Qatar Airways is “disappointed” with an American Airlines decision to end its codeshare relationship with the Doha-based carrier as part of its push against government subsidies of Middle Eastern carriers.

Akbar al-Baker, chief executive of Qatar Airways, said the decision would not lead to his airline reducing services to the US.

“We are disappointed,” Baker told reporters in Doha on Thursday. “But if this is any way for them to make us reduce or stop our operations to the United States, we are not going to do so,” he said.

“We have other partners who want to work with us so we will continue.”

On Wednesday, the US airline notified Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad of its decision to end its “codeshare” partnership – whereby two carriers share a flight – with both.

Maintaining the programme “no longer (makes) sense for us”, an American Airlines spokesman said.

“This decision has no material financial impact on American and is an extension of our stance against the illegal subsidies that these carriers receive from their governments.”

It came after Qatar Airways said in June that it wanted to buy as much as a 10 percent stake in American Airlines, which caught the US carrier by surprise.

Foreign policy experts viewed the move as an attempt by Qatar to garner foreign support amid a diplomatic clash between Doha and four neighbouring states, including Saudi Arabia.

American – along with fellow US carriers Delta Air Lines and United Airlines – has called for the White House to crack down on an alleged $50 billion in state subsidies to Middle East carriers.

The US companies say the home-country financial backing allow the airlines to illegally compete in the American market, something which Qatar Airways has denied.

Original source

It only takes a simple compass to demonstrate that the earth has a magnetic field – but it is quite difficult to explain how exactly it is created. Without any doubt, our planet’s hot core, consisting mainly of iron, plays an important part. In combination with the earth’s rotation, it builds up a powerful “dynamo effect”, which creates a magnetic field.

But with iron alone, this effect cannot be explained. A team of researchers, led by Prof. Alessandro Toschi and Prof. Karsten Held (TU Wien) and Prof. Giorgio Sangiovanni (Würzburg University) has now published calculations in the journal “Nature Communications“, which show that the theory of the geodynamo has to be revised. As it turns out, it is crucial for the dynamo effect that the earth’s core contains up to 20% nickel – a metal, which under extreme conditions behaves quite differently from iron.

Extreme Heat and Pressure

The earth’s core is about as big as the moon and as hot as the surface of the sun. There is a pressure of hundreds of gigapascals – that is comparable to the pressure which several railway locomotives would exert if they could be balanced on one square millimetre. “Under these extreme conditions, materials behave in a way which may be quite different from what we are used to”, said Karsten Held. “It is hardly possible to recreate these conditions in a lab, but with sophisticated computer simulations, we are able to calculate the behaviour of metals in the earth’s core on a quantum mechanical level.”

The heat of the earth’s core has to find a way to escape. Hot material rises up to the outer layers of the globe, creating convection currents. At the same time, the earth’s rotation leads to strong Coriolis forces. In combination these effects produce a complicated spiralling flow of hot material. “When electrical currents are created in such a system of flows, they can cause a magnetic field which in turn increases the electrical current and so forth – and finally the magnetic field becomes so strong that we can measure it on the surface of the earth”, said Alessandro Toschi.

Conducting Heat

Up until now, however, nobody could really explain how these convection currents emerge in the first place: iron is a very good heat conductor and at high pressure its thermal conductivity increases even more. “If the earth’s core consisted only of iron, the free electrons in the iron could handle the heat transport by themselves, without the need for any convection currents”, said Karsten Held. “Then, earth would not have a magnetic field at all.”

However, our planet’s core also contains almost 20% nickel. For a long time, this fact was not considered to be particularly important. But as it turns out, nickel plays a crucial role: “Under pressure, nickel behaves differently from iron”, said Alessandro Toschi. “At high pressure, the electrons in nickel tend to scatter much more than the electrons in iron. As a consequence, the thermal conductivity of nickel and, thus, the thermal conductivity of the earth’s core is much lower than it would be in a core consisting only of iron.” Due to the significant proportion of nickel, the heat of the high-temperature earth core cannot flow towards the planet’s surface by means of the motion of the electrons alone. As a result, convection currents have to emerge, which eventually build up the earth’s magnetic field.

To obtain these results, different metallic structures had to be analysed in large-scale computer simulations, and the behaviour of their electrons had to be calculated. The many-particle-calculations were performed by Andreas Hausoel (University of Würzburg), some of them on the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC). “Together with our colleagues from Würzburg, we did not only have a look at iron and nickel, but also at alloys of these two materials. We also had to take imperfections and irregularities into account, which made the computer simulations even more challenging”, said Karsten Held.

These advanced simulation methods are not only important to obtain a better understanding of the earth’s magnetic field, they also provide new insights into the electronic scattering processes in different materials. Alessandro Toschi is convinced: “Soon, these improvements of computational material algorithms will also lead to exciting forefront applications in chemistry, biology, industry and technology.”

Zika virus causes a mild, flu-like illness in most people, but to pregnant women the dangers are potentially much worse. The virus can reduce fetal growth, cause microcephaly, an abnormally small head associated with brain damage, and even trigger a miscarriage.

Now, a new study in mice shows that females vaccinated before pregnancy and infected with Zika virus while pregnant bear pups who show no trace of the virus. The findings offer the first evidence that an effective vaccine administered prior to pregnancy can protect vulnerable fetuses from Zika infection and resulting injury.

“There are several vaccines in human trials right now, but to date, none of them has been shown to protect during pregnancy,” said Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and the study’s co-senior author. “We tested two different vaccines, and they both provided substantial protection.”

The study is published July 13 in the journal Cell.

Zika made international headlines when it was linked to an epidemic of babies born with microcephaly in Brazil. There is no specific medicine or vaccine to prevent or treat disease caused by the mosquito-borne virus.

Last year, Diamond and others developed a mouse model of Zika infection that mimics the effects of the infection in pregnant women. Using this model, Diamond, along with co-senior authors Pei-Yong Shi, PhD, of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), and Ted Pierson, PhD, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), evaluated the ability of two vaccines to protect fetuses whose mothers were infected during pregnancy.

One, a so-called subunit vaccine that is based on the genetic blueprint for two proteins from the virus’s outer shell and is developed by Moderna Therapeutics, is already in safety testing in women who are not pregnant and men. The other, a live but weakened form of the virus that was developed at UTMB, is being tested in animals.

As part of the study, groups of 18 to 20 female mice were vaccinated with one of the vaccines or a placebo, and some animals received a second dose of the same vaccine or placebo a month later. Three weeks later, the researchers measured antibody levels in the mice’s blood as a measure of the strength of their immune response. They found that both vaccines had elicited very high levels of neutralizing antibodies against Zika, while the placebos had not.

After the mice became pregnant, they were infected on the sixth day of pregnancy, to mimic the experience of a woman bitten by a Zika-carrying mosquito early in pregnancy.

One week after infection, the researchers measured the amount of virus in the mothers and fetuses.

With both vaccines, fetuses and placentas from vaccinated mice contained very low levels of Zika’s genetic material. For the subunit vaccine, more than half of the placentas and fetuses had no detectable viral genetic material at all. The live-virus vaccine was even more effective: In 78 percent of the placentas and 83 percent of the fetuses no viral genetic material was found.

“The amount of viral genetic material in the placentas and fetuses from the vaccinated females was just above the limit of detection,” said Diamond, who also is a professor of molecular microbiology, and of pathology and immunology. “It’s not totally clear whether it was infectious virus or just remnants of viruses that had already been killed.”

In contrast, the amount of detectable viral material in the placentas and fetuses of unvaccinated mice was hundreds to thousands times higher.

The researchers repeated the experiment with different mice so they could evaluate the pups at birth. None of the mothers in the placebo group made it to term. The mothers became seriously ill, many of the fetuses showed high levels of infection and died in utero, and the placentas showed severe damage. In contrast, the vaccinated mothers remained healthy, all of their pups were born without obvious signs of injury, and the newborn pups had no measurable Zika virus in their heads.

“In general, most doctors don’t want to vaccinate during pregnancy on the outside chance that the immune response itself could harm the fetus,” Diamond said. “But if you’re in an area where Zika is circulating, you might vaccinate during pregnancy because the risk of Zika infection is worse than some theoretical risk of immune-mediated damage.”

The study did not look at whether the vaccines are safe and effective for use during pregnancy. Such studies couldn’t really be done in mice, Diamond explained, because mouse pregnancies only last 19 days. That doesn’t allow enough time for a protective immune response to develop before the pups are born.

This study also does not address the question of whether the vaccines work when pregnant women are infected with Zika through sexual contact. It is possible that Zika virus in semen can travel to the uterus and then to the fetus without passing through the bloodstream.

“The question is, ‘Would the immunity still hold up if the virus does not pass through the bloodstream?'” Diamond said. “We think it will hold up, but that has to be tested.”

Research by an international team, led by the University of Bristol, has shed new light on the fate of the ancient people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

It had been proposed that vast forests of giant palm trees were cut down by the people of Rapa Nui leaving them among other things without canoes.

With no canoes, they could no longer fish so they ate chickens, rats and agricultural crops.

However, Rapa Nui is not a tropical paradise with fertile soils so crop productivity decreased.

This ‘ecocide’ hypothesis attributes societal collapse on Rapa Nui to human overexploitation of natural resources.

This new study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology challenges that interpretation and instead shows that the ancient population ate roughly equal amounts of seafood and terrestrial resources.

Catrine Jarman, lead author of the study and PhD student at the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, said: “We also discovered that agricultural crops consumed must have been planted in soils that were deliberately managed and manipulated to provide better yields.

“Previous work has shown that plants of Rapa Nui were grown in rock mulch gardens and planting enclosures known as manavai. These had been carefully constructed and deliberately managed, and our study showed that the islanders may have added fertilisers.”

The research team analysed archaeological material dating from 1400AD to the historic period from the Kon Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.

These included some material from excavations lead by the famous Norwegian explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950s and 1980s.

