By Louis Rouanet*

In early June, the failure of the Spanish bank Banco Popular seemed to work smoothly under the new European resolution rules. The relatively new Banking Union seemed to work in achieving its goal to limit moral hazard. Losses were imposed upon junior bondholders and shareholders whereas Spanish taxpayers did not pay a dime. Although there are many defects with the new resolution framework, it seemed to be a step in the right direction. This impression was short lived and died when the Italian government agreed to use €17 billion of taxpayer’s money for two failed banks, Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, in late June. Thus, Italian senior bondholders will be protected despite the philosophy of the new bail-in framework according which bondholders shoulder losses if a bank fails. Consequently, the two banks’ senior bond prices rose by more than 15% on Monday.

What is the Banking Union?

After the 2007 financial crisis and during the 2010–2012 debt crisis, the European banking sector was weakened to a considerable extent. Consequently, the European Central Bank (ECB) and national governments made an extensive use of bail-outs to stabilize the banking sector. As an unintended consequence, the liquidity and capital provided to banks meant that the financial position of both the monetary authorities and the national governments deteriorated and the incentives for banks to act prudently were distorted.

It is to address these problems that the Banking Union was constructed. The novelties introduced by this new recovery and resolution framework is supposed to ensure that banks are resolved in an orderly manner. More precisely, the plans for recovery and resolution must now be prepared ex ante, i.e., before the bank’s capital position deteriorates. To this must be added that burden-sharing in the form of a ‘bail-in’ of shareholders and creditors has become a mandatory condition for the use of dedicated resolution funds. In other words, the banking union was supposed to protect taxpayers from bank failures. As the French executive board member of the ECB, Benoît Cœuré, stated:

Ending bailouts is key not only to enhancing market discipline, but also to ensuring that those who appropriate the gains are also those who cover the losses. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that there will be no more troubled banks once the SSM is in force and supervisory responsibility is transferred to the ECB. So if the Single Supervisory Mechanism is to be effective, it needs to be complemented by a Single Resolution Mechanism to deal with non-viable banks.

The Banking Union consisted in a big policy shift from the “Geithner principle.” This was the principle followed during the 2008 crisis in the US and was defended at all costs by the former secretary of treasury and bail-out fundamentalist Timothy Geithner. Geithner stated that during a crisis, creditors of large financial institutions should not suffer any losses. Bail-ins, on the other hand, put the burden of bank resolution on bondholders, shareholders and in a last resort on large depositors. This means a limitation of moral hazard of the sort which had plagued the euro area before the crisis by creating enormous imbalances. For free-marketers, this was good news. It meant more responsibility into the system and a better pricing of risk. One worry about the new framework however was that some countries would refuse to play by the rules of the game and continue to apply the suicidal Geithner principle. This is exactly what Italy did.

Italy’s violation of the new bail-in framework

By winding up Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza at a cost up to €17 billion for the taxpayers, the Italian government broke the core principle of the banking union. The EU Commission could have saved this principle by declaring that this bail-out does not meet state aid rules but did not do so. After all, the Italian bail-out made a mockery of the new resolution framework which was supposed to limit moral hazard. But, the commission did nothing. The German conservative MEP Markus Ferber summarized it best when he said:

With this decision, the European Commission accompanies the Banking Union to its deathbed. The promise that the taxpayer will not stand in to rescue failing banks anymore is broken for good.

I am very disappointed that the Commission has approved this course of action. By doing so the Commission has massively undermined the credibility of the Banking Union. If the common set of rules governing banking resolution is so blatantly ignored, there is no point in negotiating any further on a common deposit insurance scheme.

The precondition for a working Banking Union is a common understanding of its rules. If such a basic common understanding is lacking, there is no point in further deepening the Banking Union and mutualizing risk.

Of course, big banks are perfectly happy with this decision which means they can engage in further credit expansion without the fear of bankruptcy. At the opening of markets on the Monday following the bail-outs (June 26) European banking stocks experienced a significant rise.

The new Italian bail-out exemplifies the difficulties encountered in a monetary union composed of several sovereign nations. The Italian government and the Bank of Italy have relentlessly opposed the new bail-in framework and accordingly refused to follow the philosophy of the new banking resolution framework. By choosing to resolve the failures of Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza through the use of a bail-out, the Italian government has taken a costly and dangerous route so as to preserve senior bondholders. The decision of the Italian government is, it is true, legal. As the Single Resolution Board (SRB) declared the two Italian banks to be non-systemic, their liquidation comes under Italian insolvency law. The SRB declared that:

Upon careful consideration whether resolution action is necessary and proportionate to safeguard the objectives set out in the Banking Union resolution framework, the SRB has today concluded that for these two banks, resolution action is not warranted in the public interest. In particular, neither of these banks provides critical functions, and their failure is not expected to have significant adverse impact on financial stability. As a result, the banks will be wound up under normal Italian insolvency proceedings.

But if the failure of those two banks “is not expected to have significant adverse impact on financial stability,” why then did the Italian government decided to bail them out? Clearly, the statement of the SRB contradicts the actions of the Italian government. In fact, the entire rationale behind bail-outs was that it was done to ensure that financial stability is not falling apart. Creditors and shareholders’ misjudgments, not financial stability, are what is insured by taxpayers’ money. Hence, we arrive at the comical situation where Intesa, which will benefit from €5.2 billion in subsidies for taking on Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, declares that the Veneto banks crisis would have hit the whole industry. But if Intesa is right, this means that as those banks were systemic in the first place, that this crisis resolution should have been taken care of by the SRB and that therefore Intesa should never had benefited from this subsidy.

By using a loophole in the European legislation governing bank failures, Italy completely discredited the new banking union framework. Moral hazard won’t die anytime soon. Italian banks will be able to maintain their irresponsible practices until the next crisis were Italian taxpayers will contribute once again.

The future of moral hazard in Europe

The decision made by Italy is likely to remove all the good that could have been brought about by the replacement of bail-outs by bail-ins. Only the worst traits of the Banking Union are likely to survive. Among them are the centralization of the banking resolution process at the European level and the creation of a European deposit guarantee (i.e., the third pillar of the banking union).

For some, it may appear that the banking union was doomed since the beginning because it consisted in the replacement of regulations by other regulations. But as Murray Rothbard explained, some regulations may substantially improve economic conditions in an unsustainable financial system plagued with moral hazard and fractional reserve banking.

If the alternative is between governments propping up failing banks and a bail-in framework, then bail-ins are a step in the right direction. However, the interventionist solution to maintain financial stability is profoundly unstable as the State, with the help of the central bank, can protect creditors at a relatively low cost. In other words, it is almost impossible for moral hazard to disappear if the State continues to play a massive role in the financial world.

Hence, the bail-in rules are as likely to fail — and for the same reasons — as the Peel’s Act (the Bank Charter Act of 1844). The principles underlying the Peel’s Act were globally sound but had several flaws. Among them was the idea backed by the Currency school according which a central bank must oversee the application and enforcement of the currency principle. But as Dr. Salerno writes:

[A] monopoly bank with such close ties to government would have both the incentive and influence to engineer departures from the principle during a financial panic in order to prevent a widespread bank run that would threaten its own gold reserves. … This is exactly what occurred as Peel’s Act was routinely suspended during panics, effectively guaranteeing an inflationary bailout of the banks in future crises and intensifying their inflationary propensity. Peel’s Act thus did not moderate or abolish the business cycle and, indeed, came to be viewed as an impediment to the Bank of England operating as a lender of last resort during crises. As a result, the currency principle was thoroughly discredited and the ideal of sound money was badly tarnished.

Similarly, the bail-in framework will prove to be inefficient if loopholes continue to exist and if the ECB continues to be the organization supervising the banking sector. A sound financial system can develop only if central banks are removed from the equation and if we accept without exception a separation of Bank and State.

About the author:
*Louis Rouanet is currently a student at the Paris Institute for Political Studies.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Dylan Pahman*

The city of Seattle has the highest minimum wage in the United States. While economists and policy-makers continue to debate the issue, a recent working paper from researchers at the University of Washington (UW) raises serious questions about the effectiveness of minimum wage hikes. The paper – an official study commissioned by the city of Seattle itself – examines  the second phase of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the city’s minimum from $11 to $13 per hour in 2016 with the eventual goal of $15 per hour.

In short, the study concludes that the “increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent.” The researchers explain, “The reduction in hours would cost the average employee $179 per month, while the wage increase would recoup only $54 of this loss, leaving a net loss of $125 per month (6.6%), which is sizable for a low-wage worker.” If this study holds up to scrutiny, it will show that, contrary to their intention, those who hoped to help workers at the bottom have actually made things worse.

The first phase raised Seattle’s minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 with relatively no negative effect on unemployment or hours worked. So why is the second phase different?

According to Ben Casselman and Kathryn Casteel at FiveThirtyEight, “In high-cost Seattle, not many workers earned less than $11 an hour even before the law took effect.” In my recent book, Foundations of a Free & Virtuous Society, I note that “Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland have no national minimum wages but still enjoy high standards of living.” Why don’t employers in those countries – often inaccurately assumed to be socialist – lower wages to oppressive levels? I explain that it is because,

Wages are naturally regulated by the free preferences of workers. So another way to look at it is that minimum wages aren’t bad, as long as they fall below the lowest equilibrium point. But that also would make them moot, the virtual equivalent of not having a minimum at all.

Casselman and Casteel quote MIT economist David Autor as saying, “Nobody in their right mind would say that raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour would have no effect on employment…. The question is where is the point where it becomes relevant. And apparently in Seattle, it’s around $13.” Considering the foregoing, we may be more precise: The point where minimum wages become relevant is where they are no longer below the labor market’s natural equilibrium, where supply freely meets demand.

The difference between the first and second phases of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance demonstrates this basic economic reality. Fixing prices on anything will have no effect so long as the price is below what buyers and sellers would freely agree to on their own anyway. However, when that is not the case, we end up with supply surpluses. In the case of labor, that means we have more would-be workers – i.e. unemployed persons – than jobs available at that pay rate.

This is no mere economic matter. As Casselman and Casteel note, “while experienced workers have probably benefitted from the higher wage, new entrants to the labor force, including teenagers, have probably lost out.” As I note in my book, citing Anthony Bradley’s Black and Tired, not only teenagers but “low-skilled minorities” tend to be the ones left out of the labor market due to such imprudent minimum wage hikes. There is a moral concern here as well: “The jobs lost to minimum wages are some of the most crucial in an economy.” Based on this study, youth and low-skilled minorities in Seattle will likely lack key opportunities they would have otherwise had to work their way up the social ladder by gaining needed work experience.

Of course, as Casselman and Casteel point out, this is just one study, and it is not without ambiguity. The restaurant industry doesn’t seem to have been negatively affected, for example. Furthermore, we will have to wait and see if the study passes peer review, and even then it would be just one contribution – the real test is whether other studies confirm the UW researchers’ findings. Given the basics of supply and demand, however, don’t be surprised if they do.

Yet all of this is somewhat beside the point. The study may confirm that minimum wages hurt the workers they are meant to help, but how then do we help them? If wages were already at equilibrium, how come some people had to settle for $11 per hour in high-cost Seattle?

While, of course, intentional discrimination does happen and may be a factor, it isn’t a big stretch to surmise that the struggle of low-skilled minority workers largely stems from the fact they have so few marketable skills. Doing more to promote vocational training and entrepreneurship in these communities would be a good first step, though more research may be required to determine what other barriers to entry might be holding these communities back.

All that is to say, there is a lot of work to be done for middle-class Christians eager to come alongside the working poor in our country as they seek to develop their abundant, God-given potential. People need not wait around for the state to do what they can and ought to do on their own. Many churches, ministries, and other organizations already offer job training and placement, for example. This is a good opportunity for others to emulate their successes.

Unfortunately, developing meaningful, mutually-uplifting relationships with people outside one’s own communities takes hard work. Voting for an ordinance, on the other hand, is easy. One need not even know a single low-wage worker to do that, making it all the easier to turn a blind eye to the unintended consequences of bad policy. But the UW study of the Seattle Ordinance shines a light on the dark side of minimum wages, suggesting that – though laudably trying to link poverty alleviation to work – not only do they not help, they hurt. The “Fight for $15” is a self-defeating battle Christians who value the virtue of prudence and upward economic mobility for all would do well to avoid.

About the author:
*Dylan O’Brien Pahman is assistant editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality and for Christian’s Library Press. He has a Master’s of Theological Studies in historical theology with a concentration in early Church studies from Calvin Theological Seminary. He is also a layman of the Greek Orthodox Church. dpahman@acton.org

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

Many experts and commentators describe the political process in Latin America as one of ‘alternating right and left governments’. Journalists focus on the abrupt regime changes from democratic to authoritarian; from neo-liberal to progressive programs; and from oligarchs to populists.

