As the 30th ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines came to a close, the primary questions regarding maritime security, terrorism, human trafficking ended with consensus, with one glaring omission. The word China does appear in any of the statements by either the Chairman’s final remarks of the conference, nor any remarks by the host, Philippine President Rodrigo Rao Duterte.

Additionally, President Duterte did not mention the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that favored the Philippines’ maritime claims over the West Philippine Sea and invalidating China’s nine-dash line claiming most of the disputed waters, because it was an issue between Manila and Beijing only.

This omission appeared to be a clear victory for China who lobbied for omission of any statement making reference to the victory or the United Nations ‘The Law of the Sea’. With the recent statements by President Duterte that China has threatened the Philippines with the potential of war regarding the arbitration decision, China does appear to be flexing its muscle. However, the consensus and unity in the statement regarding the issues that were addressed, does reflect a regional body with the potential to reclaim those rights, as well as collectively addressing far more pressing issues in future meetings.

Rather than expose areas of division among the group, the final statement address’ complex regional issues with regards to maritime rights, human trafficking and terrorism. Moreover, the statement addresses broader issues regarding the trade of illicit weapons, WMD’s and cooperation among states for enforcement. The final list of issues pertains more to the Chinese than regional states, as China is the largest regional arms dealer to regimes like North Korea and other despots. Without showing consensus and agreement on the security issues, the region body will have a more challenging time in their collective ability to push back against the Chinese aggression in the region. What’s more, this will show signs of a region finally taking responsibility and serving as a partner to the United States, rather than reliance on the United States Navy to serve as de facto police of the seas.

Historically, the security questions complicated the relationship between states, particularly with the disputes regarding the Spratley and Parcel Islands. There are various policy positions that require greater discussion in order to avoid conflicts between states in the area. However, states are at least finding common ground on the key issues of piracy and armed robbery at sea. By finding agreement on how to address this issue, ASEAN will show it has the potential to put to rest outstanding maritime issues.

Regional security questions regarding piracy and armed robbery of vessels in the region continues to disrupt supply chains, fishing vessels and the maritime transfer of commerce in the region. The security risks involving piracy and armed robbery led to the creation of The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP), as well as the establishment of the Information Sharing Centre (ISC), which gives regional maritime security units to communicate and coordinate with one another. According to independent data gathered by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) in Kuala Lumpur, Southeast Asia in general is now witnessing an uptick in incidents of piracy and armed robbery. By establishing a coordinated effort, regional bodies are laying the ground to govern and establish agreed upon regional policies regarding maritime rights and security. In order to adequately address this ongoing menace will require creative ideas to keep criminal elements off guard, and potentially disrupt their operation, rather the other way around.

The Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) recently stated in their report titled ‘The Indo-Asia-Pacific’s Maritime Future: A Practical Assessment of the State of Asian Seas’ that Governing bodies such as ASEAN do have the potential to alleviate these issues through greater law enforcement bodies in the region. One policy suggestion is to embed Coast Guard officers on regional law enforcement vessels travelling in international waters for snap inspections. This would strengthen the ability to combat the trade of illicit materials, human trafficking and illegal fishing. Additionally, it will give confidence to maritime insurance providers who continue to have concerns regarding the risk of being disrupted by armed robbery and pirates.

Of course, all of this remains to be seen, but the potential is ripe for the region to live up to its potential. Given the policy shifts that the Trump Administration recently have forced regional bodies to attempt to fill the vacuum left by the lack of US presence. Additionally, since there is increased interest by the Private Equity community, this can lead to greater economic investment. By reducing the risk of piracy and illicit crime, this will reduce the insurance burden as well as bringing together a region ready to finally come to life. Until insurance rates for vessels are stabilized, it will serve as an impediment to greater activity in the region. With the establishment of monitoring organizations such as ReCAAP and ISC, the potential is there. Hopefully the collaborative approach by regional states will lead to greater cooperation, and safer seas.

*David Wolfe is a specialist on Asian Security and private consultant for foundations, development firms and corporations specializing in human security, supply chain management and intellectual capacity building in emerging markets in Indo-Asia-Pac countries. He has previously written for the Denmark based Riskline, the Foreign Policy Journal and Tokyo based Ai-Eye Magazine. Mr. Wolfe holds an MAIPS from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and is the former Government Relations Director for the Kashmiri American Council.

Donald Trump has made one of the most hypocritical speeches in American political history: and that’s saying something.  The same person who told the American electorate that Islam was a religion of violence and evil, and that America must close its doors to all Muslims because, as far as he was concerned, they were all likely terrorists–this same guy fawned and curtsied before the Saudi monarch who’s the protector (not a very good one, I might add) of the Muslim holy sites.

This speech and his attendant business deals signed while in the Kingdom, are a triumph of commerce over values.  Jobs and lucre and the only things this President cares about.  If he can hawk THADD missile systems to the Devil himself he’ll descend into Hell to do it.

Iran—fresh from real elections—attacked by @POTUS in that bastion of democracy & moderation. Foreign Policy or simply milking KSA of $480B? pic.twitter.com/ahfvRxK3HV

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) May 21, 2017

As I’ve written here in the past week, the speech is the capstone to a major U.S. pivot away from rapprochement with Shia Iran and towards the Sunni kingdoms.  In doing so, Trump will be forced to embrace all the vices of his new allies: their homophobia, misogyny, corruption, nepotism, intolerance, and brutality.  He will also be forced to acknowledge something he’s conveniently avoided in this speech: that his new pals themselves have been the greatest supporters of terrorism in the region.  Who founded al Qaeda?  Whose money, recruits and leadership created it?  Who funds the most vicious Islamist rebels of ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria?  Yep, your pals in the glittering palaces of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

You think because you’ve called these Islamists bad boys that their patrons will immediately abandon them?  Nah.  It would be one thing if you called out the Saudis, told them to stop funding ISIS in Syria, and advanced a plan for peace there that would involve negotiations among the different players.  But no, you didn’t do that.  You merely denounced ISIS as if it was a separate, independent entity; and not dependent on the funding and weapons of its patrons in the very Kingdom in which he spoke.

The speech was not just ahistorical, it was bereft of the least understanding of the nature of terror in the Muslim-Arab world.  Here’s a choice example:

This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations.

This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.

This is a battle between Good and Evil.

Of course it is a battle between different civilizations and faiths.  Or at least a battle between extremists who embrace one religion and who have declared war on another.  The juxtaposition of the “us” who is “good” and “them” who is “evil” is not just useless as a tool for understanding this conflict–it is profoundly dangerous.  It lulls us into the false faith that we are good and all we do must be good, because we are fighting an enemy who is wholly evil.  You can see where this sort of thinking leads: to My Lai and Abu Ghraib.  And don’t worry, Trump will take us there is we give him enough time.

One of the most pitiable passages in Trump’s address is this:

Our partnerships will advance security through stability, not through radical disruption. We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes — not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms — not sudden intervention.

We must seek partners, not perfection…

Here read “stability” as brutal strongman rule and “radical disruption” as populist yearning for democracy.  Trump derides the “pointy-headed” concepts of human rights as the “inflexible ideology” of Pres. Obama.  But in reality, of course, it is Trump’s Islamophobia that constitutes one of the most rigid of ideologies.  And as for “gradual reforms,” that term is meaningless.  It really means the stultifying, suffocating status quo.  What Trump has endorsed here is a U.S. policy of crony capitalism: we give you all the weapons you need to kill each other.  You give us your oil wealth and fund our military-industrial machine.  Beyond that, we could care less what you do or how you do it.

You want to kill 10,000 Houthis?  Go right ahead.  Join with Bashar al-Assad to massacre 250,000 Syrians?  You have my blessing.  Go to war with Iran?  No problem.

Above all, America seeks peace — not war.

What a joke.  Says the president who just signed a $300-billion deal to send Saudi Arabia our most advanced weapons systems over the next decade.  What does he think those missiles will be used for?  Building schools and hospitals?

Amidst all of Trump’s fulminations against “Islamist terrorism” (“That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires”), there was nary a word about western terrorism.  We too have our own homegrown terrorists: white supremacists and the alt-right.  They have killed almost as many westerners as Islamist militants have.  Yet why not a word of denunciation concerning them?  Why not admit that we have our own brand of terror to fight, just as Muslims do?  You know the answer without my telling you.

Here Trump rhapsodizes about refugees, calling them “human capital” for a “brighter future.”  Of course, while ignoring the massive suffering they endure in the god-awful present.  In the process he makes one of the most hypocritical statements in the entire address:

I also applaud Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon for their role in hosting refugees. The surge of migrants and refugees leaving the Middle East depletes the human capital needed to build stable societies and economies. Instead of depriving this region of so much human potential, Middle Eastern countries can give young people hope for a brighter future in their home nations and regions.

Well of course they can.  If Trump’s own allies hadn’t turned Syria into a killing field and charnel house.  But if you’re going to applaud Middle Eastern nations for accepting refugees, why not your own country?  Is the Middle East the only part of the world responsible for refugees generated there?  If there’s one thing we learn from civil wars wherever they happen: they are global phenomena.  You cannot build a wall around a failing state and isolate the suffering it generates to a small bit of territory.  All that suffering radiates outward and afflicts the entire world.  That’s why Trump’s view is mypoic and ahistorical.

The truly worst portion of the speech was reserved for Iran.  As you can see above, his rhetoric matched the false rhetoric of George Bush père et fils: the former called Saddam Hussein “the new Hitler.”

His rant begins thus:

For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.

Actually, none of the above statements are true.  I have no idea what Trump refers to as Iranian advocacy of “mass murder.”  Nor has Iran ever vowed to destroy Israel.  As for Iran’s supposed vow to “ruin” Sunni nations–that compliment has been returned many-fold by all those leaders listening to his speech. This is a Sunni-Shia religious conflict as well as a conflict for regional dominance.  To divorce this rivalry from its historical-religious context is an offense against reality.  And it will perpetuate the noxious policies and rain of death which afflicts the region today.  Conflict may be mediated through discussion and negotiation.  But if you demonize your rival, then only war and death is possible.  That is the path the Sunni states have chosen and which Trump has ratified.  Remember it is Iran which called for talks with Saudi Arabia over their differences; and the Saudis who rejected the offer.

Here’s another bit of false history akin to Trump’s painting of America’s minority communities as “ghettos” and “war zones” characterized by nothing but suffering and poverty:

…The people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict and terror.

If Iranians have endured hardship it is largely of the making of Trump and his western allies who’ve put the country under lockdown economically, financially and commercially.  And as for pursuit of conflict: Iran is not the only party pursuing conflict.  We have certainly done our share as has Israel and all those Sunni allies he was celebrating.  The failure to recognize blame as two-sided is yet another severe weakness of the Trump world-view.

Oh the irony of Trump calling for regime change in Iran, when it is one of the few democracies in the region:

…Pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.

Well, in fact Iran has the government it deserves.  The people just elected that government.  Something which has never happened in his host country, Saudi Arabia.  Trump’s arrogance and ignorance is unbounding.

This article was published at Tikun Olam.

Since my son Casey was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04, I have consistently taken steps to remove myself from the government of the USA: I stopped paying income taxes (how can I fund more murder after I essentially funded the murder of my own son?); I sold my car; dumped my house; and vocally oppose just about everything America does. Unfortunately, I still have a passport and I feel like, not only do I want to live in California, my surviving children (5th generation Californians) and my five grandchildren (6th generation Californians) live here, so I need to live here.

Also, why should I be forced to “love it or leave it?” Mostly, almost all the people who can afford to be so mobile and move around the world are the people who create untenable conditions for the rest of us, anyway.

Having written the above, you can imagine that I was extremely excited when I saw that there was a renewed interest in California Independence! I quickly contacted leadership of the movement and became involved myself and am now on the board of the California Freedom Coalition.

On May 19, 2017 we joyfully, yet with a sense of gravitas, filed paperwork in Sacramento at the office of the Attorney General to put California Independence in front of Californians in the form of a ballot initiative. Right now, we are awaiting final approval (around 50 days) to begin collecting signatures for this historic and righteous effort.

As with the first American Revolution in 1776 (an effort which few colonists supported, at first, so the “Patriots” also had to wage a battle to win the “fence-sitters” over), it has become “self-evident” to some of us here in California that the US government (USG), way across the country in Washington, DC does not represent us, or our values, in anywhere near a competent, or even, humane way. We feel like we are treated as vassals to unrestrained capitalism and war. Even California’s federal contingent that are sent to DC are a club of millionaires who have lost touch with California and the average Californian. How else are reps like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Nancy Pelosi (D) able to constantly vote for wars, war funding, and work to protect out of control US regimes and corporate interests?

While California is one of the leading economies in the world, there is still an appalling unemployment and homeless problem. Following the trajectory of the US, California’s good, manufacturing jobs have fled for greener pastures and what’s left for us: service jobs or the military. Californians send billions to the USG to support US military adventurism, and while we mostly don’t support the wars, our young people and families pay the highest and irredeemable prices in war deaths, injuries, and the deepest cut: suicide.

If left in the Republic of California, what we here in the state could do with our human, natural, and financial resources, is almost limitless. Similarly, the potential of a free California to lead the world in peace, education (the wealthy state of California consistently rates in the bottom 10% in education in the US), meaningful and full-employment with good wages and benefits, sustainable energy production, clean agriculture, clean water, clean air, etc; unleashes what my colleague in the movement Tim Vollmer has called, the “sociological imagination.”

There have been independence movements in California since before it was quickly absorbed by the USA (because of the discovery of massive amounts of gold) in 1850 and it is only a matter of time before we are again successful.

We, the patriots and matriots of Californian Independence not only want a healthier country to live in, we also feel that if California does become independent from the bloody US Empire, it will ultimately deal a death blow to that Empire. Without California, the US will have to scale back its sick habit of regime change/carnage around the world, or perish. I would rather have the US voluntarily follow California on a much more peaceful and sensible path for humanity, but if it perishes, that is fine, too. Anything to stop the Empire’s reign of terror around the world.

This is in no way a rightwing “Free State of Jefferson” movement (CalSplit) that wants to add another state to a nation that has, beyond a shadow of any doubt, demonstrated its psychopathic tendencies. We don’t advocate for an independent California to further separate the rich and the poor, but to retain the beautiful diverse nature of our state; and to elevate everyone in equality and prosperity (some people will have to de-elevate, but, that’s only a matter of time, too).

However, this is also not a “liberal” initiative that only wants to skedaddle because Trump is the current CEO of Murder, Inc; only to return to again beg for scraps from our “master’s” table when a Democrat assumes that position. This is an a-partisan effort that strives to leave the divisions of the US behind and join as Californians of all demographics to put the power and future of California back where it rightfully belongs: in our hands and in our communities

I was honored to be asked to sign the “California Declaration of Independence,” and the significance of this was not lost on any of us.

