(EurActiv) — French President Emmanuel Macron’s party is set to win as much as a third of the vote in legislative elections next month, giving it a solid majority, two polls showed on Wednesday (24 May).

Macron’s Republic On The Move (LREM) would win 33% of the vote in the first round of voting on 11 June, an Elabe poll for BFM TV found.

A separate Ifop Fiducial poll for Paris Match magazine, CNews TV and Sud Radio found 31% of those surveyed planned on voting for LREM.

That was up from up from 22% the last time the poll was conducted on May 4-5, before Macron was elected president in a runoff vote against far-right leader Marine Le Pen on May 7.

In the Elabe poll, 20% of those surveyed said they would vote for the conservative Republicans party, which was seen winning 19% of the vote in the Ifop poll.

That would be just barely ahead of Le Pen’s National Front, which was at 19% in the Elabe poll and 18% in the Ifop poll.

The far left France Unbowed party was seen winning 15% in the Ifop poll and 12% in the Elabe poll.

In both cases, that was well ahead of the Socialists at about 7%, far behind the 29.5% they won in the last legislative election in 2012, giving them a majority with their allies.

Neither poll offered an estimate of how many seats parties could win in the second round of voting on 18 June.

Labour reform plans

Meanwhile, French unions urged President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday (23 May) not to try to hustle through his labour reform plans this summer, in contrast with calls from the main employers’ group for swift measures to reinforce rising business optimism.

Macron’s meetings with unions and employers were a first crucial test of his commitment to carry out labour reforms which he sees as vital to reviving an economy bedevilled by high unemployment, but which are opposed on the left.

By Shastri Ramachandaran

Cultural legacies, with their inevitable potential for controversies compounded by competing claims between contending nations, can be fraught affairs. Disputes over art works and artefacts of one country being found in another are legion. The UNESCO convention, which mandates return of illegally acquired objects to country of origin when provenance is established beyond doubt, is actually an acknowledgement that disputes are bound to persist and, therefore, require a basis to be addressed.

Although there are numerous instances where countries have resolved disputes over cultural objects in an amicable manner, many a long-running controversial case remains unresolved. One of the best-known cases is that of India’s fabled Kohinoor diamond.

Taken away by Persia’s Nadir Shah and brought back by the Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh, under British duress, his son Duleep Singh “presented” it to Queen Victoria in the 19^th century. Britain claims ownership saying it was a gift. This is disputed by four other claimants, namely, India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

In sharp contrast to such running feuds, which periodically make headlines with a new twist or turn, Uzbekistan’s initiative to use cultural legacy as the path to dialogue between peoples and countries is truly ground-breaking. Nearly 220 international scientists, scholars, experts and museum heads – including 120 from at least 15 countries — gathered for an International Scientific Congress on Cultural Legacy held over two days in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent and its ancient city Samarkand.

Supported by the UNESCO, ICOMOS (International Council for the Preservation of Monuments and Sites) and Germany’s Konrad Adenaur Foundation, the Congress’ agenda was to discuss ways and means of reinforcing cultural legacy as the basis for dialogues between nations.

Such conversations would require in-depth study, research and documentation of any one country’s legacy in other countries; and, the process itself would mean dialogue, cooperation and wider popularisation of the material and artistic culture of the countries involved. It was resolved to make the Congress an annual event, and a permanent Scientific Committee has been set up for this purpose. A number of reports and papers – on various studies of Uzbek material and artistic objects, traditions and practices in various countries – presented at the Congress are to be published.

In pursuance of the objective of cross-cultural dialogues, Uzbekistan has brought out 10 volumes, and several short films, on the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the Collections of the World. These excellent volumes in Uzbek, Russian and English on Uzbek collections, including in leading museums, in Russia, North America and Australia have been authored by well-known art historians, Orientalists, musicologists, archaeologists, curators and scientists. They are packed with visuals and comprise rich material hitherto not published in one place, said a delegate to the Congress. Almost all the delegates this writer spoke to were fulsome in their praise of the publications and their usefulness; which would, doubtless, encourage the continuation of the projects to bring out more book albums and films.

“I am impressed by the quality of their publications on heritage. As it is impossible to return objects from museums and collections in the world to the country of origin for a variety of reasons, the book project gave Uzbekistan an active role to engage with their heritage,” Dr Christoph Rauch, Director of the Oriental Department at Germany’s Prussian State Library in Berlin, told this author. In fact, many delegates said that it was a good idea which other countries could emulate.

Alexander Wilhelm, university lecturer and publisher working out of Spain and Germany welcomes the fact that the project of publishing albums would be continued. “I am a publishing man. So, in my opinion, publishing is fundamentally a good thing. To present information about peoples, their way of life and legacy, and cultural achievements is a necessary step to initiate and enlarge mutual understanding. And, it can help to prevent conflicts.”

Dr B R Mani, Director-General of India’s National Museum in New Delhi, told IDN that the Congress was a focused and purposeful exercise. Perhaps, no other country has done a worldwide survey of objects from their culture as Uzbekistan has done in a short period preceding the Congress. “What Uzbekistan has done is a good idea. It should be done by other countries also. I wish India, too, would do something on these lines. After all, there are tens of thousands of material and artistic objects from India in other countries,” Dr Mani said.

He felt a survey followed by reports and publications of objects and their locations are more important than the question of to which country these belong and the attempts to retrieve them. “This Congress and the thinking it has set in trend are not about securing the return of heritage objects, although there are people and countries that want it back,” Dr Mani said.

An expert from Central Europe said once the tendency to accept cultural legacies as common heritage of humanity, regardless of borders, gains ground, more countries would be open to sharing what is in their possession. “The secrecy surrounding some of the prized objects and their origin will also go.”

A delegate from the UK, who did not wish to be identified, said that the desire for wanting objects back, at least in some cases, belongs to a mindset of “outdated nationalism”. He felt that in a globalised world, it would be more appropriate to treat cultural legacy as “common heritage of humanity” and commit to allowing universal access. This led to an animated discussion, off the record, among a select group of experts on the merits of letting the objects remain where they are vis-à-vis the urge to ensure that it goes back to its native cultural habitat.

Dr Rauch observed that nations are a relatively young idea, which is already challenged in many parts of the world. “I don’t think heritage belongs to certain nations, as cultural borders are not identical with borders of modern states.”

Publisher Wilhelm, who made a presentation at the Congress, is optimistic about the avenues opened up by the event and exchanges. He is convinced that ‘Cultural Legacy’ is a very good platform for dialogue. “Getting to know each other is the best path to mutual understanding. Presenting one’s own past and achievements – with flaws and all — helps to better understand different cultures. The unknown is always suspicious, if not ‘dangerous’. If I get to know my neighbours, both near and distant ones, fear disappears and understanding grows.”

He said that the Congress enabled participants to know Uzbekistan better. This understanding has created channels for even more communication of the Uzbek legacy to the world. The Congress, he said, has speeded up existing – and, even started new — scientific projects, which is good: more knowledge is always an advantage and reduces the danger of misunderstanding.

The effort is also expected to boost tourism, especially heritage and cultural tourism. Dr Rauch said that one of the main aims of the Congress is surely to promote Uzbekistan as a world tourism destination. “Uzbekistan is a young state and they need such big congresses also for strengthening their identity,” Dr Rauch pointed out.

Another historian, who wants to remain anonymous, endorsed this viewpoint, adding that after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Russia seem to enjoy a “comfortable relationship” and a “healthy equilibrium” which has not made cultural legacy a contentious issue with potential for conflict – as, added another participant, has been the case between many independent developing countries and their former colonial rulers.

Wilhem says there are risks though, because cultural legacy is also a fraught issue. The same legacy claimed by different cultures is potentially dangerous. “Some historical events are seen differently by different people. That´s why, I think, it is a good idea to stick to the ‘cultural side’ and exclude potentially dangerous political-historical events,” he added.

As K Rahman, Assistant Curator of Arabic Manuscript in India’s National Museum, observed in his feedback to the Congress: This seminar was a platform for scholars and experts from all over the world to share their knowledge and expertise with respect to the Uzbek legacy, highlighting its oral, visual and literary culture. The experience and exchanges are bound to trigger new paths of collaboration that may not be limited to Uzbekistan’s cultural legacy but extends to encompassing other peoples and cultures.

*Shastri Ramachandaran is a senior editor of IDN-INPS and independent commentator on regional and global affairs based in New Delhi. He travelled to Tashkent and Samarkand for the International Congress on the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan at the invitation of The National Association of Electronic Mass Media of Uzbekistan.

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

The suicide bomber attack on 22 May 2017 at a Manchester concert stands out analytically as an Islamic jihadi terrorist attack, once again manifesting that this scourge visiting liberal democratic societies is not going to fade away.

That this latest terrorist attack targeting Great Britain is a serious one and could be a part of a greater plot is evident that the British Government has ordered a TOP ALERT including calling out the British Army to back-up the local police

Before proceeding with the analysis of this dastardly suicide bombing I would like to SALUTE the younger British generation as they silently without panic of the trauma of the suicide bombing filed out of the Concert location. The optics was in the truest historical British tradition of stoic fortitude. There was no stampede and reminiscent of the British stoicism as they faced Nazi bombings of London for months during the Second World War.

The ISIS has claimed this terrorist attack as one of its strikes thereby qualifying it as an Islamic Jihadi terrorist attack. Details are available in plenty in the media and this Paper will not dwell on the same. Alternatively, one would like to focus on the major deductions that arise from this incessant diabolical suicide attacks on Free World democratic nations.

The most notable fact is that this suicide bomber was a Libyan Muslim young married man born in Great Britain. It vividly illustrates that liberal European societies and their more than liberal societal environments have failed to stem the radicalisation of Muslim youth residing therein. It also highlights that therefore liberal societies have now to consider abridging the constitutional and human rights of such fringe elements opting to operate outside the democratic framework.

It also highlights that liberal democratic societies cannot with political reach-out however generous, succeed in nudging radicalised segments abounding in their midst to assimilate themselves with the liberalist societies that gave them refuge and succour at the first instance even by distorting their own demographics.

Any major transformation of Muslim societies to shun Jihadi terrorism in the name of Islam can only be done by Muslim societies themselves as they are the most affected by the resultant demonization that invariably follows.

Contextually, the next notable fact that stands out is as to how and why the leading nations of the Islamic World, particularly the Sunni nations, have not been able to stem these radicalised fundamentalist impulses that spring, generate and flourish from their region. Was President Trump’s address to leading Muslim nations at Riyadh on the preceding week-end of the Manchester terrorist attack amounts to an address and appeal to the deaf?

If that be so, then does a case exist for another Global War on Terrorism? Would the United States care to lead this GWOT not as a politically expedient initiative but as a genuine effort to rid the Free World of Jihadi suicide attacks?

Before one reaches the above stage it is for consideration of the West European countries as most subjected to such attacks in recent times to unite their efforts and resources to combat this menace.

The major problem will be that as the space for ISIS sway progressively reduces in the Middle East, the ISIS terrorists are likely to spill into neighbouring regions, particularly Europe and India where fringe elements provide sleeper cells.

India has to be on heightened ALERT especially in case of Kashmir Valley, where the seditious separatists’ leaders have forgotten the havoc the spill-over from Afghanistan in terms of Taliban and Al Qaeda played on Kashmir Valley Muslim population. They could repeat a welcome to ISIS terrorists in their midst to achieve their narrow political ends.