The financial media present the ‘right’s’ socially regressive policies and strategies as ‘reforms’, a euphemism for the re-concentration of wealth, profits and property into the hands of foreign and domestic oligarchs.

Leftwing intellectuals and journalists paint an image of socio-economic transformations under Latin America’s ‘left’ regimes where ‘the people’ take power, income is redistributed and growth flourishes.
The rise and demise of left and right regimes are typically attributed to ‘economic mismanagement, social crisis, political manipulation and erroneous strategic policies’.

Orthodox economists, under the presumption that greater profits ‘create’ the foundation for long-term stability and growth, prescribe a series of ‘structural reforms’. ‘Structures’ refer to measures and institutions, which strengthen the organization of the governing elite and their socio-economic backers.

A deeper analysis of both left and right wing perspectives shows that the basic understandings are flawed; there are fundamental misunderstandings regarding the long- term, large-scale continuity of the developmental process crossing political persuasions.

As a result, the left and right socio-economic classes and political elites exaggerate the dynamics of development while profoundly underestimating its ‘stasis’ or resistance to change.

The most striking aspect of Latin American development is not the change of regimes, but the stable continuities of the (1) class structure, (2) ownership of the strategic sectors of the economy, (3) rates of profit, (4) pattern of foreign trade and (5) principal recipients of state credit.

Viewed from this perspective, it is clear that leftwing as well as rightwing electoral victories result in mere incremental changes in the ownership of the means of production, finances and distributions. The basic structures remain intact.

Increases in progressive taxes by the left, as well as tax cuts by the right, are puny compared with the large-scale pervasive tax evasion by the elite. Massive capital flight to offshore holdings offset any increase in public revenue. Capital flight and the transfer of export earnings to overseas subsidiaries in low tax countries distort any real redistribution of income.

As a result, ‘progressive’ taxes fail to reduce real upper class income. Any increase in income for workers and salaried employees result from volatile cyclical economic shifts, which are subject to abrupt reversals undermining medium term improvements in livelihood.

For example, progressive re-distributive programs are based on the size and scope of commodity prices, which, in turn, increase or reduce consumption. This is best understood as a function of the domestic structural continuities and the volatility of global demand for agro-mineral exports. When progressive regimes face the challenge of rising unemployment, income inequalities and economic crisis, regime shift occurs with the ‘rise of the right’ exacerbating the economic crisis and social regression.

The negative indicators seen during a cyclical downturn, when a left regime is in power, become more acute with the ascendency of the right. Structural continuities persisting under both progressive and rightist regimes, and not specific policies, account for this lack of real change.

The socio-economic downturns under progressive regimes, which is usually related to decreased global commodity demand, are largely responsible for the electoral victory of succeeding right-wing regimes.

The continued socio-economic decline under rightist regimes inevitably lead to a renewed crisis, as is happening in Brazil and Argentina.

In all cases, class and economic continuities under left regimes are much more important in determining their trajectories and their short and medium-term incremental improvements. Likewise the rise and decline of rightwing regimes are based on electoral victories linked to the gross opportunism of the established oligarchical classes seeking fast gains and quick flight. Regimes may change with dizzying frequency but the state and class power remain constant.

Corruption: The Engine of Left and Right Growth

A sober review of Brazil’s corruption nexus between the PT (Lula) and the oligarchy leads to the following observations:

Inequalities are based on large-scale, long-term corruption linking new progressive leaders with traditional rightwing politicians and elite economic actors.

Coalitions or partnerships between left and right parties and leaders represent kleptocracy, not democracy.

It is clear that the greater the dependency on revenues from the extractive sector (minerals, oil and gas), the more intense the party competition, the more pervasive the corruption and the wider the web of kleptocrats.

The more intense competition between the elite and Party, the less the people have any access to the economic pie defining class society.

Corruption greases the wheels of political campaigns, elections and strategic appointments within state institutions, whether ‘progressive’ or ‘rightist’.

In other words, electoral politics and ‘free markets’ function smoothly and without turmoil when the competing parties engage in a mutually compatible coalition of corruption facilitating big business contracts.

Despite uprisings, electoral change of regimes and palace coups, this immutable system of mutually shared corruption reduces the possibility of any real working-class based transformations.

Institutionalized corruptions turns ‘dissent’ into vehicles for recycling politicos between progressives and rightists.

The more the kleptocratic regimes ‘change’ the greater the continuity of class structure and economic ownership. Plus ça change…!

While popular movements and trade unions struggle and organize, searching for alternatives, their political leaders eagerly anticipate forming elite consensus and coalitions to share public office and public loot.

Outgoing rightwing regimes leave a legacy of public debts, corruption, privatized public resources and obligations to powerful domestic and foreign bankers who control the commanding heights of the economy. The incoming leftist regimes agree to assume all the debt and obstacles and none of the assets and gains.

The political decision by left regimes to accommodate this legacy eliminates the possibility of implementing basic changes and confines their policy to incremental, symbolic gestures passing as ‘change’.

It is the left’s choice to adapt itself to the kleptocratic legacy and not their progressive ideology or working class voters, which defines the real political-economic and class character of the ‘popular regimes’.

To illustrate and document the ‘transitions’ to piece-meal adjustments forward and backwards in Latin America, it is necessary to outline the ‘political turning points’ and how they were subverted.

The Democratic Option

With the demise of the military and authoritarian regimes between the 1960’s and 1980’s, the domestic and foreign ruling classes faced the real prospects of ceding political power and losing strategic ownership and wealth. In reality, the ruling class gave up very little and gained infinitely more. Socio-economic changes were aborted: the politicos of the left and right negotiated a convenient pact with the military and business elite. The left received political office, patronage and minimal incremental changes. In exchange, the entire class and property system remained intact.

The authoritarian transition to electoral pacts precluded any democratic option. Worse, the socio-economy accommodations among foreign and domestic business elites and the upwardly mobile middle class politicos ensured the continuation of the onerous and repressive class structure.

Cooption of elected officials opened the door for deeper and more inclusive forms of corruption and broadened the net of political patronage to include trade union leaders and the increasingly ambitious operatives from the NGO sector.

The Debt Crises and the Debt Default

Business-military regimes profited from corrupt multimillion-dollar arms purchases and padded their overseas bank accounts from the high interest loans they signed with foreign and domestic bankers. Because these loans were not used for public projects, the debt should have been reneged as illegal by subsequent popular-leftist regimes. Instead, the tax-paying workers and employees were left to pay off the loans.

The illegal debts totally constrained the incoming electoral regimes, precluding policies aimed at domestic growth, including increases in investments and consumption.

Numerous investigations have demonstrated the corrupt nature of the debt process: Loans, borrowed by the Treasury, were transferred to overseas private accounts. This should have served as the legal bases to reject payments to the lenders. However, the business-military borrowers, who were responsible for the illicit debt, were exonerated by successive right-left electoral coalitions.

The left-right political pacts quickly rejected any idea of defaulting on the debt because of their eagerness to take office. The possibility of ending the onerous debt payments was shut down. Instead, these regimes adopted more austerity programs, prolonged debt payments and the intensification of the neo-liberal agenda.

The Golden Age of Rightist-Imperial Plunder: the 1990’s

The elected left-right ‘coalition’ regimes, the continued payment of illegal debt and the ruling class austerity programs quickly led to hard rightwing regimes.

Inflation, accompanying the policies of the combined popular-right ‘consensus’ governments led to the collapse of the ‘electoral left’ and the rise of the neo-liberals.

Thousands of the most lucrative banking,manufacturing,transport and extractive national industries were ‘privatized’ to foreign and domestic oligarchs, often in corrupt crony-ridden deals.

Bankers, landowners, real estate and media moguls prospered.

Meanwhile, landless peasants, industrial workers and debtors were exploited and dispossessed. Western imperial centers, led by the ‘Bill’ Clinton regime, pushed for Wall Street- brokered regional trade and investment pacts.

In the United States, the decade of the 1990’s would be celebrated as the ‘golden age’ of imperial plunder of Latin America’s agro-mineral wealth, the exploitation of its labor and the dispossession of its rural communities. A mega-wave of financial swindles and IMF-imposed ‘stabilization pacts’ wiped out the savings of millions of small business-people and salaried employees, while consolidating the political and economic power of the oligarchy.

The grossly corrupt ‘presidential troika’ of Carlos Saul Menem in Argentina, Henrique Fernando Cardoso in Brazil and Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada in Bolivia, replaced the stable demand-side economic policies, including import-substitution industrialization, with supply-side programs, emphasizing agro-mineral exports and imperial-centered integration policies.

These neo-liberal, imperial-centered, privatized politico-economic regimes lasted less than a decade, but the damage of such pillage to the national economies would last much longer.

The multiple economic imbalances and the institutionalization of large-scale entrenched business-state corruption have undermined competition, efficiency, innovation and any chance for sustained growth.

Vast outflows of profits and interest (pillage flowing to US bank accounts) have undermined production and savings needed to finance growth.

The predictable collapse of this criminal ‘new order’ of agro-mineral exports (pillage), tax evasion and the business-political kleptocracy led to sharp socio-political polarization, state repression and eventually the popular overthrow of these klepto- imperial regimes – Clinton’s ‘Golden Age Partners’.

Mass struggles arose, led by grassroots movements linking the urban unemployed, rural farm workers, the downwardly mobile public and private sector employees, bankrupt small business people and middle class debtors and mortgage holders. These broad based movements directly challenged the pillage.

The catastrophic economic consequences of the ‘neo-liberal’ imperial-centered rule led to the possibility of left regimes riding on the back of mass protest.

Popular Uprising and the Left-Business Pact

The downfall of the neo-liberal regimes of the 1990’s brought left political parties and leaders to the foreground. These emerging leaders of the ‘progressive left’ would replace the ‘old neo-liberal’ right as the new partners of the business, agro-mineral and banking elite – while the academic world celebrated the ‘rising red tide’.

The ‘new pact’ promised to preserve the power of the big business firms and the holdings of national and foreign banks. Most important, the social class hierarchy was unchanged. The ‘left’ took the reins of the kleptocratic networks to finance their own elections and facilitate the upward mobility of a rising left political and NGO elite.

The marriage of incremental reforms and populist ideology (21st century ‘revolutionary’ demagogy) with oligarchic klepto-capitalism led to both the election of leftist leaders and the demobilization of the populace. A new left political oligarchy was born to enrich itself at the public trough.

Parasitical rentiers continued to evade taxes as ‘left’ bureaucrats looked the other way. The public-private petro-swindlers stuffed the pockets of the new political leaders. The left would secure needed parliamentary votes, as well as allies from the technocratic elite, united in a common goal of rapidly plundering the public treasury.

The global commodity boom, which lasted from 2003 to 2011, fueled the left’s largess in the form of poverty programs and other minimalist measures. Business elites prospered, minimum wages increased and social expenditures, especially ‘survival baskets for the poor’ surged with great fanfare. Worldwide, left academics performed victory dances in this greatly over-rated ‘red tide’.

The left political pact with capital did not lead to the growth of new productive forces to sustain rising incomes for workers and farmers. There were no new technological inputs in the economy. Instead they mounted flashy pharaonic ‘prestige projects’ linked to corrupt contracts to crony capitalists which devoured the growing public revenues from the commodity boom. The patronage machine had never functioned more smoothly!

Predictably, the uncritical left academics celebrated these new ‘radical’ regimes while ignoring mass corruption and right-left alliances. The critics who identified the precarious nature of the regimes’ economic foundations were dismissed or ridiculed.

The collapse of the commodity boom, the growth of massive fiscal deficits, the reversal of the small consumer gains , the loss of access to cheap credit and the visible entrenched corruption within the public-private partnerships provoked mass discontent and protests.

This gave the rightwing political parties the opportunity to ‘clean house’ by ousting their erstwhile partners from the left, reverse the minimalist social pacts and bring back the ‘Golden Age of the 1990’s’. Striking a moral posture against leftist corruption, they abandoned the coalition and took power.

The Left Catastrophe: 2015-2018

In Brazil and Argentina, ‘democratic electoral’ transition meant simply that the klepto-left would be replaced by a more ‘efficient’ klepto-right. Brazilian President Dilma Roussef was ‘impeached’ by a Congress of thieves and her kleptocrat supremo Vice-President Michel Temer assumed power. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner was succeeded by Mauricio Macri.

Throughout these changes, the banking, petroleum, construction and meat- packing klepto-oligarchy manages to operate with the same mafia principles regardless of the ‘tint’ of the presidency: Lucrative contracts, captured markets and record profits continue to allow the flow of illicit payoffs to the rightwing presidents, without interruption.

Left academics have ignored the nature of the klepto-state and its pervasive networks of corruption. Many held their noses and dived right into the lie-factories, in exchange for privileged access to the mass media (publicity, talk shows, intellectual and cultural ‘round tables’, etc.), invitations to fancy gatherings at the presidential palace, speaking engagements abroad and an ever-expanding source of side-line income as professors, columnists, advisers, and publicists.