We are working hard for success and we all know that it will happen and it will be good for everyone (except the 1%, at first), but we wondered how did the signers of the Declaration of Independence feel on the sweltering day (it was also hot in Sacramento on 19 May) of 4 July, 1776? I am sure, like we, they were optimistic, excited, and a little fearful of what terror would be unleashed by the major Empire of that day.

Nothing can be achieved without people willing to take the risks of ridicule, demonization, marginalization, or worse. We won’t become free until we demand freedom. As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass stated in 1857, “power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Some things are worth fighting for and the very future of sustainable life on this planet is the thing we are fighting for. If the USG cannot be stopped, then the rest of us will be.

Join us in this very worthy struggle!

“You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.” -— President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to President Donald Trump, New York Times, May 21, 2017

The business of making money on property, badly, has shifted to the business of making money, greatly, for the US industrial arms complex. This is the technique of President Donald Trump, who has been making various gestures, sword and wallet in hand, to various selected allies in the Middle East.

Besieged domestically, Trump did what other predecessors have done: find solace in the turmoil of Middle Eastern politics. On Saturday, he sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, one that will include Lockheed Martin missile defence systems, BAE combat vehicles and Raytheon bombs.[1] With characteristic hyperbole, he mentioned the “hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs. So I would like to thank all of the people of Saudi Arabia.”

Admirably, Trump never lets political awareness of a theocracy, or any state system, however brutal, get in the way of the cash heavy deal. Whether such an ally deals in punitive amputation, state sanctioned misogyny or the funding of devastating, destabilising wars, a US ally will be well treated.

On Sunday, Trump moved to soften the stance he had taken as an electoral war horse. Having deemed Islam the threatening bugbear of Western values in the lead-up to his nomination as the GOP Presidential candidate, he was now conciliatory to friends, hard on designated foes.

“This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people, all in the name of religion, people that want to protect life and want to protect their religion. That is the battle between good and evil.”

Gone was the fragile, sanctimony of human rights chatter, the hypocrisies that tend to accompany every US delegation prompted by a moral tic or humanitarian reserve. In such a moral universe, foreign intervention, arms sales and destabilisation can still occur, provided it is deodorised by the cheap trick of humanity.

The moral tic became particularly aggressive when the Obama administration suspended a sale of nearly $400 million in weapons to Saudi Arabia after the bombing of a funeral hall in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa last October.

Did such a move mean much? Kristine Beckerle of Human Rights Watch, writing for The Hill, thought so, mounting a far from convincing case. “After the funeral bombing, unlawful airstrikes continued, but the decision to suspend arms sales sent an important message to the Saudis.”[2]

Messages, weighed down by their meaningless, should still be sent in the pantomime of human rights discourse, if for no other reason to confirm that great illusion that US foreign policy remains both power and cant.

That particular cant is bound to find form in proposed amendments made by lawmakers requiring the White House to certify that the use of US weaponry be done appropriately. “Saudi Arabia,” noted Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in a statement, “is an important partner, but we must acknowledge when a friend’s actions aren’t in our national interest.”[3] Kill with our weapons, by all means, but do so with a tolerable degree of observance for the laws of war.

For Trump, such matters would have been, not so much hypocritical as unnecessary. What mattered was the sound of money and the elimination of cartoon enemies, even as he spoke to an audience mindful of their achievements in rolling back the Arab Spring.

To combat such enemies as Islamic State required adjustments in tone and speech, avoiding the altogether heavy hooch of “radical Islamic terrorism” for the more watered down brew of “Islamist extremism.”

This purely cosmetic move was no doubt deemed necessary since Trump could hardly tell his hosts and recent purchasers of US hardware that they were progenitors of a species of radicalism as odious as any other. Those listening were waiting for the verbal dance on what “extremism” he would be talking about.

For all the preparatory caution, Trump could still make the point that the Islamic world, along with the US and its allies, would have to confront “the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.” A few in the audience would have been left squirming.

While local press outlets in the United States were churning in transfixed fashion on the latest Comey-Russian saga, a perfect cover had been provided for a deal that tilts the US into a terrain that is less varnished in its brutal aspirations. This was Trump more controlled than before, one away from the noisy press corps. (The press were fairly muzzled on this occasion.) Basking in the glow of authoritarianism, he seemed at ease, one might even say, at home.

Notes:
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-arms-exclusive-idUSKBN18124K

[2] http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/334339-why-is-trump-rewarding-saudi-war-crimes-with-more-weapons

[3] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/276114-senate-resolution-would-limit-weapons-sales-to-saudi-arabia

By Holly Ashe*

My previous post on how Body Positivity is killing women, went viral.

It also raised some follow up question, and snarky comments, which needs to be followed through.

In the wake of the University of Birmingham’s extensive study, which states that people with a high BMI are at greater risk of developing either coronary heart disease, a stroke, heart failure or peripheral vascular disease (PVD) compared to healthy, normal BMI numbered people, now it’s time to finally admit the obvious, that being obese WILL cause health problems, and it is time to stop sugar coating the truth and start yelling from the roof tops the reality if one actually wants to start saving lives.

The body positivity movement that the larger community have formed on social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook is spearheaded mainly by plus size model Tess Holliday. Her Instagram following alone is at 1.4 million (despite the controversy over her online shop allegedly scamming fans and stealing from charity) and her movement Eff your beauty standards Instagram has 352k followers, abounding with positive, empowering quotes, and gallant, shapely women, standing up to the “social norm” and being illustrious of their bodies. If you read my last post, you will know my rationale on this, but to reiterate, despite the camaraderie and benevolence surrounding this crusade, it is still warping the mind of a generation, convincing them that despite medical evidence and extensive research (3.1 million people, the biggest in a study similar to this) that living this way is unhealthy, a drain on medical resources, and to put it bluntly, a deplorable foreboding demise.

An affinity of people, who have an overt issue with eating, all congregating and persuading one another that they’re fine, that nothing is wrong with them and it is everyone else’s problem that have an aversion with way you look/are? Sounds awfully familiar to me. In 00’s, the days of the newly innovative MSN messenger and one of the pioneers of social media platforms, Myspace, another unfortunate trend plagued the internet; pro-ana/mia sites.

For those who are too young and unaware of what the much publicised pro-ana/mia sites are, they are websites created to encourage, spurs on and swap tips between people suffering with anorexia and bulimia that will furtherance their quest to a skinnier and smaller body.

Now obviously I am not directly comparing the body positive movement to the pro-ana sites, there are variances, for instance, from what I can see, there is no encouragement to exuberate peoples weight problem, but the message and motivation behind both of these factions are acutely similar. Both have created a safe space with no judgement and no negative comments, only admiration for each other’s bodies, a worldwide applaud for being yourself, encouragement and consolation for doing what you want despite you going against the popular phantasm of what should be right that hoards the public views and saturates the media; and of course, the scientific fact. All of this in defiance of the health implications. The inevitable, broken, dolorous affinity with food, and the fact that simply it isn’t right.

The most distinct difference between the two though is the social perception. One was grotesquely shunned, with bans on media sites such as Tumblr, Instagram and Myspace, and called for the websites to be shut down and blocked the same way as porn was. They were regularly brought up in TV shows, and deemed as evil and a way to feed a mental illness. Maybe even causing death. But this organization that sits on the opposite side of the scale is being praised. Adopted by feminism, hailed as a breakthrough, a voice for the “real woman” and is brainwashing millions into thinking that having issues with food, being overweight and shortening your life expectancy is something to be proud of. It is encouraging eating disorders. Just as pro –ana/mia sites are.

According to the eating disorder charity b-eat, 50% of eating disorders reported were either binge eating disorder or EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified, which diagnostics recently have stopped using as a criteria). So surely we should not be celebrating and encouraging this disorder the same way pro-ana/mia does for bulimia and anorexia? Why do we delicately tip toing around this issue? Is it the number of people who are behind it? The feminist babysitters who also stand up for the bigger sister and will take everything that isn’t their opinion as hate speech and will brutally attack without checking the facts?

As mentioned before, I have already written about my distaste for the body positive movement, and the ramification it is having on the western healthcare and a generation’s future, and many of the comments received have been pretty abhorrent. Some even came from people who hadn’t even read the article, but still decided to form an opinion and preach with the masses. I was told to “fact check” (despite the scientific facts and stats being there, and linked in the piece). I was called names. But what astounded me most was the body shaming I received. The feminist “sisterhood”, supposedly a collection of women who picket for all body types, saw I was a bit of a gym bunny and instantly accused me of being an exercise addict, that it’s a mental illness, and to top it off, I was pitied by the commenters. How can one possible be heard, when people won’t listen, unless it is what they want to hear. If I was approached with facts and figures, proving this lifestyle is safe, healthy and positive, I will grab my spoon, eat humble pie and look further into it. But no one does. And the other side won’t reciprocate the gesture.

Do not mistake my concerns for an attack on obese people or bullying; if anything I am overly concerned for a generation that is heading to premature deaths, but not before suffering with heart disease, diabetes, joint pain and the other numerous, debilitating health woes that is costing our health services resources that could be used for things like cancer. One of the most detrimental aspects of this movement is the political correctness persona it hides behind. Doctors in the UK are warned against using the word fat in case they hurt people’s feelings. Medical professionals are not allowed to tell it like it is for the sake of their patient’s health, in case they get upset. The attacks I was subjected to were not justified with fact or evidence, they were delivered as a result of people’s feelings being hurt. In the PC world we now live in, we would rather cushion everyone into a false sense of security, instead of telling the brutal truth, shocking people into reality and maybe getting them to change for the better.

My wake-up call was when my GP told me I was infertile at the time. I said what will make me fertile again? I was told that my weight isn’t helping the situation. So in my own head, I told myself “you being fat is stopping you being fertile. What have you done? Why are you living like this? Damaging yourself so much that you’re now exuberating current health problems.” I was ashamed. And that shame drove me to lose weight and live a healthy life style. Now all of my health problems are under control and I rarely see my once frequently visited GP. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks the same way as me, and the false sense of security that the PC world has created has now penetrated the public’s consciousness, which subsequently does the opposite to protect, but drives them blindly to a life of a miserable, obese prison while convincing themselves and others that they are fine.

I feel that the two movements in these respects are the same; but are directly on opposite ends of each other. Whenever I try to explain myself, I always depict a seesaw, and both health endangering communities are level on either side, but we need to find a medium. Society should exact a campaign for a healthy lifestyle and a healthy mind set. An active conduct paired with a balanced diet. It is that simple. If we don’t, then this perilous epidemic will be claiming lives of thousands too soon; it’s time to wake up a realise just how treacherous, ugly and formidable this movement really is, despite its size.

About the author:
*Holly Ashe is a London based fashion and culture writer. She was previously published in Vogue International as a fashion designer and a start-up business entrepreneur. Her previous publications can be found here. You can follow her on twitter @hollyroseashe.

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars.

Dear mom and fellow members of the human family,

I love my 77-year-old frugal, hardworking, self-sacrificial Han Chinese Singaporean mother, so when Trump’s military/government dropped what they nicknamed the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ ( MOAB ) on Achin District in Afghanistan, I knew I had to do something about this psycho-social disease of ‘war’.

I mean, my mom is nothing like this abominable bomb!

I went to a studio in Kabul to be interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and told her how my Afghan Peace Volunteer friends and I felt about the MOAB: we were insulted!

Thankfully, our sentiments weren’t unusual. On the 6^th of May, the BBC World News reported that Pope Francis was ‘angered’ upon hearing about the ‘Mother of All Bombs’.

“I was ashamed when I heard the name,” the pontiff told an audience of students at the Vatican.

“A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother. What is going on?” he asked.

What’s going on?!?

I sense that most people around the world know what’s going on and are fed up – it is the self-aggrandizing greed of a few ‘kings, queens and militants’, that is, of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and the corporate, political, military, media, educational and ideological elite that is exploiting and destroying everything, misusing all our names, including Mother Earth’s.

Mom, my Afghan friends and I are disgusted by MOAB’s human and inhuman ugliness.

And we often feel just as helpless as you do, perhaps more so because almost every aspect of life in Afghanistan today is driven by armed, corrupt and brutish elite, the principal drivers in this case being the United States government, the Afghan government and the ‘extremists’.

You’re afraid too. Fearful for my safety.

But there’s another fear, which I think is a misplaced and confused fear I also used to have. You fear that without the few individuals in the seat of government, all hell will break loose. Well, in Afghanistan, hell is breaking loose because of government. Perhaps, this fear of government-less ‘anarchy’ would have made sense 2000 years ago in less ‘conscious’ human societies, but today, even in the unruly failed narco-state of Afghanistan, most of the estimated 30 million populace are not going around killing one another or killing strangers with knives or guns. In reality, government services are insufficient or non-existent, so it is people and communities that are making things work day to day without any input from the centralized government, which is said to ‘rule’ only Kabul.

Alia Braley recently explained in her Ted Talk that most Syrians are surviving and resisting the ISIS nonviolently while the powers fight. Likewise in Afghanistan. Alia suggested that we don’t see the power of the nonviolent majority because we’re ‘illiterate in nonviolence’. Co-opted and complicit education systems and mainstream media don’t teach or show us that the vast majority of ordinary people in Afghanistan or in any country go about their daily lives without killing anyone.

War is the abnormal behaviour. Naming a deadly bomb after a mother is the abnormal behaviour.

Certainly, most Afghan mothers aren’t fighting.

Like my mom. She, along with all mothers of the world, would sacrifice anything for her children’s well-being. She would never call herself the ‘Mother of All Bombs’.

I was so glad that Pope Francis spoke up. Where are the voices of the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the free-thinkers, the atheists? Or have our voices also been imprisoned by our governments, ironically under their threats of imprisonment?

I caught up with my mother over Viber this morning. She asked if I was healthy. I said I was, but I was only referring to my physical health. Psychologically and emotionally, I am as unwell as today’s humanity, in which 20 million hungry persons, the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII, are staying hungry because the governments of the world aren’t doing enough to address this acute life-and-death tragedy and to resolve the chronic root problems.

Mom, you’ve said many times how you wish for peace in the world, but each time, I could feel your disbelief, your resignation to ‘politics’ and its wars. The Afghan Peace Volunteers and I wish to encourage you, “#Mother! Don’t cry! A new generation grows. The war generation will be no more.”

Along with Zarghuna, Qasim and Barat, I want to wish you ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ and to tell the whole world that I love you!

We wish to connect with people from all 34 Afghan Provinces and all 201 countries of the world, so as to to build another world for you. #Enough! to War!

Love from your child and fellow human being,

Hakim

By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.*

Economic data flood our screens these days. But there’s one number upon which everyone should focus: The rate of economic growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It shows an increase in an economy’s ability to produce goods and services.

How is America doing? Not well. In the first quarter of 2017, the U.S. growth-rate was a mere 0.7 percent. That’s the lowest since 2014. In fact, between 2010 and 2016, the economy grew at an annual average of only 2.1 percent. That’s more than one percentage point lower than the average rate of 3.21 percent since 1947.