Concluding, one would like to observe that while Great Britain and Western Europe grapples with this scourge of Jihadi terrorism, India should learn lessons and incorporate them in India’s counter-terrorism strategy.

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

With a lavish welcome, Saudis convince Trump that Iran – not their own fundamentalism – is bigger danger for the Middle East.

By Dilip Hiro*

Saudi officials repeatedly described US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh as “historic,” calling his meeting with rulers of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, a “landmark event.” American counterparts, however, opted for the word “reset,” suggesting that the two nations are resetting ties after a strained relationship with the Obama administration.

For Saudi royals, this reset is relief from Barack Obama’s repeated urging to ease their repressive policies on human rights. They agree with Trump’s declaration that emphasizing human rights impeded trade between the countries. They also approve of his admiration for strongmen like Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah Sisi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkeys’ Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In contrast, they conveniently overlook the fact that Obama and his Republican predecessor George W. Bush advocated human rights and democracy as tactics to undermine support for radical Islamism.

Trump’s foreign jaunt made it clear that he is aligning with the agenda of the Sunni monarchs of the GCC regarding Iran. They have framed their rivalry with the Islamic Republic of Iran in sectarian terms, demonizing Shia Islam in the process. While skirting the theological battle, Trump describes Iran as a state that supports terrorism, which has not totally abandoned aspirations to build a nuclear weapon.

Eager to be seen as succeeding with his foreign policy, Trump unilaterally reset his opinions of Saudi Arabia by 180 degrees. A year ago, addressing a campaign rally in Wisconsin, he said, “Nobody’s going to mess with Saudi Arabia because we’re watching them [the Saudis]… they’re not paying us a fair price. We’re losing our shirt.” As late as 28 April, in a Reuters i interview, he complained; “Frankly, Saudi Arabia has not treated us fairly, because we are losing a tremendous amount of money in defending Saudi Arabia.” Three weeks later, in Riyadh, he uttered not a word about the US financial burden of protecting the kingdom – totaling $10,000 in miltary education and training in 2014.

Instead, Trump focused on signing a US-Saudi military cooperation agreement worth $350 billion over 10 years, with $110 billion to take effect immediately.

The last thing that the Middle East needs is massive imports of what, in Trump’s words, are “lots of beautiful military equipment which nobody makes it like the United States.” This led US Senator Chris Murphy to remark, “In the powder keg that is the Middle East, this sale may simply light a fuse that sends the region, and us, deeper down the rabbit hole of perpetual military conflict.”

Obama had already been generous in supplying weapons to Riyadh. According to the Washington-based Center for International Policy, in 42 separate deals his administration offered the Saudi Kingdom a record $115 billion package for arms, other military equipment and training.

On the eve of the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA – meticulously negotiated by the United States and signed in July 2015 by six world powers and Iran on its nuclear program – Obama went out of his way to bolster the security of Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf monarchies. He hosted a US-GCC summit at the White House and Camp David in mid-May. He promised US technical assistance in creating a ballistic missile early-warning system for GCC states to defend themselves against Iran’s missile attacks. Two months earlier, he had agreed to provide logistical and intelligence support to the Saudis when they intervened in the Yemen civil war to defeat Shia Houthi insurgents. .

In April 2016 Obama flew to Riyadh, his fourth such visit, the highest by any American president, to hold the second US-GCC summit. Thus, Trump’s recent meeting with GCC leaders in Riyadh ranked third in the series.

The JCPOA signing resulted in lifting UN sanctions on Iran. But Washington’s sanctions on Iran, emanating from US law, remained in place. “Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support for terrorism pose a continuing threat to the region, to the United States, and to our partners worldwide,” said US Treasury official Adam Szubin in March 2016, adding that America would continue to counteract these threats through sanctions. US financial institutions continue to be barred from dealing with Iran

Trump and his team arrived in Riyadh on 20 May, the day after the reformist incumbent, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, was reelected after a decisive win, 57 percent to 39 percent, over conservative rival Ebrahim Raisi. Four rounds of television debate by the contestants had preceded the polling.

Commenting on the result, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the Trump administration hoped Tehran “restores the rights of Iranians to freedom of speech, to freedom of organization, so that Iranians can live the life that they deserve.” He seemed to have missed the clarion call given by Rouhani at the largest election rally in Tehran: “We want freedom of press, freedom of association, and freedom of thought.” Nor did Tillerson notice the stark irony of his government’s total silence on the wholesale denial of these rights for the subjects of Saudi King Salman.

Pursuing a predetermined agenda, Trump told the gathering of 35 heads of state from across the Muslim world, “From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region.”

Hezbollah in Lebanon, allied with Iran, has a political wing, a key part of the republic’s parliamentary system, and two ministers in the present cabinet. And long before the Obama administration geared up to help the government in Baghdad fight the Islamic State in Iraq, Iran had trained, funded and armed Iraqi Shia to battle the extremists.

The Zaidi Shias tribes inhabiting the mountainous north in Yemen got their chance to seize the capital of Sanaa in the chaos following the Arab Spring uprising in 2011. Led by Abdul Malik al Houthi, they became known as Houthis. This insurgent movement emerged independently of Iran, which has since then tried to supply it arms with intermittent success.

When the impulsive 29-year-old Saudi defense minister, Prince Mohammad – the favorite son of King Salman, since named deputy crown prince – decided in March 2015 to launch an air blitzkrieg in Yemen, he declared that Houthis could be uprooted “in a matter of days.” But the war, costing Riyadh tens of millions of dollars a day, has turned into a stalemate. .

Prince Mohammad claims that the Houthis are puppets of Iran. On 1 May, he was asked on the Dubai-based, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television channel if he saw a possibility for direct talks with Iran. In his reply, he referred to a Shia belief of waiting for the arrival of the 12th Hidden Imam, who disappeared around 868 AD, as al Mahdi, or the Messiah, to bring justice to the world: “How can I come to an understanding with someone, or a regime, that has an anchoring belief built on an extremist ideology?” he asked rhetorically. He then asserted that Iran aimed to “control the Islamic world.”

Among Muslims worldwide, Shias are a minority of 15 percent. Only four of the 57 Muslim-majority countries are Shia. To declare that Iran aimed to control the Islamic world, 85 percent Sunni, is beyond belief.

Equally paranoid was the prince’s statement, “We know we are a main target of Iran.” He then added ominously, “We are not waiting until there becomes a battle in Saudi Arabia, so we will work so that it becomes a battle for them in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia.”

Trump, notorious for a short attention span and impulsiveness, has aligned his administration with this preposterous scenario.

*Dilip Hiro is the author of A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East (Interlink Publishing Group, Northampton, MA). Read an excerpt. His latest and 36^th book is The Age of Aspiration: Power, Wealth, and Conflict in Globalizing India (The New Press, New York). Read an excerpt.

By Irfan Yar*

After spending 20 years in exile, former Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, returned to Kabul earlier this month. However, the timing of his return is not so spectacular for this veteran warlord, who was forced out of the country in 1996 by the Taliban. Even now, the reins of power are in the hands of his foes — though the Taliban regime was toppled and a civilian government is in power. The purpose of his comeback appears to be bringing about peace in the war-worn country, and not to demand his ‘rightful’ place. But, will he really be able to contribute to Afghan peace? Or would he challenge the existing polity and try to change the future of Afghanistan?

Many interpret his return as a great step toward peace, while others believe the rivalry between Hekmatyar’s organization Hezb-i-Islami and Jamiat-e Islami, the oldest ‘Islamic’ party of the country, will deteriorate the current situation. The question is why would a global terrorist embrace a legal entity? A realist answer to the question appears to be “to seize more power.”

Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin and Jamiat-e Islami were the most powerful sects that together resisted Soviets rule in Afghanistan. However, after toppling the last communist regime in Afghanistan, President Najibullah in 1992, the lust for power made the two groups hostile, leading them to fight over Kabul. Consequently, the city was desolated with deaths of more than 50,000 civilians. Hekmatyar was promoted to Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1993 to 1994 and again briefly in 1996, before the Taliban captured Kabul. Hekmatyar then fled to Iranian capital Tehran while many Hezb leaders defected to Taliban.

In the aftermath of 9/11, US entered Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban regime in Kabul with the help of the Northern Alliance — a multi-ethnic alliance in Afghanistan who opposed Taliban. It was followed by the creation of the Hamid Karzai government, supported by the West. The members of Northern Alliance held a lion share in the newly established government. Though it also included many members of the northern alliance, Hekmatyar was shunned and declared a global terrorist, as he had close ties with al-Qaida.

After two terms by Karzai, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai assumed the office of the president in September 2014. He was a finance minister in the Karzai government. He promised to reconcile with the Taliban but peace talks with the Taliban failed after Taliban confirmed that Mullah Omar had died years ago. Hekmatyar did not hesitate to utilise the opportunity. In September 2016, President Ghani signed a peace accord with him, which stipulated that Hezb-i-Islam would accept the Afghan constitution, stop militant activities, cut off links with all terrorist organisations and lay down their arms. In exchange, the Afghan government, the agreement said, would lift international sanctions that were imposed on him and release the prisoners affiliated with Hezb.

The peace deal is said to be a success for the government. It has been welcomed by the US too, which had earlier branded him as a terrorist . The hope is that Hekmatyar could influence Taliban commanders who once operated under his banner and show the group that a peaceful solution to the conflict is possible.

Eight months after signing the peace deal with the government, Hekmatyar travelled to Kabul from Jalalabad amid tight security, guarded by an Afghan army helicopter. President Ghani himself led an event at the presidential palace to welcome his fellow Pashtun leader, Hekmatyar — once known as Rocketmyar for raining rockets on Kabul during the civil war days in the 90s. The President thanked him for “heeding the peace call.”

As expected, Hekmatyar urged the Taliban to hold peace talks. “Let’s end the war, live together as brothers and then ask foreigners to leave our country,” he said.

Also, the Afghan government is not so united and stable as it was in the period of Karzai government. There is a division in the government which was formed after the country were on the brink of civil war when both Ashraf Ghani and his presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah claimed triumph in the election. The standstill was brokered by John Kerry, former US Secretary of State, and a national unity government, based on power-sharing, was formed with Ghani becoming President and Abdullah Chief Executive.

Now, Ghani’s peace deal with Hekmatyar and his return to Kabul, after 1996, has made Abdullah’s Jamiat party, supported by Tajiks, uncomfortable and uneasy. Both Hezb-i-Islami and Jamiat-e Islami are based on ethnicity and language – the former on Pashtuns and the later on Tajiks.

While Hekmatyar’s return has strengthened President Ghani, Abdullah Abdullah and his party is not so happy. He may make up with his rival Tajik leader Atta Muhammad Noor to take on their long-term common enemy, Hekmatyar. In a fractional war, Abdullah and Noor had broken up recently. Now, their reunion cannot be ruled out.

Besides the political division on ethnic lines, this may also lead to social uneasiness and instability, with further polarisation between the different ethnicities. This may even lead to tensions between Pashtuns and Tajiks. Other minorities such as Uzbeks and Hazaras may also feel vulnerable.

Abdullah is in the favour of parliamentary government in Afghanistan. He wants maximum autonomy from Kabul because the central government has always been with Pashtuns. Therefore, Tajik leaders are struggling to find an alternative to curb the concentration of power in the President. Moreover, President Ghani and other Pashtun leaders oppose parliamentary system and say that they can have serious consequences. Hekmatyar also supports a strong centralised government.