Other samples were provided by Terry Hunt at University of Oregon and Carl Lipo professor of anthropology at Binghampton University that were collected as part of University of Hawai’i archaeological field schools.

In Professor Brian Popp’s laboratory at the University of Hawai’I at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and in the Leibniz Laboratory for Radiometric Dating and Stable Isotope Research at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany, the team analysed the stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen in archaeological soils, human and animal bone and plant remains from around 1400 AD, and modern soil and plant samples from the island.

Professor Popp said: “Human and animal bone retain isotopic ratios that reflect a consumer’s diet in life.

“By studying these isotope ratios, particularly in individual amino acids, we estimated the relative proportions of different food sources in each individual’s diet.”

Christian-Albrechts from the University of Kiel Thomas Larsen, added: “We used three independent lines of isotopic evidence to determine what the ancient Rapa Nui people ate.

“Although we cannot say that no rats were eaten, all our results indicate that seafood was an important part of the Rapa Nui diet.”

Finding that the Rapa Nui islanders consumed more fish than what was previously thought was not a real surprise for Catrine Jarman and her colleagues. What was surprising, however, was the evidence suggesting extensive manipulation of agricultural crops.

The ecocide hypothesis, though controversial, is commonly used as the archetypal parable of the dangers of environmental destruction. Understanding how past populations managed their limited resources for subsistence purposes is crucial to this debate, but empirical evidence of their diets is sparse.

Contrary to notions of ‘ecocide’, the new results suggest that the ancient population adapted to the harsh environmental conditions by managing their gardens and manipulating soils for better crops. This means that they exhibited astute environmental awareness and stewardship to overcome nutrient poor soils.

Catrine Jarman concluded: “This research highlights the unique and varied environmental adaptations that Pacific Islanders have shown through time.

“Polynesians developed sustainable economies in ways that we are now better understanding through interdisciplinary research. Lessons from the past and from traditional island societies have value and relevance today.”

Why some audiences could do with understanding a little more, and condemning a little less.

Death by stoning, the gruesome public burying of a culprit up to the waste or neck and stoning them continuously to prolong the pain is a rarely applied punishment that by any measure constitutes a minuscule portion of the Islamic penal code.

Regardless of its moral justification be it closure, deterrence or retribution, the image permeates into the minds of many as backward, medieval, morally repugnant and full of needless suffering that’s inconsistent with modernity — a notion portentously referred to as a rupture from the past.

It is often advocated that by demolishing the law in countries where it can still be administered as in the Islamic Republic of Iran – a nation of 70 million that has applied it in two or three cases in the last seven years – will make headway for them to join the family of exemplary states that respect human rights.

But the condemning of the laws of another country as unjust because they’re inconsistent with your own is not only wrong, but also ignorant of the values and customs to which others parts of the world adhere.

And in more shrewd discernment, the underlying reason for the condemnation is not about the hideous process of stoning itself, nor is it about arguing that life- without-parole is more humane that capital punishment.

It is something far more closer to people’s consciousness that they’d care to convey: the notion of ‘cruelty’ in relation to capital punishment.

Cruelty is not absolute

All forms of capital punishment are cruel. It really would not make a blind bit of difference whether you legally authorize killing someone by firing squad, by gas, by guillotine or by public beheading — it’s still cruel.

What is far more important is acknowledging that ‘punishment’ is different to ‘cruelty’ and that cruelty is not an absolute notion.

It is more accurately a notion that is cultural or societal-relative because an action that is considered ‘cruel and unusual’ in one society can quite easily be perceived as different in another.

The United States – where 2,902 prisoners have been on death row since October 2016 – is the most advanced, innovative and powerful nation on earth, yet in several of its states they have executed, and continue to reserve the right to execute, individuals by electric chair.

This is the process of strapping a person to a specially built wooden chair, subject them to jolts of excruciating electric current intended to firstly pass through their head leading to unconsciousness and brain death, before going on to essentially cook the vital organs of the body and finishing off the job.

At the same time iSingapore, an island city-state that has the third highest GDP Per Capita in the world, the top-ranked education system for children and is designated by the UN as one of the world’s least corrupt nations on earth, continues to hang people through a system of variable long drops.

This is the act of calculating the exact height, length and weight of a prisoner, dropping them through a trap door to a pre-determined distance so that they’re subjected to instant unconsciousness and ultimately death by a breaking of the spine through a separation of the second and third vertebrae.

That the prisoners may be rendered to uncontrollable grimacing and violent shakes due to the spinal reflexes involved in hanging – a corollary of the time it can take to sever the nervous system in order to prevent pain – is irrelevant.

Is it not unfair to say the former is acceptable, but the latter is cruel?

Even if you advocate for capital punishment to be administered in a way the American Eighth Amendment would not deem ‘cruel and unusual’, namely one that makes death rapid, painless and dignified, it’s still going to be fraught with difficulties to argue it is humane.

Let’s begin with firing squad: This is the process of typically strapping a prisoner across the head and wait with leather straps, pulling a hood over his head and lining them up against a wall and pinning a circular white target cloth around the person heart.

Then, from a distance of some 20-25 feet away, marksmen fire multiple rounds to ideally rupture the targets heart or large blood vessel in the hope of ultimately killing them by way of the loss of blood and the brains supply of blood in order to induce unconsciousness.

In short, it’s bleeding a prisoner to death.

Gas Chamber: This is the process of strapping a prisoner to a chair in an airtight chamber, releasing crystals of sodium cyanide into a pail of sulfuric acid in the hope that the prisoner’s normal breathing pattern kills them from the chemical mixture of hydrogen cyanide leading to hypoxia – the cutting-off of oxygen to the brain.

Unfortunately, it seldom happens in the way it’s scripted.

The strapped prisoners have a tendency to hold their breath, denying quick unconsciousness and instead lengthening the process long for as possible to the point of bursting when their skin begins to turn purple, their eyes-balls begin to protrude and the onset of vomiting and hyperventilation finally leads to them succumbing to the effects of the gas.

It’s a dirty and violent death.

Lethal Injection: This is the process of injecting a gurney-strapped prisoner with a three-drug cocktail of barbiturate, paralytic and toxic agents to induce unconsciousness, muscle paralysis and respiratory arrest before finally stopping the heart.

If you’re reading the manual for it on paper, it seems like its unquestionably the most clean and merciful of all methods.

Not necessarily.

There remains no medical or scientific evidence that proves the practice is free from any unrecognized pain and suffering, it is not a medical procedure that’s undergone scrutiny or peer review to determine it works the way it’s designed to – essentially rendering the person to unconsciousness and paralysis and in turn the inability to breathe.

In all the cases above, we can see nothing can be scientifically proven to always lead to a humane, painless and instant death.

At the same time, is it not wise to argue that the infliction of punishment is all the same since the net result is to cause death in order to uphold the rule of law?

Perhaps those who make a habit of condemning the practices of others on the grounds that their methods of capital punishment pay disregard to western notions of what’s ‘cruel and unusual’ should make a conscious effort to think again.

Mercy might well be above justice, but in being culturally aware of others perhaps what certain societies deem is meant for a prisoner — might just be best for them.

*Mohammad I. Aslam is a Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, King’s College, University of London.

**This article is dedicated to Eunjong Lee, Yonsei University (South Korea)

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) does some of the best legal work in the United States defending religious liberty. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke at one of its meetings on July 11, and some in the media treated it as if he spoke before the Klan.

ABC News released a story headlined, “Jeff Sessions Addresses ‘Anti-LGBT Hate Group,’ but DOJ Won’t Release His Remarks.” It referred to ADF as “an alleged hate group,” citing as its source the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing activist group.

NBC News was worse. It not only repeated the accusation made by SPLC, it sought a comment from the Democratic National Committee. It was not disappointed: it branded ADF a “hate group.” NBC also asked a prominent gay outfit, the Human Rights Campaign, for a statement, and it repeated the smear that ADF is a “hate group.” Not to be outdone, NBC attacked ADF co-founder, Dr. James Dobson, as anti-gay.

CNN won first prize. It began its news story referring to ADF as “a self-described Christian religious freedom advocacy group known for its anti-gay stance.” [Question: Would not CNN object if it were called “a self-described media outlet known for its anti-conservative stance”?] It then offered a quote by someone from the National Center for Lesbian Rights that was priceless. She accused ADF of being “so extreme that it does not concede even that gay or transgender people should be permitted to exist as such.”

NBC, ABC, and CNN treat SPLC as if it were some kind of gospel source of information. Yet no serious observer would give credence to an organization that lumps ADF, and the Family Research Council (FRC),  with the Westboro Baptist Church. ADF and FRC are prominent and well respected organizations that defend traditional moral values and religious liberty. Westboro Baptist Church is a bona-fide hate group: it unambiguously hates Catholics and gays.

Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is a decent and courageous defender of Christianity. He is not a hateful man. NBC owes him an apology.

CNN should fire Laura Jarrett, the reporter who quoted an activist for contending that ADF believes gays have no right to exist. She should be fired not for smearing ADF, but for incompetence.

On July 10, a Pew survey was published on the public’s perception of major institutions. The media fared the worst: most Democrats say the media have a negative impact “on the way things are going in the country,” and only ten percent of Republicans think it has a positive effect.

It is biased stories such as the Sessions-ADF one that give rise to public mistrust of the media. This is beyond “fake news”—it is a mean-spirited and ideologically driven assault on Christian activist organizations.

On Wednesday, NATO and Russia have got a new reason to argue and make claims to each other. NATO posted an 8-minute online documentary feature video, glorifying activity of the Baltic partisan movement “Forests Brothers”.

The matter is for the Baltic States WWII did not end in 1945, as well as for the Soviet army soldiers who faced unexpected violent resistance from national partisans. The Forest Brothers actively fought the Soviet army from 1948 until the late 1950s or early 60s.