But why should we care? At the moment, America’s unemployment rate is below 5 percent. Surely, some say, what matters is that the economy doesn’t shrink. In our equality-obsessed age, should we accept a lower and slower rate of growth if it means the benefits are distributed more evenly?

Unfortunately, a persistently low growth rate usually means there are deep-seated problems in the economy. If they aren’t addressed that means problems in the long-term for all of us. Especially for the less-well off.

Low Growth Reflects Low Innovation and Overregulation

America has long celebrated entrepreneurship. Innovation is crucial for spurring growth. Through it, individuals and businesses can turn once low-value resources into highly-desirable goods and services.

Alas, we’re losing our edge. Sign after sign points to marked slowdown in innovation throughout America. One measure is new patents issued for inventions. Those numbers show the United States falling behind other countries. A recent report released by the Kauffman Foundation warns that “entrepreneurial dynamism remains in a decades-long decline” in America.

Some economists argue that this is broader trend. America is becoming middle-aged. It’s a more risk-adverse, economically-complacent nation. We still talk about being a vibrant market-driven society. But much of America has adopted the economic and cultural priorities of your average European social democracy.

Closely linked with declining innovation is stifling regulation. According to a 2016 Mercatus Center study, “Economic growth in the United States has, on average, been slowed by 0.8 percent per year since 1980 owing to the cumulative effects of regulation.” Both parties have been complicit in this trend.

Keep spinning new regulations, and the result is clear. It influences the decisions made by investors and entrepreneurs — usually for the worse. Excessive regulation may, for instance, cause people to invest in an area of the economy that’s freer but less productive. Dealing with regulatory barriers can be tiresome and expensive.

It gets worse. Over-regulation can encourage businesses and potential entrepreneurs to play the crony capitalist game. They decide they’re better off working to extract privileges from the government. It’s easier than innovating. Consumers lose out on new and improved products or services, and lower prices.

Low Growth Hurts the Poor

Economic growth means little unless it serves people and promotes their well-being. That’s especially true when it comes to the less well-off. The good news is that rapid and high growth is a sure-fire way to improve the poor’s economic well-being.

Many studies prove it: Strong growth is the most important contributor to real and lasting reductions in poverty. This isn’t only because of the growth itself. It’s also because economic growth depends on the existence of particular institutions, most notably strong private property rights and the rule of law.

If these institutions are in place, entrepreneurs and businesses are more likely to take risks and make long-term investments. That’s what fuels the enduring growth that takes people out of poverty. Growth creates higher demand for one of the few resources possessed by the poor—their labor. Years ago, the OECD observed that “real wages for low-skilled jobs have increased with GDP growth worldwide, which indicates that the poorest workers have benefited from the increase in global trade and growth.”

Of course, it’s not as simple as this. Much depends on which sectors of the economy are growing. If, for instance, high-tech industries are expanding, it enhances the job-prospects of those with more technical skills, something the poor often lack.

What’s often forgotten, however, is what’s called the multiplier-effect. As one report states, every job created, for instance, in the high-tech sector contributes to the formation of 4.3 additional jobs in the local goods and services economy. While that includes other high-skill jobs like dentists, it also includes lower-skill retail jobs.

If You Care about Human Flourishing, Promote Growth

Now retail jobs are often part-time at lower wages. But they’re still important. Many people need part-time employment. Think of students who want to help pay for their studies. A part-time job often allows one parent in a family to look after the children while also contributing to the family’s overall income.

All this is usually put at risk in low-growth or negative-growth economies. The rich can look after themselves. The poor, however, cannot. They don’t have the assets to weather the storm.

Economic growth isn’t the solution to all of humanity’s problems. As no less than Adam Smith understood, it’s a means to an end — not an end in itself. It can even fuel the perennial temptations associated with materialism. But that’s no excuse for trivializing growth. It is hugely important to societies that want to reduce poverty — and achieve less material goals, like increasing education. It’s harder for people to pursue goods like education or fulfill their family responsibilities in an anemic or stagnant economy.

Put another way: if America wants to be great in the fullest sense of that word again, more lasting and higher economic growth isn’t an optional-extra. It’s a necessity.

About the author:
*Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute and was originally featured in The Stream on May 8, 2017.

Liberty and collectivism are not merely competing political systems; at a deeper level, they are rival theologies. Each has its own depiction of God and, with it, differing assessments of human dignity.

Sir Roger Scruton’s new book, On Human Nature, notes that modern fascism and socialism begin with the premise that mankind is captive, either to its biology or its social circumstances. My review of the book dwelled upon the first, and the racially discriminatory societies that biological determinism produces. But the second is no less misleading.

True, Marxism rooted itself in a misguided reading of science. Its adherents regularly touted the system of “scientific socialism” and its inevitable triumph. Marx and Engels believed the evolutionary process contained an economic component that forecast the arc of every society. Moreover, they fought against any supernatural interpretation of the process.

However, socialism’s most alluring message promotes the morality of helping the least fortunate, decrying inequality, and appealing to spiritually based beliefs in fairness and compassion. Such a message captivated generations of those who believed in the Social Gospel, or who replaced religion with statist ideology altogether.

“Marxism is not a product of scientific observation: it is theological,” Janet Daley, a columnist for the London Telegraph, writes in the April issue of Daniel Hannan’s new publication, The Conservative. “Once you accept the premises, it realigns your perception of the human condition.” (Scruton himself has an article on Communism’s destruction of community, which he calls “the true origin of Communist enslavement,” in the same issue.)

Casual adherents of the Social Gospel would be shocked when socialism unveiled its true theology, though they should not have been. Marx’s rival in the First International, Mikhail Bakunin, wrote that into the midst of the Garden of Eden “steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity.”

Nonetheless, some modern politicians want to give the devil his due – perhaps a bit more.

John McDonnell, the Labour Party’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, has occasionally confessed, “I am a Marxist.” Earlier this month, shortly after Theresa May called for a snap election, he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, “I believe there’s a lot to learn from reading Kapital,” Marx’s imposing tome.

As Kristian Niemietz noted, there is also an opportunity cost to reading Das Kapital: namely, giving up the time to read more insightful works. I would add that there’s a lot to learn from reading history, particularly the history of those who read Das Kapital and tried to impose its precepts on society. At about the time McDonnell made his comments, the viral website History Daily produced a list of “the most murderous regimes in the world.” Communists account for five of the top 12; Adolf Hitler came in third.

This is a popular website, not a scholarly publication, and one can argue with its findings. Vladimir Lenin should arguably rank high in the list, given his decision to exploit a famine that killed five million people by allowing many to starve needlessly. And Soviet Communism scores artificially low (if one can call Stalin’s death count “low”), because the author broke down casualties by dictator rather than by nation/system.

At the root of all this destruction lies envy, greed for political power, and a disregard for the inherent dignity of every individual created in the image of God.

Pope John Paul II warned in Centesimus Annus that socialism violates “human nature, which is made for freedom.”

“In contrast, from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society,” he wrote. “The social nature of man is not completely fulfilled in the State, but is realized in various intermediary groups, beginning with the family and including economic, social, political and cultural groups which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good.”

Scruton says these things are swallowed up by the state; Pope John Paul II wrote that they are “cancelled out by ‘Real Socialism.’” The inevitable result of collectivism, the pontiff wrote, “is that the life of society becomes progressively disorganized and goes into decline.”

With or without political repression, socialism cannot work because it violates the innate nature of “man, who was created for freedom.”

If there is wisdom in reading Marx and the history of his followers, there is yet more wisdom in reading the writings of those who prophetically warn society against taking this course in the first place – and those who, observing its wreckage, now strive to restore a proper appreciation of mankind and society, like Roger Scruton.

About the author:
*Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. His work focuses on the principles necessary to create a free and virtuous society in the transatlantic sphere (the U.S., Canada, and Europe). He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History summa cum laude from Ohio University and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By William L. Anderson*

When the cable TV sports giant ESPN announced 100 layoffs recently, including letting go a number of high-profile broadcasters, a lot of people took notice, and well they should: things no longer are business as usual in sports broadcasting, and we are not even at the beginning of the end, and maybe not even the end of the beginning.

Like the slow crashing of the retail sector as online purchase firms like Amazon begin their domination, we are seeing a sea change in sports broadcasting and that is going to mean big changes are down the road not only for ESPN, but for all of the sports entities that depend upon the huge payouts that ESPN provides. To put it mildly, a lot of people are about to see their lives change drastically as consumer choices drive sports broadcasting in a new direction.

Enough with the superlatives. What is happening with ESPN, and why is it important? As Clay Travis of the sports website Outkick the Coverage has been writing for more than a year, the main ESPN business plan, the one that brings in the most revenues to the firm, is doomed to near-extinction, and there is nothing ESPN can do about it. Writes Travis:

In the past five years ESPN has lost 11,346,000 subscribers according to Nielsen data. ….. If you combine that with ESPN2 and ESPNU subscriber losses this means that ESPN has lost over a billion dollars in cable and satellite revenue just in the past five years, an average of $200 million each year. That total of a billion dollars hits ESPN in the pocketbook not just on a yearly basis, but for every year going forward. ….. It’s gone forever.

Since it began to grow in popularity in the late 1970s, cable (and later, satellite) television has offered its customers coverage with “bundles,” that is different payments allow cable subscribers to expand their viewership as payments increase. For example, a “basic” cable subscription would allow the customers to view, say, 15 channels including the ABC-CBS-NBC-PBS lineup plus other channels such as CNN or Fox. A higher-tier subscription would add other channels, including ESPN and its associated channels and others such as The Food Channel or assorted movie channels.

One problem with bundling, of course, is that subscribers will pay for channels that they rarely or do not watch. For example, I have a basic subscription with Direct TV, but maybe watch 10 channels at most, even though dozens are available. (I don’t include ESPN or any of the other sports channels in my monthly package.)

As technology has improved in telecommunications, the ability of providers to further segment packages has meant that cable and satellite subscribers are able to eliminate the channels they don’t want to watch, and that means that many are unhooking from ESPN. Continues Travis:

ESPN is losing 10,000 subscribers every day so far in 2017. In the past six years they have lost 13 million subscribers and that subscriber loss is escalating each year. That’s billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Every year for the next five years ESPN is spending more and bringing in less. You don’t have to be Warren Buffett to see that’s a business problem.

He goes on to the heart of the matter:

ESPN is spending over eight billion dollars on sporting rights this year and by 2021 I believe they will be losing money regardless of how many people they fire. ESPN can’t fire employees into profitability. It’s just not possible. These firings are going to become a yearly thing and they still aren’t going to prevent the business from dying.

True, ESPN, as well as all commercial broadcasters, receive advertising revenue, but advertising alone, along with subscriptions from people who choose to purchase ESPN in their cable/satellite packages, will not be enough for the network to meet its obligations to the various organizations it pays for the rights to broadcast their events. From the National Football League (NFL), to the National Hockey League (NHL), to the National Basketball Association (NBA) to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), ESPN has paid billions of dollars, money that is funneled into high athlete salaries, not to mention salaries of coaches, university athletic directors, and, indirectly into the building and maintaining of magnificent sports facilities.

The revenues lost to ESPN are lost forever, and even given the rise of smart phones and Internet streaming, the current state of affairs is unsustainable and the sports landscape is going to change, and the changes will be extensive. It is here that Austrian economics gives us insight into how at least some of the changes will proceed.

Carl Menger, who we know as the “founder” of the Austrian school of economics, in his path-breaking book Principles of Economics in 1871 demonstrated conclusively that the value of the factors of production was based not on costs derived from other costs of production, but rather the value of the factors was imputed via the value consumers placed upon the final goods. This view contradicted the standard British classical view that the value of consumption goods was derived from the value of the factors of production, and it placed Menger in the Pantheon of the early Marginalists.

In laying out his theory, Menger used tobacco and the factors used to produce it. If people suddenly stopped using tobacco, he reasoned, then the value of the factors would change quickly relative to their ability to be transferred to other uses. The more specialized the factor, the greater the change in its value. For example, the land on which tobacco is grown would then be used for other purposes, such as growing corn or wheat, or even pasture for cows or sheep. Highly-specialized tools used only for growing or harvesting tobacco, however, would see a steep drop in value and maybe would have to be abandoned altogether.

What does this have to do with the demise of ESPN? As noted earlier, the network pays billions of dollars for rights to broadcast sports events, and it is unlikely that as ESPN loses the revenues that permit it to pay large sums, other networks will be able to take up that slack. That means the organizations that now receive this money are looking at “haircuts” down the road, which includes the NCAA and collegiate athletic teams.

The ESPN funding allows for the network to broadcast a number of collegiate sports events that ordinarily would not rate enough of an audience, and its large payouts also allow for coaches to receive record-high salaries that would not be possible if these programs depended just on ticket sales and other donations. And while it is tempting to say that “ESPN pays for this,” in reality, it is the consumer of cable/satellite television that ultimately decides the size of the ESPN payouts, and consumers are stating their preferences with their checkbooks, and there is nothing ESPN can do about it.

Without cable/satellite subscribers being willing to pay extra for the sports channels, and without the viewership that draws advertisers, ESPN revenues will fall, and that means that the factors that make up the “product” that appears on ESPN broadcasts also are going to lose value, as long as other networks don’t take up the slack (and it is doubtful they will). Thus, one is looking at a long, steady decline and the world of televised sports is going to have to adjust to the new reality.

Unfortunately, as Travis has pointed out many times, ESPN during this ratings slide has taken a hard turn toward the political left, which has further alienated a lot of conservative viewers. Writes Travis:

As ESPN has lost 10,000 cable and satellite subscribers every day in 2017, seen ratings collapse for all original programming, and recently embarked on the firing of 100 employees as part of a desperate cost cutting move to save its business. The network’s sports media defenders have desperately argued that the network’s embrace of far left wing politics has not had any impact on its collapsing viewership. That’s despite the fact that there have been two different studies that have demonstrated Republican voters have abandoned the network’s original programming in the past year.

In that regard, one can argue that ESPN has done what numerous (and especially elite) colleges and universities have done the past several years: create a hostile atmosphere for white male students all the while wanting them to be paid customers. One cannot both seek to offend and attack the same people one wishes to purchase their services without courting disaster, yet higher education and ESPN are doing just that.

To a certain extent, one can argue that both higher education and ESPN have benefited from “bubble” economies, and as consumer choice becomes directed elsewhere, the bubbles burst. As Carl Menger demonstrated, the bursting of the bubbles will mean that some factor owners will have to receive less pay in order to remain employed, while other factors will have to be transferred to other uses altogether or simply become unemployed. All soothing rhetoric aside, the world of sports broadcasting is going to see major changes in the next decade as consumers have their say.

