/stella-nyanzi-excited-protest-art-exhibition/

Daily Maverick. Uganda: Stella Nyanzi, the vulgar activist, takes on the Pair-of-Buttocks-in-Chief. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-04-11-uganda-stella-nyanzi-the-vulgar-activist-takes-on-the-pair-of-buttocks-in-chief/

ICNL. Civic Freedom Monitor: Tunisia http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/Tunisia.html

Front Line Defenders. https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-amin-mekki-medani

Middle East Observer. Leaked recording highlights head of Tunisian TV inciting his staff to slander anti-corruption watchdog.https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2017/04/23/leaked-recording-highlights-head-of-tunisian-tv-inciting-his-staff-to-slander-anti-corruption-watchdog/

Stop Homophobie. Test anal: les médecins Tunisiens condamnent la pratique dans les procédures déclenchées contre les homosexuels. https://www.stophomophobie.com/test-anal-les-medecins-tunisiens-condamnent-la-pratique-dans-les-procedures-declenchees-contre-les-homosexuels-videos/

Tunisian Government. Décret-loi n° 2011-88 du 24 Septembre 2011, portant organisation des associations. http://www.acm.gov.tn/upload/1410083987.pdf

Uganda National NGO Forum. Black Monday Campaign. http://ngoforum.or.ug/black-monday/

Washington Post. In Tunisia, activists finally catch a break against a powerful tycoon. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/04/20/in-tunisia-activists-finally-catch-a-break-against-a-powerful-tycoon/?tid=ss_fb

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Russian Hacking And ‘Hybrid Warfare’– Analysis

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By Rene Zou

Unconventional warfare tactics are becoming increasingly popular in the digital age, and Russia is leading the way. “Hybrid warfare” involves using disinformation and cyber attacks to stir up unrest in the opposition country. The ultimate goal is to undermine the enemy by sowing dissension and weakening its social fabric vis-à-vis cyber espionage and the spread of propaganda.

Russia has achieved evident success using hybrid warfare to punish its neighbors and more recently weaken the US political system. As the U.S. became preoccupied with the rise of another geopolitical rival, Moscow developed a low-cost, high impact weapon with clandestine (political) potential. State-sponsored hackers from China were initially given more attention than Russian ones, as China took bigger risks and got caught more often. In fact, Obama and McCain’s position papers and internal communications were hacked by the Chinese in the 2008 presidential election cycle. However, no documents were published, as China-based hackers are more motivated by stealing intellectual property and information beneficial to economic activity, rather than impacting the democratic political process.

By contrast, Moscow prefers “doxing,” a method that involves publishing or broadcasting what hackers find, instead of merely breaking into systems to gather intelligence. Putin’s long-term goal looks beyond the US domestic sphere and more toward gaining political advantage internationally by undermining Western diplomatic, financial, and military linkages. While the U.S. has approached Chinese cyber espionage with a years-long series of diplomatic and legal efforts, dealing with Russia won’t be as easy. This new dynamic could easily be the beginnings of a ‘Second Cold War.’

Soviet Tactics Reworked for the Information Age

In 1982, Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the KGB at the time, oversaw foreign-intelligence operatives known as “active measures”, which aimed to influence people and events abroad to suit Russia’s objectives. For instance, in extensive notes made by KGB officer Vasili Mitrkhin, he described how the Soviet leadership saw Ronald Reagan as an implacable militarist and thus sought to popularize the slogan “Reagan Means War!” among Republican and Democratic National Committees to undermine his re-election. However, KGB efforts to create turmoil via front groups, forgeries, and other techniques fell flat as Reagan’s popularity remained solid.

Throughout the Cold War, Soviet intelligence officers sought to spread rumors about the US government’s involvement in Martin Luther King’s assassination, implicate the American intelligence community in the “creation” of the AIDs virus and support left-wing insurgencies throughout the US sphere of influence. Meanwhile, American intelligence used cash payments, propaganda, and violent measures to dissuade support for leftist parties in Italy, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Nicaragua. While the CIA worked to overthrow communist regimes abroad, the FBI was responsible for keeping an eye on KGB-sponsored leftist groups at home. Thus, similar tactics of disinformation and propaganda were applied on both sides, with a truce eventually reached in the early 90s—an agreement that Russia has not abided by.