It should be noted that the Forests Brothers’ activity is little known and controversial piece of history of the Baltic States. There are two radically opposite points of view. From one point of view the Forest Brothers were partisans who continued armed resistance to the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania after the end of the Second World War. From the second point of view such treatment of their activity is very contradictory, because there are facts that many of the Forest Brothers were former Nazi collaborators and members of the Baltic Waffen SS, and that members of these groups killed thousands of civilians in their raids. Where is the truth? I wouldn’t take the responsibility of a single answer.

It seems as if in this particular case NATO has gone about the Baltic States and puts itself in an uncomfortable position, supporting the possible misinterpretation of historical facts.

A similar dispute has become a cause of contention between Ukraine and Poland, which differently interpret Stepan Bandera’s role in history. Ukraine considers Stepan Bandera a hero. Poles mainly remember him for collaborating with the Nazis and for his followers slaughtering Polish civilians. Poles find Ukraine’s version of a common history “a problem” and emphasize, that they will not accept “ideology and actions that allow murder of innocent civilians, even in the name of the highest goals, to which undoubtedly fight for state independence belongs.” The matter is very similar to what is going on between NATO and Russia just now.

Such political interference into the history of separate countries, in bitter moments of the past wouldn’t make NATO stronger, wouldn’t make relations between opponents warmer, wouldn’t make continent more peaceful. There are enough problems in contemporary history that should be solved immediately and a new one makes the situation even harder. As for the Baltic States they simply want NATO’s attention, and common Soviet past with Russia gives a good opportunity attract necessary attention and, probably, money…

By Mariya Cheresheva and Sven Milekic

Ugly incidents have marred the run-up to Thursday’s Europa League qualifier in Split, Croatia, between fans of Bulgarian team Levski and Croatia’s Hajduk.

Clashes between supporters of Bulgarian football team Levski and Croatia’s Hajduk erupted in the Croatian coastal city of Zadar on Wednesday night, the Bulgarian foreign ministry confirmed on Thursday.

Zadar Police told BIRN that four unknown persons attacked four Bulgarian citizens, setting their car on fire and injuring the driver, who was not hospitalised. No suspects behind the arson attack have been identified as yet.

The Bulgarian foreign ministry said police in Zadar were questioning 18 Levski fans, three of whom suffered mild injuries and received medical aid before being released from hospital.

The Bulgarian ministry quoted Croatian police information, according to which four Bulgarians got involved in a fight with Hajduk supporters in Split on Wednesday, and were then attacked on their way back to Zadar, where they are staying.

The Bulgarian ambassador to Croatia, Tanya Dimitrova, who has visited the scene, has been reassured by the Croatian authorities that the torching of the Bulgarian vehicle would be treated as a criminal offence and investigated, the ministry said.

Bulgarian NOVA TV sports correspondent Iliyan Enev reported on clashes between fans of the two rival teams throughout Wednesday.

“Our group of journalists even had to be guarded while we were dining in the hotel – something which happened for the first time,” he told NOVA.

Levski and Hajduk were due to play at 8.30pm Croatian time on Thursday in the first game of the second round of qualifications for the Europa League.

Wednesday’s accident is not the first involving Bulgarian football fans. Around 300 Levski fans were involved in a mass brawl with supporters of the Montenegrin club Sutjeska in Niskic, Montenegro on June 6. Levski fans apparently flocked to the VIP Lodge at the Niksic stadium and reportedly harassed visitors.

Montenegrin police moved in to prevent more violence after several fights erupted and torches were hurled onto the pitch.

On June 29, supporters of the Bulgarian team Botev Plovdiv took part in a mass fight in the Albanian capital, Tirana, after coming under attack from fans of Albania’s Partisans.

By Rajendra Shende*

“For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families,” 33-year-old, self-made, fifth richest man of the world Marc Zuckerberg, wrote in his 6000-word letter published on his Facebook page early this year. “With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community – for supporting us, for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all,” he wrote.

Faces of youth in today’s world may not be as good as they look on Facebook posts; however, the images in the story-book of this young community are full of promises, adventures and even anxieties.

Half a century ago in 1968, the protests and revolutionary upsurge by students in the western world still echo threats to the edifice of insensitive establishments and social instability. Today’s youth community, faced with unjust authoritarianism, extreme inequality, rampant capitalism and environmental degradation are already showing signs of destabilization of the social fabric of the global community.

In India, nearly half of the population, a huge 650 million, is part of the youth community below the age of 30. Every year, more than 12 million job-hungry adult-age youth pour themselves into the market place. Unfortunately, 75% of them are not job-ready, with a huge baggage of little education or irrelevant education packed in their youthful dreams and hopes. That takes their journey nowhere.

Steeply rising joblessness among students graduating from universities is not only an Indian phenomenon. China too is creating an army of educated unemployed that some fear could destabilise China’s huge economy. Thus, two of the world’s fastest growing economies are pouring the largest pool of unemployed youth into the market place. The rest of the world, still recovering from economic recession, presents global gloom for the youth.

Recognising that university, college and school campuses are the breeding grounds for youth’s creativity and realising that if that creativity is not incubated well, we may as well face the 1968 syndrome, Prakash Javadekar, India’s Human Resource Development Minister, has launched an unusual project that can address the challenges facing youth by use of cutting edge digital technologies, Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics and more.

The project not only creates awareness on United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), but, in fact, it contributes to the goals within the ‘Campus Community’.
The project is the flagship activity of TERRE Policy Centre, a think tank and action platform for sustainable development. It is called Smart Campus Cloud Network-SCCN in short.

“SCCN is a huge laboratory that is essential to test and deploy innovative and creative potential of each and every student in the campus and build their skills at the same time,” said Javadekar, while launching the project at Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) in Pune, one of the 100 candidate cities in India slated for transformation into a Smart City.

“The lessons and results from this laboratory would prove to be game-changing, because youth will self-propel their careers, based on the educational experience that they would gain by ‘doing’ and not just by ‘studying’”, said Javadekar. Youth coming out from the campus would be candidates for various government flagship projects; Make in India, Digital India and 100 Smart Cities, as well as start-up leaders and entrepreneurs.

There are more than 750 universities, 40,000 colleges and institutes and 1.5 million schools in India where around 200 to 300 million students are engaged in learning. Apart from being significant consumers of energy, water and other utility and material resources, educational campuses provide captive young thinkers and actors enabling action-based education on sustainable development and implementation of the UN’s Agenda 2030.

They are the spaces bubbling with potential opportunities to create skilled and ‘job-ready’ professional force.

SCCN is a tool to exploit that very opportunity. SCCN is the virtual network of campuses which are engaged in reducing their campus-related ecological footprints and sharing that data through real-time cloud networks. By reducing the ecological ‘footprint’ of campuses and enhancing the sustainable ‘handprints’, SCCN is a win-win strategy. It promotes ‘learning by doing’ and economizing the campus operation by boosting resource- and energy efficiency. Simultaneously, it builds skills of India’s young future workforce and moulds managerial talents to build Smart India and, more importantly, their own future professional career.

Results from campus activities that target energy efficiency, enhance the share of renewable energy, waste management, water conservation, air pollution would be part of the dashboard in digital cloud. The well-defined energy and other indices resulting from the campus activity would be shared with other campuses to generate positive competition setting research and innovation in spiral-rise to better the sustainability targets. SCCN is a massive exercise in disruptive innovation to transform the way education is imparted to the students throughout India.

Smart Campus Cloud Network will not be limited to campuses in India. It has outreached to South Asia and beyond. It already has 15 campuses in the network including one each from Brazil and Peru.

SCCN would use the cutting-edge technologies to measure, monitor and share the results of the students’ activities aimed at making their own campuses clean, green, sustainable and smart.

Apart from use of the emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IOT), big data and artificial intelligence, the special apps for interaction between the core group members would be deployed as communication tools among the campus community. Campus-indices used to compare and compete are based on the UN SDGs. It would encourage the young minds to be creative in competing and it would spark multitudes of start-ups.

A web of diverse universities interconnected with common goals of contributing to UNSDGs is a path-breaking skill-building project with hands-on education through the age-old practice of learning by doing.

University Grants Commission said about SCCN: “Smart Campus Cloud Network is a global networking initiative seeking to link educational institutions in the mission of bringing about sustainable, eco-friendly and energy-sufficient development. It is poised to facilitate dialogue and sharing of ideas amongst students and faculty as a way of making the maximum out of Sustainable Development Goals. The Network will be a significant contribution to the realization of Smart Cities and Smart India mission unveiled by the Prime Minister.” Vishwanath Karad, Founder and Director General of the MIT group of institutes, said, ‘SCCN is amazing confluence of 3 Ss: Science, Spiritualism and Sustainability.”

The overarching objective of SCCN is to mainstream sustainable development in education, encourage annual reporting by the campuses on their sustainability initiatives and ranking the campuses based on smart sustainable actions by students and faculty.

Never before have colleges and universities mainstreamed sustainable development in their curriculum in such intensive way.

*The author is a former Director UNEP, is Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, Pune. He can be contacted at shende.rajendra@gmail.com

By Cecil Victor*

It is summer, and what has been the pattern over the past decade, the season of madness is upon us. Pakistan has intensified its attempts at infiltration of proxy militants into Kashmir through the subterfuge that the attackers are “freedom fighters”.

This year China too decided to openly support the assaults on India by intrusions into one of the most sensitive segments of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the dagger-shaped protrusion of the Chumbi Valley between India’s north-eastern state of Sikkim and Bhutan. It gives easy access to the slender lifeline, the Siliguri Corridor in north West Bengal, connecting the northeast to the rest of India.

The spectre of a “two-and-a-half front war”—a collusive simultaneous China-Pakistan series of thrusts across the 4,056 km LAC along the northern foothills of the Himalayas and the 705 km Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), coupled with a series of cross-border terrorist strikes — has arrived.