About the author:
*Bill Anderson is a professor of economics at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Johan Galtung*

Spain is in a process that will take some time, from “España: Una, Grande, Libre” to “España: Una Comunidad de naciones“—“Spain: One, Great, Free” to “Spain: A community of nations.”  Could also be great and free, but not One; not Castillan, but also Catalan, Basque, Gallego, Andalucian, and the islands, Baleares, Canarias.

ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna)–world famous for killing the successor to Franco, Carrero Blanco, in 1971 possibly shortening the dictatorship by a generation–disarmed, handing over its means of violence, on 8 Apr 2017. ETA is dissolved.  Negative peace, by eliminating one violent party. There was much violence, doing bad things to each other. No more. Then what? Maybe doing good things to each other?  Positive peace is about that.

Military power eliminated, we are left with economic, political and cultural power.  Positive peace means equity: economic, political and cultural cooperation for mutual and equal benefit.

Economically, concretely that means more enterprises, companies, businesses with Basques cooperating with Castillans, and others.  Easily understood and practiced; one way in which Spain hangs together.  But political cooperation?  Cultural?

The political actors are Basque municipalities, Basque provinces and the Basque nation.  Municipalities and provinces can use twinning, tripling, with Castillan and other municipalities and provinces. “How do you solve more unemployment and delinquency problems given that the crisis eliminates many jobs in such fields?”  No need only to go via the state, the center, Madrid to get official answers from the top. Horizontal political cooperation, at two obvious levels, not top-down.

Culturally the Basques have not been good at communicating Basque culture. In Spain in general, Basque = terrorist. Serving delicious Basque food is fine, but not enough. Tell the rich history, the origins, where? Similar to what? Altamira. Loyola. Iruña, Donostia, Gasteis.

Language.  There is vast difference between knowing nothing and knowing some words, like good morning, good-bye.  Basques should share that and more with the rest of us for more human relations. It breaks so much ice with Russians, a minority in Europe, for instance.

Everything said so far is easily done but mostly undone–and yet indispensable as infrastructure for positive peace between the Basque nation and the rest of Spain. Why not start with language, and at the very top: in the government, and in the parliament?

The multi-national country with a clear model is Switzerland. The 4 nations are divided among the 7 members of the government 3-2-1-1; 3 German-, 2 French-, 1 Italian- and 1 Rheto-romanisch-speaking.  The formula is not proportionate, giving the Germans only 43%, not the 71% they have, to impede one nation from dominating the rest.

For Spain this would call for a formula for dividing a government with, say, 25 members into 6, maybe with 12 Castillans?  Reader, please try: six numbers between 1 and 12, adding up to 25.

But there is more to it.  In the Swiss parliament, in principle, all speak their own of the four languages, and all understand the other three and respond in their own. In Spain that might work for the others, but not for Basque, interpretation would be needed. But the right to speak Basque is non-negotiable. First learn to understand and to read, the passive mode; active speaking and writing can come later.

This would be the Spain of the future, a community of nations according to language, history, geography but not religion, by and large all Catholic; the Basques maybe even more so.  Let us face it: something like this is not only written in the cards, it is doomed to come, to Spain as to others (even France!).  There will be resistance from the nation used to run the country alone; just as well give in.

For the good of the whole country, all the inhabitants, keeping in mind that Switzerland has survived 7 centuries, mainly on this basis.

Spain is today also divided in 17 “autonomías“, a third of 50 provinces; the fewer they are, the easier for the center to dominate. But, what does autonomy mean? To police oneself, not by Guardia Civil recruited from non-Basque provinces. Not only to teach Basque but also to teach, in general, for those who want, in Basque.

But again, there is more to it. Today no country is closed to others but relate more or less to other countries. Autonomy should include foreign relations.  Embassies are for the states, but on the staff of Spanish embassies–and in the foreign office like in other ministries–all nations would be represented. But consulates could also be for the nations if they so want, to represent their own national and individual interests.  A Basque dies abroad; the family may want the whole matter to be handled by Basques, in Basque.

And the Basque nation, easily recognized by RR. The double-R has left its traces in many places. In France of course, in Chile and other countries in Latin America as administrators of the Spanish empire, in the Vatican as Jesuits.  Basque consulates are called for all places.

EU? Not as member state, not being one, but as a major member nation in the EU organ for nations, like Catalans spanning two states.

Will that not tear Spain apart?  Not at all, there are several Spains after all.  Mind the old Chinese saying, in strength (rigidity) there is weakness, in weakness (flexibility) there is strength.

So much for future visions.  There is also a recent past to handle, with traumatized bereaved left behind by ETA. But so did GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación), killing ETA militants secretly during the Gonzalez democracy, not openly like under the Franco dictatorship.  Conciliation is easier when both have been in the wrong than with only one evildoer.

Positive peace builds on negative peace building on conciliation of traumas and solution of conflicts.  There is much work to be done.  But Spain as a true community of nations will inspire the whole world.

*Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of TRANSCEND International and rector of TRANSCEND Peace University. Prof. Galtung has published more than 1500 articles and book chapters, over 470 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and more than 170 books on peace and related issues, of which more than 40 have been translated to other languages, including 50 Years – 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives published by TRANSCEND University Press.

Turkey’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR) published the invitation of tender competition for Wind Energy Renewable Resource Power Plant Region (YEKA in Turkish) on April 13, in the Official Gazette and announced it to the public as well as to the all  interested parties.

Applications for the tender will be made to the Directorate General of Renewable Energy of the MENR by July 27, 2017 at 12:00.

In the early application phase, a firm but temporary guarantee letter for one year which would be in full or partly cashable, at non-limit 10 (ten million) US Dollars will be submitted to the tendering vendor institution.

The initial ceiling bid price of the competition will be  7.00 US cents / kWh. The electricity purchase period will be 15 years. Winner will receive the land, make the investment, install the wind power plant and sell the electricity to the vendor institution for 15 years at a fixed price.

Business Partnerships or Consortiums which are established by the legal entity or by more than one legal entity may apply. To participate in the competition, the competitor must submit a work experience list of completion certificate showing the Wind Turbine generation with a total power of at least 2,000 (two thousand) MWe from 01/01/2014 until 31/12/2016 of the Technology Provider.

Following is a list of manufacturers that have installed 2000 MWe wind power plant in the world in the last two years, in terms of  market share in the world (2015) in a range from small to large:

Nordex Germany, 3.4%
Ming Yang, China, 3.7%
United Power, China, 3.9%
Gamesa, Spain, 4.6%
GE, USA, 4.9%
Sulzon Group, India 6.3%
Siemens Germany, 8.0%
Enercon Germany, 10.1%
Goldwind, China 10.2%
Vestas Denmark, 13.2%

Earlier it was not yet the last definitive official specification, so tentative draft  tenders for 1000- Mwe wind plants were shared with interested parties as “top secret”. By way of example, independent private persons can prepare such draft documents.

A  manager in a well-known Turkish-foreign joint venture company,  experienced master engineer brother, one day said to me, “If you start working after the tender documents have been sold out, you cannot win that tender for sure.”

Over time I saw how accurate this recommendation was. You will be involved in the preparation of the tender specifications. The sales people should  help the buyer. If you receive a request for help, you will answer immediately, you will help, you will be supportive. Most purchasers do not have enough experience nor enough time to get the necessary technical and commercial documents.

They ask for help from market vendors to prepare the tender documents. Vendors even prepare them directly. You have to be involved in helping to prepare the tender documents. In the meantime you will take your position. You will be looking for a local-foreign partner.

You will need draft specifications in English for these tenders. You should prepare the draft if it is in the short notice, or sit down and write yourself. Tender documents are similar to each other. International tender specifications have standard items. It never changes. If you know the capacity, location, fuel specs, you can always write draft contract specifications by yourself.

Then you get out  in international markets with this draft specification. You can sign cooperation agreements. You will save time. The formation of a joint venture partnership requires at least 6 months. When the tender documents come out, vendor  will usually give you 90 days. Then vendor consumes at least 6-month evaluation. No sound offer can be made within 90 days.

Years ago, I prepared draft technical documents both in Turkish-English with the demands of the Ministry’s employees for a new domestic coal-fired thermal power plant. I have used an outdated technical tender specification of the vendor institution by renewing the name capacity location informations.

I have foreseen design of the USA boiler specs so that we can take advantage of it. So I filled the necessary standards with ASME, ASTM only. Official final tender conditions were later added German, Russian, Japanese technical standards by the administration of the vendor staff to ensure tender equality.

To be able to pre-negotiate with foreigners and prepare early proposals, such preliminary texts are required for domestic firms. They have no official image. There is no possibility to wait for the final official tender specification to be announced, capacity is known, place is known, prevailing rules are known, main text is almost certain.  For the draft wind tender for 1000 MWe, the solar power plant for 1000 MWe specification can be taken as basis. The draft specification can be made ready to be prepared.

Now the final tender is already announced. So the official specification will apply for proposal for all interested parties. For any further information you require, please feel free to contact the vendor authority.

Picking sides and arming/funding/training competing sides of Middle Eastern Islamic terrorist groups and nations by the US/West/Russia has to come to an end, and a common strategy and close working relationship need to be established.

This ludicrous game of international “whack a mole” that the US/West/Russian intelligence and military services seem to be playing with international terrorism has to come to a resounding end, with the disgusting and revolting attacks on little girls attending an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester England yesterday.

If this is not the final alarm bell designed to wake up the respective governments of the United States, Western European nations, and the Russian Federation to stop “picking sides” in the Middle East, arming one against another, swimming through the murky waters of ISIS, “moderate rebels,” Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other fundamentalist Islamic paramilitary organizations, then nothing else could be.

It is high time that the US/West/Russia demand that the Sunni-dominated Gulf State nations (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey) as well as the Shia dominated Eurasian Islamic nations such as Syria and Iran acquiesce to, and accept, intelligence and military officers within their own respective governments to monitor, be aware and appraised of, and informed of, all comings and goings within their countries involving terrorism, militancy, and other scourges of humanity designed to disrupt and disorient innocent communities within the US/West/Russia.

This is not to advocate a full scale war against any of these Islamic nations, as the Neo-Cons/Neo-Liberals would suggest, but rather, a peaceful offer, and one they can not (and should not) refuse:

Peacefully admit and allow representatives from the ranks of the intelligence and military communities of these 3 entities (US/West/Russia) to work closely with the indigenous governments of the Shia and Sunni dominated sects of Islam to clamp down, monitor, and prevent global international terrorism, wherever it should manifest itself.

This way if another terrorist attack should unfortunately occur on the soil of the US/West/Russia again, then those governments were either complicit in it, or were asleep at the wheel.

Either way, blame and accountability can and should be assigned, and punishments by the People against their leadership, should ensue.

The time for political correctness is over, the time for the defense of “sovereign immunity” of nation-states is over, and it is time to get serious in the fight on the scourge of international terrorism.

The message from the US/West/Russian Federation to the Shia/Sunni world should be this:

Either voluntarily admit a sufficient number of intelligence/military officers/personnel into your respective governments to inspect (just like the IAEA and UN are allowed to periodically inspect their nuclear/weapons facilities) and monitor in order to prevent the burgeoning training, funding, organization, coordination, arming, and planning of international terrorism, or be destroyed, in outright warfare.

Because the USA/West/Russia should no longer accept the horrific and disturbing deaths of their own civilians on their own home territory (especially little girls going to a concert in the middle of England).

“When the bugles call, the conservative’s instinct is to rally to the tattered…” Tattered what? Was it colours or banners? I was trying to remember the end of this line as I walked towards Café Phillies on Kensington High Street. To my surprise, the venue was unusually full, the average age of the patrons around seventy. I checked my Twitter feed. Macron had won in France and the EU bourgeoisie were predictably ecstatic. I ordered a coffee, took a table next to the door, and waited for Mr. Peter Hitchens.

For those too young to remember the birth of this century, the aforementioned quote is from an essay entitled “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” published in The Spectator during the buildup to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. I was eighteen, an idealist, fairly radical (as people usually are at that age) and an admirer of Peter’s elder brother Christopher. In the wake of the 9/11 outrage, there was a widespread feeling that we were on the cusp of a civilisational conflict that would define a generation. It was also the first time I read anything written by Peter Hitchens.

As a sceptic by nature and a reader of history, I found the wisdom of transformative nation-building questionable. However, I am not ashamed to admit that I did not oppose the invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, I was not at all sure of the correct response to 9/11 given the circumstances. But I was instinctively opposed to the use of force as a tool for the promotion of values, even against an enemy as vile as the Taliban. This was in spite of the fact that I am from India, herself a victim of what Christopher called “Islamo-fascism.” Force, as anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of history would agree, should only be retributive and punitive. Transformative force always risks imperial overreach. From the Romans to the British, the Mughals to the Soviets, everyone failed in their utopian wars.

Hitchens’s Spectator essay became famous for creating a rift between the two brothers, reflective of the broader ideological divide in the Western world between Wilsonian values promotion and Palmerstonian conservative realism. This personal rift began to heal in 2005, though their ideological differences persisted until Christopher’s untimely death. Over time, I began to prefer Burke over Bukharin, an embodiment of the cliché that men tend to grow more conservative with age and education. My optimistic radicalism inevitably diminished and I resigned myself to an acceptance of the power of structural forces and the limitations of human agency. The Hobbesian idea of an anarchic world – one in which societies are at a different evolutionary stages of development, and the problems of which admitted no simple universalist solution – made a lot more sense to me. I did not discard Christopher Hitchens entirely due to his neoconservatism foreign policy evangelism (I am still closer to his ideas on religion), but I began reading his brother Peter more thoroughly.

 *     *     *

I didn’t expect my guest to be my height. From the YouTube videos and BBC Question Time appearances, I was, for some reason, expecting him to be considerably taller than me and rather imposing. As I stood up, relieved, I was met with a firm handshake. I suggested that the cakes looked good, as a sort of pitiful icebreaker. “Oh, I’m sure they are…but…” Mr. Hitchens then ordered a glass of orange juice. “Let’s get on with it.”

I find it impossible not to compare the two brothers, even though I had resolved not to do so. Despite their opposing views they are in other ways not dissimilar. I always found Christopher’s prose to be more forceful, like a sledgehammer to the medulla oblongata. Peter is a subtler wordsmith, more poetically stoic. There are, however, observable similarities: flashes of quick temper; a touch of arrogance; an earnestness and resolve to compel an adversary see your point of view, even in the face of insurmountable odds. Both were Trotskyist in their early days. Peter found Anglicanism, while Christopher turned from evangelical Marxist internationalism to evangelical Neoconservative globalism. In a way, both remained men of faith; Peter had faith in religion, Christopher in transformative internationalism. I’d imagine this assessment would be mortifying to the latter, veritable hero of reason and logic that he was.