The oligarchs’ marriage of convenience with the left, and their prolonged honeymoon, was financed by million-dollar bribes to the left-right political allies. In exchange, the oligarchs received billions of dollars of lucrative state contracts.

When the Left agro-mineral model collapsed, many of their voters turned to street protests.

The oligarchs and the rightwing parties knew the time was ripe to dump the left presidents. They deftly seized total political power to further concentrate their economic wealth, property and social control over labor.

Kleptocracy in Transition: From ‘Progressive’ to Rightwing

In the last few years, the ascendant rightwing political parties and leaders have implemented their most retrograde agenda: This includes raiding pension funds, raising the retirement age and cutting the budget for social security, public education, housing and health programs. The oligarchs and the Wall Street bankers seemed too eager to strip the public corpse.

In Brazil, the rightwing alliance’s ambitious plan to seize power by ‘criminalizing’ the left may have backfired.

The right relied on the judiciary for its peaceful return to power. This began successfully with the prosecution and ouster of the left regime through the courts. However the courts did not stop there: They proceeded to investigate, arrest and jail elected politicians from the right creating a crisis of state.

Over one thousand nine hundred congress people, senators, cabinet ministers, public sector executive officers, governors and mayors from right to left have faced or are facing investigation and arrest, including the newly-imposed rightist president Michel Temer in Brazil and the mega-swindler, President of Argentina Mauricio Macri.

Initially, foreign and domestic bankers, speculators and investors, as well as the financial press celebrated the return of the right. The stock markets soared and all made ready for the grand privatizing fiesta of the public sector. When the courts continued to pursue the rightwing politicians and bureaucrats, the pervasive nature of state klepto capitalism was exposed. Members of the business elite joined their politico-partners in jail, and investors pulled out their capital. The press’ celebration of the ‘return of the free market’ faded to a whisper.

As the rightist regimes’ elected leaders went on trial, the klepto ‘market’ economies collapsed. The ‘reformist’ (regressive) business agenda, which had depended on effective presidential power linking klepto-patronage to legislation, retreated. Without their accustomed diet of corruption, elected officials fled. Judges and prosecutors investigated and undermined the authority of the new rightist regimes.

Faced with weakened and discredited presidential authority, the urban trade unions, rural social movements, students and the unemployed woke up and marched on the presidential palace.

The validity of the elections by rightist majorities has been undermined. Faced with jail for large-scale bribery and fraud, leading executives of the largest conglomerates bargained with the courts, implicating their business partners, party leaders, congress- people and cabinet ministers.

The right wing’s rapid rise and demise has sown consternation among the kleptocratic oligarchy. In just two years, the courts have done more to undermine the power of the oligarchy-business-rightist political nexus than an entire decade of leftist klepto-political rule during the celebrated ‘red tide’!

While in power, the elected left did nothing to dismantle the large-scale kleptocracy they had inherited from the previous rightist regimes of Menem, and De La Rua (Argentina), Cardoso (Brazil) and Sanchez de Losada (Bolivia). This was because they expected to take control of the network and profit from the existing system of business-political pacts.

The left regimes did not end alliances among corrupt bankers and the agro- business elite because it might undermine their own ‘development model’.

Instead, the left appointed its own pliable functionaries to key ministries to mediate and ensure co-operation within the system of klepto-profit sharing.

Only when the business-rightist pact emerged to undermine and eject the elected leftists from power, were they charged with corruption.

To avoid prosecution for business-rightist corruption, the oligarchs gladly shifted their bribe machinery from the right to the left (and vice versa).

The business-left alliance, based on corruption and demagogy, ensured the continued success of neo-liberal extractive capitalism – until the global financial crisis and the collapse of commodity prices ended the happy fiesta.

As the commodity bubble collapsed and the left regimes were forced to borrow heavily to finance their own political survival, deficit spending, corruption, economic stagnation, unemployment and rising deficits which provoked a broad array of opposing forces. These ranged from bankers and investors, to trade unions and informal workers. At no point did the left consider the alternative of fundamentally transforming the agro- mineral economies. Instead they borrowed from the international and domestic banks, slashed social programs and imposed regressive austerity programs – all to maintain their political power.

Corrupt capitalism is the only functional form of capitalism in Latin America to day. It is based on exploiting public resources and government contracts to promote ‘accumulation’. The ‘class struggle’ has been replaced by tri-partite kleptocratic alliances among business, trade unions and the state. In this era, elite deals have replaced class struggle…. temporarily.

The Return of the Class Struggle and the Demise of the Klepto-Left

Class struggle returned with the arrest and discredit of the klepto-capitalists and their klepto-left allies.
The rightists’ return to power exploded in their own faces because they reproduced and deepened kleptocratic economies. Their brazen boasts, which seemed to pronounce “all power to the biggest swindlers and political bribe takers”, quickly radicalized the populace.

Beyond the Demise of the Right: Fake and Real Alternatives

The demise of the right and its ‘premature’ departure from power are not the product of a class uprising or mass protests. The judicial system has led the way and forced their retreat.

For this reason, the replacement of the right is an open question.

The business, banking and imperial elites clearly favor a reshuffle of personalities and the trotting out of a new ‘honest face’ to pursue their rightist agenda.

An electoral ‘free-for-all’, where popular left kleptocratic and charismatic leaders emerge, is the left’s choice.

A third alternative would be the recently discredited left returning to office, crippled by ongoing investigations and tied to the old business and political alliances.

None of these ‘alternatives’ will end klepto-capitalist power and practice. None will satisfy mass discontent.

In the wings, there is always the possibility of a ‘moralizing military coup’, led by a military-business-imperial junta, to clear the streets and impose temporary stability. Such a ‘coup’ would be unable to revive economic growth and reverse the socio- economic slide into klepto-capitalism. Moreover, it would unify the unemployed kleptocratic politicos and NGO executives into a ‘peoples’ coalition of ‘democratic opposition forces promising prosperity and freedom’ to buy and sell votes and offices.

The real alternative in Latin America can only emerge and succeed if it begins by rejecting the klepto-left and turns to new ways of selecting leaders and building parties and movements. Direct action, workplace and street occupations, confrontations and the encirclement of banks and MNC headquarters and the implemention of debt and mortgage defaults – all linked to the immediate demands of workers, employees and professionals – can build the foundations of alternative power.

Democratic leadership depends on electoral politics under the control of popular constituent assemblies. They must reject corporate funding. Elected officials’ salaries must be turned over to the movements, which will pay office holders at a scale close to the wage and salaried workers they represent.

Left transformations begin with agrarian reforms and continue through the modernization of production, marketing, processing and linkages to socialized banking and credit systems. Indigenous communities should be incorporated in popular assemblies with rights and representation.

Left programs, which center on nationalizing banks and foreign trade, should build community-controlled banks and credit agencies.

Productive and commercial employment should be based on permanent jobs.

Community-based alliances with employees and workers associations must link up with multi-issue, class-based, gender and ecology movements.

Military industries should be reconverted to domestic production and linked to environmental protection.

Robust investigations and prosecution of corporate tax evasion, capital flight to tax havens by speculators and hedge funds should proceed with due speed.

Convicted bank swindlers and bribe-taking politicians should be punished with mandatory maximum sentences.

The demands and programs, tactics and strategies flowing from a growing educated work force can transform ‘free time’ into learning, leisure, family and friendships.

Local and national defense forces guarding national borders from imperial penetration, drug cartels and criminal gangs should replace the bloated security state and corrupt oligarch-linked military elite.

Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence and robotics, should reduce working hours and increase workplace safety while retaining workers to manage, monitor and innovate the productive process.

Left governments should focus on direct people-to-people diplomacy over and against the elite-led diplomatic deceptions that lead to wars.

Elite ethno-religious groups expressing loyalty to foreign powers and acting as agents against the interests of their homeland should leave and resettle in the country of their chosen loyalties.

Throughout Latin America, left corruption reflects the deep continuities of ownership by the banking, industrial, agro-mineral elites. Left regimes, which choose to link economic growth and investment to the corruption of public agencies and dubious public-private partnerships, are doomed to crisis and defeat.

The illegal enrichment of left political decision-makers results in greater social inequalities because they distribute the pillaged public funds and potential tax revenues into the accounts of private and party elites.

Costly competitive election campaigns are based on corrupt deals. Illicit contracts lead to criminal profits, which lead to the illegal flight of capital to foreign bank accounts.

There is no difference between corruption through ‘bribery’, as in Latin America, and corruption through ‘legal’ multi-billion dollar lobbies in North America: Both purchase politicians and legislation and subvert the interests of the people.

In conclusion and to re-phrase Fidel Castro: ‘You cannot build radical social democracy with dollar signs in your eyes.’ Free market capitalism can only operate through klepto-capitalist, not popular democratic, principles.

Corruption flourishes in the context of a monopolized elite mass media and high cost elections under the dictates of capital. Kleptocratic rule is fundamental to capitalism because it promotes the dispossession of small farmers and businesses and the exploitation of workers. Behind and accompanying all great fortunes are enormous and ever growing swindles involving the degeneration of public officials. Corruption is the driving force and very heart of capitalism!

Appendix

Billion-dollar corruption payoffs by just one giant Brazilian construction multi-national, Odebrecht, involved at least eleven Latin American countries, including both left and right regimes.
Brazil’s giant multi-national meat packer, JBS, and the public-private oil company, Petrobras, bribed at least a dozen regimes in Latin America.

Rightwing kleptocracies bribed by Odebrecht

Panama
Mexico
Colombia
Guatemala
Peru
Dominican Republic
Brazil (1993-2002) and (2016- ) Argentina (1990-2001,20016-) Leftwing kleptocracies Argentina (2002-2016) Venezuela (1999-2017) Ecuador (2008-2016)
Brazil (2003-2016)

The United States leads all the world’s kleptocracies in terms of bribes by lobbies, and financial swindlers and money laundering banks and illegal payoffs by oil and gas companies to politicians and officials.

Brazil’s largest oil (Petrobras), iron ore (Vale), and meat packing (JBS) multi- national corporations financed their overseas acquisitions and markets through bribes financed by low interest loans from the state development bank (BNDES).

Close to one hundred Petrobras officials and political leaders have been convicted and jailed for taking bribes from contractors and developers, including the Treasury Secretary of the ‘Workers Party’.

JBS, the worlds’ second leading beef and pork processor and leading cattle feeder, paid a 3.4 billion dollar fine because it bribed regulators to allow the shipment of contaminated meat products to the US (Walmart), China and throughout Latin America. In a deal with prosecutors, Joesley Batista, CEO of JBS released recordings of Michel Temer, Brazil’s current right-wing president, demanding bribes from the conglomerate to avoid federal prosecution.

During the rightwing Cardoso regime, the initial privatization of Vale, the world’s largest iron mine, was accomplished through grotesque bribes and money laundering.

Leftwing President Lula da Silva allowed klepto-privatization of Vale to move forward. Lula even called for more and bigger Brazilian multi-national swindles. Upon taking office in 2003, President Lula da Silva unrolled the ‘red carpet’ for the business elite, stating that “it is time for Brazilian businessmen to abandon their fear of becoming multi-national businessmen”. The newly emboldened kleptocratic Brazilian conglomerates proceeded to ‘fearlessly’ bribe their way throughout the markets of Latin America, Asia and US. Lula subsequently served as overseas emissary to promote corrupt Petrobras oil contracts with Angola, Venezuela and Ecuador.

Overcoming heavy Islamic State resistance the Syrian Democratic Forces breached the Old City of Raqqah on Monday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) officials said  Tuesday.

According to OIR, coalition forces supported the Syrian Democratic Forces advance into the most heavily fortified portion of Raqqah by opening two small gaps in the Rafiqah Wall that surrounds the Old City.

Islamic State fighters were using the historic wall as a fighting position and planted mines and improvised explosive devices at several of the breaks in the wall. Syrian Democratic Forces fighters would have been channeled through these locations and were extremely vulnerable as they were targeted with vehicle-borne IEDs and indirect fire as well as direct fire from heavy machine guns, rocket- propelled grenades and snipers as they tried to breach the Old City, the OIR said.

Conducting targeted strikes on two small portions of the wall allowed Coalition and partner forces to breach the Old City at a locations of their choosing, denied Islamic State fighters the ability to use pre-positioned mines, IED and VBIEDs, protected Syrian Democratic Forces and civilian lives, and preserved the integrity of the greatest portion of the wall. The portions targeted were 25-meter sections and will help preserve the remainder of the overall 2,500-meter wall.