Sergey Tretyakov, a defected station chief for Russian Intelligence in New York wrote, “Nothing has changed” in 2008, “Russia is doing everything it can today to embarrass the U.S.” Still, President Vladimir Putin accuses U.S. of playing the same game, blaming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for spurring anti-Kremlin activists into action, not to mention, the West’s support of anti-Moscow “color revolutions”. Further, Putin considers NGOs and civil society groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as ‘undesirable’ NGOs as well as thinly disguised instruments for regime change.

Hybrid warfare is thus the 21st century-equivalent of espionage and propaganda in the Cold War. Moreover, the enemy has since developed into ‘American hegemony’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet a new doctrine has also surfaced, as Russians began to realize the value of studying Western tools of soft power to not only counteract them at home, but also apply them abroad to achieve its own national objectives. In 2013, Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of general staff, published an article in the Military-Industrial Courier titled “The Value of Science in Prediction.” In this text, now dubbed as the “Gerasimov doctrine”, Gerasimov promoted the idea of hybrid war and suggested that wars in the future will be fought with a four-to-one ratio of non-military to military measures, whereby espionage, subversion, propaganda, and cyber attacks will take on an increasing importance.

Pavel Zolotarev, a retired Russian general, explained that Gerasimov’s method overcame the need for “grandfather-style methods” like scattering leaflets, throwing around printed materials, or manipulating the radio or television. With nuclear deterrence out of the way, the information space has expanded with new possibilities for unconventional warfare. Indeed, Putin—a former high ranking KGB official himself—has pursued disinformation tactics in today’s (post-)modern age with widespread success.

Timeline of Major Hacks and Events

The first major attack by Russian intelligence agencies occurred in 1996—in what investigators have named Operation Moonlight Maze. During this covert cyber attack, countless files, including weapons designs, were stolen from NASA, the US Navy, Air Force, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration from a computer nicknamed “Baby Doe” at the Colorado School of Mines. According to a report issued after the discovery, if all the stolen files were to be printed out, it would form a tower as high as the obelisk of the Washington Monument.

However, the landmark event expanding state-sponsored cyber attacks from the security to political sphere took place in 2007, when Russia instigated a “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) assault on Estonia due to controversy over a statue of a WWII Soviet soldier that was being removed from the center of Tallinn. This was widely regarded as a punishment of the former satellite state’s ascension to NATO and warming relations with the West. Moreover, it demonstrated that Russia could paralyze an entire country without invading it, as then Minister of Defence Jaak Aaviksoo, described “This was the first time that a botnet threatened the national security of an entire nation.”

Less than a year later, in August 2008, the same tactics were applied in Georgia as 54 websites with ties to the government, media and banks came under attack due to territorial disputes in South Ossetia. Military information was stolen, while communication systems and the Internet broke down as Russian tanks and planes advanced into the disputed territory. Michael Sulmeyer, a former senior Pentagon official in charge of cyber policy under Obama describes it as “one of the first times you’ve seen conventional ground operations married with cyber activity.” These cyber assaults certainly gave Russia the upper hand, as Georgia and Estonia were left in a state of confusion and disarray.

The conflict in Georgia lasted just five days, and though it was an obvious military victory for Russia, it was also viewed as a “total defeat in the information space.”  As Zolotarev explains, the imagery of Russia shelling Georgia played on international media produced less than satisfactory propaganda outcomes for Russia, and thus pushed military generals to further study the use of media and other information to wage war on the information front. These newly refined tactics were then practiced in other theaters to drum up pro-Moscow sentiment during the annexation of Crimea and the Syrian civil war.

By 2014 and 2015, targets of Russian hacking gradually shifted westward, first sneaking into the networks of Hungary, Luxembourg, and Belgium, and then eventually to Russia’s multilateral adversaries such as NATO and the Office of Security Cooperation in Europe. This coincided with the rise of Russian state-backed hacking teams—Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear— and their infiltration of Washington. In June 2015, Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed that Russian hackers accessed an unclassified Pentagon network as well as sensitive parts of White House computer systems (including information about the President’s daily schedule).