China has been warning India of the “lessons of history” – a bald reference to the devastating attack across the Himalayas in 1962. At least once it threatened to arrive in New Delhi within a few hours! Published reports indicate that Beijing enjoys a massive superiority in both land and air forces and an ability to deploy up to 30,000 troops anywhere along the Line of Actual Control within a few days, because of its developed network of roads, bridges and forward landing strips.

This time, as Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said, “It is a different India” and New Delhi is better prepared. It has inducted around 100 T-72 main battle tanks and refurbished and made operational forward airbases and Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) in both the Ladakh sector of Jammu and Kashmir in the west and the Arunachal Pradesh salient in the east.

The terrain in the west allows the use of heavy armour. This gives the local commander the option of using these assets either in attack, to break up Chinese troop concentrations wherever sighted, or to dig in and fight a defensive battle to deny the Chinese the kind of swift deep penetration it managed in 1962.

Learning from the Kargil experience, India has made arrangements for artillery backup in the shape of the remnants of the original Swedish-made Bofors 155 mm howitzer, the indigenously designed and developed (and further improved in terms of range and accuracy) ‘Pinaka’ multi-barrel rocket launchers and the Russia-built ‘Smerch’ triple-launched rockets. In combination these can lay down a close-spaced barrage within a predetermined “kill zone,” or even in a fast-changing battlefield monitored by forward-based artillery observers.

To largely offset the absence of the same type of infrastructure as on the Chinese side, India has reactivated ALGs in J&K as well as in Arunachal Pradesh. The apparent intent is to be able to obviate the absence of arterial roads and yet be able to redeploy significant numbers of troops either with fixed winged aircraft or helicopters.

Capturing and holding territory in a landscape that looks like the moon is a difficult objective. The better alternative is to hold ground and stop the Chinese in a pre-designated “kill zone” dominated by the direct-fire capabilities of the T-72 tanks and the Pinaka rockets.

The activisation of forward air bases and ALGs in the close vicinity of the Central Sector of the Line of Actual Control vis-à-vis China will ensure immediate close air support either through a process of combat air patrols or by a requisition by the local army commander.

The combination of static and mobile (airborne and ground-based) defences is designed to ensure that the territorial integrity of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh in J&K bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region, remains inviolate.

The Indian artillery units proved their worth in a more daunting landscape during the Kargil war with Pakistan. With assured air superiority by the Indian Air Force the possibility of stopping the Chinese in their tracks is exponentially brighter than it was in 1962.

In the Arunachal Pradesh sector where the terrain makes it difficult to deploy tanks, the holding action by India will perhaps have to be conducted by the Bofors howitzers, the Pinaka rockets and the Russia-made Smerch rockets.
The Chumbi Valley was the epicentre of the Chinese attack in 1962 (it is the same tri-junction between Sikkim, Bhutan and China –seated at the dagger point– that has now been reactivated by Beijing) The obvious intention is to prove to the world that India is incapable of being able to defend its closest neighbour Bhutan (and hence cannot be expected to provide security to the nations bordering the South China Sea).

This is a tactic Chinese President Xi Jinping has been using to needle India. It needs to be recalled that even while he was sitting on an ornate swing with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi near (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, during his 2014 visit, the Chinese PLA had intruded several kilometres into the Chumar section of J&K. It is inconceivable that Xi, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission – the most powerful man in China –did not authorize the intrusion at that time to underscore his message to India.

Indian preparations for the defence of Arunachal Pradesh include artillery emplacements aimed at the Chumbi Valley daggerpoint to break up any Chinese concentration. The activation of seven Advanced Landing Grounds in Tawang, Walong, Mechuka, Vijoynagar, Tuting, Passighat, Ziro and Aalo will facilitate landings by Hercules C-130J transporters. These are backed up by the stationing of Sukhoi-30 aircraft at Chabua and Tezpur airfields in Assam.
On the ground indications are that, as at Ladakh, a network of artillery systems is being laid down to counter Chinese troop concentrations in the Chumbi Valley. A clear eye will also have to be kept to prevent the Chinese from breaching Bhutanese sovereignty and launching an attack through Bhutan.

To be able to deal effectively with this two front war, India will have to ensure that the proposed Mountain Strike Corps is raised to its full battle order with its full complement of manpower and weaponry.

The “third force” – the jihadi terrorists in J&K – which both the Pakistanis and Chinese have designated as their vanguard, have shown signs of transformation from the purely guerilla force to a more conventionally organized military organization.

Photographs of up to 30 to 40 terrorists in groups imply that they are now operating in platoon strength. In earlier seizures, weapons have been recovered from underground caches capable of accommodating up to 40 persons. That they are now operating from behind the stone-pelters is obvious from their presence in large numbers at funerals of their colleagues. Gun salutes indicate their orientation.

Simultaneously, India has the option to send out clear signals to Pakistan that it has some “unfinished business” in the Shakargarh Bulge that protrudes into India, through which terrorists hit the Pathankot air base.

The Shakargarh Bulge was the scene of a deep-penetration thrust by Indian troops into Pakistan that stopped near the communications hub at Narowal after the abject surrender by Pakistan and declaration of ceasefire by India on 16 December 1971. The Akhnur and the Uri-Poonch bulges are still being used to push in Pakistani army regulars disguised as “Kashmiri freedom fighters”.

Many in the Indian defence establishment think it is time to let the Indian Special Forces go get ‘em in a replication of the “surgical strikes” last September launched after the terrorist attack on Uri.

*The author is a military and strategic expert. He can be contacted at cecilvictor@hotmail.com

The Islamic State (IS) has been able to attract into its fold a substantial number of people from the Central Asian States (CAS). A number of IS-inspired attacks by nationals from the CAS continue to take place in various countries in the region as well as outside. Impetus for this dynamic is not to be found in radicalization alone, rather in escapism from poor economic conditions and repression by authoritarian regimes. State responses to the phenomenon, however, have remained off the mark. Though necessary, it is clear that more is needed than repressive measures and greater funds allocation that masquerade as stringent measures. It also seems unlikely that the defeat of IS in Iraq and Syria will mean the death of extremism in the CAS region.

“The Caliphate will come to Tajikistan, so that Muslims will be able to live with Allah”[1] – – Gulru, a mother of three from Tajikistan who travelled to Aleppo in 2015 along with her children and husband.

On New Year’s Eve of 2017, a gunman identified as Uzbek national Abdulkadir Masharipov carried out an attack in an upscale night club in the suburbs of Istanbul and killed 39 people.[2] According to reports, the attacker opened fire with an automatic rifle, throwing stun grenades to allow himself to reload and shoot the fallen on the ground. Among those killed in the attack were Turks and visitors from several Arab nations, Canada, and India. The Islamic State (IS)claimed responsibility for the attack, hailing the gunman, with the code name Abu Mohammed Khorasani Abdulkavi, as a “heroic soldier of the caliphate” who attacked the nightclub “where Christians were celebrating their pagan feast.” While Masharipov was arrested after two weeks, his facilitator, identified as Abdurrakhmon Uzbeki[3] was killed only later in an American ground operation in Syria in April 2017.[4]

This was the second big terror attack in Turkey, after the 29 June 2016 attack at the Ataturk airport, which was carried out by three attackers, a Chechen, a Kyrgyz, and an Uzbek, ostensibly trained by the IS.Forty-one people were killed and 230 were injured in that attack after the attackers arrived in a taxi and began firing at the terminal entrance. They blew themselves up after police responded.

While Turkey’s proximity to Iraq and Syria offers one explanation as to why the country is experiencing spill over from the conflict, other nations have not been insulated from IS-inspired attacks similarly executed by or including nationals from the Central Asian States (CAS). For instance, in April 2017, a driver of a hijacked beer delivery truck, identified as Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan, careered into crowds on Stockholm’s largest shopping street, killing four and injuring many more. Akilov had been recruited by the IS and had been resident in Sweden since 2014.[5]In Russia, 22-year-old Akbardzon Dzhalilov, a native of Kyrgyzstan who had obtained Russian citizenship, carried out suicide terror attacks in the St. Petersburg metro on 3 April 2017, killing 15 people and injuring 45. In fact, individuals originating from the CAS appear to constitute a large chunk of the IS cadre base and thus have indeed emerged as significant potential sources of terror attacks at home as well as abroad.

The Journey

Since 2014– the five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, including the Chinese province of Xinxiang – have become prominent recruiting grounds for the Islamic State.

‘Thousands’ remains the most commonly used expression in reports describing the IS-CAS connection. In 2015, the International Crisis Group (ICG) reported that with IS were between 2,000 and 4,000 from CAS. The same year, another estimate suggested that more than 4,700 Central Asians could have joined.[6] While about half of these people are from the Russian republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, the rest are from the five CAS countries. While correct estimates are hard to come by, a 2016 estimate of Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs put more than 500 citizens of Kyrgyzstan fighting in Iraq and Syria, with more than 30 killed in combat. Kazakhstan similarly stated that around 400 Kazakhs were involved in armed conflicts in the Middle East. The highest contribution, however, came from Tajikistan, with 1,300 youths said to have joined the IS. There are no estimates for Uzbeks, but according to a report, many such CAS-origin cadres with IS in reality are Uzbeks.[7]

While a large portion of movements have been from the CAS and Russia to Iraq and Syria, the profiles of the attackers in Turkey, Russia, and Stockholm reveal that some individuals had moved out of CAS and settled in the likes of Europe, Afghanistan, and Turkey prior to their participation in terrorist attacks.The Istanbul night club attacker,Masharipov, for example was born in 1983 in Uzbekistan and educated in Afghanistan, but he had entered Turkey six months before carrying out the operation.

Available information further suggest that some women from CAS countries have travelled to Iraq and Syria with their spouses. The call of IS,which says it wants teachers, nurses and engineers, not just fighters,thus opens up a much wider canvass of possible assailants making their way abroad.