Therefore, President Ghani can pit Hekmatyar against Abdullah, to be an influential check on him. In addition, Hekmatyar could help contain the emerging power of Tajik leaders in Afghanistan and reduce further the feasibility of any non-Pashtun leader winning the next presidential election.

“I address Taliban as my brothers. There are good Taliban and bad Taliban,” said Hekmatyar, the aged Hezb leader. He appears pro-Pakistan since he had received substantial support from it and Saudi Arabia during the Soviet-Afghan war. Subsequently, he was in exile in Pakistan for quite a long time. Just like Pakistan, he also believes in “bad and good Taliban.”

If Hekmatyar somehow acquires power, his sympathy towards Pakistan can bring a paradigm shift in the Afghan foreign policy, favouring Pakistan. This can also effect Indo-Afghan relations. Moreover, as for as his xenophobic tendencies are concerned (toward the US and its allies), they will fade away once he starts receiving support from them.

Hekmatyar’s return will also question the status quo of Afghan politics since he is not happy with the existing political order in Kabul. For President Ghani and other Pashtun leaders, his return is a great step toward peace. However, others are reluctant to welcome him.

Hekmatyar’s comeback is unlikely to contribute to the Afghan stability until he works in collaboration with Jamiat and other leaders, as they did during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to check the biggest threat of the Taliban and the ISIS in Afghanistan. The panacea of the Afghan war lies in the maxim “unity is strength.”

The author is a Research Intern at Observer Research Foundation and a Masters Student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

By Rene Zou

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

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

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

Soviet Tactics Reworked for the Information Age

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

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

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

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

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

Timeline of Major Hacks and Events

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rise of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear

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

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

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

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

Russia’s Motivations

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

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

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

US Response

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

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

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

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

The relationship between President Trump and what is usually defined – with Soviet terminology – as the American “deep State” is increasingly complex and conflicting.The reason is easy to explain: Trump wants to avoid having tense relations with the Russian Federation, while the “deep State”, which is largely represented by the 17 US intelligence agencies, wants to restore tough and overall confrontation with Russia, as well as to avoid the materialization of the Russian Eurasian project with China, to regionalize China and finally shut in Russia between the Black Sea and Poland.

This is probably the first time a US President is systematically delegitimized by the media but, above all, indirectly, by the intelligence structures of his country.

The US intelligence is now part and parcel of the political game – a phenomenon regarding also other Western intelligence services – and it operates at intelligence and media levels with well-known techniques: misinformation, media manipulation, fake news, defamation, information destabilization and, we could say, a kind of psychological war against its own country.

The mechanism of the anti-Trump “deep throat” works as follows: an anonymous source, that is probably part and parcel of the President’s Administration, informs both the New York Times and the Washington Post – on alternate days, but with an obviously pre-arranged pace and scheme – of the true or alleged ins and outs and behind-the-scene stories of the President and his main aides.

At this juncture, the news is reported, reiterated and underlined by the CNN and the various national TV channels, thus hitting the headlines of all world media.

I am referring, for example, to the demonstrations staged during the inauguration of the Presidency on January 27, which – as reported by the Democratic media – were coordinated and global, with at least two million participants; to the demonstrations at the beginning of his campaign in mid-June 2016; to the anti-Trump protest in Richmond, Virginia (the former Confederate capital) of October 14; to the systematic and multiple interruptions of the then Republican candidate in Michigan in December, not to mention the attempt to assassinate Trump made on June 18, 2016, by Michael Steven Sanford in Las Vegas.

All signs of a plan orchestrated well before Donald J. Trump rising to power.

Therefore the classic defamation mix is used – even at the trivial aesthetic or symbolic level – so as to later destabilize the current US Presidency with manipulated news triggering real concern and alarm, but always with a precise paradigm in mind: Trump is a “friend of Russia” and hence a sworn enemy of the United States.

Therefore, one of the results of fake news is the creation of the symbolic link between “being friends of the United States” and hence being “enemies of Russia”.

Nothing prevents us from thinking that currently the old “military-industrial establishment” is planning an expensive rearmament, which some naïve people imagine to be a major stimulus for the US economy, only against the Russian Federation.

And this would also explain the continuing information and intelligence destabilization of Trump’s Presidency, which – on the contrary – thinks of a new relationship with Russia, starting from the stabilization of Syria and a new division of the world in areas of influence.

This is exactly the opposite of the strategic policy line of the Democratic candidate and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who had based all her foreign policy and many of her future proposals on overthrowing Bashar el Assad and hence supporting the whole Syrian-Iraqi jihadist galaxy, in strategic correlation with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

As already noted, however, there is an excellent relationship between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which have also correlated their oil prices and are negotiating the sale of Russian weapons to Saudi Arabia, which saw them working effectively in the Syrian conflict.

Nevertheless fake news which, according to a recent study, accounts for 35.8% of all North American political communication, has a very precise historical origin: the denial of the Shoah.

The negationist model with reference to the destruction of European Jews – just to use the title of an old and still useful book by Hilberg – has its own intrinsic logic: non-essential facts and phenomena are brought into the spotlight and a non-objective counterdeduction is developed between these facts and the historical facts, which are selected among the most favorable or harmless ones.

Initially the information manipulation does not deny, but trivializes and diminishes: for example, it is said that the victims of the extermination camps were not six millions – hence, with a sudden leap of logic, it is maintained that the Shoah did not take place.

From few victims to no one and from no one to a fictitious cause of the non-phenomenon, which replaces the real one because it represents a greater amount of “fundamentals”, of fake causes.

In the case of current fake news, however, a false deduction is made on the basis of true and partially true facts – then this deduction replaces the true and real one.

To do so, also the information “noise” is needed, that is, the continuous mass repetition of fake news – another implementation of Talleyrand’s old proverb: “Slander as much as you like, there will always be something left”.

A statement that can be also found in Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” made by Don Basilio.

The Soviet disinformation (dezinformatsja) was completely different: it hid dangerous intentions with benevolent and friendly traits.

It was counterfactual, too, but it did not distort facts, it simply created new and positive ones.

Just think of the propaganda in favor of the new CPSU Secretary of the time, Andropov, who was also Head of the CPSU First Central Directorate.

The new leader “loved jazz”, “read Goethe” and was obsessively defined as a “reformist”.

Even today, in the West, the word “reformist” is a primary instrument of psychological warfare, since it is never specified about which reforms we are talking.

Reverting to current times, in Trump’s case, fake news is immediately believed true because widespread hate is created deliberately against the US President, thus “making false news true”, which, however, fuels further rancor and resentment against Trump even when it is later found to be fake news.

Specialized websites, such as the Palmer Report, disseminate false, unchecked or unverifiable information, such as the actions of some attorneys against the President, which is reported by the media and hence serves as a Pavlovian confirmation of the hatred previously cultivated against Trump himself.

As Pavlov taught us, both hatred and love are “conditioned responses” and news, regardless of its being true or false, strengthens or diminishes the conditioning of a response or reflex, be it conscious or unconscious.

Incidentally, from this viewpoint, the Pavlovian theory of conditioned response is more useful, profound and exhaustive than the Freudian theory of “complex”.

However, the most politically relevant case of fake news is the recent visit paid by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to the US President.

In fact, on May 15, the Washington Post reported the unchecked news of Trump disclosing highly classified intelligence to the Russian Foreign Minister, who had met the Head of the US Administration accompanied by the Russian Ambassador, Serghiei Kisliak.

It is also said that Trump “compromised” an Israeli Mossad source by telling Lavrov that Isis-Daesh plans to use laptops and tablets aboard airliners so as to place miniaturized devices into them.

Other more reliable sources tell us that the highly classified information allegedly disclosed by Trump to Lavrov regards the new wide Israeli capabilities of intercepting signals and operational communications.

We also suspect, however, it is already known to Russia, at least by inference, considering the close contacts existing between the Russian forces in Syria and the Israeli military commands.

These new Israeli technologies would allow to monitor also the most secret and confidential military and intelligence operations.

Nevertheless you can feel the discretion, the coldness and the fear of the Israeli services, which are also afraid that the Russian Federation may leak some details of these new technologies to Syria or, even worse, to the Iranian troops operating in Syria.

In the future there is also the possibility of joint operations between the United States and Jordan towards the Syrian territory, considering that the United States does not show to be still satisfied with the new “ceasefire” areas in Syria managed by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Currently Russia looks at the US American plans for an offensive against Daesh-Isis with much skepticism – plans which are supposed to involve also the Kurds.

Therefore many US media have suggested that the intelligence services linked to the US ones no longer want to collaborate with the United States for fear of being “compromised” in their turn.

Obviously both Netanyahu and Theresa May respond to this hypothesis-fake news by reaffirming the solidity of the relations between their intelligence services and the United States.

Therefore the current tension between Trump and the US “deep tate” is very simple to explain: it is a civil war by other means.

At legal level, however, the US Constitution defines the President as the “Commander-in-Chief”, who can hence disseminate confidential information to anyone he deems useful.

Putin, who is an old executive of the Russian intelligence services, ironized on the matter – during a meeting held with the Italian Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, on May 17 last – by maintaining he could provide the US Congress with even the minutes of the meeting between Trump and Lavrov.

Other unchecked news, triggering suspicion and mistrust – as is often the case with fake news – regards the usual anonymous source disclosing to the New York Times that Trump “tried to obstruct and pervert the course of justice” by putting pressure on the FBI to stop investigating into the possible contacts with Russia of the former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

If, in the past, a judge had accused the Head of the Confidential Affairs Office of the Italian Ministry for Internal Affairs, Federico Umberto d’Amato, of “talking to the Soviets”, he would have been laughed at.

With whom should a national security officer of such an important country speak?

With greengrocers?

You talk also, and above all, with the enemy, because it is with the enemy you must deal, not with the friend.

Hence currently a strange gnostic and puritanical theology looms large in the American mentality, in which any contact with what is considered to be “evil” is denied and forbidden a priori.

Anti-Machiavellianism – unless it is ironic like that of Frederick II of Prussia – creates monsters.

In all likelihood, this is the result – in the specific field of intelligence – of the “closing of the American mind” described by Allan Bloom in 1987.

Reverting to the FBI case, the same anonymous sources report that President Trump “hoped” the FBI Director would “drop the matter” as Flynn is “a good man.”

A different sense, but fake news always refuses nuances and always speaks using the present tense.

Or using the past tense.

Obviously if a US President tried to obstruct and pervert justice, he should be impeached – and this is exactly what the North American “deep State” wishes to achieve as soon as possible, namely making Trump end up like Nixon.

Too much money is involved in some political-military issues. The Saudi and Sunni world pay huge sums and it is worth recalling that Saudi Arabia’s funds to the Clinton Foundation are estimated at 10-25 million US dollars, while the “friends of Saudi Arabia”, co-funded by a local prince, have given another million and later additional 5 million US dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Kuwait, Qatar (the first funder of Isis-Daesh) and the United Arab Emirates have provided to the Clinton Foundation 5-10 million US dollars, respectively.

Hence the project that Trump is expected to announce on May 22 next (and this is not fake news) of an Arab-Muslim alliance among the 17 Sunni leaders and the United States would not be useless.

For the time being only the Egyptian President has not accepted the proposal of this new “Islamic-Arab NATO” and the clear goal is to pool the efforts of the whole Sunni world against Daesh-Isis and the sword jihad.

Iran also believes that this new alliance is essentially targeted against Iran and the Shiite regions and this, too, is certainly not an analytical mistake.