“Unlike ISIS who deliberately destroyed the ruins of Palmyra and the Al-Nuri mosque and uses sites such as the Rafiqa Wall, hospitals, schools and mosques as weapons storage facilities and fighting positions, Coalition forces are making a great effort to protect civilians and preserve these sites for future generations,” said Coalition Spokesman, Col. Ryan Dillon.

“The most humane way to save the people of Raqqah is to swiftly and decisively defeat ISIS, who have terrorized the people of Raqqah for more than three years. Only this way, can the people of Raqqah be saved and city return to peace.”

By Dr Subhash Kapila

Major global flashpoints generating challenges for Indian foreign policy stretch from North Korea to the Middle East via the South China Sea disputes, China’s disruptive strategies in South Asia, Pakistan’s Islamic terrorism exports and the explosive Saudi-Iran confrontation and ultimately the external military interventions in Syria.

As an Emerged Power, India cannot be a passive spectator as these global flashpoints become incendiary and explode, and whose unintended consequences may unleash uncontrolled violence. India needs to speak out and initiate foreign policy responses supportive of those oppose or checkmate nations which flout international conventions, are defiant of global public opinion and indulge in military aggression and brinkmanship. This is only possible when the Indian foreign policy establishment engages itself in a lateral analysis of the global flashpoints and their linkages.

In the above spectrum of global flashpoints what is notable is that China stands out directly or indirectly involved in all the flashpoints that exist in the wider Indo Pacific Asia. Confronting China directly or indirectly along this entire spectrum is the United States which has and ought to have vital security stakes in Indo Pacific Asia.

In the Middle East, it is Russia that acquires more prominence as the nation in growing power-play against the United States with China in the backdrop protecting Russia’s Eastern vulnerable flanks.

In view of the above the foremost Indian foreign policy challenge would be to reset its attitudinal policy inclinations towards China and Russia. In 2017, both China and Russia have veered strongly towards Pakistan as their preferred partner in South Asia just to strategically embarrass India. Indian foreign policy establishment needs to modulate India’s policy formulations towards China and Pakistan viewing through the Pakistan-prism tilt.

India as an acknowledged Emerged Power in the Indo Pacific Asia context and with vital stakes in Middle East stability can no longer afford the historically dubious policies of Non-Alignment. India willy-nilly gets drawn into the turbulence that these global flashpoints generate globally and regionally. In essence, the management of such turbulences and India adroitly navigating through such turbulences generate significant foreign policy challenges for India.

But in achieving the above, India’s foreign policy has now to initiate strategies where Indian foreign policy does not shirk from practising ‘realpolitik, balance of power formulations and even strategic alignment in the global and regional power play in which China and Russia are in a tussle with the United States. India’s foreign policy in 2017 reflects strongly that an Indian strategic alignment has already evolved with the United States. But at times Indian foreign policy today does reflect some ambiguous or confused approaches in its stand on the global flashpoints. Or, one could state that India needs to be more unequivocal as to where it stands or positions itself on the global flashpoints outlined above.

North Korea is the prime example where India must come out strongly in stringent condemnation of its nuclear blackmail, terrorist assassinations abroad and missiles-firings coercive blackmail of South Korea and Japan. North Korea is emboldened to do so because of China’s implicit backing and now Russia too is getting on the same act. North Korea is not only a security threat to the United States, South Korea and Japan, all the nations which in 2017 India is involved in evolving security linkages. Additionally, North Korea also has China-sponsored WMD linkages with Pakistan. On all counts above, India must synchronise its foreign policy responses on North Korea with those of the United States, South Korea and Japan.

On China’s conflict escalation in the South China Sea disputes, arrogating to itself complete sovereignty over the entire South China Sea maritime expanse and in defiance of international conventions, India has stiffened its stances lately. Here again, Indian foreign policy approaches must be in intimate synchronisation with those of the United States and Japan. India has a valued strategic partnership with Vietnam—a country more critically affected by Chinese aggression. Indian foreign policy needs to reflect more stiff condemnation of China’s intransigence, military-capacity building of Vietnam and India’s participation in South China Sea joint patrols with US Navy and Japanese Navy.

China imposes heavy and critical burdens on Indian foreign policy contextually in relation to South Asia with particular reference to the China-Pakistan Axis which has jointly unleashed both external and internal security threats for Indian security. Add to this, China’s attempts to wean away from India the smaller South Asia nations. Indian foreign policy in 2017 should not hedge in terms of matching responses to China’s disruptive strategies against India matching China’s entire disruptive spectrum against India.

In South Asia, China with assistance of Pakistan, and both by their demonstrated anti-India containment stances have confirmed that that China and Pakistan now jointly in 2017 are not states adversarial to India bit also locked in incessant border confrontations. So why Indian foreign policy should consider or explore openings for dialogues with China and Pakistan. Why should India continue with its membership of China-dominated groupings like BRICS and SCO? China and Pakistan stand confirmed as India’s ‘enemy states’ and Indian foreign policy should reflect this stark reality in its formulations.

India’s foreign policy in the Middle East faces immense challenges in that regional powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are involved in intense regional power tussles with each other with potential flashpoints extending from Syria in the North to Yemen in the South. Of all these regional powers, it is Iran which is most vital for India in terms of our national security interests. India and Iran logically should have more strategic convergences than India possibly could have with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have historically been strong supporters of Pakistan and therefore Indian foreign policy is afforded little bandwidth for winning them over to be supportive of Indian interests.

Iran therefore should be the cynosure of India’s foreign policy despite occasional aberrations from Iran’s side like recent statements on Kashmir from the Supreme Leader.

The challenge for Indian foreign policy becomes complex in view of United States latest stances on Iran by the Trump Administration. Indian foreign policy faces challenges in 2017 in balancing its national security interest primacy in India-Iran relations and at the same time assuring the United States that a sound India-Iran relationship would ultimately be more contributive to US national security interest in the Middle East.

In Syria, India’s convergence of interests may coincide with those of Russia than with the United States. So there is a big dilemma for the Indian foreign policy establishment here. India cannot be on the wrong side of history by siding with the US-Saudi-Turkey combine intent on a regime-change in Syria. The foregoing, more necessitated by strategic impulses to prevent Iran-led Shia domination of the Northern Crescent, rather than by any Syrian threats to US and Saudi security.

Israel must continue to receive focussed attention from the Indian foreign policy establishment even though it may appear contradictory to Indian preference for Iran. The distinction must be that Iran has to be viewed in the regional context whereas Israel has to be viewed at a different and higher plane. Despite the public vitriolic rhetoric that flows between Iran and Israel, there are many subterranean links between the two nations. In the Middle East, Israel emerges as a foreign policy convergence between the United States and India.

Concluding, one would like to assert that in relation to global flashpoints that have the potential to flare-up explosively with unpredictable consequences for Indian security, the Indian foreign policy establishment should be well prepared with their considered responses rather than last moment knee-jerk reactions. Perspective planning cell should form an essential component of the Indian foreign policy establishment to enable long-range contingency planning.

By Dr. S.Chandrasekharan

The second phase of the local body elections went off peacefully on June 28 and the results have started coming in. The enthusiastic response of the people that included a substantial number from the plains in Provinces 1 and 5 should be a lesson to the Madhesi leaders of the RJP-N that their strategy of boycotting the elections had not worked. They have been made to look stupid by the people, to say the least. It is now for them to participate in the elections to Province No. 2 scheduled for September 18 without further protests and go along with the citizens in Terai who are eager to participate in the elections. There is now even a suggestion that the elections to the last Province could be held even earlier!

The elections were generally peaceful though there were a few incidents of bomb blasts and clashes earlier before the polling date.. The Army had been deployed heavily in the trouble prone areas and this helped in going through the elections smoothly.

Roughly, voting was for election of 15038 local representatives for 334 units in 35 districts in the provinces of 1,5 and 7. There were 62000 candidates in the fray.

Despite the voting being held in the middle of the monsoon with heavy rains in some places and in the midst of the planting season, voters turned out in large numbers and it is said that roughly there was 70.5 percent voting. It is very creditable figure and Deuba’s government should be happy about it.

Significantly, the two provinces 1 and 5 that have substantial voters from the Madhes (Terai) also averaged around 70 percent thereby indicating that the Madhesis did not pay heed to the call of some of the Terai leaders to boycott the elections. This included the districts of Rupandehi, Kapilavastu and Sunsari that consisted overwhelmingly of Terains. In fact it is said that some of the leaders of the RJP supported even indirectly their proxy candidates in the elections though officially the party could not participate!

The trend in the second phase of elections shows that the UML and the Nepali Congress are “neck and neck” with the former having a slight edge over the latter. While the UML had a very clear lead in the first phase, the second phase saw only a marginal lead.

The Terain Leaders particularly from the RJP should be now realise that the more they resist, greater will be the chances of UML sweeping the polls in the forthcoming provincial and national level polls. If the UML comes to power in a big way it is doubtful whether the Terai or the Terains would get any justice at all.

The plain truth is that people want to vote and they are not willing any more to listen to the leaders who were calling for boycott of the elctions. The second point, that needs to be borne in mind by them is that the Terai is cursed with division within as could be seen that in the second phase the groups led by Upendra Yadav and Gachhadar did go for the polls but did not fare so well as expected.

The Maoist Centre appears to have lost its sheen and except in small pockets have come a poor third. The extremist groups have been wiped out.

Buoyed up by the success of the second phase of the elections, the Election Commission has come forward with a time table for conducting the provincial and national level elections before the deadline of Jan. 12 of 2018. Since elections cannot be held in the Hill districts after December, the Commission has proposed holding the provincial level elections in end October and the national level elections by the third week of November. This is doable, provided the government moves very fast on the delimitation of the constituencies and that of the boundaries of the provinces.

The Electoral Constituencies Delimitation Commission that re aligns the constituencies before the provincial and federal elections is yet to be formed. So is the case of the Federal Commission for de limiting the boundaries of the provinces. Deuba’s government will have to work at full speed to get the two entities going. He has also to find a face-saving formula for the Terain groups that come under the umbrella group of RJP Nepal to participate in the final phase of local body elections on September 18. This is in the larger interest of the country.

A new study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology reports that in Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhoods with high levels of residential abandonment are hotspots for tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus). This environmental injustice may leave low-income urban residents more vulnerable to mosquito-borne disease.

Shannon LaDeau, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and senior author on the paper, explains, “We are interested in how land cover, microclimate, and socioeconomics influence the distribution of tiger mosquitoes. In Baltimore and other temperate cities, the interplay of these factors determines when and where mosquitoes emerge and the extent to which they pose a risk to people.”

Native to Asia, tiger mosquitoes arrived in the US in the 1980s, likely as stowaways on imported tires. They have quickly spread throughout the South and Northeast, where they thrive in cities. Unlike native mosquitoes, they feed during daylight hours and are known for living in close association with people.

Lead author Eliza Little, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University, explains, “Tiger mosquitoes are highly tolerant and can reproduce in very small pools of water; a cap of water will suffice. They are known to transmit diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, with documented cases in Asia and Europe. They also have the potential to spread Zika.”

The research team, which included scientists from the University of Maryland and Rutgers University, spent three years monitoring mosquito activity in five west Baltimore neighborhoods. Study sites spanned a gradient of low, medium, and high socioeconomic status neighborhoods. At each site, 33 blocks were identified as predominantly residential, excluding businesses, schools, and large apartment complexes.

Block-scale surveillance of mosquito breeding habitat was conducted three times during each season (in June, July, and September). Every three weeks, from May to September, adult mosquitoes were also sampled. Climate data from a NOAA station at the Maryland Science Center was used to track how rainfall influenced the development of larval mosquitoes.

To reveal how landscape features and vegetation influence mosquito prevalence, target neighborhoods were mapped using block-by-block surveys and Landsat satellite imagery. During ground surveys, researchers counted trees, abandoned buildings (officially condemned or with 148 boarded-up entry), parks, vacant lots, grassy areas, and trash with the potential to serve as breeding habitat.

High vegetation cover was found in both low and high income neighborhoods, but its impact on mosquito abundance differed. More mosquitoes were found in lower socioeconomic areas because vacant lots and abandoned buildings provide more breeding sites. Infrequent garbage removal is another issue, giving rise to semi-permanent dumping sites that attract mosquitoes.

The correlation between a neighborhood’s socioeconomic status and mosquito abundance wasn’t static. In low-income areas, rain-filled trash, abandoned and decaying properties, and overgrown lots create mosquito breeding habitat. In higher socioeconomic areas, mosquitoes are supported by residents who water their plants and lawns during the summer.

LaDeau explained, “In a city like Baltimore, hot, dry conditions should cause mosquito populations to decline. Instead, in higher income neighborhoods, residents water their yards and enable mosquito populations to survive. That said, overall, our surveys found much larger mosquito populations in lower income neighborhoods.”