Much about these journeys has yet to be documented and hence there remains limited access to precise methodologies being used. Some insight, though comes from accounts such as that of a Kyrgyz woman who, in 2014, travelled with her husband to Syria to be a part of IS.  She contacted her family only after her husband was killed. Refusing to return home, she wrote, “Please try to understand me, I live in a true Islamic country where my beliefs are accepted. I want to raise my children as true Muslims and I can do that only here. This is the duty of a true Muslim. My reward is in the afterlife. One’s parents are not as important as Allah.”[8]

The Impetus

Such deep-seated alienation from the existing order appears to undergird the flow from the CAS to the Middle East and beyond.  Multiple reasons account for the trend.

Much of Central Asia was formerly part of the communist Soviet Union, which repressed the sense of identity, religion, and nationality. Once communism collapsed, and the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, the absence of economic opportunities and withdrawal of state support created conditions for the birth of a new ideology. Young men who had been long suppressed by the state found opportunities for identity and meaning by becoming part of the existing movements espousing an Islamic caliphate.

Formation of new organizations amidst the disintegration of the Soviet Union saw the prevailing chaos facilitate still further movement into the CAS region. As a result, a large number of radical Islamist organisations have been operating in the CAS region. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement came into being 1989. Hizbut Tahrir al Islam, which had originated in 1958, expanded into the CAS in the early 1990s, while the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was formed in 1998.  The Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahidin originated in 2001 as a splinter of the IMU in 2001.

While their methods and strategies may have differed, most groups shared the goal of overthrowing secular yet authoritarian and corrupt regimes and establishing an Islamic state.[9] This meshed well with the romantic and potent IS “call to justice for many who have become disenchanted with the corruption and authoritarianism of Central Asia’s leaders.”[10]

IS expansion in the region thus was facilitated by some within the existing organisations declaring their allegiance to the IS, leading to splits in the parent organisation. The IMU in late 2014, for instance, underwent a split after its emir, Usman Ghazi, declared the outfit’s allegiance to the Islamic State.[11] Even when some of these organisations have held onto their alliance with the al Qaeda, their operations have prepared, in a way, the ideological base for IS to take root and recruit.

IS recruiters, present in cities across the region, have exploited this fertile ground. According to researchers, they target mostly poorer regions, suburbs, towns, areas with big bazaars, a crossroads perhaps, with a good communication network; places that allow a mixing of people anonymously. In February 2015, Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry said it had uncovered 83 cases of recruiters trying to bring fighters to Syria. In May 2016, Russia arrested two Tajiks suspected of recruiting for IS and a year later sentenced them to prison terms of over six years.[12] While such narratives, especially with regard to Russian counter terrorism methods, need to be accepted with some scepticism, IS has indeed targeted migrant workers from the CAS region in Moscow’s construction sites.[13]

A notable IS recruit from Tajikistan was Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov[14], a 41-year-old U.S.-trained former police officer who had commanded OMON,an elite police unit. Khalimov left for Syria in April 2015 and in May 2016 appeared in a You Tube video “vowing to bring jihad to Russia and the United States as he brandished a cartridge belt and sniper rifle.”[15]

“Listen you dogs, the president and ministers, if only you knew how many boys, our brothers are here, waiting and yearning to return to Tajikistan to re-establish sharia law there,”[16] he said, addressing Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon. In November 2016 the Tajik Interior Ministry issued an international arrest warrant for him.

Mobilisation and not radicalisation explains why the aloofness from security matters of the largely secular CAS and their brand of Islam has over time been driven to change. For many years before the IS phenomenon, with an insignificant presence of radical Islamist organisations, Islam in Central Asia remained devoid of ideological content. Islam in general and Sunni Hanafi Islam in particular posed no security threat. Over time things changed.

On the one hand, there appears to have been, among previously affluent families, a search for meaning. Although no large-scale assessment of IS supporters in the CAS is available, stories have emerged of personal journeys by Muslim men and women that have followed a particular pattern. Life has gradually changed, which for well-educated individuals belonging to families previously of means, meant searching for new structures of belonging.  This showed up in the adoption of strict Arabic values before proceeding to Syria.

On the other hand, there was an economic dimension, though it is not entirely clear what role the developing economic stresses in some of the CAS played in the surge of IS-related activities. Kazakhstan’s economy, for instance, has been affected by the fall in global oil prices. Its real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth slowed from 1.2 percent in 2015 to 1 percent in 2016. The World Bank expects its economic growth to hover around 3 percent a year from 2017-19.[17] This has led to rare outbreaks of violence and public protests since April 2016, initially caused by discontent over proposed land reforms but swiftly attracting others unhappy about wider issues.

Tajikistan, the poorest of the CAS nations, with 8 million people, borders Afghanistan and has been run by President Rakhmon since 1992. In a civil war that lasted for six years between 1992 and 1997, he used Russian support to crush Islamist guerrillas.  He now tolerates little dissent, even as life has become increasingly difficult for his countrymen.

Poverty in both Tajikistan as well as Kyrgyzistan stands at 30 percent, making life difficult for a large number of their population and making them vulnerable to extremist mobilisation. Russia’s very restrictive immigration policy, where young CAS men and women previously found employment, means many are now returning home without jobs.  This has added to their personal vulnerability. Although no research appears to have been done connecting the phenomenon of joblessness, anecdotal accounts do point at the fact that “resistance in the name of Islam has proved to have had less to do with religion and more with hopelessness, despair and anger generated from oppressive and incompetent rule.”[18]

Looking at the range of types in the potential recruiting pool, certainly a straight ideological pitch will appeal to some. Khalimov and the Kyrgyz woman whose statement was quoted earlier, for instance, could have been among this group.

For the rest, experts believe economic reasons serve as a crucial entry point. A Tajik woman, whose daughter Gulru (and her three children) went to Syria in 2015 to join IS along with her husband,told The Guardian newspaper that IS “had given the family $30,000 for their journey to Aleppo. They had settled into a four-bedroom apartment with a television, refrigerator and carpets. IS also pays them $35 a month in child benefits for each of their three children.”[19]

State Response

Just how significant the perceived threat actually is remains a matter of assessment.  The spectre of attack, though, has led to an increased flow of resources to the security establishments of the countries concerned. In December 2014, Uzbek then-President Islam Karimov (who died in September 2016) asked Vladimir Putin for assistance in combating the threat of extremism in the region. In January 2015, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, announced that he would allocate more funding to securing the country’s borders.[20]

In January 2015, IS released a video which allegedly showed a young Kazakh boy executing two men accused of being Russian spies. The same month, Uzbekistan’s domestic intelligence agency announced that it had intercepted communications indicating that IS was planning on carrying out terrorist attacks in the country.Kazakhstan, whose 18 million people are relatively well off, has been an authoritarian state ruled by President Nursultan Nazarbayev since 1989 and has experienced a number of attacks by militants suspected of links to IS. In June 2016, in the city of Aktobe, 18 attackers believed to be acting upon a call issued by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a senior IS leader and spokesperson, killed three military officials and five civilians.In July 2016,a gunman killed at least three policemen and two civilians in Almaty, the country’s financial capital.[21] The same month, one of the six Salafists being detained by the security forces blew himself up.

These, in addition to attacks that have taken place in Russia by CAS recruits of IS, have prepared the ground for a strong state response that serves the additional purpose of protecting the regimes against widespread, growing discontent. At least some analysts see parallels between the trajectory of IS and possible developments in CAS. On 9 June 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that IS was trying to destabilise central Asia and southern Russia and called for strengthened coordination between the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).[22] Earlier, in December 2015, Emomalii Rakhmon, the president of Tajikistan, referred to IS as “the plague of the new century and a global threat.”

The return of IS fighters to their homes in fact poses a near and medium term threat to the CAS region. The phenomenon which started following the liberation of Fallujah and Manbij in Iraq and Aleppo in Syria has continued, with IS steadily losing the territory under its control. The result is a steady return of IS veterans to their homelands. And the adopting of hard-line approaches by individual CAS countries seeks to make such return journeys difficult.

Not only have there been instances of individuals arrested upon return, even journalists investigating the story have been persecuted.  In June 2016, for instance, Kyrgyzistan detained three people who had fought in Syria and returned home. They were charged with intending to create an IS underground cell to carry out attacks. While Tajikistan does have an amnesty scheme for people surrendering voluntarily to the authorities, the unknown implications of such declaration could serve as a deterrent on potential returnees. In July 2016, the country sentenced two persons – Dilafruz Kholov and Izzatullo Fuzailov – to 10-year prison terms after charging them with attempts to kill the President.

Tajik authorities have also used the IS threat to repress domestic opposition. The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) has been accused by the government of having connections with IS, and in 2015, the Tajik Supreme Court banned the party.  Its top leaders were sentenced to long prison terms after a closed-door trial. The country’s most restrictive measures on religion also include shuttering dozens of mosques across the country, fining women for wearing the hijab, and banning parents from giving their children Arabic names. Tajik police even have gone to the extent of forcibly shaving off the beards of some 13,000 men, according to the Human Rights Watch.[23] Virtually outlawing of political opposition and cracking down on all forms of Islam, Tajikistan could have indeed created ideal conditions for the IS and other extremist ideologies to spread.

Such conflicted measures, fighting IS while simultaneously seeking regimes survival, highlight that the CAS remain largely unprepared to deal with the threat of violent radical Islamism. It is almost a truism to observe that effective response must begin with reform at home.  Socio-economic transformations, anti-corruption measures, and more professional law enforcement must accompany more blunt measures to fight IS. In the CAS, unfortunately, the chances of this happening are slim.

End Notes:

[1]  Daniil Turovsky, “How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria”, Guardian, 5 may 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/05/isis-russia-syria-islamic-extremism. Accessed 24 June 2017.

[2] Zia Weise, “Istanbul nightclub attack: Man suspected of killing 39 in New Year’s Eve massacre captured by police”, Telegraph, 17 January 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/16/istanbul-nightclub-attacker-killed-39-new-years-eve-nightclub/. Accessed 20 June 2017.