But my brief was different. I was meeting Peter to discuss a speech he gave at Keele University, titled “The EU is a Continuation of Germany By Other Means.” Given the current geopolitical situation, this assertion is surely so obvious it hardly needs empirical corroboration. For any researcher of geostrategy, it is clear that European Union is a hegemon in the making. The pattern is strikingly familiar. The EU is a liberal internationalist and interventionist force, governed by a small ideological elite, and it throws its weight around. The most disastrous example of these impulses ravaged the entire North African coastline and turned Libya into a slave trade hub. It is also expansionist, having accumulated the entire real estate of central and eastern Europe right up to the Russian border by either economic or military means. It has imposed tariffs on China, punished US companies, reprimanded India and Australia on human rights, is on a confrontation course with United Kingdom, and has openly pondered its own military force. Whatever one thinks of the EU and its liberal hegemonic ideology, these are the facts.

And yet, at a time when even academia is waking up to these facts, such a view is still too 19^th century and ‘realist,’ given the media’s soft liberal bias on both sides of the Atlantic. European Geostrategy has revealed how the Gibraltar crisis between UK and Spain was a trap set by the EU. Bob Kaplan has called the EU a “necessary empire,” an assessment shared by George Friedman. I wrote in 2016 that EU intransigence would push Britain to be more nationalistic.

It is a theory of great power politics that if you push a great power too much, it will snap back like a spring. Britain and Russia are great powers, and facing a continental liberal expansionist hegemon might compel them to align tactically as a conservative nationalist counterforce. Imagine a situation in which the EU tries to break up the UK by stipulating that Ireland needs to be independent and unified within an expansionist EU. The inevitable reaction to such a development would be the British use of force to prevent it, and the subsequent instigation of nationalist and secessionist forces within Europe, just as Russia is doing now. Sounds implausible?

Peter agrees with the assessment, but adds that the EU is not just an empire, but a German empire. “No empire is completely benign.” The story of modern Europe has always been one of geopolitical rivalry between Germany and Russia. The British (and the Americans) have always tried to understand European geopolitics through a British (or American) lens as a struggle between the Anglophone and the Continental. In reality it was always about German expansion in the east. Britain foolishly miscalculated, twice, and joined a completely unnecessary war, losing empire and global hegemony in the process.

Germany and France have battled for dominance of Western Europe, which France lost in 1870. Mittel Europa was different. Germany tried to consolidate this militarily, twice, but failed. The third attempt has been much more subtle and successful. In reality, it was always about a German grand strategy of dominating East-Central Europe and Russia resisting it. The European Union is essentially therefore a modern avatar of the empire, based on Richard von Kühlmann’s imperial concept of “limited sovereignty.”

But what about Poland, I ask. Or other socially conservative states opposed to liberal hegemony or policies like mass immigration? “If you see Poland or other eastern European countries, alongside Germany, [the relationship] is clearly one of patron and recipient,” Hitchens replies. “Do you honestly believe that any country in Europe has the economic might of Germany or the capability to resist German diktats?” It was foolish of me to ask. The heartland of America is conservative and, one would imagine, quite non-interventionist, yet it is ruled by a liberal internationalist/neoconservative grand strategy. You can have differences of opinion within an empire, but the elites will still decide foreign policy.

“Look, empires are there to serve imperial purposes. I don’t think Americans worry about Germany dominating Europe too much.” Unlike Britain, the Americans have smartly realised that Europe needs to be dominated by Germany to balance Russia. Everyone will choose a side. There is no other option. “[The] Ukraine crisis is essentially punishing Russia.” This charge is extraordinary. “Russians  played their hand smartly, which the West didn’t expect.” They offered a better deal to Yanukovich, and almost managed to tear Ukraine from the EU and ever expanding union. The result was a naked putsch, just months before there could be a general election. But if Putin is such a strategic genius, then why is he bogged down in Ukraine and Syria? “Well he is not a genius, but it’s a choice he made. Who controls Sevastopol now?” It is pure nineteenth century geopolitics. Land and naval access are still the key determinants. Everything else is secondary.

“But one might argue…” I begin. “Are we arguing or are you interviewing me?” Hitchens interrupts. “I don’t mind arguments, but we don’t have unlimited time today.” A flash of mercurial Hitchensian temper at my impertinence. I am there for a schooling, not a peer discussion. One needs to choose one’s words carefully in front of Peter Hitchens.

The topic turned to another of his causes, from migration, to terrorism and drugs. “Look, it’s simple, something about which I have already written. I’m not defending Islam, but crimes like gun violence in US or Anders Breivik were influenced by drugs. All I am saying is that terrorism is a very small percentage of crimes, and there is a high correlation of any crime with substance abuse.”

It was my turn to be frustrated. “But correlation is not causation…”

“I am not finished yet. Why not just have a look? My point is, we are not looking in the right direction. I was a fanatic myself, and it never led me to even think of killing my family members or murdering random people. Fanaticism in itself is not a spark for outrage, there must be something else.”

I obviously disagree, but we were running out of time. “Interesting.” “Well of course it is interesting, that’s why I said it!”

We moved on to religion. How can he possibly tolerate so much abuse on social media, especially from people who lack his talent and experience? Does his Anglican faith help him to keep calm and carry on? Or a sort of romantic martyrdom for pushing back against the conventional wisdom? “I’d of course like adulation, but I don’t mind arguments.” By now he was sounding almost friendly, even reflective. He calls himself an obituarist of Britain. “[The] United Kingdom is a threat to itself, not Germany or Russia.” Britain lost its sense of identity, social cohesion, faith, something which I think applies to the entire West.

Pessimism can be soothing sometimes.

As I watched him leave, it came back me. “When the bugles call, the conservative’s instinct is to rally to the tattered colours, however boneheaded the government.” And however unassailable or lonely the cause might be. Peter Hitchens is an Edwardian Englishman. Despite his resigned belief that Britain and the West are doomed, this probably gives him the causes to argue for, and the strength to face the incessant abuse from ignorant and anonymous trolls.

Interestingly enough, contrary to what he might believe, the West is now more socially conservative, non-interventionist, and isolationist than at any period of recent history. There’s more currency now for Peter’s ideas than he gives himself credit for, no matter how under-represented they are in the media. With a seething trans-Atlantic undercurrent brewing against the liberal elites, no victory for Macron or Merkel will solve the structural rot of ‘the empire.’ Nationalism is a hard concept to kill. Even the Soviet Union couldn’t manage it. Borderless utopianism is in trouble. If history has taught us one thing, it is that empires inevitably overstretch and contain the seeds to their own implosion. For the sake of the West, let’s hope that history proves its obituarist wrong, as it did in the past. I somehow believe, despite all pessimism and protestations, Mr. Hitchens would want that as well.

This article appeared at Quillette.

We can call this legislation whatever we want—you can call it a ‘destroy health care’ bill. You can call it a ‘tax break for the rich’ bill. But we should not call it a health care bill. I have never seen a health care bill which throws 23 million Americans off of health insurance. That’s not a health care bill.

It’s not a health care bill when you cut Medicaid by $800 billion, denying health insurance to children or some of the poorest people in this country or middle class people who need help with nursing home care for their parents.

It is not a health care bill when you defund Planned Parenthood and deny 2.5 million women their choice of health care providers.

It is not a health care bill when you force older workers pay two, three, four times more for their health care that they currently get. So call it whatever you want, but please do not call this bill a health care bill.

This is legislation that provides over $200 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent. It is legislation which provides hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the insurance companies, the drug companies and other people in the medical industry.

Our job is to come together and improve the Affordable Care Act, lower deductibles, lower co-payments, lower prescription drug costs. Our job is to pass a health care bill, not to throw millions of people off of their health insurance they currently have.

By Husanjot Chahal*

On 11 May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka to attend the International ‘Vesak Day’ celebrations, just two weeks after Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s five-day visit to New Delhi. PM Modi’s visit marked the 7th interaction between the Indian and Sri Lankan heads of state since 2015, which is suggestive of vigorous high-level political engagement. This political activism has mostly aimed at enhancing bilateral relations through increased economic, investment, and development cooperation. Even though the need for engagement has remained strong, in practice, very little has been achieved on the economic front. Given the current trajectory, even less is expected to materialise on the ground.

Cumulatively, the only significant economic arrangement realised by India and Sri Lanka in the past two years is the ‘Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in economic projects’, signed recently during PM Wickremesinghe’s visit to India. Media reports and official interviews, prior to his visit, highlighted the likelihood of an India-Sri Lanka deal for the development of the Trincomalee area as a regional hydrocarbon hub in the Bay of Bengal and eastern Indian Ocean. What ensued instead was the MoU – essentially in the nature of a “roadmap for the future.”

Apart from outlining a few broader agendas (on the development of the transportation sector, agriculture and livestock, etc), the roadmap sketched out agreements in the power sector (a 50MW Solar Power Plant in Sampur, a regasified 500MW LNG Power Plant, an LNG Terminal/Floating Storage Regasification Unit in Colombo/Kerawalapitiya). With Sri Lanka facing an acute power crisis, the emphasis on energy projects is no surprise. The spotlight on the proposed joint venture to develop the World War II-era oil storage facility in Trincomalee remains. While listing agendas, however, the roadmap remains oblivious to past trends and current realities.

The history of Indian involvement in Sri Lanka’s power sector provides a grim picture held back by domestic political concerns and a sluggish bureaucracy. For instance, the Sampur power plant, originally proposed as a coal-based project, has been in the pipeline since 2006 and still awaits execution. It has witnessed a series of delays for various reasons, including repeated requests by Colombo to change the location of the project due to changes in local socioeconomic conditions, mainly related to resettlement of Tamil families displaced by war. With most of the resettlement work still remaining, any new venture in Sampur will have a guaranteed pool of opposition from at least one section of the Lankan population.

A major roadblock for Indian economic engagement in Sri Lanka is, and has been, the prevailing trust deficit amongst its people vis-à-vis India. There have been negative perceptions about India’s role on the island; for instance, with regard to tying “their only supply of cooking gas or petroleum” to New Delhi’s geopolitical games. The April 2017 strikes by the workers of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) against the joint development of the Trincomalee oil farms serves as another instance indicating entrenched resistance to economic cooperation with India. The fact that it practically prevented PM Wickremesinghe from signing the Trincomalee deal during his India visit, followed by President Sirisena’s official assurance that no deals would be signed during PM Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka, indicates the political strength of such resistance.

With particular reference to Trincomalee, besides tackling apprehensions, there is a serious need to address stakeholder concerns about project ownership and operation. In 2003, as part of an MoU signed by the CPC and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), India’s oil subsidiary in Sri Lanka – Lanka IOC (LIOC) – obtained a 35-year lease to develop the China Bay (Trincomalee) tank farm, with a total of 99 tanks. However, implementation of the MoU was marred with reservations expressed by the CPC on the procedural aspects of implementation and against providing exclusive right to LIOC to run the installation. Due to internal political reasons, the lease agreement was not implemented in totality, such that LIOC has been able to use only 14 tanks in the lower farm area, and the remaining 84 are unused.

The Common Workers Union (CWU) of the CPC alleges that since the lease agreement had to be signed within a period of six months, and was not signed, it is not legal. On the other hand, while speaking about the recently signed MoU, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has been clear in stating that Lanka IOC has had the rights to develop the tank farm since 2003, and the agreement to now develop the upper tank farm as a joint venture comes in light of “our spirit of partnership.” These differences in the narrative could be a recipe for conflict, and needs to be addressed sensitively if a fruitful partnership is intended.

The India-Sri Lanka roadmap for cooperation in economic projects is, at best, a good first step since 2015 that has come after significant initial delays. Implementing its agenda will be a complex process. Nothing short of a serious attempt to pace the process of concluding agreements, learning from past lessons, reaching out to bridge the trust deficit, and addressing stakeholder concerns in various projects, will enable forward movement.

* Husanjot Chahal
Researcher and Programme Director, SEARP, IPCS

A friendly, caring nurse is tending some wounded people in a temple in Bangkok. Several have been shot, others are too traumatised to speak. Suddenly more shots crack out and Royal Thai Army bullets start raining down on the unarmed gathering. People start running in all directions, seeking cover. The nurse – a 25 year old single Thai woman known as Kamonked “Nurse Kate” Akkahad who is wearing a clearly identifiable red cross bib – is hit. She falls to the floor. She is shot again. And again. And again.

By the time the bullets stopped hitting her body and her life-force was spent, Kate had been shot several times by a Thai Army soldier firing from an elevated position. Later, beer cans were found at the spot the soldier fired from.

The most shocking thing from a legal perspective about Kate’s death is that we know pretty much who pulled the trigger and who ordered the soldier to pull the trigger. All the way up the chain of command. We know because there were respected journalists there reporting what they saw. We know because an undisputed paper trail leads back to Kate’s killers and those who ordered them. We know because there are dozens of eyewitnesses. Our diplomats from US, Canada, UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the rest of the world stationed in the Thai capital know. The global media’s representatives in Bangkok know. The killers themselves know.

Nurse Kate wasn’t the only unarmed civilian who was killed by the Thai Army in May 2010. Dozens more were executed in full view of an indifferent world. Thai Army snipers – trained and equipped by the US – were sent to shoot 16year old school boys in the head. This brutal crushing of Thailand’s pro-democracy Red Shirt movement in 2010 – something I personally witnessed when I visited the protest sites – was something organised by the Thai Army and their political allies in the Thai Democrat Party. There has never been accountability for these acts and the international community has never sought any such accountability. Sadly, this doesn’t look like it is going to change anytime soon.

So, when the tanks rolled three years ago on May 22nd 2014 to crush the democratically elected Yingluck Shinawatra led government, the generals and their royalist and elite backers knew that whilst the international community might cluck and wail a little nothing of note would be done to stop them. After all, it was only four years after they’d ordered the May 2010 killing of unarmed protesters and only eight years after the generals had staged a previous coup in 2006 and the world had barely blinked when both events had occurred. In the post-2014 coup months the tourists were still flowing onto the beaches and into the luxury spas, the US and EU were still selling them the weapons they needed and the de facto dictator and coup leader, General Prayuth Chan-ocha – who also helped organise the killings in 2010 – was still getting invites to meet world leaders.

So where is Thailand now three years after the coup?

Clearly, the corrupt and illegitimate generals are still ruling the roost and still hold sway over the Thai people through force of arms. This is completely unacceptable when any international norms are applied to the situation. Democracy has been suspended, dissent has been crushed and any expectation of matters improving seems impossible whilst these unelected generals are still in place.

Underlying this structural capture of Thailand by anti-democratic elements lies a wave of oppression that utterly condemns the aspirations of the Thai people with many arrests under Thailand’s appalling lese majeste law. These people now face decades in prison. Elections promised by the junta have failed to materialise with 2018 now being discussed as a possible timeframe – a timeframe which no seasoned analyst of Thai affairs takes seriously. The reasons for the delay in a return to democracy are obvious. The generals know that if they have to face Thai voters they will be roundly rejected – in effect, democracy remains their number one enemy.