As per doxing, (the now known culprit) Cozy Bear had published a private phone call between Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, in discussions to broker a deal in Ukraine on Youtube. Although US officials traced the mischief to Russian hackers, no penalty was issued other than official condemnation. As a result, Russian hacking efforts were emboldened. Fancy Bear targeted other Western hubs by publishing Islamist propaganda on France’s TV5Monde  and began snooping on politicians in the German Bundestag.

By summer of 2015, Cozy Bear had begun spear-phishing a long list of American government agencies, Washington non-profits and government contractors, including the Democratic National Committee’s network. Fancy Bear showed up in March 2016, first penetrating the computer of the DNC’s sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In response to Russia’s perceived election interference, the Obama administration imposed further sanctions on Russia and declared Russian diplomats as persona non-grata in the U.S. However, Obama’s cautious attempt to avoid the appearance of bipartisanship (as the polls swung in favor of Clinton) and fear of an escalating cyber war failed to deflect further Russian hacking efforts.

The Rise of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear

Fancy Bear is the name given to the Russian hacking team working for GRU (the external intelligence agency of the Russian military) among others, including APT 28, Strontium, and the Sofacy Group. Fancy Bear has been on the radar of security researchers for at least seven years, most notably for its disinformation campaigns in Georgia, Ukraine, and against NATO. Cozy Bear—also known as CozyDuke, the Dukes or APT 29—is Fancy Bear’s rival hacking team, and is believed to belong to a competing Russian intelligence service that has hacked the State Department, White House, and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Digital forensics identifies Cozy Bear for its sense of humor, with regards to the adroit disguise of malicious files and interesting bait sent to their targets. Meanwhile, Fancy Bear is known for its customization and reconnaissance of targets and propensity for infecting files. The security firm FireEye have explained how they demonstrate “formal coding practices indicative of methodical, diligent programmers” with tools that security analysts have named ‘Sourface’, ‘Chopstick’ and ‘Eviltoss’ among others. Meanwhile, both groups employ zero-day exploits—flaws installed in popular software to secretly send data back to a network without the target’s knowledge. They are difficult to design, keep stable, and are expensive on the black market, which has made them a hallmark of state-sponsored hackers.

Similarities between the two groups thus include their sophisticated and expensive digital tools, shared interest in information of sensitive and strategic nature and high likelihood of state sponsorship. This indicates that both groups are comprised of advanced hackers who are more concerned with political as opposed to financial gain, with targets often linked to political, military, diplomatic and journalistic activity. While the Bears mainly concerned themselves with eastern European countries and multinationals in the past, their scope has broadened to include the West, at present.

Three days before the Democratic National Convention last summer, Wikileaks shared nearly 20,000 emails from the DNC’s internal network after Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear successfully hacked into the system. This culminated in the DNC scandal, whereby the Democratic establishment was exposed for their active endorsement Hillary Clinton’s campaign over the election of Bernie Sanders. As a result, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the DNC and her top party aides resigned from their positions amidst populist anti-establishment fury.

Russia’s Motivations

Cozy Bear and Fancy Bears’ interests seemingly align with political objectives in Moscow. Putin’s top three motives could be summarized as follows: 1) undermine American democracy; 2) weaken the next American president; and 3) deliberately help elect Trump. So far, Russia’s hack-and-dox scheme has been successful on all three fronts. Russian interference not only raised doubts about the election, but also served as a distraction to sow confusion. All the while, disinformation or false information intended to discredit the true or official version of events has taken the U.S. by storm.

That being said, unlike Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, the political landscape of the 2016 elections was ripe for Russians to meddle in. This meant highly polarized parties, a fragmented society, and a fractured media environment. As Oleg Kluging, a former KGB general living in the U.S. accounts: “The goal is to deepen the splits.” Moreover, Evan Osnos and his colleagues at the New Yorker note, disinformation campaigns are “less a way to conjure something out of nothing than to stir a pot that is already bubbling.” Hence, the DNC attack would have had a limited impact if the U.S. had not already been marred by disarray and low levels of trust.