“This study highlights the dual needs for personalized mosquito control on a lot-by-lot basis and public education across different socioeconomic neighborhoods to implement effective control strategies,” Little noted. Adding, “Our work can also inform urban greening strategies. There can be unintended consequences when green spaces are added to cities without first removing mosquito-sustaining containers.”

By understanding the environmental conditions that give rise to mosquito populations, researchers can better predict and manage mosquitoes in urban areas, reducing environmental injustices and protecting public health.

LaDeau concluded, “This summer, if you want to reduce mosquito numbers, one the best things you can do is reduce water-holding containers in your community. After a rainfall, do a quick survey of your yard or neighborhood and address sites where water pools. Planters, clogged gutters, neglected pet dishes and bird baths, and trash all provide great tiger mosquito breeding grounds.”

You may have experienced sleepless nights when you were anxious, stressed or too excited. Such emotions are well-known to affect wakefulness and can even cause insomnia, though the underlying mechanisms in our brain have still been unclear. Scientists in the Sleep Institute in Japan spotted neurons that play crucial roles in connecting emotions and sleep, shedding light on the future discovery of drug targets for anxiety disorder and/or sleep disorders.

Encountering predators, adapting to a novel environment or expecting a reward? These stressful or emotionally-salient situations require animals to shift their behavior to a vigilant state, altering their physiological conditions through modulation of autonomic and endocrine functions.

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a part of the extended amygdala, which is generally considered as a key player in stress response, fear and anxiety. Through projections to various brain regions including relay nuclei of the autonomic nervous system, hypothalamic regions and the central nucleus of the amygdala, the BNST controls endocrine and autonomic reactions in response to emotionally-salient stimuli, along with behavioral expression of anxiety and fear.

A group of researchers led by Takeshi Sakurai, Vice Director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS), University of Tsukuba, found that acute optogenetic excitation of GABAergic neurons in BNST during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep in mice resulted in immediate transition to a wakefulness state without the function of orexins, highly important neuropeptides for maintaining wakefulness. Notably, stimulation of the same neurons during REM sleep did not show any effects on sleep/wakefulness states.

Prolonged excitation of GABAergic neurons in BNST by a chemogenetic method evoked a longer-lasting, sustained wakefulness state, and it was abolished by administering a dual orexin receptor blocker (antagonist) DORA 22 in advance, meaning that orexins are involved in this phenomenon.

“Our study revealed a role of the BNST GABAergic system in sleep/wakefulness control, especially in shifting animals’ behavioral states from NREM sleep to wakefulness. It also provides an important insight into the pathophysiology of insomnia and the role of orexin in arousal regulation, which will hopefully lead to the first step to develop remedies for sleep disorders,” Sakurai said.

The United States strongly condemned on Tuesday North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Following the confirmation of North Korea’s launch of an ICBM missile, the US and South Korea conducted joint exercises that included the firing of ballistic missiles off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is reported to have said that the launch of the ICBM missile was a July 4th gift for the US, which the Korean Central News Agency claims was a new Hwasong-14 that is capable of hitting the “heart of the United States” with “large heavy nuclear warheads.”

The latest launch comes shortly after Beijing warned of “disastrous consequences” should the North Korean crisis spiral out of control.

“Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world,” said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

According to Tillerson, global action is required to stop a global threat.

“Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime,” Tillerson said.

Tillerson said that all nations should publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“We intend to bring North Korea’s provocative action before the UN Security Council and enact stronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable,” Tillerson said.

“The United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the end of threatening actions by North Korea. As we, along with others, have made clear, we will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea,” Tillerson said.

Tillerson said that US President Donald Trump and his national security team are continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with allies and partners.

“We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional allies and partners,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. said.

“The launch continues to demonstrate that North Korea poses a threat to the United States and our allies,” the Pentagon spokesperson said. “Together with [South Korea], we conducted a combined exercise to show our precision fire capability.”

“We remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies and to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat from North Korea,” White said. “The United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Our commitment to the defense of our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan, in the face of these threats, remains ironclad.”

Strongly commending Tuesday’s launch of a ballistic missile of possible intercontinental range by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has underscored that the country’s leadership must cease such actions and comply fully with its international obligations.

“This action is yet another brazen violation of Security Council resolutions and constitutes a dangerous escalation of the situation,” read a statement attributable to the UN chief’s Spokesperson.

“The DPRK leadership must cease further provocative actions and comply fully with its international obligations,” it added.

According to reports, the latest launch was conducted over the Sea of Japan.

In the statement, Secretary-General Guterres also underlined the importance of maintaining the unity of the international community in addressing this serious challenge.

Last month, condemning “in the strongest terms”, the DPRK’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development activities, the UN Security Council had unanimously adopted a resolution, applying existing sanctions to 14 individuals and four entities from the country.

The individuals are now subjected to travel ban and asset freeze, and the four entities subjected to asset freeze. They are listed in the annexes to the resolution.

Around forty women have been taken hostage after Boko Haram militants carried out a gruesome cross-border raid on a village in Niger. Security forces have launched an operation to find the captives.

Jihadist Boko Haram fighters attacked the Ngalewa village Sunday evening, local authorities said. Riding camels, the terrorists slit the throats of the villagers and took dozens of women hostage.

“Boko Haram elements… slit the throats of nine people… they took women, 37 women, and departed with them,” the governor of Diffa region, Laouali Mahamane Dan Dano, told state TV Tuesday.

The defense and security forces are already in pursuit, and we hope that in the coming days these women will be found and freed,” the governor added.

The governor said the village most likely became the target of the attack because of its resistance to jihadist rule.

The mayor of the district, Abba Gata Issa, confirmed the nine dead, adding, that dozens of women and children had been kidnapped from the village which lies just 50 km across the Nigerian border, TV 360 Nigeria reported.

The Nigeria-based Boko Haram is considered to be one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world, on par with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The terrorist formation has killed tens of thousands of people while displacing over two million since its insurgency campaign began in 2009.

In a 2014 raid on a secondary school in the Nigerian town of Chibok, the notorious terror group kidnapped 276 schoolgirls, most of whom are still missing.

Authorities in western Myanmar’s violence-torn Rakhine state have charged more than 500 local Muslims and deemed 1,300 others fugitives for their alleged involvement in deadly attacks on border patrolmen in the state’s three northern townships last October, Rakhine’s attorney general said on Friday.

A total of 521 people, including five children, have been detained, though one of the five died during his trial, said attorney general General U Kyauk. No details were given about what caused the boy’s death.

The trials of the other children have either been completed or are in progress, he said.

Trials of some of the adults who have been charged will be held at the courthouses in Maungdaw township and in Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, he said.

Officials did not describe the specifics charges made against them.

A shadowy militant group claiming to represent Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya community carried out raids on border guard stations in October 2016 that killed nine border patrol officers.

Afterwards, government soldiers swept into the northern Rakhine townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung to hunt down hundreds of others suspected of involvement in the raids during a four-month security operation.

During a meeting of the Rakhine parliament, state lawmaker Tun Aung Thein said three ethnic Rakhine people have been killed and five others have been missing since the attacks last October.

“We can’t investigate how many extremists and terrorists from outside we have in our country,” Tun Aung Thein said. “That’s why people have become worried. Those from villages in Maungdaw township have been moving out of their villages, while others are considering moving out.”

On high alert

Earlier last week, soldiers were put on high alert in Maungdaw following the departure of about 200 Rakhine Buddhist villagers from the township after a string of local killings.

The move came after Myanmar security forces last week killed three men while clearing a suspected Rohingya insurgent training camp in a mountain range in the Maungdaw-Buthidaung township area where tunnels, weapons, huts, rations, and training materiel were discovered during a two-day security clearance operation.

State lawmaker Maung Ohn said that though more security forces have been assigned to Maungdaw town, they are more urgently needed in the villages surrounding the town.

“If we lose the villages [to insurgents], we will lose Maungdaw too,” he said.

Rakhine state lawmaker Kyaw Zaw Oo said local authorities have asked the central government several times for additional security for the area, but their requests have not been fully met.

“We have submitted many proposals and held meetings with government authorities, but their response to this issue has been very weak,” he said.

“We don’t know if they are intentionally not responding to it or if they don’t want to take responsibility for it,” Kyaw Zaw Oo said.

“If they don’t effectively address this issue … we will face the possibility of losing our territory as we lost it in the past,” he said, in a reference to Muslim insurgents who took control of land in Rakhine decades ago.

Reported by Min Thein Aung for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

By Sharri K Hall*

On May 3, 2006, the people of San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico organized a protest against plans to build an airport that would forcibly remove thousands of people from lands they had inhabited for generations. Current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who was acting governor at the time of the State of Mexico, sent in Mexican State police to end the resistance. The Mexican State police were ill-equipped to handle the resistance so on the following day, May 4, they returned with the Federal Police, and helicopters to implement a violent operation. In the conflict that followed, two people were killed and 217 were detained, including 50 women.[i] Law enforcement officials tortured and sexually violated these women in an effort to repress and silence them.[ii] Officers allowed days to pass before victims were treated by medical professionals.[iii] Despite their trying experiences, these women refused to be silent about their experiences and, for more than a decade, spoke out against sexual victimization by law enforcement officials. Since then, public agents in Mexico have been accused of a litany of human rights violations against women including arbitrary and illegal detention, withholding of due process and judicial rights, physical abuse, and sexual torture by means of sexual assault and rape.[iv]

On May 5, 2014, Mariana Selvas, Georgina Rosales, María Patricia Romero, Norma Jiménez, Claudia Hernández, Bárbara Méndez, Ana María Velasco, Yolanda Muñoz, Cristina Sánchez, Patricia Torres, and Suhelen Cuevas[v] came together on the eighth anniversary of their plight and formed the initiative Rompiendo el Silencio (Breaking the Silence).[vi] Rompiendo el Silencio aims to expose the systemic pattern of sexual torture that women in Mexico face upon detention by law enforcement and military agents to intimidate, repress, or humiliate women into submission.[vii] The initiative intends to educate the public about the nature of sexual torture and reveal the victims by making their stories and experiences known to the outside world. Sexual torture is violence against women through which their bodies and their freedom are violated through sexual assault, rape, the introduction of objects, and physical assault. Since 2014, Rompiendo el Silencio has worked tirelessly with diplomatic institutions and human rights organizations such as the United Nations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Centro Prodh, and Amnesty International.

Despite valiant efforts from these 11 women, until recently, their voices had gone mostly unheard by Mexican local and federal governments. Ten years after the assaults took place, the IACHR finally brought the investigation before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights into the events that took place in Atenco in May 2006, calling for a much more thorough inquiry into the chain of command to ascertain who may have issued the order permitting the abuse and use of force and calling for disciplinary action against authorities who contributed to the human rights violations and the denial of justice for the women. The IACHR suggested that the State government has sought to minimize and cover up the events. Though the government in the State of Mexico has acknowledged the accusations, it has not convicted anyone in relation to these crimes. Only 21 officers of the 700 ordered to appear at the protest were charged for abuse of authority. All 21 were acquitted. A state police officer was charged for the “non-serious crime” of “libidinous acts” after forcing a victim to perform oral sex; he was also acquitted.[viii] Five doctors were charged with ignoring evidence of sexual abuse, but had their cases dismissed.[ix] Rather than prosecute the law enforcement officials involved, the State of Mexico initially prosecuted the victimized women. Five of the women were imprisoned for more than a year on arbitrary charges such as blocking traffic.[x] Additionally, in May 2017, The State Human Rights Commission of Veracruz (La Comisión Estatal de los Derechos Humanos de Veracruz, CEDHV) issued a recommendation to the Attorney General of the State of Mexico and the President of the Superior Court of Justice and the Judicial Council of Veracruz to release María del Sol Vásquez who has been illegally detained for five years for crimes that she did not commit.[xi] There is not yet evidence to suggest whether the Mexican government will heed these recommendations.