The Thai Army – who have directly owned parts of the Thai media for decades – have also stepped up their “brainwashing” efforts. Dissenters are sent for Orwellian “attitude adjustment” with the media spewing out an endless volume of pro-Army and pro-elite propaganda. Questioning such output can lead not only to interest from the military authorities but can also lead to a variety of “social sanctions” such as online hate campaigns, sacking from the work place and even expulsion from university for students. All this approved by a completely unelected military government headed by despotic blood-soaked thugs.

Add into this the international community’s explicit backing – new US President Donald Trump has recently said he’ll be inviting Thai junta leader, General Prayuth to the White House – and it is easy to see how Thailand’s junta are likely to think that their impunity will continue.

What can be done?

The recent situation regarding the Gambian election and and the intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) reveals that where there is the will to act and the various pro-democracy actors – in concert with the international community – can reach agreement on a coherent plan on a way forward, then democracy can return. In Gambia the outgoing dictator, Jammeh, refused to relinquish office after losing an election – ECOWAS, with the backing of the UN, threatened action and the despot crumbled.

In Thailand, the situation has been muddied by the lack of coherent leadership from the pro-democracy movement. The last democratically elected Prime Minister was Yingluck Shinawatra. Whilst she certainly appears reluctant to lead any pro-democracy movement — due in main to the extreme repression unleashed by the Thai military – she could still be considered as the last legitimate head of the Thai government.

In addition, the Thai military, with their allies in Thai royalist circles and the bureaucracy and with continued support from many of the nation’s wealthiest families, have a very firm grip over almost all aspects of the state. Most members of Thailand’s Red Shirts now rightly fear for their safety and lives if they attempt to organise any opposition, lawyers and other activists are targeted with arrests and sometimes torture and the vicious lese majeste law – complete with 15year prison terms – is the weapon of choice for one of the most onerous censorship regimes on earth.

ASEAN – the regional economic bloc of SE Asian nations – has been completely mute on Thailand. The failure to protect democracy is indicative of ASEAN’s weakness and also the regional lack of commitment to democracy.

The wider international community remains either ineffectual or uninterested. The democratic rights of Thais are far down the list of priorities for the EU, the UK and certainly the US administrations even if platitudes are uttered from time to time. In keeping with this tone, the international media may issue the occasional report highlighting concerns but the representatives of that media based in Thailand are very much aware that they cannot report the entire truth or may be subject to arrest if they do. However, the media based outside the confines of Stalag Thailand could certainly draw greater attention to the plight of Thai democracy – the lack of this just mirrors the lack of will on behalf of the international community.

The broader failings, then, are explicit and can be laid out thus – the lack of coherent leadership of the pro-democracy movement mainly due to the state repression; the failure of ASEAN to act collectively to sustain international norms and protect democracy in their region; the abrogation of responsibility by the wider international community in the face of the 2014 coup d’etat and at other times when the Thai military have intervened against the will of the Thai people.

There is still hope and there are mechanisms by which Thailand’s situation can improve, not least through international pressure and the international legal system via the UN. However, without broad, sustained and serious support for their democracy the Thai people will continue to be let down by the world. It’s about time that changed so that, at least, there are no more victims like Nurse Kate in the future.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has ordered the release of 1,014 prisoners of different nationalities from Dubai’s correctional and punitive establishments, ahead of Ramadan.

Dubai’s Attorney-General Essam Eisa Al Humaidan, said that His Highness’s order to pardon the prisoners will bring happiness to their families, help the pardoned individuals get a fresh start in life and support them in reintegrating into the community.

Al Humaidan said that the order will have a positive impact on the community, as it will give the pardoned prisoners a chance to re-join their families and friends and begin a new chapter in their lives.

The Attorney General also said that the public prosecution has commenced the legal procedures to implement Shaikh Mohammed’s order.

Original source

By Henry George*

The rise of Nelson Mandela and the ANC in 1994 and the end of the malevolence of apartheid in South Africa was meant to usher in a new era of social justice and racial equality in a nation in a continent that had never known either.

There were great hopes for the future, with many sure that the creation of a political ecosystem that relied on democracy and the removal of discriminatory laws and regulations would be a sure-fire recipe for success, which would be fair to each group on South Africa and would be guaranteed to lift up those who had been underrepresented politically and who had underperformed economically.

To say that this has not happened is an understatement. The rulers who govern South Africa today are classic examples of the archetypal ‘extractive elite’, who use the power of their office to extract power, prestige, influence and wealth for themselves and their close associates, be it family, friends or loyal politicians. It is political tribalism with an added layer of acquisitive moral corruption. And the people it hurts most are of course those the ANC claims to stand for. 

The ANC has consistently promised economic prosperity and social justice since 1994. It had delivered neither. South Africa today is in a worse position than it worse position than it was 23 years ago. It should surprise no-one; when Marxism (as the ANC avowedly is) meets racial demagoguery it is never a recipe for success, for anyone, whatever their skin-colour. The gains made in giving the black South African population its political rights and extending to them their inherent natural rights – like freedom of movement and association – have been vastly overshadowed by increasing economic stagnation – due in no small part to the mandatory quota system imposed on employers – and decline, the decline of the country’s infrastructure which has led to protests over poor sanitation and drinking water and an increasingly unreliable electricity supply, the decline of its political institutions, the massive rise in crime and political incompetence and corruption and the massive drop in life expectancy.

To direct the increasing protests away from its own pathetic failures, the Zuma-run ANC scapegoats the large numbers of migrants in South Africa from other African countries looking for work. Attacks on black migrant workers have been on-going and increasing for over 2 years now. Added to this, the white minority have also felt the effects of the rising social tensions and the racially motivated scapegoating policies and rhetoric of South Africa’s governing party, with many who can afford it now living in veritable fortresses in an attempt to mitigate the greatly increased risk of deadly home invasions.

Mandela’s dream of a harmonious and utopian post-racial nation, if it was ever as real as many hoped, is now dead, and has been for some time. The issue of crime alone is enough to consign all the hopes of the 90’s to the landfill of history. If the sanctity placed on an individual’s life is the barometer by which we measure how civilised a society is, then South Africa now falls far short. John Simpson admitted a while back that South Africa was (and is) so violent that it was tied with Iraq and Colombia for one of the most violent nations on earth. It became so violent that the ANC imposed a blackout on the release of crime statistics in order that its credibility as a government whose first duty to its people is to protect them from crime would not be undermined. The fact that this action had the opposite effect points to the ineptitude of the people in power. Statistics are now released once a year, and even then it is hard to gauge just how bad the levels of different types of crime are.

First, one must ignore the SAPS’s (South Africa Police Service) tactic of playing down the levels of crime by comparing low-crime rate areas in  South Africa with high crime-rate areas in other countries. One example is that of comparing Pretoria with Washington D.C.. Back in 2001, the BBC ran a story on the shocking rise in baby rapes, a fact that would be awful enough on its own if it weren’t for the fact that a woman is raped in South Africa every 26 seconds. Meanwhile, this estimate provided by the People Opposing Women Abuse group is disputed by the SAPS, who says it is more like 36 seconds. It is estimated that 40% of women will be raped in their lifetimes, that only 1 in 4 rapes are reported, and that 14% of those charged of child rape are convicted, while for adult rape the rate drops to 3%. As an aside, the phenomenon of child gang-rape has been given the sobriquet of “Jackrolling”. Western feminists, where are you?

The homicide rate meanwhile is just as shocking. From April 2004 to March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa (population at the time 43 million). In the “high-crime” United States (then population of 299,398,00016) the country saw 16,740 homicides. Put another way, South Africa had sixty homicides per 100,000 people; the US approximately six. To add an extra layer of context, the Sharpeville Massacre of blacks, by police, protesting the pass laws in 1960 saw 69 people gunned down. That number of people was almost equal to those killed every day from 2004-05. The murder rate then dropped slightly (nothing to be celebrated here) but shot up again last year: in the twelve months to March 2016, there were 18,673 homicides, a rise of 4.9% over the previous year, up from 17,805 murders. This equates to over 51 murders a day last year.

The picture could be worse, however. In a 2003 report, Robert McCafferty of the United Christian Action has said that Interpol had pegged South Africa’s murder rate at “114.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants,” around twice those released by the SAPS. In 1995 and 1996, Interpol counted 54,298 annual homicides to the SAPS’s 26,883, a discrepancy of 27,415 murders, a not insignificant gap if accurate. It must be stated however that these statistics are from 2003, and of course are subject to change over time (although the overall trend is upwards with a few troughs rather than downwards with a few spikes), while the claim of underreporting to this extent needs to be further checked out. However, I’ve not seen anything that directly disputes these figures, which I suppose is because they’ve been ignored. In any event, if this underreporting continues today, then the levels of violent crime in South Africa could be much worse. Again, where are Western liberals? Do they not care about black people dying in these numbers? The fact is that when asked in a 2001 survey by the Human Sciences Research Council about their feelings of safety, 70% of respondents said they felt less safe than before 1994. The ANC government has failed its voters, and has betrayed them by sacrificing their lives for continued political power.

The situation could yet worsen further. The amount of racial animosity, both against foreign blacks and against whites is on the rise. The man mainly responsible for South Africa’s descent into increasing racial animosity is Julius Malema, former leader of the ANC youth-wing. The leader of the almost farcically-misnamed Economic Freedom Fighters has been in the process of building up his own power base by appealing to all those left behind by the ANC’s incompetent and corrupt misrule. From Malema himself we learn that “This country is still in the hands of white people… They have been enjoying themselves because they always owned our land… We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now. What we are calling for is the peaceful occupation of the land and we don’t owe anyone an apology for that… White minorities be warned. We will take our land. It doesn’t matter how. It’s coming, unavoidable. The land will be taken by whatever means necessary [emphasis mine].” His use of “for now” is crucial, as it basically means “get ready for violent action in the near future”. This ramping up of rhetoric never ends well for anyone, whatever their race.

To shore up his position, Zuma has joined in and thrown his support behind the EFF’s economically suicidal (and immoral) proposal to expropriate what remains of the white-owned farmland without compensation – even though no-one is sure of what race are the owners of the 78% of private land, according to the independent Institute of Race Relations – leading to warnings that he risks a race-war if he pushes the required legislation through. In response to this, the head of the Boer Afrikaner Volksraad, Adnreis Breytenbach said that his organisation  – which has 40,000 members – would take expropriation of land without compensation as a “declaration of war”. “We are ready to fight back”, he said, “we need urgent mediation between us and the government”. “If this starts, it will turn into a racial war which we want to prevent”. The fact that white farmers are being culled at a rate of, by some estimates, 130 per 100,000 has lead to the deaths of between 1,701-3,000 farmers since 1994 and has worsened the situation considerably.

This legislation would require that all the black parties unite to push it through, something Zuma has been calling for, which may offer some slim reassurance to the optimists among you given that he could fail. And yet, Zuma represents the mainstream opinion and a relatively moderate voice (if you can believe it). To understand how crazy the intellectual atmosphere in South Africa is, one need only consider the ideas of Chris Malikane, professor of economics at University of the Witwatersrand, who is an advisor to the country’s Finance Minister, Malusi Gigaba.

Malikane has called for “expropriation of white monopoly capitalist establishments such as banks, insurance companies, mines and other monopoly industries.” He did admit “that this country will plunge [into crisis] and become like Venezuela and Zimbabwe.” But obviously this is a price worth paying for the glory of the revolution, as he asked, “Did you think to transform is going to be nice? We need a two-thirds majority to change the Constitution. Otherwise, to achieve what we want to achieve, we need to go that route [take up arms]. Let’s try two-thirds. I don’t like war.” The end of that statement is beyond parody because everything the Marxist revolutionaries in power have been doing is making a horrific race war more likely by the day.

None of this is helpful or conducive to avoiding mass violence. As a result of their Marxist collectivist heritage, those in the ANC and other parties are fully invested in economic collectivism, a failing which also extends to the race-based collectivism on show in South Africa today. This form of race-based collectivism makes it easier to find a scapegoat, and to avoid the nuance of differences within the white population that would negate the racial guilt associated with being a white South African.

For example, a large minority of white South Africans never voted for the apartheid National Party, while liberal anti-apartheid parties were represented in the government, campaigning to the end the racially discriminatory system. In 1948, the National Party lost the popular vote by a large margin, only winning because of South Africa’s first-past-the-post system.

Added to this, large numbers of white South Africans supported the ending of apartheid and the inclusion of black South Africans in the political and social life of the country. Let us also not forget that the generation of South Africans who’ve come along after 1994 never lived under apartheid, and most never supported or condoned it. Why should they be tarred with the same racially-collectivist brush? I would argue that it is because it would be a betrayal of the ANC’s (and co.) Marxist roots and would involve real self-reflection on the part of the ANC (and co.) as to why their country is doing so poorly, and they can’t stand the idea that they are responsible for South Africa’s decline since 1994. Civilised societies blame individuals for a crime, not whole groups. This is yet another way in which the government has failed its people, both black and white.

The ending of apartheid presented an opportunity to create a country where race became a consideration consigned to history. This has not happened. It would not be too much too argue that South Africa is now in a worse position than it was before 1994 or at any time since, economically, politically and socially. The violence continues to escalate, both within the various black communities, against black migrants, and against the white population. This situation has been made worse by the collectivist nature of the government, who when shown the utter failure of their incompetent Marxist economic plans in the form of high unemployment and virtually no tax base for their welfare and other payments, turned instead to racial demagoguery to distract their supporters from the reality of their plight. South Africa had the chance to be a beacon for the rest of the continent; instead it squandered the opportunity and is now on the precipice of mass racial violence.

About the author:
*Henry George studied for a History BA at Royal Holloway, University of London. He then studied for a War Studies MA at King’s College London, focusing on ISIS inspired terrorism and Fourth Generation Warfare for his dissertation. He also blogs here, focusing on issues surrounding identity politics, political philosophy, free speech and cultural issues broadly linked to the West’s decline. He can be reached on Twitter at @intothefuture45.

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

By Anthony Tingle and David Tyree*

The Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) is a disruptive commercial technology that poses a unique and currently undefined threat to U.S. national security. Although, as with any new technology, the parameters of the capabilities regarding military use have yet to be fully discovered, recent events highlight the potential danger. In September 2013, an unarmed sUAS hovered near the face of German Chancellor Angela Merkel while she delivered a campaign speech.1 In January of 2015, an sUAS defied restricted airspace and landed, initially undetected, on the White House lawn.2 And more recently, in August of 2016, at least five sUASs disrupted wildfire fighting efforts near Los Angeles, grounding helicopters for fear of mid-air collisions.3 Likewise, sUAS altercations with law enforcement are increasing, as the Federal Aviation Administration now receives over 100 adverse UAS reports per month.4 These examples emphasize the intrusive, undetectable, and potentially lethal nature of this emerging technology.