[3] Eric Schmitt, “Commando raids on ISIS yield vital data in shadowy war”, New York Times, 25 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/world/middleeast/islamic-state-syria-raqqa-special-operations.html. Accessed 27 June 2017. Accessed 27 June 2017.

[4]“U.S. forces kill Islamic State militant linked to Turkey nightclub attack”, Reuters, 21 April 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-usa-uzbeki-idUSKBN17N2AJ. Accessed 20 June 2017.

[5] Chantal Da Silva, “Stockholm attack: Uzbekistan says it had warned West about suspect”, Independent, 4 April 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stockholm-terror-attack-uzbekistan-warned-suspect-rakhmat-akilov-a7683631.html. Accessed 21 June 2017.

[6] “Foreign Fighters”, The Soufan Group, December 2015, http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/TSG_ForeignFightersUpdate3.pdf. Accessed 21 June 2017.

[7] In 2015, a representative of Kyrgyzstan’s Secretariat of the Council of Defense claimed that more than 70 percent of the Kyrgyz that have gone to join the IS are of Uzbek descent.

[8] Luca Bello, “A Kyrgyz Family in the Islamic State”, Diplomat, 21 April 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/a-kyrgyz-family-in-the-islamic-state/. Accessed 21 June 2017.

[9] ZeynoBaran, “Radical Islamists in Central Asia”, Hudson Institute, 12 September 2015, https://hudson.org/research/9830-radical-islamists-in-central-asia. Accessed 24 June 2017.

[10] Reid Standish, “Shadow Boxing With the Islamic State in Central Asia”, Foreign Policy, 6 February 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/06/shadow-boxing-with-the-islamic-state-in-central-asia-isis-terrorism/. Accessed 24 June 2017.

[11] In June 2016, a new faction of the IMU emerged indicating that it remains loyal to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other traditional jihadist groups that operate in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

[12] “Two ISIS recruiters from Tajikistan receive prison sentences in Russia”, RAPSI News, 23 May 2017, http://www.rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20170523/278685905.html. Accessed 25 June 2017.

[13] Daniil Turovsky, “How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria”, n.1.

[14] Some publications refer to him as Gulmurod Chalimow.

[15] Dmitry Solovyov, “Commander of elite Tajik police force defects to Islamic State”, Reuters, 28 May 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-tajikistan-idUSKBN0OD1AP20150528. Accessed 24 June 2017.

[16] ibid.

[17] “Kazakhstan’s Economy Has Bottomed Out, Now Searching for New Sources of Growth”, The Financial, 16 May 2017, https://www.finchannel.com/business/64921-kazakhstan-s-economy-has-bottomed-out-now-searching-for-new-sources-of-growth.   Accessed 14 June 2017.

[18] Dana E. Abizaid, “Why ISIS Recruits from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan”, National Interest, 16 January 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-isis-recruits-uzbekistan-kyrgyzstan-19067. Accessed 14 June 2017

[19] Daniil Turovsky, “How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria”, n.1.

[20] Uran Botobekov, “Is Central Asia Ready to Face ISIS?”, Diplomat, 8 July 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/is-central-asia-ready-to-face-isis/. Accessed 11 June 2017.

[21] Mariya Gordeyeva and Olzhas Auyezov, “Suspected Islamist militant kills five in Kazakhstan”, Reuters, 18 July 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/shooting-heard-near-police-station-kazakh-city-almaty-055718240.html. Accessed 11 June 2017.

[22] “Putin warns IS plans to destabilize southern Russia and Central Asia”, TASS, 9 June 2017, http://tass.com/politics/950688. Accessed 11 June 2017.

[23] Steve Swerdlow, “Tajikistan’s fight against political Islam”, Human Rights Watch, 15 March 2016, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/15/tajikistans-fight-against-political-islam. Accessed 28 June 2017.

The need to tick off the tactical and strategic boxes in the interminable war against Islamic State is so pressing it acquires the quality of ham acting, where generals and leaders become thespians of exaggerated promise before the camera.

Nothing typified this more than the euphoric statements outlined by the Iraqi leadership in the aftermath of its efforts to retake Mosul after nine months of fighting. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was almost shrill in declaring victory on Monday, making the all too optimistic assertion that the Caliphate was dead, that terrorism had been quashed.

What Islamic State did do was represent a tailored common enemy, a convenient point of unity that kept Iraq’s traditionally murderous sectarianism at bay. The faux Caliphate, in many ways, supplied a temporary necessity, a cloak of consensus.

It kept the Sunni-Shia divide in check, though it never resolved it. Gains made by ISIS in 2014 came more easily largely given the Sunni-majority population’s feeling of neglect in the post-invasion era. But it went deeper, given the more dominant Shia presence in Baghdad.

Now, the Kurdish forces stand out as a force to be reckoned with, a situation that Baghdad will find hard to avoid. A Kurdish independence referendum is also slated for September. As if these niggling points were not enough, oil revenue, and its disputed regime of distribution, plays a part.

Much scepticism should be shovelled onto triumphalism, and notions of a noble battle waged by the forces of light against those of pure darkness obscure the pattern of crimes committed by a number of forces.

At issue here are the instrumental methods used in battle. Iraqi forces and members of the coalition deployed, to considerable extent, Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions in densely populated civilian areas. Air strikes were also used.

In the words of an Amnesty International report released on Tuesday, “Even in attacks that seem to have struck their intended military target, the use of unsuitable weapons or failure to take other necessary precautions resulted in needless loss of civilian lives and in some cases appears to have constituted disproportionate attacks.”

The Islamic State forces made happy use of civilians, and also restricted civilian movement, condemning the effectiveness of any leaflet drops warning of imminent attacks. This, in addition to their more traditional methods of brutality inflicted on the populace.

A cosmopolitan town has also been emptied – some 897,000 people have been displaced, a point that puts it at risk of de-Sunnification. The city that will spring up from the rubble is bound to look different from that which preceded its seizure by Islamic State, one less colourful, and in all likelihood less pluralistic.

Much of this will depend on the calculus of retribution that tends to take effect in the aftermath of such victories. In the sectarian, religious game, scores are always settled, while the law is kept taped and muzzled. Mosul risks becoming yet another powder keg of resentment dotting Iraq’s devastated landscape.

It also risks becoming another example of reconstruction failure. (Ramadi and Falluja remain pictures of post-ISIS devastation.) The rebuilding phase, if history is an example to go on, risks falling into a quagmire of faulty finance, economic woe, corruption and security. And there is much reconstruction to take place, with three-quarters of the city’s roads destroyed, most of its bridges and 65 percent of its electrical infrastructure.

Money supplied is often money denied, with special political interests sucking the available funds before they can go into tangible efforts at reconstruction. The more one looks at the agenda to rebuild, the more one is struck by the fact that government institutions remain the problem.

“We need a lot of money,” claimed a glum Emad al-Rashidi, advisor to the governor of Nineveh province, “and we don’t get much help from the world, because the money is stolen by policymakers that pretend they are rebuilding Mosul.”

The begging bowl, as a matter of fact, is a big one. It is being passed around even as the city smoulders. A plethora of partners and agencies are involved, giving it the impression of an industry in need of oiling. The UNHCR, for instance, has demanded $126 million in funding to perform its necessary work.

The Special Inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction has claimed that the $60 billion in US funds spent over 10 years has produced little, while the Iraqi government’s own effort over $138 billion fared little better. Such efforts, ruinously delayed, will provide sweet music for the next militant upsurge.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea, has the right to test and develop as many weapons as it likes. It doesn’t need another country’s permission to enhance its arsenal and, given America’s history of aggression, it is wise to do so. Any country deemed an enemy of the United States that doesn’t have a strong defense is in danger of ending up like Iraq or Libya, invaded or destroyed by other means.

There is no reason for Americans to pay attention to drivel about DPRK missiles reaching Alaska or any other part of this country. The United States has more weapons, nuclear and conventional, than any other nation in the world and is therefore the greatest threat to peace. The only danger from the DPRK’s missile program comes from American reactions to it.

The corporate media are constantly whipping the public into a frenzy regarding matters that should not be of concern. Despite headlines asking, “What to do about North Korea,” the answer is simple. There is nothing to do at all. Or rather it should be to engage with that nation rather than to demonize it on a regular basis. The Trump administration has asked for a unilateral stand down as a prerequisite for any talks, something which the DPRK would not and should not agree to do.

While politicians and pundits demand that something be done about this independent country, the United States escalates tensions with war games that simulate an invasion of North Korea. At the same time that the DPRK is labeled a danger the American Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system is being installed in South Korea and poses a very real threat. And in turn it creates an incentive for more weaponry.

President Trump is the greater danger in this scenario. He ran for office on a platform of putting America first and with a mistaken and uninformed notion that other countries won’t put their own interests first. He believes that he can pull Russia away from allies like China and Iran when they have become closer for the express purpose of defending themselves from America. Trump may fume that China doesn’t control the DPRK but his temper tantrums don’t change the fact that other countries do what is best for themselves too.

But Trump isn’t alone in his North Korea scare mongering. Democrats haven’t defended that country’s right to self-determination either. Trump rattles his saber with a loud voice, but Democrats are just as ready to advance the cause of the United States as hegemon. Democrats in the House of Representatives joined Republicans recently in voting for new sanctions against the DPRK. Only one member voted against this proposal.

The liberal corporate media do likewise. Their lament that something must be done about North Korea puts the seal of approval on very dangerous foreign policy decisions. One can read through page after page of the New York Times or Washington Post without seeing any difference of opinion on North Korea. Every reporter and op-ed writer sees it as a problem to be solved instead of as a nation to be engaged with in a respectful manner.

The only potential peacemakers on this issue are Russia and China. They call on North Korea to cease its missile testing and also on the United States to stop its provocative military maneuvers. The reasonable proposal has been either ignored or condemned by the press and the politicians in this country. Their agreement on this issue and their continued closeness are also not a problem to be solved but instead result from a legitimate need for protection from the United States.