Though Rompiendo el Silencio has not been able to persuade the Mexican government to indict those involved in the crimes of May 2006, it has successfully brought national and international attention to its cause. In 2016, Amnesty International conducted thorough research into the systemic torture and ill-treatment of women by Mexican police.[xii] The report revealed that, as a result of the “war on drugs,” the 2006 San Salvador de Atenco civil unrest case was not an isolated incident, but that security forces routinely sexually abuse women in order to secure confessions and boost figures to show they are effectively tackling organized crime. The women interviewed in the report claimed they had been sexually abused or raped, and/or experienced some sort of psychological abuse during their arrest and interrogation by both state and federal officers and by military personnel.[xiii] “These women’s stories paint an utterly shocking snapshot of the level of torture against women in Mexico, even by local standards. Sexual violence used as a form of torture seems to have become a routine part of interrogations,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International, said.[xiv] The women are most often accused of participating in organized crime or drug-related offenses, presenting the accused to the media as criminals and forcing them to confess to crimes they may not have committed. Most victims come from marginalized, low income backgrounds and are unable to afford legal defense.[xv] In 2013, there were 20,000 reports of torture by law enforcement officials from both men and women in Mexico. That number doubled between 2013 and 2014. Still, there have been only 15 criminal convictions, a mere 0.000375 percent conviction rate. The report exposed that federal authorities rarely afford the women proper medical and psychological care or forensic examinations for those who claim they were ill-treated.[xvi]

The successive Mexican governments (PAN and PRI) are under heavy contention for their “war on drugs” that has left hundreds of thousands dead since 2005. The Mexican state is known for continually ignoring human rights violations and citizen security, especially in the case of women. This case has risen amidst the crisis of the Peña Nieto administration. His presidency has been largely disappointing after he had been elected on the promise to end the war on drugs, extrajudicial killings, and other related abuses of power. As such, his approval ratings sit at an all-time low of 20 percent.[xvii] Most recently, Peña Nieto had been criticized for ignoring the disappearance of 43 students in September 2014 that were allegedly kidnapped by police in Mexico City.[xviii] The Mexican government is not only allowing these heinous crimes to go unpunished, but also creating a culture where impunity is not only accepted, but expected. Women fear arrest even if they have done nothing wrong. Despite overwhelming proof that these abuses are occurring regularly, the government has almost completely ignored these women and their rights. The only safeguard for women is federal taskforce created within the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) which critics have called a “band-aid” solution that does not convict sexual perpetrators.[xix] “[In] the nine months since its establishment, it has remained dormant and has made no progress in any of the just three cases brought before it.”[xx] Most other nations have some means for private citizens to report police crimes, but Mexico has not yet created any such program. Peña Nieto only has one year left of his term. If he intends to raise his approval ratings before his exit from power, he should begin by executing policies against sexual torture.

The Peña Nieto administration needs to form a program to investigate criminal allegations of Mexican law enforcement and military personnel. The government needs to suspend and prosecute all law enforcement and military personnel accused of psychological, physical, sexual, and judicial abuses. It needs to pay reparations and offer mental and physical treatment to all victims of sexual torture by law enforcement. The government needs to implement new tactics to facilitate its “war on drugs” that are not harmful to innocent citizens. The government needs to address the machismo culture that allows male law enforcement to feel they can abuse women for their own gains. Most importantly, the government needs to address their issue of impunity and institute reform that holds state officials and law enforcement accountable for their actions. The Peña Nieto administration is unlikely to implement any of these procedures. As such, in the 2018 election cycle, Mexico must elect a president who will not ignore these women’s cause and would be willing to work with human rights organizations to end sexual torture.

*Sharri K Hall, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Clément Doleac, Senior Research Fellow, Marianna Rivera Sanchez, Extramural Contributor, and Laura Schroeder and Alexia Rauen, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[i] “México: el brutal caso de las 11 mujeres de Atenco que complica a Peña Nieto,” BBC, September 29, 2016.

[ii] Dan Moshenberg, “For the women of Atenco, today is one more day of women’s fight for justice and freedom,” Women in and Beyond the Global, September 23, 2016.

[iii] Azam Ahmed, “Police Sex Abuse Case is Bad News for Mexico’s Leaders,” The New York Times, September 22, 2016.

[iv] “Casos,” Rompiendo el Silencio, accessed June 9, 2017, http://centroprodh.org.mx/rompiendoelsilencio/.

[v] “México: el brutal caso de las 11 mujeres de Atenco que complica a Peña Nieto.”

[vi] “Rompiendo el silencio,” http://centroprodh.org.mx/rompiendoelsilencio/

[vii] “Inicio,” Rompiendo el Silencio, accessed June 9, 2017, http://centroprodh.org.mx/rompiendoelsilencio/.

[viii] “Mujeres de Atenco,” Rompiendo el Silencio, June 25, 2015.

[ix] Ahmed, “Police Sex Abuse.”

[x] Ahmed, “Police Sex Abuse.”

[xi] “CEDH en Veracruz emite recomendación por tortura, violencia sexual y retención injustificada contra María del Sol Vásquez,” Rompiendo el Silencio, May 25, 2017.

[xii] “Surviving Death: Police and Military Torture of Women in Mexico,” Amnesty International, 2016, https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/surviving-death-police-and-military-torture-of-women-in-mexico/.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Ahmed, “Police Sex Abuse.”

[xviii] Kirk Semple, “Missing Mexican Students Suffered a Night of ‘Teror,’ Investigators Say,” The New York Times, April 24, 2016.

[xix] “Mujeres,” Gobierno del Estado de México, accessed June 14, 2017, http://edomex.gob.mx/mujeres.

[xx] “Surviving Death.”

By Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

India and Israel were born as independent nations within nine months of each other in 1947 and 1948. Partition was a common feature of their creation, as modern nation states. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel and joined the United Nations. Then American President Harry S. Truman recognised the new nation on the same day.

The USA had supported the British initiative of 1917, which called for the establishment of a Jewish national home in, an initiative which became known as the Balfour Declaration (Arthur Balfour was then the British Foreign Secretary). Britain, responsible for the mandate of Palestine, until May 1948, later went on to oppose both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine. Arab and Muslim countries never reconciled to the Jewish state in the heart of Arab lands and had to struggle for recognition by the international community.

Arguing for a composite State, wherein Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish people would live side by side in a secular State, India had voted against the United Nations’ partition plan for Palestine. India’s vote was overruled by a majority vote approving the creation of Israel and Palestine as two independent States. (The Partition Plan got a two-thirds majority: the vote was 33 for and 13 against, with 10 states – including the UK – abstaining.)

Eventually, on September 17, 1950, India officially recognised the State of Israel, though India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992. It was Congress Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who approved the diplomatic opening to Israel, though it is under BJP-led governments that ties with Israel have received that extra fillip. Israel maintained a Consulate in Mumbai (the old Jewish Agency Office opened during the British Raj) which became the conduit for official exchanges and helped members of the Indian Jewish community to migrate to Israel.

Destiny and the cycle of history have brought India and Israel closer today than ever before. Israel has come a long way, leaving behind the complicated history of its creation and the turbulent years that followed which saw three Arab-Israeli wars. India too has discarded the baggage of history and the apprehension of vote-bank sensitive Indian politicians seems to have receded, as national interests of India and Israel have steadily converged over the decades. The burgeoning ties with Israel has not prevented India from reiterating its public support for the State of Palestine and exhorting both sides to negotiate a peaceful settlement, based on a two-State solution and secure borders. While this remains the official position of every Indian government, there is no hesitation in engaging with Israel publicly.

Currently, Israel is not under pressure on the Palestinian issue. Nor does it see a full-fledged Palestinian State as conducive to its long term security interest. Some issues, like the status of Jerusalem and return of refugees just cannot be solved, given the rigid positions on both sides. The current Israeli government, led by PM Benjamin Netanyahu, belongs to the hard line Likud Party in coalition with conservative Jewish parties, in no mood for any compromise. With the West Asian region torn apart by civil wars raging in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the rise of “Daesh” or the Islamic State, international attention has been deflected away from the Palestinian issue. Israel, therefore, is under minimal international pressure to reach any compromise with the Palestinians.

The only pressure that counts on Israel is American pressure and the Israelis have successfully neutralised pressure from the outgoing Obama government. The Trump Presidency will be aggressively pro-Israel. The Palestinians are also hopelessly divided between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas in Gaza. The turmoil in the region and the acute rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has forced a convergence of interest between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Hence, Arab hostility towards Israel has mitigated somewhat, as geo-strategic competition between regional powers has grown.

The recent visit of Israeli President Reuvan Rivlin to India, last November, marks the maturing of India-Israel ties that have gradually blossomed, over the years. India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Israel in January 2016 and there has been an increase in the frequency of high level visits between the two countries, after the PM Modi’s government took office. It is widely expected that PM Modi may undertake the historic first visit by an Indian PM to Israel in 2017, when the two countries celebrate 25 years of diplomatic ties.

Israel, has on the other hand, has never wavered in its conviction, since the era of its first PM David Ben Gurion that India and Israel will ultimately be close friends. Ben Gurion and Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru exchanged correspondence regularly. Recognising that India’s support would be crucial to win support of other nations, as the process of de-colonisation gathered momentum and new independent States emerged in Asia and Africa, Israel worked overtime to convince a skeptical India to recognise the fledgling Jewish State. The Israeli leadership even roped in Albert Einstein, arguably the most famous member of the global Jewish community, to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru. Even Einstein could not convince Nehru, despite the latter’s deep admiration for the great scientist.

The growing reality today is that India-Israel ties have expanded steadily, encompassing sensitive areas like High Technology products, Defence equipment, Security, Intelligence, Agriculture, Water Management, Pharmaceuticals etc. Joint production and development of key defence items has emerged as an important domain of cooperation. Israel is today the 3rd largest source of key defence equipment for India. Israel has doggedly pursued its courting of India over the years, particularly at times when India needed critical defence supplies during conflicts with Pakistan, when other sources of supplies were not available quickly.

While India has reciprocated, she has tried to keep these growing ties off the radar screen. The reasons remain the same – ties with Arab and Islamic countries. There are, however, continuing worries about the stalled Free Trade Agreement, supply of Israeli armaments to China, boorish and arrogant behaviour by some Israeli tourists in India. Today, however, bilateral ties are no longer hostage to ties with other. Ties with Israel have broad bipartisan support in Indian politics. India’s dilemma becomes more acute when Israel cracks down on Palestinians. Israel’s iron-fist approach to Palestinian violence and confiscation of their lands promotes sympathy in India and anti-Israel feelings among Indian Muslims who are quick to demonstrate their sympathy for Palestinians. Strangely, Indian Muslims remain silent, when Hindus are regularly oppressed and persecuted in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Closer ties with Israel has gone hand in hand with closer ties with Iran and the Arab countries of the Gulf. Regular exchange of high level visits led to the decision to invite the UAE Crown Prince as the Chief Guest for India’s Republic Day in 2017. PM Modi sought out and met Israeli PM Netanyahu, during his visits abroad for multilateral meetings. There is no either/or choice and India will pursue closer ties with the Arab/Islamic countries and Israel. There is no pressure on India to make this choice. While Presidential visits have occurred, an Israeli PM has visited India. But no Indian PM has ever visited Israel. The stage is being set for PM Modi to make a historic visit to Israel, sometime in 2017 and become the first Indian PM to break this jinx.

A new partnership is taking shape with slow, but determined steps taken by Turkey and Sri Lanka. While one cannot talk about a very intimate relationship between the two countries, both political and economic relations are increasingly gaining strength.

It is also necessary to indicate that at this point, both sides express a strong will to develop bilateral relations. In this vein, the Department of International Relations of the Middle East Technical University and the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Ankara held a joint panel entitled “Turks and Sri Lankans: Through Historical Links to the Future” on June 19, 2017, thus providing an opportunity to comprehensively assess Turkey-Sri-Lanka relations.

Turkey-Sri Lanka relations have a deep history dating back to the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire opened its first diplomatic representative to the British-ruled Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in 1864. The Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II sent the imperial ship (Ertugrul) to Japan, the ship was docked in Colombo on November 1, 1889 for its logistical needs. The Turkish officials and crew formed good relations with local community and more than 200 thousand Sri Lankans visited the Ertugrul frigate. The Turkish honorary consulate had served until 1915, the year that the Ottoman Empire participated to the World War I against the British Empire.

Just after the end of the Second World War, Ankara had set up diplomatic relations with Colombo on February 4, 1948 after Sri Lanka gained its independence. However, the revitalizing of relations between Turkey and Sri Lanka is a very recent process. Whilst Sri Lanka had opened its Ankara Embassy in 2012, Turkey opened the Colombo Embassy in 2013.

The mutual senior level visits conducted between the two countries are rare. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranashinghe Premedasa had conducted the first senior level visit to Turkey in May 1986 upon an invitation of his Turkish counterpart, Turgut Ozal. The two leaders discussed how to build up political and economic relations between Turkey and Sri Lanka. Later, Turkey decided to open an embassy in Colombo in 1987, but the decision could not be implemented due to financial shortcomings of the Turkish government at the time. After 17 years of this visit, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a visit to Sri Lanka in December 2004 in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster hit to South and Southeast Asian nations. In return, President Mahinda Rajapaksa made an official visit to Turkey in 2008.

Bilateral trade relations also started to flourish throughout the 2010s. Economic relations, starting with a trade volume of $17 million in 1990, reached their highest volume at $188 million in 2010. Yet in 2016, the bilateral trade volume declined to $157 million. In 2016, Turkey imported merchandise worth $105 million from Sri Lanka while it could only export goods worth $52 million to its counterpart.