The sUAS epitomizes the difficulties with rapidly advancing commercial technology.5 The sUAS is as prolific as it is disruptive, and it will challenge our joint air-defense procedures and doctrine and redefine our perspective on the military uses of commercial technology. In this article, we examine the characteristics and capabilities of the sUAS, report on current counter-UAS initiatives within the Department of Defense (DOD), and present policy ideas to mitigate the future threat from militarized commercial technology.

Characteristics and Capabilities

The rapid rate of commercial technology’s advance has directly contributed to the rise of sUASs. Improvements in communication equipment, cryptography, and lightweight materials have led to the current state of the multiple rotary-wing UASs, often referred to as “quadcopters,” and extremely small fixed-wing UASs. For this article, we define aircraft that fall into the DOD UAS Category 1 (weighing less than 20 pounds) as an sUAS6 because the interdiction of larger than Category 1 aircraft quickly approaches traditional defensive counterair operations.7

As technology advances, the sUAS will increase in lethality. If Moore’s law continues to hold, we will see an increase in sUAS command and control distances, electro-optical sensor resolution, GPS guidance accuracy, and battlefield autonomy. With advances in material science, especially considering adaptive (“3D”) printing techniques and carbon nanotubes, sUASs will become smaller, faster, and lighter, and will loiter longer and carry heavier payloads.

The basic physical structure of the sUAS (including the use of advanced materials) hinders radar technologies, the primary component of modern air defense. Radar works by bouncing energy off airborne objects and interpreting the return reflections. Although the carbon fiber and plastic components (of which the majority of most sUASs are comprised) naturally reduce radar return, size appears to contribute most to the shortcomings in sUAS radar identification and tracking.8 While modern radar technology has the capability to engage smaller objects. Additionally, concerning radar, sUASs are often indistinguishable from other airborne objects (specifically birds).9 While additional methods such as acoustic-phased arrays and electro-optical cameras show promise, a combination of these tracking and identification technologies may be necessary to defend against the growing sUAS threat.

It is hard to understate the current complexity and importance of positively identifying sUASs. As sUASs continue to be used for a variety of commercial and private purposes (including package delivery and photography), the sUAS operator’s intent becomes difficult to discern. Unlike traditional aircraft, which require runways and thus provide longer lead times for tracking, the average sUAS is able to become airborne quickly and close on its target. Additionally, positive identification is a necessary component of engagement authority, especially when considering deployment of sUAS countermeasures on U.S. soil, including interdiction by law enforcement and the possibility of civilian casualties. To effectively counter sUASs, it will be necessary to refine and practice procedures and doctrine, while developing the capability to effectively detect, track, and positively identify the threat.

Future advances in material and computational science will enable the sUAS to perform autonomously, increasing their efficacy as an offensive weapon. One of the characteristics of the sUAS is that it uniquely lends itself to advanced aerial tactics. As battlefield automation progresses, militaries are advancing toward the use of multitudes of sUASs in coordinated formations known as “swarming.” This swarming tactic could make defense difficult, especially for large objects or fixed facilities. The use of swarm tactics increases the destructive power of the sUAS and presents adversaries with a defensive dilemma.10 In this regard, militaries may have to reconsider the concept of mass on the battlefield.

Currently, the practical use of sUAS swarms suffers from a confluence of technological shortcomings seemingly resolved by relatively minor advances in technology. The lift capacity, speed, and agility of the sUAS is directly dependent on the amount of weight carried by the vehicle. Reductions in the weight of communications equipment, sensors, onboard processors, and kinetic payload (for example, “energetics”)11 will increase the range and maneuverability of these systems. Likewise, advances in small, lightweight power sources and materials such as carbon nanotubes (and corresponding manufacturing processes such as adaptive printing) will enable smaller and faster sUASs with longer loiter and greater operating distances.

While the size and maneuverability are defining characteristics of the sUAS, advances in automation algorithms are a necessary component of the swarming tactic. Simultaneous command and control of a large number of small objects necessitates autonomy technology that will undoubtedly be available in the near future.12 In fact, a number of UASs currently deployed or in development operate with varying degrees of autonomy.13 It is quite feasible that attacking sUAS swarms will be able to automatically sense and communicate weaknesses in the opposing defense, thus adapting their swarming tactics accordingly.

The development of sUAS swarm tactics and techniques in many ways mirrors the introduction of Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology in the early 1970s. The MIRV concept included the use of multiple nuclear warheads included in a single ballistic missile, greatly increasing the probability of successfully striking the enemy with nuclear missiles.14 Similar to the inability of the Soviets to counter a larger number of potential inbound nuclear warheads, the sUAS overwhelms those on the defense with possible multiple aggressors. Although similar in terms of using mass, sUAS differs from MIRV in terms of maneuverability and the ability to land and wait for more opportune times to attack. Not all the sUASs in the offensive swarm need to be deadly, as the parallels with MIRVs extend beyond a simple numerical advantage. Offensive sUAS tactics could co-opt the idea of decoys from MIRV technology. With the advent of MIRV decoys, or warheads that had the same physical characteristics as their nuclear counterparts, the economic efficiency of MIRV technology enabled asymmetric advantages.15 Similarly, the use of decoys may reduce the overall cost of simultaneously attacking with large numbers of sUASs, presenting adversaries with multiple deadly dilemmas.

Current Counter-UAS Initiatives

The U.S. military currently has a multitude of ways to effectively destroy UASs. Starting in 2002, the military exercise Black Dart focused on countering the UAS threat. The exercise has tested a number of kinetic and nonkinetic methods ranging from 0.50-caliber guns to Hellfire missiles.16 The ability to defend against this threat is, at its core, a problem of asymmetry and efficiency. How do we defeat swarms of $1,500 drones in a practical, cost-efficient manner? The following sections detail existing counter-UAS methods, including traditional kinetic and directed energy means, and examine their applicability to defending against sUASs.17

Traditional Kinetic Methods. Traditional kinetic means of air defense, while ostensibly effective in a single intruder scenario, are cost inefficient versus relatively cheap sUASs. Factoring in the possibility of multiple small, low, and fast targets, existing kinetic means of defense are tactically inadequate. Current kinetic defense systems lack the coverage, range, and accuracy to counter future sUAS swarms.18 It is unlikely that these weapons systems could create a necessary “dome of steel” around stationary positions. Although reducing the caliber of these defensive weapons may ostensibly increase the rate of fire, one would expect a corresponding decrease in range. Disregarding possible Gaussian-type weapons (for example, railguns) currently under development, the most viable direct-fire kinetic defense from sUASs may be small-caliber precision-guided rounds.

The miniaturization of precision-guided munitions may provide the capability to interdict a large number of sUASs at standoff distances. According to Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, “We’re not too far away from guided 0.50-caliber rounds. We’re not too far away from a sensor-fused weapon that instead of going after tanks will go after the biometric signatures of human beings.”19 In the absence of a viable “brute force” or “shotgun” method of area defense (for example, massive amounts of “dumb” kinetic projectiles), these relatively cheap miniature guided munitions may hold the answer to countering swarms of sUASs. Another method to counter sUASs may be with the use of other sUASs.

One method to counteract swarms of attacking sUASs may be to use sUASs as “hunter-drones.” Currently, there is a “drone war” occurring over the skies of Tokyo as the Japanese Yakuza (an organized crime syndicate) frequently use sUASs to courier drugs across the city. When the Tokyo police use sUASs with nets to capture these drones, the Yakuza retaliate by attacking the police drones.20 Increases in battlefield automation might allow “hunting parties” of sUASs to degrade or destroy enemy sUASs with nets or other kinetic methods. Additionally, man-portable air-defense systems like anti-UAS weapons may prove effective against sUASs.21 In the near term, though, solutions may lie in more natural means of sUAS interdiction.

There has been research into the use of birds of prey for countering the sUAS threat.22 The U.S. Air Force Academy has recently conducted a year-long study involving gyr-saker falcons. Tests reveal the falcons were able to “detect, positively identify, track, and engage a specific sUAS already in flight.”23 Compared to soaring birds like hawks and eagles, falcons must actively flap their wings while in flight, limiting loiter time to around 20 minutes. Additionally, the training time per falcon is approximately 4 to 5 months.24 While this study did not address the use of falcons to interdict different types of sUASs, the study lead, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Rhymer, believes that it is possible to “train falcons to generalize to different types of UASs.”25

Directed Energy. If Army directed-energy systems are disadvantaged in terms of size and weight (compared with the Navy’s), then Air Force systems are even more so. The Air Force is constrained by attempting to develop directed-energy systems carried by aircraft. The Air Force scientific advisory board is currently assessing the requirements for these missions on the modified AC-130H model,26 with a projected demonstration date of 2020.27 While this lofty endeavor recalls memories of the now defunct Airborne Laser System, the mission and domain of the Air Force forces the Service to pursue small, lightweight laser systems that can be mounted on aircraft.

Perhaps the most promising directed-energy technology in terms of defeating multiple sUASs is the use of high-powered microwaves. These microwave devices have the capability to render the electronic components of an sUAS useless, much like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).28 Although there may be practical considerations in the use of EMP devices in urban environments or on the battlefield (that is, necessitating controlled use of these weapons), microwave weapons are under development and, in the future, could be used simultaneously to destroy large numbers of sUASs.29

Addressing the Threat: Commercial Adaptive R&D

Since the early 2000s, DOD has acknowledged the necessity to increase the integration of commercial technology into military systems and procurement. But it is a recent phenomenon that commercial technology represents complete capabilities that circumvent the long lead times of traditional government research and development (R&D) and procurement. In other words, in many sectors commercial products are no longer simply contributing to military capabilities; they are the capabilities.30

While DOD has adapted to the commercial influence in defense procurement, it has failed to recognize the increasing rate of impact of technology on national security. The rising capabilities of commercial technologies, such as the sUAS, presage even greater future commercial threats. Similar to the impact of civilian malware across the spectrum of cyber operations (on both civilian and military concerns), future unforeseen commercial technologies will readily lend themselves to military applications, unnerving those most concerned with maintaining national security.

The challenge is to address this new and fast-moving commercial threat under the shadow of an antiquated and inadequate defense procurement process. The existing DOD procurement paradigm relies on establishing requirements that are fulfilled, in part, by commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems and components. Regarding DOD R&D, this requirements-based procurement happens either directly (from the national labs, for example) or indirectly through using COTS. As emerging COTS capabilities surpass the capacity of the government R&D establishment, the United States must develop policies to maintain its technical advantage over its adversaries.

In terms of contribution to national defense, the United States currently fails to take full advantage of its indigenous private industry. We recommend that DOD should work closer with private industry prior to the release of commercial technology, a policy that we call Commercial Adaptive R&D, or CARD.31 The CARD concept promotes the use of DOD partnerships and relationships with commercial firms to enhance DOD visibility of impending commercial technological release. In contrast with simply using the results of commercial R&D in the form of COTS, under the CARD concept, DOD would seek to conduct research on technology at different stages of development. This pre-market R&D has a number of advantages for both DOD and the firm.

First, DOD gains knowledge on market-shaping technology that will inevitably find its way into the hands of our adversaries. With commercial technologies’ rising level of capabilities, state and nonstate actors increasingly threaten U.S. ability to maintain technological overmatch. By conducting CARD, DOD gains vital knowledge on the possible uses of new technologies, and possible counters to these technologies, before our adversaries. Much like the development of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the use of the CARD strategy will help prevent the United States from being surprised by significant commercial technology.

Second, for both the firms and DOD, there exists a possible benefit from the discovery of additional uses for their technology. The dual-use nature of technology is rarely immediately apparent, especially if the government is not exposed to or knowledgeable of that technology.32 By working closely with large firms, DOD is able to discover new national defense applications for commercial technology, helping both the firm and the government.

Third, DOD can revive the chances for possibly useful technologies that have fallen “below the cut line”—or, in other words, are deemed by the firm as not commercially viable. By signaling its interest in these technologies, DOD provides an opportunity for a “second life” to the firm’s technology, resulting in possible commercialization.

Lastly, the CARD construct reduces government R&D risk. The government no longer directly vets new technology as the industry bears the brunt of maturation of the innovation. Utilizing these market-shaping firms in partnership roles with government R&D is disproportionately low given the amount of R&D that is conducted (for example, the Intel Corporation R&D budget for 2013 was roughly $10.6 billion).33 A majority of the risk is placed on the commercial firm, whereas DOD begins to conduct R&D on the product in mid-to-late stream.

By adopting new policies toward government defense procurement and the degree to which they conduct research with private industry before the commercial release of COTS products, DOD will develop early defenses against threatening technologies, help shape the development of defense-related technologies, and prevent technological surprise. The greater integration of DOD into private R&D, or CARD, will help better ensure national defense in a period of increasing commercial threats.

Conclusion

Although current state-of-the-art sUAS capabilities are sufficiently threatening, we are on the cusp of technological advances that will make the sUAS exponentially more deadly. The asymmetric nature of the sUAS, especially when considering swarm tactics, makes the technology difficult to defend against. An sUAS is relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous (it is estimated that there are over one million sUASs in the United States alone).34 Conversely, most defense systems are—at least at this stage of development—restrictively expensive. It may be fiscally restrictive and grossly inefficient to attempt to counter this commercial threat with large military programs. Additionally, as technologically state-of-the-art as current commercial sUASs appear, small advances in supporting technologies will yield huge leaps in sUAS capabilities, further compounding defensive problems such as detection and identification.

To protect against this threat, the United States must develop doctrines both for sUAS attack and defense. It is necessary to improve our capabilities in both offensive and defensive sUAS technologies. Additionally, this is inherently a joint fight, with the technology and techniques developed by each Service synergistically contributing to the development of anti-sUAS doctrine. Now may be the time to establish a joint organization specifically to address the sUAS threat, similar to the Joint Improvised-Threat Defense Organization (formerly known as the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization), originally established to counter improvised explosive devices.

Additionally, since the early 2000s, it has been widely accepted that DOD needs to integrate COTS requirements solutions. In this “linear model” of innovation, private industry conducts R&D to develop the COTS product, and the government applies COTS to existing requirements. Most important, DOD needs to conduct R&D on the pre-COTS product to discover new requirements based on new capabilities. This form of R&D should supersede the old model of simply fulfilling government requirements. DOD can accomplish this through close interaction with private industry to discover uses for emerging COTS products before they are simultaneously released to the public and our potential adversaries.

In the history of modern warfare, there have been few purely commercial technologies that so readily lend themselves to immediate weaponization as the sUAS. The threat lies not only in the technology itself, but also in the degree to which that technology is sufficiently capable and available to all potential nefarious actors. In this sense, the potential threat from sUASs should catalyze new thinking in DOD about the uses of commercial technology. Moving forward, it is this commercial availability of advanced technology that is the true threat, and it is this new technological frontier that may pose the greatest future challenge to our national security.