Reverting to Trump, however, it is hard for him to survive this line of fire of false, manipulated, partially true, malicious or ambiguous news.

For the first time, a great country like the United States destabilizes itself on its own to avoid a regularly elected President managing the political platform with which he won the elections.

As far as we understand, considering the current tensions, in all Western countries the old globalist and globalizing elites want to return to power soon.

As time goes by, the mechanism that generated Brexit, the electoral success of Marine Le Pen in France and of the so-called “populists” – a sloppy and inadequate definition that is also fake news in itself, considering the profound differences existing between countries and parties – as well as the obvious electoral manipulation in Austria, makes us really think that the time of survival for globalist elites is reduced to the minimum.

Hence the desire to act quickly, in all ways and by all means.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

By David Vine*

Much outrage has been expressed in recent weeks over President Donald Trump’s invitation for a White House visit to Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, whose “war on drugs” has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings.

Criticism of Trump was especially intense given his similarly warm public support for other authoritarian rulers, like Egypt’s Abdel Fatah el-Sisi (who visited the Oval Office to much praise only weeks earlier), Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who got a congratulatory phone call from President Trump on his recent referendum victory, granting him increasingly unchecked powers), and Thailand’s Prayuth Chan-ocha (who also received a White House invitation).

But here’s the strange thing: The critics generally ignored the far more substantial and long-standing bipartisan support U.S. presidents have offered these and dozens of other repressive regimes over the decades. After all, such autocratic countries share one striking thing in common. They are among at least 45 less-than-democratic nations and territories that today host scores of U.S. military bases, from ones the size of not-so-small American towns to tiny outposts. Together, these bases are homes to tens of thousands of U.S. troops.

To ensure basing access from Central America to Africa, Asia to the Middle East, U.S. officials have repeatedly collaborated with fiercely anti-democratic regimes and militaries implicated in torture, murder, the suppression of democratic rights, the systematic oppression of women and minorities, and numerous other human rights abuses.

Forget the recent White House invitations and Trump’s public compliments. For nearly three quarters of a century, the United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in maintaining bases and troops in such repressive states. From Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have, since World War II, regularly shown a preference for maintaining bases in undemocratic and often despotic states, including Spain under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, South Korea under Park Chung-hee, Bahrain under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and Djibouti under four-term President Ismail Omar Guelleh, to name just four.

Many of the 45 present-day undemocratic U.S. base hosts qualify as fully “authoritarian regimes,” according to the Economist Democracy Index. In such cases, American installations and the troops stationed on them are effectively helping block the spread of democracy in countries like Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Niger, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

This pattern of daily support for dictatorship and repression around the world should be a national scandal in a country supposedly committed to democracy. It should trouble Americans ranging from religious conservatives and libertarians to leftists — anyone, in fact, who believes in the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. After all, one of the long-articulated justifications for maintaining military bases abroad has been that the U.S. military’s presence protects and spreads democracy.

Far from bringing democracy to these lands, however, such bases tend to provide legitimacy for and prop up undemocratic regimes of all sorts, while often interfering with genuine efforts to encourage political and democratic reform. The silencing of the critics of human rights abuses in base hosts like Bahrain, which has violently cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators since 2011, has left the United States complicit in these states’ crimes.

During the Cold War, bases in undemocratic countries were often justified as the unfortunate but necessary consequence of confronting the “communist menace” of the Soviet Union. But here’s the curious thing: In the quarter century since the Cold War ended with that empire’s implosion, few of those bases have closed. Today, while a White House visit from an autocrat may generate indignation, the presence of such installations in countries run by repressive or military rulers receives little notice at all.

Befriending Dictators

The 45 nations and territories with little or no democratic rule represent more than half of the roughly 80 countries now hosting U.S. bases (who often lack the power to ask their “guests” to leave). They are part of a historically unprecedented global network of military installations the United States has built or occupied since World War II.

Today, while there are no foreign bases in the United States, there are around 800 U.S. bases in foreign countries. That number was recently even higher, but it still almost certainly represents a record for any nation or empire in history.

More than 70 years after World War II and 64 years after the Korean War, there are, according to the Pentagon, 181 U.S. “base sites” in Germany, 122 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Hundreds more dot the planet from Aruba to Australia, Belgium to Bulgaria, Colombia to Qatar. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, civilians, and family members occupy these installations. By my conservative estimate, to maintain such a level of bases and troops abroad, U.S. taxpayers spend at least $150 billion annually — more than the budget of any government agency except the Pentagon itself.

For decades, leaders in Washington have insisted that bases abroad spread our values and democracy — and that may have been true to some extent in occupied Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. However, as base expert Catherine Lutz suggests, the subsequent historical record shows that “gaining and maintaining access for U.S. bases has often involved close collaboration with despotic governments.”

The bases in the countries whose leaders President Trump has recently lauded illustrate the broader pattern. The United States has maintained military facilities in the Philippines almost continuously since seizing that archipelago from Spain in 1898. It only granted the colony independence in 1946, conditioned on the local government’s agreement that the U.S. would retain access to more than a dozen installations there.

After independence, a succession of U.S. administrations supported two decades of Ferdinand Marcos’s autocratic rule, ensuring the continued use of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, two of the largest U.S. bases abroad. After the Filipino people finally ousted Marcos in 1986 and then made the U.S. military leave in 1991, the Pentagon quietly returned in 1996. With the help of a “visiting forces agreement” and a growing stream of military exercises and training programs, it began to set up surreptitious, small-scale bases once more.

A desire to solidify this renewed base presence, while also checking Chinese influence, undoubtedly drove Trump’s recent White House invitation to Duterte. It came despite the Filipino president’s record of joking about rape, swearing he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts just as “Hitler massacred [six] million Jews,” and bragging, “I don’t care about human rights.”

In Turkey, President Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic rule is only the latest episode in a pattern of military coups and undemocratic regimes interrupting periods of democracy. U.S. bases have, however, been a constant presence in the country since 1943. They repeatedly caused controversy and sparked protest — first throughout the 1960s and 1970s, before the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and more recently after U.S. forces began using them to launch attacks in Syria.

Although Egypt has a relatively small U.S. base presence, its military has enjoyed deep and lucrative ties with the U.S. military since the signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979. After a 2013 military coup ousted a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, the Obama administration took months to withhold some forms of military and economic aid, despite more than 1,300 killings by security forces and the arrest of more than 3,500 members of the Brotherhood. According to Human Rights Watch, “Little was said about ongoing abuses,” which have continued to this day.

In Thailand, the U.S. has maintained deep connections with the Thai military, which has carried out 12 coups since 1932. Both countries have been able to deny that they have a basing relationship of any sort, thanks to a rental agreement between a private contractor and U.S. forces at Thailand’s Utapao Naval Air Base. “Because of [contractor] Delta Golf Global,” writes journalist Robert Kaplan, “the U.S. military was here, but it was not here. After all, the Thais did no business with the U.S. Air Force. They dealt only with a private contractor.”

Elsewhere, the record is similar.

In monarchical Bahrain, which has had a U.S. military presence since 1949 and now hosts the Navy’s 5th Fleet, the Obama administration offered only the most tepid criticism of the government despite an ongoing, often violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. According to Human Rights Watch and others (including an independent commission of inquiry appointed by the Bahraini king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa), the government has been responsible for widespread abuses — including the arbitrary arrest of protesters, ill treatment during detention, torture-related deaths, and growing restrictions on freedoms of speech, association, and assembly. The Trump administration has already signaled its desire to protect the military-to-military ties of the two countries by approving a sale of F-16 fighters to Bahrain without demanding improvements in its human rights record.

And that’s typical of what base expert Chalmers Johnson once called the American “baseworld.” Research by political scientist Kent Calder confirms what’s come to be known as the “dictatorship hypothesis”: “The United States tends to support dictators [and other undemocratic regimes] in nations where it enjoys basing facilities.” Another large-scale study similarly shows that autocratic states have been “consistently attractive” as base sites. “Due to the unpredictability of elections,” it added bluntly, democratic states prove “less attractive in terms [of] sustainability and duration.”

Even within what are technically U.S. borders, democratic rule has regularly proved “less attractive” than preserving colonialism into the twenty-first century. The presence of scores of bases in Puerto Rico and the Pacific island of Guam has been a major motivation for keeping these and other U.S. “territories” — American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — in varying degrees of colonial subordination. Conveniently for military leaders, they have neither full independence nor the full democratic rights that would come with incorporation into the U.S. as states, including voting representation in Congress and the presidential vote.

Installations in at least five of Europe’s remaining colonies have proven equally attractive, as has the base that U.S. troops have forcibly occupied in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since shortly after the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Backing Dictators

Authoritarian rulers tend to be well aware of the desire of U.S. officials to maintain the status quo when it comes to bases. As a result, they often capitalize on a base presence to extract benefits or help ensure their own political survival.

The Philippines’ Marcos, former South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee, and more recently Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh have been typical in the way they used bases to extract economic assistance from Washington, which they then lavished on political allies to shore up their power.

Others have relied on such bases to bolster their international prestige and legitimacy or to justify violence against domestic political opponents. After the 1980 Kwangju massacre in which the South Korean government killed hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators, strongman General Chun Doo-hwan explicitly cited the presence of U.S. bases and troops to suggest that his actions enjoyed Washington’s support.

Whether or not that was true is still a matter of historical debate. What’s clear, however, is that American leaders have regularly muted their criticism of repressive regimes lest they imperil bases in these countries. In addition, such a presence tends to strengthen military, rather than civilian, institutions in countries because of the military-to-military ties, arms sales, and training missions that generally accompany basing agreements.

Meanwhile, opponents of repressive regimes often use the bases as a tool to rally nationalist sentiment, anger, and protest against both ruling elites and the United States. That, in turn, tends to fuel fears in Washington that a transition to democracy might lead to base eviction, often leading to a doubling down on support for undemocratic rulers. The result can be an escalating cycle of opposition and U.S.-backed repression.

Blowback

While some defend the presence of bases in undemocratic countries as necessary to deter “bad actors” and support “U.S. interests” (primarily corporate ones), backing dictators and autocrats frequently leads to harm not just for the citizens of host nations but for U.S. citizens as well.

The base build-up in the Middle East has proven the most prominent example of this. Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution, which both unfolded in 1979, the Pentagon has built up scores of bases across the Middle East at a cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. According to former West Point professor Bradley Bowman, such bases and the troops that go with them have been a “major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization.” Research has similarly revealed a correlation between the bases and al-Qaeda recruitment.

Most catastrophically, outposts in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan have helped generate and fuel the radical militancy that has spread throughout the Greater Middle East and led to terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. The presence of such bases and troops in Muslim holy lands was, after all, a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks.

With the Trump administration seeking to entrench its renewed base presence in the Philippines and the president commending Duterte and similarly authoritarian leaders in Bahrain and Egypt, Turkey and Thailand, human rights violations are likely to escalate, fueling unknown brutality and baseworld blowback for years to come.

This article was originally published in TomDispatch

*David Vine, a TomDispatch regular, is associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. His latest book is Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (the American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications. For more information, visit www.basenation.us and www.davidvine.net.

By Una Bergmane*

(FPRI) — In 2014, Russian Chanel One reported that Ukrainian officials had crucified a three year old boy. The heartbreaking story was told by a sole witness named Galina Pyshnika who presented herself as a pro-Russian refuge from Ukraine. This story was fake and subsequently debunked by Russian opposition, Ukrainian activists, and Western media. The so-called witness turned out to be a paid actress who later appeared in other Russian media horror stories about Ukrainian atrocities in completely different roles. This story is not unique—it is typical of Russian information operations. Countries such as the Baltic states, which are victims of Russian information efforts, need to develop a clearer strategy to deal with the threat.