North Korea is considered a bogeyman whether it tests missiles or not. It has been accused of everything from hacking into the Sony corporation computer systems to creating new malware viruses. Its president Kim Jong-un is treated like a joke or a demon. He may as well use the only defense he has at his disposal and that is to make America think twice about attacking his country.

Trump is like his presidential predecessors. He upholds the belief that other countries have no rights that the United States need to respect. The media may follow along with words like “isolated, “rogue,” and “reclusive.” These adjectives mean just one thing. A particular state has run afoul of the American government because it dares to exist on its own terms. That is a right every nation should have. Scare mongering is a tool to get public approval for more war. It is the United States that increases the risk of nuclear conflagration more than all of the “rogue” nations put together.

Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990’s progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US’s corporate for-profit medical system into a national ‘Medicare For All’ public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.

Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right.

To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.

We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply involved.

We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from retreat to surrender.

We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives’ large-scale, long-term embrace of far-right ideology and practice.

Progressives by Name and Posture

Progressives purport to embrace ‘progress’, the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption and good governance, based on democratic procedures.

Progressives prided themselves as appealing to ‘reason, diplomacy and conciliation’, not brute force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.

Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward the ‘good society’, free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust wars.

Progressives in Historical Perspective

In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.

They denounced militarism ‘in general’ but supported a series of ‘wars to end all wars’. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.

Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and defended the Bill of Rights.

Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory… until their government went to war.

Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the ‘left wing’ of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil liberties.

Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and electoral means to advance African American rights.

Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.

Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.

In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.

The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970’s when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.

The Retreat of the Progressives

By the late 1970’s the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war, civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).

The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their ‘numbers’ were up, their caliber had declined, as they sought to ‘fit in’ with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President’s party.

Without the pressure of the ‘populist street’ the ‘Progressives-turned-Democrats’ adapted to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took office. Yet the ability to influence the ‘electoral rhetoric’ was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.

Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party, (their self-proclaimed ‘boring from within’ strategy), they would capture the party membership, neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform the party into a ‘vehicle for progressive changes’.

Upon their successful ‘deep penetration’ the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable ‘centrist’ Democrats. These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.

The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade

Progressives adapted the ‘crab strategy’: Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.

Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of President ‘Bill’ Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured Israel’s victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction of Lebanon!

Like a huge collective ‘Monica Lewinsky’ robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton’s vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector. When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.

Progressives followed Clinton’s deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve’s free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.

Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats’ ‘hard right’ policies.

The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive’s to temporarily trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested Bush’s savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations’ infrastructure.

Progressives embraced Israel’s bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State. They supported Israel’s bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.

Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state decrees by the Republican Administration.

Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender

While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly ‘leveraged’ hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic Party campaign for Barack Obama, ‘Wall Street’s First Black President’.

Progressives had given up their quest to ‘realign’ the Democratic Party ‘from within’: they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers for the election and re-election of the warmongering ‘Peace Candidate’ Obama. After the election, Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives’ historical legacy.

Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American’s ‘First Black’ President’s bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet and empty.

When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers, while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama’s Presidential decision to protect and reward the mega-swindlers.

Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate. The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when Obama’s ‘kill orders’ extended to the ‘mistaken’ murder of his target’s children and other family member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the ‘first black American President’ when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.

Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors while supporting the policies of their ‘first black President’.

Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were now the price they would pay to remain part of the “Democratic coalition’ (sic).

The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the Obama’s free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the ‘deplorables’.

With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid caveat: the Democratic Party ‘Socialist’ Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.

Sander’s Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate. The ‘Bernie’ eventually ‘sheep-dogged’ his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral. Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders’ round up of the motley progressive herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton’s nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda, they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump’s demagogic, nationalist, working class rhetoric which was designed to agitate ‘the deplorables’. They even turned on the working class voters, dismissing them as ‘irredeemable’ racists and illiterates or ‘white trash’ when they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the ‘fly-over’ states of the central US.

Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats’ promotion of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared from their bastardized ‘identity-centered’ ideology.

Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI tactics: “Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?” For progressives, ‘Russia-gate’ defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.

Progressives joined the FBI/CIA’s ‘Russian Bear’ conspiracy: “Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election” – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that ‘their constituents’, the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred ‘the Donald’. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient ‘white trash’ electorate of ‘Deploralandia’.

Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former ‘Director Comey’ of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints.

The Progressives’ far right- turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of ‘psychologically unfit to lead’ – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential coup d’état on behalf of the Far Right!

Progressives loudly condemned Trump’s overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!

In return, President Trump began to ‘out-militarize’ the Progressives by escalating US involvement in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles ‘Presidential’.

Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama’s actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!

Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being ‘weak’ on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump’s embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!

Conclusion

Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented immigrants to their expulsion under their ‘First Black’ President; from thoughtful mass media critics to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state; from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his ‘dirty tricks’ to camp followers for the ‘intelligence community’ in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.

Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.

Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance to mindless collaboration.

By Nathan Keeble*

Tennessee Promise, and now Tennessee Reconnect, are the first programs of their kind in the United States. Through these programs designed by now gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd, the state will pay tuition for all that seek an associates degree from a community college. They are everything that progressives like Bernie Sanders have wanted for decades. President Obama has said that they should serve as an example for the entire nation. Tennessee, one of the most conservative states in the Union, has become a champion of single-payer education.

One of the defining aspects of the Tennessee Promise and Reconnect programs is the source of their funding. Instead of being funded directly through taxpayer money from the state’s general fund, these programs are bankrolled by money generated by Tennessee’s state run lottery. This detail was essential to the legislation’s enactment, courting otherwise conservative or libertarian legislators.

The use of lottery funds seemed to overcome many ethical and economic objections. Unlike taxes, people choose to pay for lottery tickets. Promise and Reconnect weren’t like other government programs because they at least appeared to be funded voluntarily, just like a business. At first glance, the dangers of a single-payer system in education are largely, if not completely, neutralized.

Enough people were convinced by this argument that the legislation easily passed. However, closer scrutiny will reveal that the Tennessee Promise and Reconnect programs do not avoid any of the ethical or economic pitfalls of government programs such as these.

What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen In Lottery Funds

Nobody is forcing the man standing in front of them at the gas station coercing him into buying a lottery ticket instead of another product of equal price. His choice of purchasing a lottery ticket in lieu of another good is indeed voluntary. Everyone can see this as true. However, what is not being seen clearly is that the man’s choice of lottery ticket and its supplier is not voluntary at all.

Like the majority of states, Tennessee strictly prohibits gambling, giving only occasional, temporary exemptions for charities to hold fundraising raffles. In 2002, a constitutional amendment was ratified granting a total monopoly to the state of Tennessee to provide a lottery. As the 2002 amendment reiterates, “All other forms of lottery not authorized herein are expressly prohibited unless authorized by a two-thirds vote of all members elected to each house of the General Assembly for an annual event operated for the benefit of a 501(c)(3) organization located in this state…”

Because the state prevents any sort of competition, the revenue generated by the lottery program is not a genuine market outcome. In a free market, this revenue, at the very least, would be split among competing firms. State revenue generated through monopoly gains is every bit as coercive and invasive in a market economy as revenue generated through taxation, even if it is less obvious.

Whether or not one should support the legalization of gambling is beyond the scope of this article. What is necessary to recognize is that Tennessee’s lottery revenue is a deviation from what would occur in a market, and that money which is spent from its fund is equivalent in character and economic effect to any other type of government spending.

Why Tennessee Should Break Its “Promise”

Tennessee Promise and Reconnect are a part of the Drive to 55 program, championed by Governor Bill Haslam and gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd. The primary goal of this initiative is to see that 55 percent of Tennessee residents complete some form of college education. The chief economic flaw is revealed through the arbitrariness of this goal.

Why does Tennessee need 55 percent of its residents to have a college degree? Why not 62 percent or 87 percent? No answer can be given. Furthermore, which 55 percent of Tennesseans should go to college? Some students are necessarily more adept than others. Even more important is the question of the composition of the education they receive. What should students study and how many should enter each career path? The truth is that Tennessee Promise, as well as government in general, is uniquely ill-equipped to answer these critical questions.

Like any other resource, human resources are only as valuable in the economy as the wealth it produces for consumers, a truth that every good economist since Carl Menger has understood. At any given time, an economy only needs so many people working in each occupation. If too many degrees in a particular field are granted, a gap will form in the labor market resulting in chronic underemployment, which means trouble for workers suffering from a lack of income and consumers whose needs are not being met as effectively as they should be. Indeed, no economy can function unless resources, both tangible and intangible, are allocated properly in accordance with the desires of consumers.

The only method that can, and invariably will, answer the questions “what degrees, how many of them, and for which students?” is the market price system. In a market unhampered from government intervention, private lenders would direct financing to students who are most likely not only to graduate, but also to the students who are most likely to succeed in their planned careers, enabling them to repay their loan. They do so because they are subject to profit and loss. Private lenders must direct student financing efficiently and effectively to avoid insolvency.

Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect necessarily do away with all of the above. These programs do not face insolvency due to their funding source and provide student financing indiscriminately to all who come. In the absence of any rational ability to coordinate education resources to the demands of the labor markets and consumers, a serious misalloaction of labor is the only possible outcome. For the real world, this misallocation means years of people’s lives squandered, income forsaken, and wealth consumed.

To say that Reconnect and Promise are the Federal Student Loans program on steroids is not hyperbole, and the damage which federal student loans have done to students, colleges, and the labor market is visible to anyone with open eyes. Effects of state intervention in student financing have caused such upheaval in young people’s lives that an outwardly socialist candidate nearly became the DNC’s nominee for president in a populist surge largely over this issue, something previously unimaginable.