Turkey and Sri Lanka could undertake joint enterprises in the regions and sectors they have a competitive advantage. For example, Turkish companies are placed in an advantaged position in Eurasia and Africa in industries such as construction, textiles, agricultural production and food security. Sri Lanka is also emerging as an investment and production hub for South Asia.

Another area for cooperation between the two countries is tourism. Turkey hosts some of the best hotel chains in Europe and has gained a considerable experience regarding its facilities and its tourism policies. In this context Turkey is a desirable partner both with regards to its tourism industry and with regards to Turkish tourists. On the other hand, Sri Lanka carries an important tourism potential and needs to increase both the number of touristic facilities inside the country and the quality of service in its facilities. Turkish and Sri Lankan companies could cooperate in these fields including jointly setting up and managing facilities.

One of the most pressing priorities in terms of bilateral relations is cooperation in the field of education. This is because it would be difficult to further strengthen relations without mutual constituent bases who are acquainted with one another. Currently there exists no a cooperation agreement or exchange programs between Turkish and Sri Lankan universities. At this stage, it is necessary to increase mutual student and academic exchange programs. Also, there are no institutions instructing in Sinhalese and Tamil in Turkey and vice-versa. It is also important to set up think tanks that would conduct research on possible opportunities for political, economic and cultural cooperation between Turkey and Sri Lanka.

There are some opportunities to develop the Turkish- Sri Lankan relations in the multilateral framework. Firstly, a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Turkey and Sri Lanka participates in some of the meetings and activities that are carried out by the group. Therefore, the SCO can serve as a leverage as far as the introduction of a joint regional policy by Turkey and Sri Lanka is concerned. With the accession of India and Pakistan in 2017, the SCO now turns to an Asian organization from the Eurasian grouping in the initial stage.

Secondly, China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative (BRI) shines out another major opportunity that Sri Lanka and Turkey need to seize upon if they are to realize economic integration on the bilateral level and beyond. Since its initial announcement, this initiative has deeply resonated with both the region and the wider globe. It is both in terms of their financing and the vast geographical area they are envisaged to cover that the set of projects as designed to form the backbone of BRI have increasingly become an object of intense discussion. Within the BRI, Turkey is a part of overland Silk Road in the Eurasian landmass, while Sri Lanka is a part of Maritime Silk Road. At this Juncture, Turkey and Sri Lanka should develop alternative solutions to integrate the two countries within the BRI and urge China and other regional partners to support the idea.

Finally, there is the need for a strategic roadmap with regards to developing the relations between Turkey and Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is necessary for Turkish and Sri Lankan decision makers to draw a strategic roadmap based on opportunities for cooperation and existing problems.

*Dr. Selcuk Colakoglu, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Turkish Center for Asia-Pacific Studies. scolakoglu@gmail.com

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin presented on Tuesday the Order of St Andrew the Apostle to President of China Xi Jinping. The ceremony was held in the St Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

According to the Kremlin, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle is awarded to prominent statesmen and public figures and representatives of science, culture, the arts and various industries for their exceptional services in promoting the prosperity, greatness and glory of Russia. The order can also be awarded to foreign heads of state for outstanding services to Russia.

China’s President Xi Jinping is in Russia on an official visit at the invitation of Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at the presentation, Putin said that it was, “a great honor to present the highest order of the Russian Federation – the Order of St Andrew the Apostle – to our dear friend, President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping.”

Putin said that the award was in recognition of Xi Jinping’s special services to the development of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between the two countries and also to the strengthening of friendship between Russia and China.

“Mr Xi Jinping, my dear friend. You have always been a consistent advocate of close cooperation between Russia and China based on equality, trust, openness and respect for one another’s interests. Evidence of this attitude is the fact that Russia was the first foreign country you visited as the leader of China in 2013. Such friendly gestures are worth a great deal. We know this very well and appreciate it,” Putin said.

According to Putin the Russian-Chinese partnership has become even stronger and continues to develop intensively, especially in the area of major bilateral projects in trade, the economy, defence, military technology and culture.

“Mr President, I wholeheartedly wish all the best, success, health and well-being to you and peace, stability and prosperity to the friendly Chinese people,” Putin said.

Responding to the presentation, Xi Jinping said, “The President has bestowed the Order of St Andrew the Apostle on me. This is a great honor. I see this not only as a personal honor but also as evidence of our Russian partners’ attention to the development of Chinese-Russian relations and also as proof of the feeling of sincere friendship the Russian people have for the people of China. I would like to use this occasion to express my gratitude to President Putin personally and to the friendly Russian people.”

Xi Jinping said that this is probably the best period in the history of Chinese-Russian comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation.

“Our countries are working in the spirit of equality and trust, mutual support, prosperity and centuries-long friendship to strengthen mutual political trust and to promote the alignment of the Belt and Road initiative and the EAEU,” Xi Jinping said. “By closely coordinating their actions on the international stage, the two sides are promoting their individual development and mutual prosperity. This provides a vital impetus and adds positive energy to the maintenance of peace and stability on the planet.”

A Qatari refusal to bow to the dictate of its larger neighbours is a case study of the place of small states in international relations that is unfolding as a Saudi-UAE-led alliance prepares to tighten the noose around the Gulf state’s neck with likely new sanctions intended to strangle it financially.

No doubt, small states are watching closely as the crisis in the Gulf enters a new phase with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt gathering in Cairo to formulate a response to Qatar’s refusal to accept a set of 13 demands that would undermine its sovereignty and humiliate its emir.

A Saudi-UAE deadline for a Qatari response elapsed on Monday. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that the demands are non-negotiable. The Saudi-UAE-led alliance demanded that Qatar halt support for militants and Islamists, close a Turkish military base in the Gulf state, lower its relations with Iran, and shutter Qatar-sponsored media, including the controversial Al Jazeera television network.

Qatar’s presumed rejection, delivered to mediator Kuwait, has not been made public but is likely to have been couched in a willingness to negotiate with its detractors based on a refusal to compromise its sovereignty and right to chart an independent course.

The response is certain to take the Gulf crisis to the next level with new sanctions intended to cripple the Qatari economy. A month into the crisis, Qatar has demonstrated that it can sustain the cutting of diplomatic relations and an economic boycott imposed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and a score of financially and economically dependent Arab, African and Asian nations, many of them small states.

While the jury is out as the Gulf crisis unfolds, one lesson is already clear for small states: Qatar, unlike most small states, has so far on the back of its oil and gas export revenues, had the financial muscle to counter the boycott.

“The lesson learnt is that, at the end of the day, a small country must develop the capacity to defend itself. It cannot depend on others to do so,” said prominent Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh, who is chairman of the board of governors of the Centre for International Law at National University of Singapore. Heeding Mr. Koh’s analysis, has already started to move towards self-sufficiency in dairy products, a mainstay of past imports from Saudi Arabia.

In circumventing the boycott, Qatar is aided by the fact that inter-Gulf trade accounts for less than ten percent of all the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GGC) trade. The GCC groups the region’s monarchies, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain.

“Trade except for food and construction materials is low. The (Qatari) government can intervene as importer and price regulator,” said Khalid al-Khater, the Qatari Central Banks’s director of research and monetary policy.

Cornelia Meyer, an economist and energy expert, who is frequently interviewed by Al Jazeera, argued that Qatar had so far responded to the crisis adequately. “”Hunker down, let’s make sure we can feed people, let’s make sure we can still export LNG,” Ms. Meyer told the network’s Newsgrid program.

So far, the Saudi-UAE-led boycott has hit Qatar in three areas. The closure of Qatar’s only land border with Saudi Arabia has forced it to secure food and water supplies from alternative sources in Turkey, Iran, India and Oman. The same is true for construction materials.

Qatar Airways has had to absorb higher fuel costs and longer flight times as a result of the closure of Saudi, UAE and Bahrain airspace to flights in an out of Doha. Finally, Oman and India serve as alternative ports for Qatar in- and out-bound vessels because of the closure of the three states’ harbours to Qatari shipping.

Qatar has so far been able to easily shoulder the cost of circumventing the boycott. The next round of what is likely to be primarily financial sanctions is certain to be costlier but analysts and financial institutions believe that Qatar will be able to sustain the blow.

Speaking to CNN, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said the next round would not involve a “big bang” but rather a gradual “turning of financial screws.”

The Saudi-UAE-led alliance could announce as early as Wednesday at the gathering of foreign ministers a withdrawal of their deposits from Qatar’s central and commercial banks, the revocation of licenses of Qatari banks in their respective countries, and a divestment of Qatari investments in airlines, telecommunications, retail and real estate.

International ratings agency Standard& Poor (S&P) reported that Qatari banks were strong enough to survive a withdrawal of all Gulf deposits as well as a quarter of the remaining foreign funds the banks keep.

Deposits and other funding sources from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, represent about eight percent of total liabilities of Qatari lenders or $20 billion, S&P said. It said that in a worst-case scenario, only two of Qatar’s 18 lenders would have to dip into their investment securities portfolio.

Based on scenarios it ran, S&P said that “the results show the rated Qatari banks to be in a decent position, on a stand-alone basis, to face a significant reduction of external funding. Even assuming a 20% haircut on the value of those investment portfolios, the banks should be able to continue operating without requiring the intervention of the Central Bank of Qatar.”

Much like with its response to the Saudi-UAE demands, Qatar has refrained from responding in kind. Similarly, the UAE has been careful to exempt from the boycott Qatari energy supplies, which would hit hard Dubai that relies on Qatari natural gas for 40 percent of its need. The question is whether it will continue to do so as the noose tightens.

As the Gulf crisis escalates, mediators are likely to find the crafting of formulas that allow both sides of the divide to save face challenging. Ultimately, the key is likely to be reciprocity, a principle that Saudi Arabia and the UAE will probably find the most difficult to swallow.

Mr. Gargash predicted that a resolution of the crisis could involve putting monitors from the US Treasury and European financial authorities in the Qatari finance ministry and central bank to ensure that no funds flow from the Gulf state to terrorist groups.

Getting both parties to agree on this is likely to be complicated by a lack of agreement on who is a terrorist and a probable Qatari insistence that the United States and Europe also monitor financial flows in Saudi Arabia and UAE.

Qatar is certain to note that Saudi Arabia has also been accused of funding militants, most recently in Britain. Prime Minister Teresa May is under fire for refusing to publish a report on foreign funding of extremism in the UK that allegedly implicates the kingdom.

A formula floated to address the Saudi-UAE demand that Al Jazeera be shuttered is likely to be equally difficult. The proposed compromise would involve holding Al Jazeera Arabic to the same standards on which Al Jazeera English, widely viewed as a highly professional journalistic product, operates. The formula would uphold the principle of freedom of the media and expression, but fall short of the Saudi-UAE aim of censoring all critical voices.

How the battle in the Gulf unfolds and how the crisis is resolved is likely to have far-reaching consequences for international relations and likely shape the attitudes of small states across the globe. To be sure, Qatar has unique advantages: financial muscle and a network of relationships built in part on its gas exports.

The question is, said Singapore ambassador-at-large and Executive Deputy Chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Ong Keng Yong: “What happens when small states’ core interests are impinged upon, and caught within broader big-power dynamics. Or do small states’ interests not matter, and should be subordinated to that of big states?

Putting it another way, must Singapore be so governed by fears of offending bigger states that we allow them to do what they want or shape our actions to placate them even if they affect our national interests?… There is no choice but to stand up. Doing otherwise will encourage more pressure from those bigger than ourselves,” Mr. Ong Keng Yong said.

By Laura Schroeder*

A Tale of Terror

Writing a book is a feat in itself, but as any author can confirm, publishing it presents yet another set of challenges. Just ask Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose 466-page manuscript took a full 6 years to be released. Slahi’s book was not a work of fiction but a classified memoir, surrendered to the U.S. government in installments.

Slahi, who fought alongside men who aligned themselves with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, wrote his oeuvre from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, where he was held for 14 years after being transferred to US custody.[i] In his memoir, released in excerpts for a series in The Guardian, he recounts enduring painful contortions, beatings, sleep deprivation, and random threats.[ii] Slahi’s attorneys helped him publish, and later declassify, this harrowing account, often referred to as the Guantánamo Diary. In late 2016, he was released without any charges to family members in Mauritania, but his words, now public, serve as a testament to the degrading conditions of a facility that remains open despite its violations of international human rights law.