Conflicts Of The Future Are Occurring Before Our Eyes

In 1999, political scientists John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt argued that the conflicts of the future increasingly would be about which story wins. The recent Russian aggression in Ukraine, as well as fake news and cyber hacks in the U.S. and Europe, shows the accuracy of their decades-old prediction. While Western governments debated if and how they should support Ukraine, Russian officials sought to delegitimize the Ukrainian state and deny Russian aggression.

Political and military conflicts have always been accompanied by propaganda, but the internet and the increase of global interconnectivity make the spread of anonymous rumors and fake news easier than ever. These developments are particularly worrisome for former Soviet states. Many of these states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, etc.) are geographically small and militarily weak. Their capabilities to endure political, economic, or even military standoffs with Russia directly depend on their ability to mobilize Western support. Russia’s recent online propaganda buildup aimed at Western media, elites, and public complicates this task. As the Ukraine example shows, former Soviet republics are still too often perceived as a “legitimate Russian zone of influence” and thus supposed to accept limitations of their sovereignty.

The Baltic states might seem exceptional because of their NATO membership, but in the case of a major crisis in Baltic-Russian relations, the activation of NATO’s Article V would depend on decisions made by each national government. It can be hoped—but not taken for granted—that these decisions would be fast and positive. Conflicts in 21^st century Europe are not going to be conventional; they will be hybrid wars that blend conventional and unconventional warfare, regular and irregular warfare, as well as information and cyber warfare. As the Ukrainian war shows, this type of warfare aims to create confusion in the West about the causes of the conflict and the extent of Russian involvement. Russia relies on creating competing narratives to create confusion. In the case of escalating tensions between Moscow and the Baltic capitals, Moscow would deny its involvement or even the existence of an inter-state conflict. It would be up to the governments in Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn to rebuke Russian disinformation.

What Can The Baltic States Do?

How could Russia’s small neighbor states prepare themselves for a possible crisis? What tools can they use, and what strategies should they have in place in order to be able to rapidly mobilize international support in case of such a crisis?

A wide range of measures should be taken, varying from domestic nation building to traditional diplomacy. Over the last several years, the governments of the Baltic states have done a lot in terms of domestic policies, modernization of armed forces, and foreign policy. While these achievements have been discussed elsewhere, this article proposes a discussion on how a less traditional tool—public diplomacy—can be used to shape the security environment. Over the last 25 years, institutions in the Baltic states (foreign ministries, Latvian Institute, Estonian Institute, and others) have deployed serious efforts in this field, but these activities rarely have been seen as a question of national security. Public diplomacy has traditionally been defined as state-sponsored communication with foreign populations. It often has been misperceived as either a polite term for propaganda or merely a tool for boosting the tourism industry and sharing local culture. However, the concept of soft power—the capability to attract and co-opt rather than to threaten and coerce—has highlighted the importance of long-term international image building.

For small states such as the Baltic states—whose hard power capabilities always will be limited—building an attractive national image is crucial for national security. When it comes to the projection of a national image to foreign populations, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania face a classic problem: while big powers like China or the U.S. can work on improving their international images, small states must ensure that foreigners can spot them on a map. Small states’ “invisibility” is a security threat: lack of knowledge and lack of information make space for Russian propaganda. For example, Russian propaganda efforts in Latvia about Lithuania would fail because Latvians know what Lithuania is. But Russian disinformation about Latvia might succeed in Italy, where both the public and decision makers have limited understanding about the realities of the country and its society.

Thus, public diplomacy should be seen as a long-term image building effort. The Baltic states should not seek to inform each Western citizen about their history and culture, but instead, should seek to project simple, positive, and, most importantly, relatable images. These efforts should be based on the clear understanding of what is appealing to the targeted foreign populations and focused on the creation of a sense of sameness. Public diplomacy must be seen as targeted nation branding and not as an elaborated projection of national identity. In other words, it is not the actual self-perception of the population that matters, but strategically conceived images that appeal to foreign audiences. Estonia’s strategy to brand itself as a nation of modern technologies is an example for other countries in the region. The message is focused and conveys progress and modernity that efficiently counters Russia’s narrative about fascists on its Western borders.

The Baltic states must avoid a possible crisis that would be perceived in the way that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain described the Czechoslovak conflict with Nazi Germany in 1938: “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” Russia’s neighbors’ arguments for convincing the West to support them should be made preemptively, long before a possible crisis arises. It should be based on principles, ideas, and norms that foreigners can relate to.

The Baltics’ successful drive for independence in 1989-1991 worked because it had a clear message based on international law: the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was illegal. Today, the Baltic states have the advantage of being NATO members, so they should argue that NATO’s failure to protect them would mean the end of the transatlantic alliance.

Estonia and Latvia, which each have large populations of Russian speakers, should avoid international portrayals of these communities as a fifth column. Besides alienating these groups and making them vulnerable to Russian propaganda, such interpretations could lead to the misperception of these states as failed societies. Instead, stories about the successful integration and peaceful cohabitation of ethnic communities should be shared, cutting short Russia’s accusations of ethnic discrimination. Internationally, relations with Russia should be portrayed with caution. There is a fine line between warning allies about risks and portraying the Baltics as on the edge of war. The former is necessary, but the latter can create a perception of endless conflict.

Public diplomacy cannot exist without the participation of non-state actors. Opera singers, sportsmen, and musicians of Baltic descent bring more visibility to the Baltic states than any government official ever could.

For example New Yorkers who could never name a Latvian politician are well familiar with New York Knicks player Kristaps Porzinģis or Met soprano Kristīne Opolais. The institutions in charge of public diplomacy in the Baltic states should maintain strong links with these individuals. In addition to inviting them to participate in nation branding campaigns, long-term relations should be built for allowing in a moment of crisis to rely on their support in the efforts to alert the Western public.

In all of the above-mentioned efforts, diasporas can play a crucial role because they possess both the contacts in the host societies and the first-hand knowledge about their values, traditions, perceptions, and norms.

Besides participating in long-term public policy, these communities, if they are well-organized and feel a strong attachment to their homelands, could bring tremendous support in a moment of crisis by lobbying Western decision makers, protesting, and alerting the public and the media.

Baltic lobbying in the U.S. during the Cold War and especially the mobilization during the crucial years of 1989-1991 contributed to the reestablishment of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian independence. Their lobbying to Congress mobilized U.S. lawmakers who, in turn, put considerable pressure on the president.

However, the passionate commitment to the Baltic cause that drew the post-WWII refugees and their descendants is less common among post-1991 emigrants. The wave of economic immigration did not create strong diasporas. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania must do more to maintain relations with citizens living abroad.

The Use Of Cyber Diplomacy

The Baltic states should invest in cyber diplomacy—the use of cyberspace in their communication with foreign populations. Estonia’s E-residency project, which offers a transnational digital identity issued by Estonia, is an example of successful cyber diplomacy. In addition to promoting the image of Estonia as a modern, progressive, techno-savvy, and business friendly state, it creates positive links between Estonia and citizens of other countries.

Cyber diplomacy should not be understood just as using modern means of communication; it should be considered as a crucial part of a public diplomacy strategy to project appealing and relatable national images to counter Russian propaganda. Recent reports about volunteer “elves” in Lithuania and Latvia fighting Russian “trolls” online is just one example that demonstrates the importance of civil society participation in these efforts. The state should not attempt to control these efforts, but instead to be able to coordinate and support them.

Before the first round of French presidential elections in April 2017, one of leading candidates, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, suggested that France should leave NATO. Otherwise, he argued, it might one day force France to get involved in a conflict between the Baltic states and Russia, which according to Mélenchon, have been “in conflict for thousand years.” A certain resemblance can be observed between this perception of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Chamberlain’s words about “a quarrel in a faraway country.” These fears of great wars caused by small states are often justified by the example of the conflicts in the Balkans that led the whole of Europe into the World War I. Meanwhile, other authors have made a very different historical analogy—that the Baltics states today are what West Berlin was during the Cold War: the front line of the free world. In the future, the security environment of the Baltic states will be, to a very large extent, affected by the competition between these two stories.

When it comes to the foreign policy choices affecting small states, decision makers as well as the general public are guided by images, perceptions, and interpretations. Russia’s propaganda machine is aimed at efficiently distorting these perceptions.  Baltic security depends on the capacity to build positive and relatable national images that limit the effects of Russian propaganda. No less important, Baltic public diplomacy must motivate Western decision makers and populations to support the region in moment of crisis.  Both traditional public diplomacy and cyber diplomacy should be used to achieve these goals. The Baltic states should coordinate these efforts, while involving both civil society at home and the diaspora living aboard. Forging an effective long-term public and cyber diplomacy plan must be understood as a key question of national security strategy.

About the author:
*Una Bergmane is a Baltic Sea Fellow in the FPRI Eurasia Program.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

At least 24 people have been killed and 27 others injured in an attack on a bus carrying Coptic Christians in southern Egypt, according to the Health Ministry.

The ministry’s spokesman, Khaled Megahed, said the injured are being transported to several hospitals near the city of Minya.

The bus was carrying around 45 people and was heading to Anba Samuel monastery when armed men opened fire on the vehicle, a security source said.

Yet, a church official told Al-Ahram newspaper that most of those on the bus were children as it was a regular trip for the monastery.

Ten armed men wearing an army-like outfit obstructed the bus before opening fire on its passengers, witnesses told the privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, adding that there were children among those killed.

Minya is one of few southern cities with a large population of Copts.

Egypt has seen a spate of attacks since 2013, when the army deposed Islamist president Mohammad Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader, following mass protests against his divisive rule.

Several of the attacks have targeted Christians and churches as armed groups blame them for supporting the army.

In April, 46 people were killed in two suicide bombings, claimed by Daesh “the Islamic State extremist militia”, targeting two Coptic churches on Palm Sunday in the Nile Delta city of Tanta and the coastal city of Alexandria.

The bombings prompted Egypt to declare a nationwide state of emergency for three months.

In December, 28 people were killed in a suicide attack at a chapel adjoining Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral. That attack was also claimed by Islamic State.

Egypt has the largest Christian community in the region, accounting for around 10 per cent of the country’s 93 million mostly Muslim population.

By Walid Zaki and Nehal El-Sherif, original source

A Dearborn, Michigan man, and a devout Muslim, has filed a lawsuit against the fast food chain Little Caesars, claiming he was served a pepperoni pizza containing pork rather than halal meat.

Mohamad Bazzi is seeking $100 million in damages for misrepresentation and fraud, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The Little Caesar Pizza on Schaefer Road, Dearborn is in a district that is 99 percent Muslim, according to Bazzi’s lawyer, Majed Moughni.

The pizza joint has a ‘Halal’ sign in the window, but Moughni said it also caters to patrons from Detroit, and said he has two theories.

One, either they are careless, reckless disregard for people’s religious belief and whenever it gets busy they can’t keep up with the workload and hand them the non-halal pork telling them it’s halal,” Moughni told RT.

“Two, they’ve contaminated the entire production line, making it not halal.”

The lawsuit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court, says the first incident happened March 20. Bazzi had ordered a large halal pepperoni pizza, and the receipt noted halal. After a few bites back at home, however, he and his wife realized they were eating pork. Bazzi’s wife had converted to Islam and knew what pork tasted like.