Still, they recognize that this “strategy is especially valuable when a country like Russia, which is considerably weaker than it was at the height of the Soviet era, is waging a geopolitical struggle with a stronger entity.” The Obama administration only learned of the DNC hacking nine months after the FBI first tried to notify the organization about the intrusion. While the October 7th declaration by the administration concluded with confidence that Russia was behind the DNC hack, it resorted to closely monitoring the line between “covert influence” and “adversely affecting the vote count.” Hillary’s lead in the race at the time reinforced Obama’s decision to not react strongly so as to delegitimize the race, (the DNC was infiltrated long before Trump won the Republican nomination) but the Russians had already achieved their goal by then.

US Response

By the time the US intelligence community began investigating the DNC hack, politics had taken the place of digital forensics. President Trump says that there is no evidence that Russian meddling had anything to do with his success, first describing the investigation as a “witch hunt” before grudgingly accepting the FBI probe. The DNC’s fumbling encounter with the FBI as well as both parties’ failure to grasp the scope initially paved the way for more future attacks. However, recognizing the fact that stakes are too high for the U.S. as a whole, a bipartisan alliance has formed to investigate the hacking—including Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Jack Reed. Moreover, a joint task force including the CIA, FBI, NSA and the financial crimes unit of Treasury Department was formed on Inauguration Day.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing exploring the Pentagon’s cybersecurity strategy, Senator Jeanna Shaheen brought up the need to clarify the definition of what constitutes cyber warfare. Dr. Craig Fields, chairman of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), agrees that a common and coherent response is needed to help guard-off future attacks. In the past, senior Democrats have called for the declassification of intelligence assessments relating to the hack. Meanwhile, James Comey appealed to the Justice Department for more resources for the inquiry just days before he was fired by Trump.

As Washington busies itself with a sprawling and highly politicized counterintelligence operation, it is safe to say that Moscow is leading the 21st century war on information.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

The post Russian Hacking And ‘Hybrid Warfare’ – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Chasing Red Squirrels In Washington DC – OpEd

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Democratic politicians, aided and abetted by their journalist supporters in publications like the Washington Post, New York Times and at electronic news organizations like CNN, MSNBC and NPR, are playing a dangerous game focusing their anti-Trump “resistance” energies on trying to revivify the moribund Cold War with Russia and China.

You hear almost nothing out of Democratic Party establishment figures about the continuing economic crisis facing most average and poor Americans, who continue to struggle trying to get by on lower paying jobs than what they had before the Great Recession (supposedly ended!), or working at part-time jobs, living from paycheck to paycheck while the rich get richer, and having the traditional tickets out of their family’s predicament — a quality public school education and then college for their kids, a home they can finance and ultimately own, and a secure support system for their parents, and eventually themselves when they reach retirement age — undermined and threatened with death by a thousand cuts — all taken from them.

Instead, they hear how President Trump is in some kind of conspiracy with the evil Russians, who we’re told insidiously helped destroy America’s election system, handing the presidency to Trump instead of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

There are so many things wrong with this picture.

First off, Russia these days, almost three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is not America’s enemy — something that at least half of Americans understand instinctively, including most of those who voted for Trump in November. 86,000 US tourists and business people visited Russia in 2015, part of some 33 million who visited the country from around the globe to make it the ninth-most-visited country in the world.

Forbes magazine, when tensions between the US and Rusia were high amid Democratic Party charges that Russia was trying to throw the election to Trump last August, published an article [1] reporting that billions of investment dollars were flowing from the US into Russia from a Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest firms, including PepsiCo, Procter&Gamble, McDonald’s, Mondelez International, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson as well as resource companies like Cargill, Alcoa, and General Electric.

Russia, let us not forget, has been keeping the primarily US-owned and funded ISS space station staffed with its Soyuz rocket ferries, while the US flounders, trying to find the funding to develop a reliable transport system of its own following the forced retirement of the ill-conceived space shuttle.