United States Use of Guantánamo Bay

Guantánamo is a vestige of U.S. colonial rule in the Caribbean. The United States acquired Guantánamo after it assisted Cuba in its revolution against Spanish rule at the turn of the 20th century. As one of many conditions set by the U.S. in the Platt Amendment, Cuba submitted to U.S. intervention and a lease for Guantánamo was drawn up for $2,000 USD in gold each year. The detention center currently operates on an $80 million USD budget per year. Today, the Cuban government maintains that US activities there are illegal and violate Cuban sovereignty.[iii] The U.S. should return the Guantánamo Bay to Cuba, but it is unlikely that Washington would surrender such valuable real estate, as it sees its location as central to Navy operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.[iv]

The detention facility opened in January 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the declaration of a “war on terror.” Since then, approximately 780 men have been held there.[v] Nine have died, six of them from suspected suicide.[vi] Under then-president George W. Bush, detainees were labeled “unlawful combatants” and their treatment was deemed to be outside of the confines of the U.S. justice system; consequently, it became easier to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists outside the purview of a formal regulatory body. Responding to complaints of grim conditions in 2009, former president Barack Obama announced that he would shut down Guantánamo. Fifty-six detainees were cleared for release under the Guantánamo Review Task Force, and 10 detainees, the majority of whom were from Yemen, were released.[vii] Nonetheless, the United States failed to close the detention facility permanently, continuing to employ it for extraordinary rendition.[viii]

Public Protest and Political Crosshairs

On Sunday, June 25, protesters in front of Trump National Hotel in Doral, Florida, called for the shutdown of Guantánamo, denouncing President Trump’s relative silence on the issue of torture.[ix] The protest represented one public indictment of the detention center, where 41 prisoners are currently held, with a staff of about 1,650.[x] Of the 41 prisoners, 26 are indefinite detainees, 10 are charged with crimes, and the remainder are cleared for release.[xi] It is unclear how the process of releasing prisoners will be put into effect under the new administration.

Trump has, however, stated that he believes that there should be no further releases from Guantánamo.[xii] Additionally, in perhaps one of Trump’s most popular campaign sound bites, the fervent advocate of hardline national security stated that he hoped to continue detaining alleged terrorists in Guantánamo: “We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes. Believe me, we’re gonna load it up.”[xiii]

Despite this rhetoric, Trump has paid little attention to Guantánamo in his first months as president. Once a priority issue for human rights and activist groups, abuses in Guantánamo are discussed with less frequency, but detainees continue to face gross violations of human rights, including forced feeding, threats of violence, and physical violence itself. [xiv]

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has condemned the actions that have taken place at Guantánamo and pushed for its closure.[xv] Indeed, the Commission has noted that the United States has violated the rights to personal liberty, personal integrity, effective remedy, legal representation, and periodic review of detention, among other violations. In 2011, the Commission issued Resolution No. 2/11, which stated that detainees have been denied their right to judicial review of deprivation of liberty. It has also declared that the principle of non-refoulement, or the prohibition on transferring and deporting individuals to countries where they may be persecuted, has been violated. Additionally, operations at Guantánamo directly violate the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as well as the U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment. [xvi]

What is more, while a justification for maintaining operations at Guantánamo is national security-based, the facility itself may be undermining U.S. security by perpetuating an image of the United States as inhumane. In fact, Al Qaeda propaganda has used descriptions of abysmal conditions at Guantánamo as a recruitment tool and to fortify arguments that the United States is exceptionally cruel in its treatment of prisoners. [xvii] In 2010, Colin Powell noted that its existence gives “radicals an opportunity to say, you see, this is what America is all about. They’re all about torture and detention centers.”[xviii]

Writing the Next Chapter

President Trump’s recent criticism of the state of human rights in Cuba reveals a great hypocrisy. The operation of a legally questionable military base that unlawfully holds and tortures prisoners has gone on for far too long.

The United States cannot continue with such dehumanizing treatment and only by releasing current detainees can the U.S. move beyond this inhumane legacy. Respect for human rights demands that Guantánamo Bay cease to be used to hold prisoners like Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The time has come to decide what kind of chapter U.S. will add to the book of human history. A difficult but necessary task lies ahead: writing a tale of respect for human rights and publishing it for the world to see.

*Laura Schroeder, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by James Baer, Senior Research Fellow, Taylor Lewis, Extramural Contributor, and Madeline Asta, Jack Pannell, and Tobias Fontecilla, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[i] Siems, Larry. “Guantánamo Diary: How a classified manuscript became a book.” The Guardian. January 16, 2015. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/guantanamo-diary-a-classified-handwritten-manuscript.

[ii] Ackerman, Spencer. “Guantánamo Diary author Mohamedou Ould Slahi freed after 14 years.” The Guardian. October 17, 2016. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/17/guantanamo-diary-author-mohamedou-ould-slahi-detention.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] “Why the U.S.-Cuba Thaw Doesn’t Mean Guantanamo Bay Is Closing.” Time. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://time.com/3642064/cuba-guantanamo-bay/?xid=time_readnext.

[v] “Guantánamo Bay: 14 years of injustice.” Amnesty International. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/guantanamo-bay-human-rights.

[vi] “Q&A: Guantanamo Bay, US Detentions, and the Trump Administration.” Human Rights Watch. June 27, 2017. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/04/qa-guantanamo-bay-us-detentions-and-trump-administration.

[vii] The New York Times. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/timeline/2017.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix]http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/06/25/activists-demand-guantanamo-bay-shutdown-rally-trump-golf-course/

[x] “Prisoners: Who’s Still Held?” Close Guantánamo. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www.closeguantanamo.org/Prisoners.

[xi] Rosenberg, Carol. “Trump’s been silent on Guantánamo since moving to the White House.” Miami Herald. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article135852953.html.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] News Distribution Network, Inc. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=91440&siteSection=mcclatchydc&videoId=30389899.

[xiv] “Q&A: Guantanamo Bay, US Detentions, and the Trump Administration.” Human Rights Watch. June 27, 2017. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/04/qa-guantanamo-bay-us-detentions-and-trump-administration.

[xv]“IACHR Report Highlights Human Rights Violations at Guantanamo and Urges Closure.” International Justice Resource Center. September 09, 2015. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www.ijrcenter.org/2015/08/17/iachr-report-highlights-human-rights-violations-at-guantanamo-and-urges-closure/.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] “Guantanamo Bay: A Terrorist Propaganda Tool.” Human Rights First. Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/guantanamo-bay-terrorist-propaganda-tool.

[xviii] Postel, Thérèse. “How Guantanamo Bay’s Existence Helps Al-Qaeda Recruit More Terrorists.” The Atlantic. April 12, 2013. Accessed June 29, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/how-guantanamo-bays-existence-helps-al-qaeda-recruit-more-terrorists/274956/.

Reporting this week in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) explains that wind-driven incursions of warm water forced the retreat of glaciers in West Antarctica during the past 11,000 years. These new results enable researchers to better understand how environmental change may impact future sea-level rise from this climate-sensitive region.

By studying tiny shells in seafloor sediment cores retrieved from Pine Island Bay in West Antarctica, the team has reconstructed the interactions between the ice and ocean from 11,000 years ago until present. They describe the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) as having experienced significant and sustained ice loss until 7,500 years ago, driven by warm water incursions. The influx of warm water then subsided for several thousands of years until it was reinvigorated in the 1940s, driving further retreat.

The WAIS is of great interest to researchers as two of its largest glaciers, Thwaites and Pine Island, are draining into the sea and contributing to sea-level rise. The big questions are why, and by how much, and what may happen in the future under climate change.

Lead author Dr Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand senior marine geologist at BAS said: “This ten-year study has yielded some exciting results. By understanding the mechanisms that caused the retreat of the WAIS over the past several thousand years, we can begin to build a clearer picture of what is happening today.”

Data collected over the last 20 years have shown that the present ice loss in West Antarctica results from the relatively warm water from the deep ocean flowing on to the shallow continental shelf. This warm water reaches the coastline in places, where it triggers substantial melting of the floating parts of glaciers and leads to thinning of the ice upstream.

Dr Hillenbrand continued: “Our reconstruction shows that warm deep water flooded Pine Island Bay at the end of the last ice age. It forced the ice to retreat but stopped at about 7,500 years ago, when the belt of westerly winds driving the deep water onto the shelf shifted northwards.

“Ice loss from this part of West Antarctica is already making a significant contribution to sea-level rise – around 1 mm per decade, and is actually one of the largest uncertainties in global sea-level rise predictions. Whilst this is a small figure in actual terms, combined with the contribution from other melting glaciers around the world and expansion of the world’s oceans, it will have an impact upon society through flooding of low-lying coastal regions”.

“Understanding what happened in the distant past provides another important part of the jigsaw. Computer model simulations have suggested that ice-sheet melting through warm water incursions could initiate a collapse of the WAIS within the next few centuries, raising global sea-level by up to 3.5 metres.”

The team investigated sediment cores collected from Pine Island Bay in the Amundsen Sea from the German research vessel RV Polarstern on two expeditions in 2006 and 2010. The team analysed the chemical composition of tiny shells built by organisms (foraminifera) that had lived in the water column and at the sea bottom before their shells became embedded in the seafloor sediments. This chemical composition acts as a ‘fingerprint’ of the water that the shells were formed in. By comparing these shells with those of modern shells bathed in warm deep water today the researchers were able to identify time intervals when warm deep water was either present or absent.

Co-author Dr James Smith, a marine geologist at BAS, said: “Our data also reveal a more recent history of the WAIS. A shift in the wind direction during the 1940s caused renewed upwelling of warm deep water on to the shelf. This has continued ever since and is responsible for the ice loss we are observing today and over the last few decades.”

Co-author Dr Gerhard Kuhn, from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, said: “Our results provide evidence that in the past WAIS retreat was also predominantly caused by melting through warm ocean water. This gives confidence in the predictions of the current generation of ice-sheet models which are used to forecast future ice loss from Antarctica and resulting sea-level rise.”

Several of the team, including Smith, Hillenbrand and Kuhn, are now are working on a new project to provide estimates of ocean temperatures during this time interval.

Pine Island Glacier is one of the most inhospitable areas in Antarctica to investigate and researchers have only been exploring this area since the 1990s.

Repair petitions filed in the wake of the 1918 Puerto Rico earthquake and tsunami, stored and forgotten in the San Juan archives for nearly 100 years, are giving scientists a house-by-house look at the damage wrought by the magnitude 7.3 event.

In the journal Seismological Research Letters, seismologists Roland LaForge and William McCann describe how they used the records to trace the impact of the earthquake in Aguadilla, the town closest to the 1918 epicenter.

The researchers combed through handwritten and often heartbreaking petitions for funds to repair homes battered or washed away by the tsunami, or damaged by earthquake ground shaking. Together, the data provide a “pretty accurate picture to find out where the damage was, and how far the tsunami made it inland,” said LaForge.

At the south end of town, in particular, the tsunami’s three to four meter- high mark could be determined from repair petitions from houses closely clustered together–where some homes reported wave damage and some were untouched by the waves.

The address-level findings are consistent with a 1919 reconnaissance of the earthquake damage and more modern calculations of tsunami wave heights, the researchers say. But the new study provides more detailed “ground truth” of what happened during the 1918 quake, said LaForge, and could be useful in predicting which parts of Aguadilla would be mostly likely to suffer damage during the next major earthquake.

In the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, LaForge said, “finding and interpreting written historical earthquake damage accounts is difficult and time consuming, but we have learned that researching these old earthquakes has become more important over time”.

The October 11, 1918 Puerto Rico earthquake and tsunami is the most recent damaging seismic event to affect the island. More than 100 people died, and the island sustained $4 million dollars (1918 dollars) in damage, especially in the towns of Aguadilla, Mayagüez, Aguada and Añasco.

As part of the relief efforts after the earthquake, residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed submitted petitions for repair funds to a Special Earthquake Commission established after the event. Inspectors came out to review the damage claimed in each petition, and funds were awarded based on their recommendations.

McCann, a former professor at the University of Puerto Rico, stumbled across boxes of these petitions, unsealed for nearly 100 years, in the General Archive in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He later mentioned them to LaForge, who had worked with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority on seismic hazard studies of dams on the island.

The two received a grant from the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) to digitize and study more than 6000 pages of the petitions and other records and photographs related to the earthquake. Although 275 petitions were known to be received from Aguadilla, only 88 (32%) were discovered in the San Juan archives. Most of these appear to be petitions to repair damage rather than replacement of entire homes.

“The layout of the town is pretty much the same as it was in 1918,” LaForge explained. “And we had these detailed damage descriptions by neighborhood and street and address in some cases. We thought if we can match up these addresses with modern-day addresses to know where they were, we could get a pretty good picture of where the damage was and how severe it was.”

The petitions marked other losses as well. “Reading through the actual reports was very poignant at times,” LaForge said. “Some of these people lost family members, or knew people who drowned. You get a real idea of what people went through.”

LaForge hopes that other researchers–students at the University of Puerto Rico, perhaps– will use the digitized petition data to learn more about the earthquake and tsunami impact in other towns such as Mayagüez. “The dataset in general is a real gold mine.”

The Seismological Society of America, which publishes Seismological Research Letters, will hold a joint conference in April 2018 with the Latin American and Caribbean Seismological Commission in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The site of the Seismology of the Americas meeting was chosen in part to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1918 earthquake.