“[The] plaintiff and his wife became sick to their stomach, knowing what they had consumed was pork,” stated the complaint. “That plaintiff could not believe that he was defrauded and wondered how many other people may have been unknowingly eating pork that defendants sold as Halal.”

Eating pork is prohibited by Islam.

Bazzi filed a police report on March 23, knowing it was a crime under local and state law to defraud the consumer and mislabel meat as halal when it is not.

On May 24, Bazzi went back to the pizza restaurant and made another order, specifically asking for halal pepperoni pizza. He says the same thing happened – a pizza labeled as halal, but containing pork.

Bazzi went back to the store and confronted the manager. In a private recording from that encounter, the manager changed her story four times before admitting that she gave Bazzi pork, according to the complaint.

I think they do have halal there but it is a very busy pizza place and when they get overwhelmed with orders they just put it in the halal box and ship it out,” Moughni told RT. “The way my client explained it was there was another Muslim waiting for her order and they did the same thing to her.”

Halal requires that meat be prepared according to Islamic guidelines, such as reciting a prayer while the animal is cut.

Moughni said in order for the pizza joint to claim it is halal, there would have to be separate ovens, separate pans, separate refrigerators, and separate equipment – otherwise it is contaminated.

“You can’t advertise as ‘Halal’ and not abide by the rules, and the rules say you can’t have pork products in your pizza, it becomes non-halal.”

The lawsuit is seeking class action status as the plaintiffs legal team think there are others who “have been similarly affected…[and] relied on Defendants representation that they purchased Halal pepperoni when in fact they were sold pork pepperoni or non-Halal pizza.”

Little Caesars, which is headquartered in Michigan, issued the following statement regarding the lawsuit, according to WXYZ, Detroit.

“Little Caesars cherishes our customers from all religions and cultures, and the communities we serve are very important to us. While we can’t comment on pending litigation, we take this claim very seriously. At this time, we believe it is without merit.”

The lawsuit claims breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment and fraud. The case is against Little Caesars Pizza, Little Caesars Enterprises and the employees of the shop.

This is not the first time Moughni has been involved over claims of non-halal food labeling.

In 2011, McDonald’s was sued over claims that the fast food restaurant was selling non-halal chicken that it claimed was halal. The case was settled for $700,000.

McDonald’s removed the halal claim after the settlement.

My fellow Americans,

Each month families across the country work very, very hard to balance their budgets and to make the tough choices necessary to take care of their loved ones and to give their children opportunities they never had before. This is who we are as Americans – we take pride in leaving each new generation a better country than the one we inherited.

Yet for decades, Washington has refused to make the tough choices. As a result, the American Dream has slipped from the grasp of more and more of our people.

This has to change. We need a government that spends on the right things – the safety, security, and well-being of our people – and stops the waste and abuse of taxpayer funds, whether in America or in global projects overseas – of which, perhaps, there are too many.

My administration is laying a new foundation to build a future of economic prosperity and achieve American Greatness. The budget we are proposing will reverse economic stagnation and open the path to millions of new jobs for American workers.

We will balance the budget without making cuts in Social Security and Medicare. We will achieve our goals by doing exactly what you do in your home: setting priorities, cutting the fat, and growing new opportunities. And the big thing for me is economic growth, which is not possible without safety and security. We will grow our economy; it is growing already. It will grow faster than you’ve seen it in decades. That is why our budget reverses years of cuts to our military that have made us less safe in a more dangerous world. We are going to make sure the men and women on the front lines of freedom have the tools they need to keep us safe and totally secure.

At home, we are going to give our ICE officers – who have done an incredible job – and our Border Patrol agents – who are amazing people – everything they need to end the lawlessness once and for all.

It is our moral duty to keep our citizens safe and free, and to protect the right of every American to pursue their dreams. We don’t want MS-13 roving our streets, we’re getting rid of them by the thousands, they’re going to be out of here.

But I’m proud to tell you that the first budget we are releasing provides a firm new foundation for the safety, and also for jobs and prosperity for all Americans in the years to come.

Thank you very much. You’re going to love the end result.

On behalf of the American people, I would like to wish all Muslims a joyful Ramadan.

During this month of fasting from dawn to dusk, many Muslims in America and around the world will find meaning and inspiration in acts of charity and meditation that strengthen our communities. At its core, the spirit of Ramadan strengthens awareness of our shared obligation to reject violence, to pursue peace, and to give to those in need who are suffering from poverty or conflict.

This year, the holiday begins as the world mourns the innocent victims of barbaric terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom and Egypt, acts of depravity that are directly contrary to the spirit of Ramadan. Such acts only steel our resolve to defeat the terrorists and their perverted ideology.

On my recent visit to Saudi Arabia, I had the honor of meeting with the leaders of more than 50 Muslim nations. There, in the land of the two holiest sites in the Muslim world, we gathered to deliver together an emphatic message of partnership for the sake of peace, security, and prosperity for our countries and for the world.

I reiterate my message delivered in Riyadh: America will always stand with our partners against terrorism and the ideology that fuels it. During this month of Ramadan, let us be resolved to spare no measure so that we may ensure that future generations will be free of this scourge and able to worship and commune in peace.

I extend my best wishes to Muslims everywhere for a blessed month as you observe the Ramadan traditions of charity, fasting, and prayer. May God bless you and your families.

On the eve of his election to the House of Representatives, Montana Republican Greg Gianforte beat up Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the “Guardian” newspaper.

What prompted the violence? Jacobs had asked Gianforte for his reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s report showing that the House Republican substitute for the Affordable Care Act would result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance.

Then, in the words of a Fox News team who witnessed the brutal attack: “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. … Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken…. To be clear, at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff’s deputies.”

After the attack, Jacobs was evaluated in an ambulance at the scene and taken to Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital. Several hours later he left the hospital wearing a sling around his arm.

Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Donald Trump’s reaction? In Sicily for the G-7 summit, he praised Greg Gianforte’s election as a “great win in Montana.”

For years, conservatives warned that liberals were “defining deviancy downward” by tolerating bad social behavior.

Donald Trump is actively defining deviancy downward in American politics. He’s making America meaner.

Last year, Trump said of a protester at one of his campaign rallies: “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

In a different era, when decency was the norm, House members would not seat a thug like Gianforte in the chamber. In the age of Trump, it’s okay to beat up a reporter.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative former talk-show host in Wisconsin, says “every time something like Montana happens, Republicans adjust their standards and put an emphasis on team loyalty. They normalize and accept previously unacceptable behavior.”

Gianforte’s attack on Jacobs was shameful enough. Almost as shameful was Gianforte’s press release about what occurred, written immediately afterward by his campaign spokesman, Shane Scanlon:

“Ben Jacobs entered the office without permission, aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began asking badgering questions. Jacobs was asked to leave. After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.“

It was all a blatant lie, as confirmed by the Fox News crew that watched the whole thing. But under Trump, blatant lying is the new normal.

And a “liberal journalist” is the enemy.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, says that “by casting the press as the enemy of the American people, Donald Trump has contributed to a climate of discourse consistent with assaulting a reporter for asking an inconvenient question.”

It used to be that candidates and elected officials had a duty to answer reporters’ questions. We assumed that answering questions from the press was part of the job. We thought democracy depended on it.

But we’re now in the era of Donald Trump, who calls the press the “enemy of the American people.”

It was never the case in the United States that candidates or elected officials beat up reporters who posed questions they didn’t like. That was the kind of thing that occurred in dictatorships.

But “Trump has declared open season on journalists, and politicians and members of his Cabinet have joined the hunt.” says Lucy Dalglish, the dean of Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

More generally and menacingly, Trump has licensed the dark side of the American psyche. His hatefulness and vindictiveness have normalized a new meanness.

Since Trump came on the scene, hate crimes have soared. America has become even more polarized. Average Americans say and do things to people they disagree with that in a different time would have been unthinkable.

“I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,” says Rep. Mark Sanford, a Republican Representative from South Carolina.  “I’ve talked to a number of people about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”

This is not only dangerous for our democracy. It’s also dangerous for our society. “There is a total weirdness out there,” says Sanford. “People feel like, if the president of the United States can say anything to anybody at any time, then I guess I can too. And that is a very dangerous phenomenon.”

A president indirectly sets the norms of our society. Trump is setting them at a new low.

Bat-Hen Epstein Elias’s long article on Iranian Jews is interesting. Parts of it, in fact, are heartwarming. Yet, despite the lack of any serious evidence, the story is entirely framed in the language of fear.

Entitled, “All the Jews there live in fear that their telephones are tapped,” the story in ‘Israel Hayom’ peddles the idea that, although Iranian Jews seem generally content with their lives in Iran as an economically-privileged group, somehow, they are still afraid.

Or, perhaps, Israel needs them to be afraid, despite the fact that the Iranian Jews interviewed in the article expressed little or no fear sentiment at all.

One such character is ‘M’, who, like others asserted: “I never felt like I was being attacked because I was Jewish, or that my religious freedom was harmed.”

His narrative seems positive, if not altogether an encouraging model for co-existence.

For example, ‘M’ said: “I have a good friend, a Muslim, who takes care of me. He takes me to the doctor, and even to the movies and the park, and invites me for meals. Everyone is very good to me and helps me. Before I got sick, I had a lot of money. Medications in Iran are good, a little expensive, but they can be obtained with private insurance and government insurance.”

But then, the fear component is purposely pushed by the Israeli journalist with no clear editorial justification.

Referring to ‘M’, Elias wrote, “Like others, (‘M’) is careful when it comes to talking about the political situation, the nuclear program or the fear of an attack.”

Aside from the fact that Israel Hayom serves, along with other Israeli media, as a major platform for fear-mongering, the need to be afraid is a collective phenomenon in Israel, which it insists on imposing on Jewish communities around the world.

One could in fact argue that ‘fear’ in Israel is an official industry. It helps the government justify its military spending; it helps the military justify its wars; and it further cements the rise of rightwing, religious and ultra-nationalist parties, which now together, rule Israel.

In some way, this is an old, yet ongoing story.

When Israel was established in 1948, it called on all Jews to ‘return’ to the Jewish state, for they, allegedly, could not be safe anywhere else. While many Jewish immigrants throughout the years came to Israel seeking economic opportunities, many were compelled by fear.

That mindset has not changed at all. When militants staged several attacks in Paris in January 2015, Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on all French Jews to migrate to Israel.

“We say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters, Israel is your home and that of every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” Netanyahu said.

The statement was strongly criticized by French officials. Many were befuddled by such opportunism during one of France’s most difficult moments in many years.

But for Netanyahu, as for past and present Israeli leaders, inciting or capitalizing on Jewish fears is nothing new.

However, peddling fear is now far more sophisticated, and is deeply embedded in the relationship between the state and Israel’s Jewish population. It has been so internalized to the extent that Israel is incapable of seeing the legitimate fears of the Palestinians and is only obsessed with its own self-induced fears.

A particularly telling story was reported in Israeli media earlier this month when Israeli police officers gave a group of elementary school children a demonstration on “how to kill a Palestinian assailant and verify that he is dead.”

True, the event which took place in Ramat HaSharon on May 8 was not welcomed by all parents, but it was, nonetheless, an example of the training in fear that takes place at a very young age.

Commenting on the story, Jonathan Cook wrote, “Half of Jewish schoolchildren believe these Palestinians, one in five of the population, should not be allowed to vote in elections.”