About the authors:
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Tingle, USA, is a Strategic Initiatives Analyst at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Second Lieutenant David Tyree, USAF, is a Flight Student Pilot at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 85, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:
1 Wallace Ryan and Loffi Jon, “Examining Unmanned Aerial System Threats and Defenses: A Conceptual Analysis,” International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace, no. 4 (January 10, 2015).

2 Faine Greenwood, “Man Who Crashed Drone on White House Lawn Won’t Be Charged,” Slate.com, March 18, 2015, available at <www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/18/white_house_lawn_drone_the_man_who_crashed_it_there_ won_t_be_charged.html>.

3 Michael Martinez, Paul Vercammen, and Ben Brumfield, “Above Spectacular Wildfire on Freeway Rises New Scourge: Drones,” CNN.com, July 19, 2015, available at <www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/us/california-freeway-fire>.

4 The latest Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reports are available at <www.faa.gov/uas/law_enforcement/uas_sighting_reports/>.

5 While the militarization of the Small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) would ostensibly increase its lethality, this article focuses on the possible capabilities of commercial sUASs (including the addition of an explosive payload).

6 Practically, the discussion of sUASs should not be limited to this weight. The FAA categorizes aircraft under 55 pounds as an sUAS.

7 UAS Task Force Airspace Integration Integrated Product Team, Unmanned Aircraft System Airspace Integration Plan (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 2011), available at <www.acq.osd.mil/sts/docs/DoD_UAS_Airspace_Integ_Plan_v2_(signed).pdf>.

8 William Camp, Joseph Mayhan, and Robert O’Donnell, “Wideband Radar for Ballistic Missile Defense and Range-Doppler Imaging of Satellites,” Lincoln Laboratory Journal 12, no. 2 (2000), 267–280.

9 In the same vein as radar, infrared systems have a similarly difficult time in detecting small heat signatures of an sUAS.

10 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Swarming and the Future of Conflict (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), available at <www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB311.html>.

11 Energetics refers to the reduction of explosive size while increasing explosive power. See John Gartner, “Military Reloads with Nanotech,” MIT Technology Review, January 21, 2005, available at <www.technologyreview.com/s/403624/military-reloads-with-nanotech>.

12 Daniel Gonzales and Sarah Harting, Designing Unmanned Systems with Greater Autonomy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2014), available at <www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR626.html>.

13 One example of autonomous UAS operations is the use of the Israeli Harpy 2 for suppression of enemy air defense operations. See T.X. Hammes, “Cheap Technology Will Challenge U.S. Tactical Dominance,” Joint Force Quarterly 81 (2nd Quarter 2016).

14 Lynn Etheridge Davis and Warner R. Schilling, “All You Ever Wanted to Know About MIRV and ICBM Calculations but Were Not Cleared to Ask,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 17, no. 2 (1973), 207–242.

15 John Wilson Lewis and Hua Di, “China’s Ballistic Missile Programs: Technologies, Strategies, Goals,” International Security 17, no. 2 (1992), 5–40.

16 Richard Whittle, “Military Exercise Black Dart to Tackle Nightmare Drone Scenario,” NewYorkPost.com, July 25, 2015, available at <http://nypost.com/2015/07/25/military-operation-black-dart-to-tackle-nightmare-drone-scenario/>.

17 While possible sUAS countermeasures exist, this article does not discuss technologies and techniques associated with cyber effects, such as GPS spoofing and command link capture.

18 The 20-mm Phalanx (Close-In Weapon System) has a left-to-right limit of 300 degrees. For more information, see “USA 20 Mm Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS),” NavWeaps.com, June 16, 2010, available at <www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_Phalanx.htm>.

19 Cheryl Pellerin, “Work Details the Future of War at Army Defense College,” Defense News, April 8, 2015, available at <www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/604420>.

20 James Vincent, “Tokyo Police Unveil Net-wielding Interceptor Drone,” TheVerge.com, December 11, 2015, available at <www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9891128/tokyo-interceptor-net-drone>.

21 Andrew Tarantola, “The SkyWall 100 Is a Net-launching Anti-Drone Bazooka,” Engadget.com, March 3, 2016, available at <www.engadget.com/2016/03/03/the-skywall-100-is-a-net-launching-anti-drone-bazooka/>.

22 See Peter Holley, “Watch This Trained Eagle Destroy a Drone in a Dutch Police Video,” Washington Post, February 2, 2016, available at <www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/01/trained-eagle-destroys-drone-in-dutch-police-video/>.

23 Don Rhymer et al., “Falconry: Alternate Lure Training (FALT),” Report nos. 56250 and 63300.

24 Don Rhymer, telephone interview by authors, November 11, 2015.

25 Ibid.

26 William P. Head, Night Hunters: The AC-130s and Their Role in U.S. Airpower (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014).

27 Thomas Masiello and Sydney Freedberg, Jr., “Air Force Moves Aggressively on Lasers,” BreakingDefense.com, August 7, 2015, available at <http://breakingdefense.com/2015/08/air-force-moves-aggressively-on-lasers/>.

28 For both microwaves and lasers, there exist the possibility of countermeasures. In terms of microwaves, electronic hardening of the sUAS could provide protection. Against laser attack, countermeasures such as smoke might provide a level of survivability.

29 Jason D. Ellis, Directed-Energy Weapons: Promise and Prospects (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, April 2015), available at <www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_Directed_Energy_Weapons_April-2015.pdf>.

30 Additionally, we especially see this commerciality phenomenon in the cyber domain.

31 The authors want to thank Dr. Terry Pierce for providing the opportunity to observe the Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Innovation, the operations on which the Commercial Adaptive R&D (CARD) concept is based. Dr. Pierce also provided valuable input into developing the CARD theory itself.

32 John A. Alic, Beyond Spinoff: Military and Commercial Technologies in a Changing World (Cambridge: Harvard Business Press, 1992).

33 Michael Casey and Robert Hackett, “The Top 10 Biggest R&D Spenders Worldwide,” Fortune, November 17, 2014, available at <http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/>.

34 Andrew Amato, “Drone Sales Numbers: Nobody Knows, So We Venture a Guess,” Dronelife.com, April 16, 2015, available at <http://dronelife.com/2015/04/16/drone-sales-numbers-nobody-knows-so-we-venture-a-guess/>.

Morocco has historically represented one of the most moderate voices in the Arab and Muslim world. The first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation, Morocco has long been allied with the West and often serves as a bridge between Western countries and the MENA region. It is, in many ways, considerably more liberal than many Middle Eastern and North African countries – and yet, it was not until King Mohammed VI came into power in 1999 that the country began to make strides in instituting societal reforms that liberalize civil society and increase civil and human rights.

While the most radical of the reforms that have taken place under Mohammed VI are the substantial improvements in women’s rights, other extremely important and meaningful changes have occurred, including increased recognition of the Amazigh culture and language and a new and unprecedented commitment to international human rights standards.

Women Rights

Shortly after ascending to his father’s throne in 1999, King Mohammed VI gave a speech in which he asked:i

“how can society advance when the rights of women – who form half of it – are squandered and they are subjected to injustice, violence and marginalization despite the deference and fairness accorded to them by our true religion?”

While it would take four long years before the Mudawanna reform was achieved in 2003, this speech set a precedent for the King’s reign that had been absent from Moroccan society under his father, Hassan II. In recognizing the absence of women’s rights in his country, as well as acknowledging their importance, he not only foreshadowed the reform that would take place, but also challenged his people to begin thinking in this way. Reforming the family code was by no means a simple process.

Thanks to Mohammed VI’s efforts to democratize the political system through a parliament and its president who actually had some kind of a legitimate role, the four years between his calling for a new Moudawana and its realization were fraught with civil and political unrest. An intense ideological divide developed between the liberal, secular feminists who called for a family code in line with the relevant UN conventions and the Islamists, both male and female, who adamantly opposed this deviation from shari’a law and Islamic values as they saw them.

It was ultimately the 2003 terrorist attacks and society’s subsequent fear of Islamic extremism that led to the Moudawana’s rather radical content. Beyond the improvements for women that can be found in the new code – including changes in laws regarding marriage, divorce, child custody, alimony, inheritance, and many more – the reform succeeded in bringing women of all political and religious beliefs into civil society in order to voice their opinion about the laws that would so closely affect them.

Mohammed VI’s reforms to the Moudawana were completed in February of 2004, following immense opposition from Islamist groups. The new code raises the marriage age from 15 to 18, allows women to divorce by mutual consent, curbs the right of men to ask for divorce unilaterally, restricts polygamy, and replaces a wife’s duty of obedience with the concept of joint responsibility. Similar to the Instance d’Equité et de Reconciliation -IER- and reforms with human rights, the changes to the Moudawana did not go without criticism and the acknowledgment that there was still much to be done. However Mohammed VI’s reforms for family law have given women a number of rights often unseen in the Arab world.ii

This involvement of different women in the legal and political process is perhaps even more monumental than the laws contained in the new Moudawana.

Mohammed VI has also involved diversified politics at an even higher level by requiring 10% of members of parliament to be women. The King’s commitment to increasing the position of women in Moroccan society can be seen not only in the landmark Moudawana, but in the way he presents himself to society. The fact that Mohammed VI was the first ruler to introduce his wife to the public – or even allow her into public – was shocking to many Moroccans, and truly demonstrates the dramatic shift in attitude towards women that has occurred since the reign of Hassan II, as well as the King’s commitment to normalizing this shift for his people. As the first wife of a king to have a public role, Lalla Selma holds a great amount of power in the cultural conscience, if only symbolic.

Human rights

And women’s rights are not the only ones that have been pioneered by King Mohammed VI – largely as a response to the gross human rights violations perpetrated by his late father and the subsequent demands of his father’s former prisoners; an Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Equité et Réconciliation-IER-) was established in January of 2004iii (“Truth and Reconciliation in Morocco.”) Though there is significant speculation surrounding the function this body serves – as the government has no obligation to adhere to its recommendations – the International Center for Transitional Justice asserts that:iv

“since 2006 the CCDH [Advisory Council on Human Rights] has made substantial progress in carrying out the IER’s [Equity and Reconciliation Committee] reparations program” (“Truth and Reconciliation in Morocco”).

Amazigh culture and identity

Overall, it appears that while important work remains to be done, the IER is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and demonstrates that the King is willing to make efforts in this area. In another move to diversify Moroccan society and represent all voices, the constitutional referendum of 2011 included the first ever official recognition of Amazigh culture and identity central to Morocco, as well as elevating Tamazight to official language status. While many critics believe that this constitution was essentially used to appease people without giving up any real power, this nod to the country’s Amazigh origins is monumental.

Not only is Morocco the first North African country to do so, but this acknowledgement of non-Arab and non-Muslim culture and heritage follows in the trend of Morocco departing from shari’a law, as in the Moudawana, and Islamist ideals of government. Perhaps this referendum did little to change the reality of life in Morocco, but it adds, little by little, to the openness and tolerance of the country. The theme of all of these societal reforms seems to be that they are monumental for Morocco, liberal for Morocco, and radical for Morocco.

Constitution

In 2011 following various street demonstrations and in the midst of the Arab uprisings occurring in the Middle East, Mohammed VI implemented a new constitution. The new constitution, according to Human Rights Watch:v

“articulates many rights, including freedom of expression, protections for people in custody, and a new right to challenge the constitutionality of existing laws in a high court”

While this sounds like excellent progress on paper, international human rights organization Human Rights Watch argues that the government has yet to adopt any legislation that would put these reforms into action. They also state that Morocco continues to enforce laws focusing on freedom of expression, including imprisonment for: vi

“defaming or insulting public officials or state institutions…and a speech that “harms” the monarchy.”

On the recognition of the Amazigh language and its elevation to an official status in the 2011 Constitution, Younes Abouyoub argues:vii

“Most Moroccans applaud—and rightly so—the bold decision of King Mohamed VI to include in the preamble of the newly proposed constitution the official recognition of Tamazight as a state language alongside Arabic, the first official acknowledgement of Amazigh (Berber) identity on a constitutional level in a North African country. In fact, this inclusion is what some analysts have speculated led to the overwhelming approval of the July 1 constitutional referendum; Thomson Reuters reported that 98.5 percent of the population voted in favor, with a 73 percent turnout of registered voters. Skeptics cast doubts over that figure, citing voting irregularities, and point out that the king’s play of the Berber identity card is no more than a bid to pass off a cosmetically new constitution while holding on to his monarchy.  Those who are more cynical suggest that the consequences might be dire, and lead Morocco down the road to the Algerian model of tension between those of Arab and Berber origins”

A Last word

Morocco is a country in transition, and while many citizens feel the democratization is not moving swiftly enough, it is moving. And it is this movement which will be the legacy of King Mohammed VI – not that he changed everything, brought democracy or perfected human rights, but that he set the wheels in motion for others to add to the reforms he enacted.

On the Moroccan carefully-managed transition, Heba Saleh writes in The Financial Times of November23, 2015:viii

“Reforms initiated and controlled by King Mohammed to defuse protests in the wake of revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have allowed Morocco to escape the upheavals that have troubled other countries in the region, blighting economies and even leading to civil war. Stability has been helped by a process of cautious co-operation between the monarch and the moderate Islamists of the PJD headed by Abdelilah Benkirane, the prime minister, who has led a coalition government since elections in 2011. The poll came after the adoption of a constitution that requires the king to choose the prime minister from the largest party in parliament.”

Is Morocco a liberal country?

While King Mohammed VI’s arrival into power has helped to make real strides in terms of societal reform within Morocco, these reforms have not created what could be described as an entirely “liberal” society. Advancements have been made in terms of both human and women’s rights, which are incredibly important within the context of the Arab world today. Despite this fact Morocco still faces a wide range of criticism in regards to not only these reforms, but also the laws it continues to enforce regarding freedom of expression and the powers of the monarchy.

Endnotes:
i. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3183248.stm
ii. https://tavaana.org/en/content/moudawana-peaceful-revolution-moroccan-women
iii. http://democratie.francophonie.org/IMG/pdf/Declaration_de_l_intance_equite_et_reconciliation.pdf
iv. http://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Morocco-TRC-2009-English.pdf
v. https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/20/us-obama-should-press-moroccos-king-reforms
vi. Op.cit. http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/07/06/morocco-reforming-constitution-fragmentingidentities/fmy9
vii.
viii. https://www.ft.com/content/a713eabc-6e98-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a

Sources:
Zakia, S. 2011. Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco. University of Minnesota Press.
Fatima Sadiqi, 2010, from ‘Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance’, ed. Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin, Freedom House, New York
Castillejo, C. and Helen Tilley. Marc 2015. The road to reform: Women’s political voice in Morocco. March 2015, Case Study Report, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
Prettitore, P. April 2014. Ten Years After Morocco’s Family Code Reforms: Are Gender Gaps Closing?  The World Bank
Moudawana: A Peaceful Revolution for Moroccan Women, Tavaana