Sure Russia has land and submarine-based missiles targeting the US, but remember these are in response to even more US missiles that are targeting Russia (and China), and it has been the US that has been blocking efforts to stand down those missiles, and to renounce the using them in a first strike, and that has been working to install anti-missile batteries on Russia’s western and eastern borders designed to make such a first strike conceivable. And sure Russia re-absorbed Crimea into its borders, taking it back from the one-time Soviet Union province of Ukraine. But remember that move came after a US-sponsored, directed and financed violent coup drove out the elected leader of Ukraine, replacing him with a pro-US government that initiated a violent campaign of harassment of ethnic Russians in the country, and that began making entreaties to join NATO — an organization whose sole purpose, rooted in the old Cold War, has been containing and ultimately destroying Russia.

Democrats are fond of calling Russia “aggressive” and its leader, Vladimir Putin, “a thug”, but remember that Russia only has one overseas military base, and that is the one in Syria, where the country was invited to come to back the existing Syrian government of elected President Bashar Al-Assad. Compare that to the US that has invaded some seven countries in recent years and is involved in undeclared and illegal wars around the world even now, including Syria, and that has some 800 military bases abroad, including in countries bordering Russia to the West, Turkey to the south, and Japan in the East.

Based upon hard evidence, as opposed to speculation and unsupported claims, Russia, far from being aggressive, is trying to develop expanded trade with Europe, to encourage foreign investment inside Russia, and to diversify its economy beyond being just a resource-based raw-materials exporter so as to raise the living standards of its people. It is not seeking to re-establish a zone of occupied countries in eastern Europe, nor is it even trying (as Moscow demonstrated by prematurely withdrawing most of its forces last year) to occupy and create a vassal state in Syria.

Meanwhile, as the Democrats focus on trying to build up Russia as a Cold War 2.0 bogeyman working in league with President Trump and his motley crew of billionaire cabinet officers and feuding advisors, they are both angering Trump supporters — many of them former working class backers of the Democrats — who aren’t falling for it and instead feel Trump is being unfairly labeled as a traitor — and at the same time are failing to reform the party to return it to its former “New Deal” and “Great Society” roots as a champion of the middle class.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, despite the corrupt, focused efforts of Hillary Clinton backers and the Democratic Party establishment to destroy his campaign, came last year within a whisker of defeating Clinton for the presidential nomination. That upstart campaign, and the tens of thousands of people who showed up at his rallies across the country, not to mention the countless “Sanders” placards in normally Republican-leaning states and counties during the primaries, showed that there is a desperate hunger among America’s working families for a party that will stand up for their interests. These would be things that polls consistently show the public wants, like higher taxes on corporations, increased funding and higher benefit levels for Social Security, better funding for Medicare, a single-payer health care system covering all Americans, lower military spending, a break-up of the nation’s big banks, improved infrastructure, reform of labor laws to make it easier to join a union, free public education through four years of college, and yes, serious action to combat climate change, etc.

That’s where Democrats should be focusing their efforts. Those are the issues they should be working hard now at finding convincing congressional candidates to fight for in coming campaigns over the next year and a half to retake the House and Senate.

But it’s not happening. All the action in the Democratic Party is focused, not out in the grass roots, but in Washington, in a losing game of trying to paint President Trump as a pro-Russian puppet, and in a vain effort to get him impeached by a Republican-led House and Senate.

It would be comical except that it’s just sad.

Unwilling to give up their dream of being the party of the “liberal-minded” and liberally cash-dolling corporate elite — the hedge-fund managers on Wall Street and the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs so ready to talk a good game about support for racial equality and transgender rights as long as they can get their carried interest and their low corporate tax rates, Democrats are continuing to turn a blind eye on the desperate need of most Americans who continue to see their incomes stagnate or even shrink, the prospects for their children shrivel, and their health care become ever harder to afford.

The end result is predictable: Democrats will perform miserably in the 2018 off-year elections, losing a chance to at least retake the House from Republicans, and Trump will manage to get re-elected in 2020, probably with continued control of both houses of Congress.

By the time the Trump nightmare is over in 2024, the country, like its by then water-logged coastlines, will be hard to recognize.

The post Chasing Red Squirrels In Washington DC – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

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