This, then, is the desired outcome of such methodology, which is constantly fed by the state. Cook adds, “This month the defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called the minority’s representatives in parliament ‘Nazis’ and suggested they should share a similar fate.”

The use of the word ‘Nazis’ is not merely a widely inaccurate depiction, but such terminology is designed to constantly stir past fears to achieve racially-motivated political objectives.

Yes, Israelis are manipulated to be very afraid. But unlike occupied and oppressed Palestinians, the Israeli fear is self-induced, an outcome of an inherent sense of collective insecurity that is constantly fed by the government, political parties and official institutions.

Despite Israel’s massive military budget, nuclear arms and territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinians and other Arab neighbors, the sense of insecurity it engenders keeps on growing at the same rapid speed as its military adventures.

It is a vicious cycle.

When Netanyahu, for example, drew a red line in a graphic of a bomb during a speech at a United Nations General Assembly session in September 2012, he was, in essence drawing a new parameter of fear for his own society.

Yoav Litvin, a US-based Israeli doctor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, wrote convincingly on the subject.

His article entitled, “Independence on Nakba Day – Accountability and Healing as an Israeli Aggressor,” critiques the Zionist narrative, explaining how such deeply entrenched ideas of eternal victimization has led to Israel’s current state of permanent aggression and highly militarized society.

“We see that perspective represented by a long line of pro-aggression, exclusivist, expansionist and militaristic Israeli governments that instill and potentiate fear in order to control public opinion and facilitate their political and economic goals,” he wrote.

“In so doing, the Jewish victim narrative, a form of collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), sustains the level of aggression and oppression that is a part of daily life in the reality of occupation.”

Writing in the ‘Haaretz’, Daniel Bar-Tal conveys a similar sentiment. However, for Bar-Tal, the Zionist narrative is itself designed, in part, to accommodate existing beliefs pertaining to a collective Jewish experience.

Bar-Tal rites, “Societal beliefs, vis-à-vis security, in Israel are based on past experience and on information disseminated via various channels and institutions, whether with regard to the conflict with the Palestinians or to relations with other actors in the region.” But equally important, “every member of society is also exposed to the collective memory of the Jewish people, by means of social, educational and cultural institutions.”

The Zionist narrative has purposely molded ‘past experiences’ into new political objectives and an expansionist ideology to harness the perpetual support of the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere. It has convinced them that their very survival is dependent on the subjugation of Palestinians.

This vicious cycle has, thus, become an obstacle to any peace that is predicated on justice and respect for international law and human rights.

The Zionist narrative, as championed by Netanyahu and Lieberman has zero margins for inclusiveness, and for that ideology to be maintained, fear in Israel must be infused.

However, the stronghold of fear must be broken.

Litvin courageously writes: “We, as Israelis, must break the parasitic bond that Zionist propaganda has created between the Israeli/Zionist collective narrative (the state) and ourselves so that dissent becomes both legitimate and even patriotic as a means of building an inclusive and just society in Israel/Palestine.”

In fact, there can be no other way.

Columbia University dental researchers have found that frequent recreational use of cannabis–including marijuana, hashish, and hash oil–increases the risk of gum disease.

The study was published in the March issue of the Journal of Periodontology.

Periodontal (gum) disease is an inflammatory reaction to a bacterial infection below the gum line. Left untreated, gum disease can lead to receding gums and tooth loss. Longstanding periodontal disease has also been associated with a number of non-oral health issues, from preterm labor during pregnancy to heart disease.

Jaffer Shariff, DDS, MPH, a postdoctoral resident in periodontology at Columbia University School of Dental Medicine (CDM) and lead author, noticed a possible link between frequent recreational cannabis use and gum disease during his residency at a community-based dental clinic in Manhattan.

“It is well known that frequent tobacco use can increase the risk of periodontal disease, but it was surprising to see that recreational cannabis users may also be at risk,” said Dr. Shariff. “The recent spate of new recreational and medical marijuana laws could spell the beginning of a growing oral public health problem.”

Dr. Shariff and colleagues from CDM analyzed data from 1,938 U.S. adults who participated in the Centers for Disease Control’s 2011-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, administered in collaboration with the American Academy of Periodontology. Approximately 27 percent of the participants reported using cannabis one or more times for at least 12 months.

Periodontal exams focus on a patient’s gum tissue and connection to the teeth. Among other assessments, periodontists look for plaque, inflammation, bleeding, and gum recession. The clinician uses a probe to measure the space between teeth and their surrounding gum tissue.

Healthy gums fit a tooth snugly, with no more than one to three millimeters of space, known as pocket depth, between the tooth and surrounding gum tissue. Deeper pockets usually indicate presence of periodontitis.

Among the study participants, frequent recreational cannabis users had more sites with pocket depths indicative of moderate to severe periodontal disease than less frequent users.

“Even controlling for other factors linked to gum disease, such as cigarette smoking, frequent recreational cannabis smokers are twice as likely as non-frequent users to have signs of periodontal disease,” said Dr. Shariff. “While more research is needed to determine if medical marijuana has a similar impact on oral health, our study findings suggest that dental care providers should ask their patients about cannabis habits.”

Commenting on the study, Dr. Terrence J. Griffin, president of the American Academy of Periodontology, said, “At a time when the legalization of recreational and medical marijuana is increasing its use in the United States, users should be made aware of the impact that any form of cannabis can have on the health of their gums.”

Beekeepers across the United States lost 33 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2016 to April 2017, according to the latest preliminary results of an annual nationwide survey. Rates of both winter loss and summer loss–and consequently, total annual losses–improved compared with last year.

Total annual losses were the lowest since 2011-12, when the survey recorded less than 29 percent of colonies lost throughout the year. Winter losses were the lowest recorded since the survey began in 2006-07.

The survey, which asks both commercial and small-scale beekeepers to track the survival rates of their honey bee colonies, is conducted each year by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America. Survey results for this year and all previous years are publicly available on the Bee Informed website.

“While it is encouraging that losses are lower than in the past, I would stop short of calling this ‘good’ news,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership. “Colony loss of more than 30 percent over the entire year is high. It’s hard to imagine any other agricultural sector being able to stay in business with such consistently high losses.”

Beekeepers who responded to the survey lost a total of 33.2 percent of their colonies over the course of the year. This marks a decrease of 7.3 percentage points over the previous study year (2015-16), when loss rates were found to be 40.5 percent. Winter loss rates decreased from 26.9 percent in the previous winter to 21.1 percent this past winter, while summer loss rates decreased from 23.6 percent to 18.1 percent.

The researchers noted that many factors are contributing to colony losses, with parasites and diseases at the top of the list. Poor nutrition and pesticide exposure are also taking a toll, especially among commercial beekeepers. These stressors are likely to synergize with each other to compound the problem, the researchers said.

“This is a complex problem,” said Kelly Kulhanek, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who helped with the survey. “Lower losses are a great start, but it’s important to remember that 33 percent is still much higher than beekeepers deem acceptable. There is still much work to do.”

The number one culprit remains the varroa mite, a lethal parasite that can easily spread between colonies. Mite levels in colonies are of particular concern in late summer, when bees are rearing longer-lived winter bees.

In the fall months of 2016, mite levels across the country were noticeably lower in most beekeeping operations compared with past years, according to the researchers. This is likely due to increased vigilance on the part of beekeepers, a greater availability of mite control products and environmental conditions that favored the use of timely and effective mite control measures. For example, some mite control products contain essential oils that break down at high temperatures, but many parts of the country experienced relatively mild temperatures in the spring and early summer of 2016.

This is the 11th year of the winter loss survey, and the seventh year to include summer and annual losses. More than 4,900 beekeepers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia responded to this year’s survey. All told, these beekeepers manage about 13 percent of the nation’s estimated 2.78 million honey bee colonies.

The survey is part of a larger research effort to understand why honey bee colonies are in such poor health, and what can be done to manage the situation. Some crops, such as almonds, depend entirely on honey bees for pollination. Honey bees pollinate an estimated $15 billion worth of crops in the U.S. annually.

“Bees are good indicators of the health of the landscape as a whole,” said Nathalie Steinhauer, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who leads the data collection efforts for the annual survey. “Honey bees are strongly affected by the quality of their environment, including flower diversity, contaminants and pests. To keep healthy bees, you need a good environment and you need your neighbors to keep healthy bees. Honey bee health is a community matter.”

Thank god for Oren Hazan.

Without him, this would have been an exceedingly dull visit.

Israel’s cabinet ministers were lined up in the blazing sun at the foot of the airplane stairs for the official reception of President Donald Trump.

It was very hot, there was no shade, dark suits for men were obligatory. Just awful.

Many cabinet ministers did not want to attend. The Prime Minister had to compel them with dire threats.

But lo and behold, when Trump descended from the presidential plane, there was an endless line of receivers. Not only all the cabinet ministers were lined up, but also a large number of infiltrators. It was too late to remove them.

The most prominent among them was Oren Hazan. A simple first-term Member of the Knesset, with an acknowledged gift for vulgarity, he infiltrated the row of cabinet ministers. When President Trump approached his outstretched hand, Hazan produced his cellphone and started to take pictures of himself with the President, who, taken by surprise, cooperated sheepishly.

Within seconds, the photo was all over the world and on many websites. It seems to have made little impression in America itself. But Hazan was proud. It boosted his image even more than the recent court case, where it was found that there was no proof that he provided prostitutes to clients of his casino in Bulgaria.

It was as if somebody was out to prove my contention of last week, that the present Knesset was full of “parliamentary riffraff”. Oren Hazan fits that description admirably.

There were two Donald Trumps this week. One of them was touring the Middle East, being feted everywhere. The second was in Washington, where he was battered from all sides, denounced for incompetence and even threatened with impeachment in the future.

Against the background of his troubles at home, Trump’s Arabian Nights were fantastic.

His first stop was Saudi Arabia. The desert kingdom put forward its best face. The royal family, consisting of a few hundred princes (princesses do not count) looked like the realization of all of Trump’s secret dreams. He was received like a gift from Allah. Even Melania, demure and silent as usual, was allowed to be present (and that in a kingdom in which women are not allowed to drive a car.)

As usual among eastern potentates, gifts were exchanged. The gift for Trump was a 110 billion arms deal that will provide jobs for multitudes of American workers, as well as investment in American enterprises.

After his short stay, including a meeting with a large group of Arab rulers, Trump came away with tremendous enthusiasm for everything Arab.

After a two hour flight, he was in a completely different world: Israel.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have no common border. Though at one point – by the Gulf of Aqaba – only a few miles of Jordanian territory separate them, the two states could just as well exist on different planets.

Contrary to the romance of the desert kingdom, where hunting hawks are prized, horses are admired and women are kept behind closed doors, Israel is a very prosaic place. Trump quickly learned just how prosaic.

Before the airport ceremony, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had a hard time convincing his cabinet to come to the airport at all. It was a very warm day, Ben Gurion airport is an especially hot place, and wearing a heavy, dark business suit is a nightmare for Israelis.

But in the end, the honor of attending was overwhelming. Not only did all cabinet ministers attend, but quite a number of ordinary (in both senses) parliamentarians and the like infiltrated the receiving line, which must have looked endless to the esteemed guest. Hazan was just one of many, though the most colorful.

They did not just want to shake hands. Every one of them had something very important to convey. So poor Donald had to listen politely to each and every one of them reciting his historic remark, mostly about the sanctity of eternal Jerusalem.

The Minister of Police had an urgent news item for Trump: there had just been a terror attack in Tel Aviv. It appeared later, that it was an ordinary road traffic accident. Well, a police minister cannot always be well informed.

(My humble advice: on such hot days, please erect an air-conditioned tent at the airport.)

A word about The Ladies.

I presume that in her marriage contract, Melania Trump undertook to be graceful and silent on such occasions. Along the lines: look beautiful and shut up.

So she stands aloof, slim, statuesque, her profile to the cameras.

Sarah Netanyahu is the very opposite. She is not quite as sleek as Melania, and she certainly does not shut up. On the contrary, she does not stop talking. She seems to have a compulsive desire to be the center of attention in every scene.

When a microphone succeeded in capturing a snatch of her small talk, it was about painting the walls of the official residence in anticipation of this visit. Not very highbrow.

I don’t think that it is wise for Sarah’le to stand next to an international beauty queen like Melania. (Just a thought.)

It all reminded me of a book I read ages go. The first British colonial District Officer in Jerusalem, almost a hundred years ago, wrote his memoirs.

The British entered Palestine and soon issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised the Jews a national home in in the country. Even if the Declaration was a pretext for grabbing Palestine for the British Empire, the British were indeed imbued with a love for this country. They were also quite friendly to the Jews.

Not for long. The colonial officers came, met Jews and Arabs, and fell in love with the Arabs. Hosting guests is a part of Arab culture, a long-standing tradition. The British loved the Arab aristocracy.

They were much less enamored with the Zionist functionaries, mostly from Eastern Europe, who never ceased to demand and complain. They talked too much. They argued. No beautiful horses. No hawks. No noble manners.

By the end of British rule, very few British administrators were ardent Jew-lovers.

As for the political content of Trump’s visit, it was a contest of lies. Trump is a good liar. But no match for Netanyahu.

Trump spoke endlessly about Peace. Being quite ignorant of the issues, he may even have meant it. At least he put the word back on the table, after Israelis of almost all shades had erased it from their vocabulary. Israelis, even peaceniks, prefer now to speak of “separation” (which, to my mind, is opposed to the spirit of peace.)

Netanyahu loves peace, but there are things he loves more – annexation, for example. And settlements.

In one of his addresses, a sentence was hidden that, it seems, nobody noticed but me. He said that “security” in the country – meaning the right to use armed force from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River – will be exclusively in the hands of Israel. This, in simple words, means an eternal occupation, reducing the Palestinian entity to some kind of Bantustan.

Trump did not appear to notice. How could he be expected to?

Peace is not just a word. It is a political situation. Sometimes it is also a state of mind.

Trump came to Israel with the impression that the Saudi princs had just offered him a deal – Israel will free Palestine, Sunni Arabs and Israelis will become one happy family, they will fight together against bad old Shiite Iran. Wonderful.

Only Netanyahu does not dream of freeing Palestine. He does not really give a damn about far-away Iran. He wants to hold on to East Jerusalem, to the West Bank and, indirectly, to the Gaza Strip.

So Trump went home, happy and satisfied. And in a few days, all of this will be forgotten.

And we will have to solve our problems ourselves.

(EurActiv) — US President Donald Trump, fresh from scolding Europe over military spending, slammed “bad” behaviour in trade by Germany as acrimony dogged the start of annual G7 summit talks on Friday.

The controversy threatened to undermine a show of unity by the world’s richest democracies against jihadist terrorism, after 22 people were killed in the Manchester concert bombing on Monday (22 May).

Unusually for such a setpiece event, leaders gave up any pretence of papering over their divisions as they opened the two-day summit in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina, which the Italian hosts had hoped would showcase cooperation against deadly flows of illegal migration from nearby Africa.

“There is no doubt that this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” European Union President Donald Tusk said.

The meeting comes days after an eight-year-old girl was among those killed in Manchester, northwest England, by a homegrown suicide bomber. Four more of the victims were aged 14 or 15.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was issued a call for G7 countries to put more pressure on internet companies to ensure extremist content is quickly taken offline and notified to authorities.

With the Islamic State group on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, “the fight is moving from the battlefield to the internet”, May was to tell her colleagues, aides said, before flying home early to oversee the ongoing “critical” security situation in Britain.

US officials acknowledged they were expecting a difficult discussion on trade after reports that Trump had described the Germans as “bad, very bad” and vowed to stop them selling millions of cars in the United States, during a meeting with senior EU officials in Brussels on Thursday.

Also in Brussels, Trump had fired an extraordinary broadside at NATO allies for failing to pay their fair share of the transatlantic defence bill, and stopped short of endorsing the group’s guarantee of collective defence.

Both US and EU officials confirmed the outspoken president had raised the auto trade issue but sought to play down the language used, as Trump shared friendly words with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders heading into the G7 gathering.

White House economic advisor Gary Cohn said that trade would be a “big topic” overall after Trump rode to power on an “America First” platform of protectionism.

“We are going to continue to fight for what we believe is right, which is free, open and fair trade, which the president has been very clear on what that means,” Cohn said. “We will have a very robust discussion on trade.”

With May and Trump among four new faces in the G7 club, the gathering in Italy was billed as a key test of how serious the new US administration is about implementing its radical policy agenda, particularly on climate change.

Senior officials are preparing to work overtime in a bid to bridge what appear to be irreconcilable differences over Trump’s declared intention of ditching the US commitment to the landmark Paris accord on curbing carbon emissions.

Leaks row

Officials acknowledge the summit is effectively about damage limitation against a backdrop of fears among US partners that the Trump presidency could undermine the international order in place since World War II.

For Trump, the talks will be the final leg of his first presidential foray overseas.

The gruelling week-long trip briefly diverted attention from domestic concerns focused on alleged campaign collusion with Russia.

But that issue reared up again overnight as it emerged the FBI is examining his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s contacts with the Russian ambassador in connection with the probe of alleged interference in the election campaign by Moscow.

US officials had hoped the globe-trotting trip would enable Trump to position himself as a more statesmanlike figure and he enjoyed largely positive coverage on his stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and at the Vatican.

But some of that has been undone by now-viral images of the billionaire tycoon shoving his way past other leaders at a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, and by his reported comments on Germany.

North Korea ‘will be solved’

The other new face is France’s youthful president, Emmanuel Macron, who has vowed to defend the Paris climate change deal agreed in 2015.

Macron met May just before the summit and promised France would do “everything we can” to help Britain in the fight against terrorism.

But he gave short shrift to May’s request for Brexit-bound Britain and the EU to negotiate their future trading relationship at the same time as they thrash out the terms of their divorce.

Japan meanwhile was using the summit to air its concerns about North Korea. Meeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sicily, Trump bullishly promised the problem posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes “will be solved”.

The recent Manchester bombing is likely to lead to renewed media and policy focus on radicalisation and a search for a reason for it. However, this may lead to a search for a non-existent magic key rather than dealing with more complex problems.

By Paul Hedges*

In the wake of the Manchester bomb attack on 23 May 2017, it is likely that increased attention will be given to the question of why and how seemingly modern, young, Westerners become radicalised. The identified attacker is a 22-year-old, Salman Abedi, born in Manchester to refugee parents of Libyan decent.

He went to a UK university but dropped out before working in a bakery, and supported Manchester United football club. A “home grown” terrorist, he was born and brought up in the country he attacked and from the scant information we have so far, he had partially integrated but ultimately found this difficult. Indeed, his community had reported him to the police for his extremist views and he was known to security forces.

No Magic Key

A recent high profile debate saw two notable French theorists, Gilles Kepel and Oliver Roy clashing over different interpretations of contemporary extremism. In broad terms, Roy emphasises the dysfunctional individual who wishes to enact violence and finds an excuse for their internal rage. As such, for him, it is not so much about society and certainly not about Islam per se.

Rather he speaks of the “Islamicization of radicalism”. His argument is that what is happening today with Islam is comparable to ideologies that justified terrorism over the 20th century (in a European context) which were nationalist or political. For Roy, the ideology does not matter; it simply becomes a cover for violent individuals.

Kepel on the other hand, and in the French context, blames society and a radicalisation of Islam. He sees a society that is hostile to immigrants, especially Muslims, being a breeding ground for disaffected young people. This is coupled with a particular interpretation of Islam, associated with a fringe militant form of what is known as Wahhabism, which justifies terrorist violence against a hostile world (more specifically the West).

That these scholars disagree so fundamentally is, I suggest, a clue that there is not a single answer. Rather different individuals are probably drawn to acts of terror, and militant organisations, for a variety of reasons. Structural reasons in society are certainly important, making extremist narratives credible; individual psychology is also a factor as not every young immigrant becomes a killer; and, an ideology that legitimates violent action is needed.

Here, I believe, we see Kepel and Roy talking about two aspects of the same thing; as with all ideologies or worldviews (including religions) there are ways they can be used to justify pacifism and nonviolence, self-defence, or atrocities including terrorism.

Why Concept of Radicalisation is a Problem

This brings us to the question of why some (generally young) people are drawn into extremism and terrorism. Many theories, often empirically based on profiles and interviews with former extremists, exist. Marc Sageman, the American counter-terrorism specialist, has spoken about the “bunch of guys” theory which highlights that it is often a search for brotherhood (many of them are male) and group bonding which leads some to follow others who have bought into extremist ideologies.

However, this may not explain so called lone wolf attackers. Likewise, scholarship which has shown that a disproportionate number of extremist militants have been engineers, while empirically based, does not provide a catchall profile.

A problem arises when people look for the factor or special ingredient which leads to radicalisation. There are a range of individual and social factors. Further, experts such as Matthew Francis in the United Kingdom have pointed out that imagining some special formula exists called radicalisation is just wrong. Rather, we are looking at what sociologists call “socialisation”. That is to say, the way all of us learn about the norms, values, and ideals of our society.

With what we call terrorists or radicals, the socialisation they receive is simply about different norms, values, and ideals. Radicalisation is not a special system applied to make a normal person different. If it was it would presumably be easier to spot dangerous individuals. Rather, they can be engaged in the typical activities which we all are. However, from whatever source, they are engaging with a different sense of social values from the rest of society.

The potential terrorist needs a process whereby they will buy into a framework in which attacking their fellow citizens, including innocent children and bystanders, seems legitimate. All three factors of psychology, society, and ideology identified by Roy and Kepel play a part in this. However, arguing that one of these is always the most significant ignores the complexity of individuals.

Looking Forward

While a single theory explaining every aspect of terrorism or radicalisation will always be attractive, it is not helpful if the media, policy analysts, and policy makers look for a magic key. The theories of figures like Kepel, Roy, and Sageman are important, but each appears to be only part of the picture (it is a very big picture, so this is no critique of their scholarship). Likewise, we must move away from simple buzzwords like radicalisation which explain nothing in themselves, and can lead to false perceptions of the problem.

Moving forward, a holistic approach is needed: dealing with the psychology of individuals who may be at risk of being drawn to extremist ideologies; structural problems in society (including injustice, prejudice, and poverty, although terrorists can come from affluence and privilege); and refuting extremist ideologies, but also – and more importantly – developing a positive counter ideology.

No single factor, or idealised profile, will fit all terrorists or potential terrorists, and the search for, or emphasis on, this can be a problem in dealing with the complexity involved.

*Paul Hedges is Associate Professor in Interreligious Studies with the Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He maintains a blog on Interreligious Studies and related issues at: www.logosdao.wordpress.com.