Tennessee should be a trail blazer in limiting the disastrous effects of government involvement in higher education. In part because it was misguided by what is nothing more than a technicality in funding, the state is becoming a leader in higher education’s march off a cliff instead. The world of education financing is in desperate need of profit and loss bearing entrepreneurs, who can use market prices to rationally direct capital. Real reform must focus on unleashing the marketplace, not limiting it and growing the state.

About the author:
*Nathan Keeble is a Mises University Graduate and helped found the Campaign to End Civil Asset Forfeiture in Tennessee.

Source:
This article was published by MISES Institute

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

On July 7 2017, seventy two years after the most inhumanely destructive weapon was invented and used on hapless Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Conference of the majority of member states in the United Nations decided – by a vote of 122 for; one abstention: and one against – to adopt a Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

It had been a long journey from January 1946 when the newly established United Nations Organization, located temporarily in London, adopted its very first resolution calling for nuclear disarmament signifying the undisputed priority of this issue. Since then, at every session of the UN General Assembly, resolutions with various nuances on nuclear disarmament were adopted with varying majorities.

Meanwhile the number of nuclear weapon armed countries grew to nine – of which only five were recognized as nuclear weapon states in terms of the 1968 Treaty for the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Many other states huddled under their nuclear umbrellas the main one being the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

For these states and the concept of deterrence and extended deterrence there is the specific prohibition contained in the new Treaty to host nuclear weapons belonging to some other country. For the NPT as a whole, belying the fears of the opponents, the norm of non-proliferation has been greatly strengthened in the new Treaty.

Three clearly discernible strands merged in the final thrust of the nuclear disarmament movement to achieve the adoption of the July 7 Treaty text. They were: (a) the process over seven decades in the UN itself led by a dedicated group of countries; (b) the work of civil society; and (c) the “Humanitarian initiative” which has made an indelible stamp on the disarmament field and influenced the Preambular paragraphs of the July 7 treaty especially.

Milestones

Historic landmarks at the UN included the 1978 first Special Session of the UN General Assembly devoted to Disarmament (SSODI) the Final Document of which remains the high watermark of the international consensus reached on disarmament clearly identifying as a priority the goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons.

A group of parallel treaties both global and regional upheld this objective. These include the most widely subscribed to disarmament treaty – the 1968 Treaty for the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which under Article VI provides, ineffectively, for negotiations “in good faith” for nuclear disarmament and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which remains unratified by eight nations before it can enter into force.

A slew of regional nuclear weapon free zone treaties from the Antarctic Treaty covering the uninhabited South Pole region; the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco for Latin America and the Caribbean; the Treaty of Rarotonga for the South Pacific; the Treaty of Pelindaba for Africa; the Treaty of Bangkok for South-east Asia came into force insulating vast geographical areas from the stationing of nuclear weapons. With most of them supplemented by Protocols signed by the NPT nuclear weapon states pledging to respect these zones a major advance was made as voluntary “affirmative action” by non-nuclear weapon states.

On the international legal front, the 1995 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice was a major success in calling for the declaration of the illegality of the possession and use of nuclear weapons but the feasibility of its implementation was questioned. A series of distinguished international commissions such as the Canberra Commission also called for the elimination of nuclear weapons in their cogently argued reports with significant impact on global public opinion.

The debate

Broadly speaking the debate between the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) and their allies on the one hand, and the Non Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS) on the other, was around the wisdom of achieving the seemingly common objective of a nuclear weapon free world through a “step by step” process of achieving security before disarmament or by agreeing on an outright nuclear weapon ban followed by it gradual implementation under credible international verification procedures.

The latter school of thought supported politically by the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) countries in the UN and the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and civil society faced rising levels of frustration by the obstructionism of the NWS and their supporters. The precedent established by the outright ban on the two other categories of weapons of mass destruction – Biological Weapons through the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 and Chemical Weapons by the Chemicals Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993 – as legal norms was relevant.

In the case of the CWC the norm was supported by an international organization and an intrusive verification system. The reported violations in the fog of the ongoing Syrian conflict by the Syrian Government and by irregular armed groups supported by major powers in a proxy war does not invalidate the verification system.

Article VI of the NPT had long been the banner under which NNWS had fought its battle for nuclear disarmament. After the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 that appeared an increasingly frustrating avenue when agreements reached by consensus at the NPT Review Conferences in 1995, 2000 and 2010 were brazenly violated by the NWS. Nuclear weapon proliferation by India and Pakistan, who stayed out of the NPT, seemed to be rewarded by their NWS friends while the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remains under increasingly tough sanctions in a tense stand off with the NWS in the UN Security Council.

In that context, Austria and Switzerland, supported by the ICRC with its impeccable humanitarian credentials, initiated the “Humanitarian Initiative” from within the NPT with growing support in the UN behind a series of resolutions highlighting the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. This grew into a broad campaign with conferences in Oslo (March 2013), Nayarit (February 2014) and Vienna (December 2014) the logical conclusion of which led to the 2016 resolution at the UNGA calling for the decisive 2017 Conference.

Bold initiatives

In the buildup of frustration over failed and unimplemented NPT Review Conferences and decisions, civil society grew more strident and bold in its demands. Initiatives adopted by NGOs like the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the move to abolish Cluster Munitions led to treaties outside the UN framework at first before they were brought within the UN confirming their legitimacy and enlarging their circle of adherents.

On nuclear weapons where the stakes were higher and the opposition of the NWS more formidable the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) led a coalition of NGOs energetically succeeding first with the adoption of the UNGA resolution in 2016 and then the 2017 Conference.

The holding of the conference was met with opposition and a boycott from the NWS and their allies including Australia and, surprisingly, Canada. Only the Netherlands from NATO participated in the Conference – if only to vote against the final resolution adopting the text of the Treaty

The election of Ambassador Elayne Whyte-Gomez – the able woman diplomat from Costa Rica – as President was significant. Her country – one of the very few without a standing army and with former President Oscar Arias as a Nobel Laureate – had laudable credentials quite apart from her own diplomatic skills.

The conclusion of the Conference coincided with the G20 meeting in Hamburg with its stormy protests and the media focus on the first Trump-Putin meeting and the dissonance of Trump’s policies with the rest of the G20 especially on climate change. International media attention, which, at the best of times, is niggardly when it comes to the question of nuclear disarmament, was even more so in reporting on the July 7 climax of the conference.

In favour of the Treaty

The sparse commentary was largely skeptical with regards to the implementability of the Treaty, which comes before the UNGA for adoption in September. Several factors operate in favour of the future of the Treaty.

First it has set a modest target of 50 ratifying states for entry into force rather than the 44 specifically named states in the CTBT including the USA. Second a history of comparable treaties shows that the lapse of time between the first surge of signatories and the totally inclusive nature of the Treaty may be long but the validity of the treaty as international law is undisputed.

In the particular case of the NPT when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2373 in 1968, endorsing the draft text of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the vote was 95 to 4 with 21 abstentions. The 122 countries that voted for the adoption of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are thus pioneers on a bold and exciting path combining security concerns with humanitarian interests.

We are at a transformational moment. Violence and conflict triggered by extremist ideologies and an arms race among great powers has resulted in a total of $1676 billion of military expenditure in 2016. Nine nuclear weapon armed states with a total arsenal of 15,395 warheads, 4120 of them operationally deployed, threaten the catastrophe of nuclear war declared intentionally or by accidents like computer error or hacking. Nuclear weapon arsenals are being modernized all the time with reckless nuclear doctrines increasing the danger of actual use.

Populism – a counterfeit brand of democracy – is being enthroned in the West and other parts of the world while increasing economic disparities and growing intolerance of minorities is spreading, triggered by the largest wave of human migration of refugees and displaced people since World War II. In contrast the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a ray of hope for our troubled times.

*Jayantha Dhanapala is a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs 1998-2003 and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the USA 1995-97 and to the UN in Geneva 1984-87. He is currently the President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs. The views expressed are his own.

By Sheldon Birkett and Tobias Fontecilla*

Ángel Rondón, Odebrecht’s Dominican representative, was recently sentenced to one year in prison on corruption charges. Rondón is accused of having organized the distribution of $92 million in the form of bribes among several politicians to secure public work contracts and install a monopoly on the island.^[i] The investigation further revealed the intricacy of the Brazilian conglomerate’s international bribing scheme. Odebrecht is a transnational company created in 1944 consisting of diversified businesses, which include infrastructure, energy, oil and gas, in addition to petrochemicals projects and services. On June 7, 2017, the Dominican Supreme Court judge Francisco Ortega sentenced several individuals to house arrest or prison on bribery charges whilst others were barred from leaving the country.

Odebrecht’s involvement in corruption first became global headline news in 2014 following the discoveries made by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba Branch, as part of Operation Lava Jato (Car Wash).^[ii] Operation Car Wash eventually implicated top Brazilian government officials including former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, current president Michel Temer (with audio tape evidence) and former Senate leader Delcídio do Amaral. Amaral was arrested after trying to buy the silence of jailed Petrobras executive Nestor Cervero who could implicate Amaral as a facilitator of illicit payments. Lula however has yet to be proven guilty, since no tangible evidence has been put forth. Cervero has denounced 74 individuals from across the political spectrum following a plea deal with the Brazilian government.^[iii] Odebrecht was involved in numerous corruption scandals across Latin America between 2001 and 2016. In total, Odebrecht paid approximately $788 million in illegal bribes in twelve different countries securing public works contracts. Odebrecht’s corruption scheme has been associated with more than 100 projects across Latin America in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.^[iv][v] The scheme was able to operate almost undetected for 13 years until the commencement of Operation Car Wash. The United States, together with the Brazilian and Swiss governments, which have been major hubs for illicit money transfers, initiated legal action under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) on December 21, 2016. In a plea agreement the defendants agreed to pay $3.5 billion in penalties to all three countries.^[vi] Given the magnitude of the corruption ring, the largest ever uncovered,^[vii] strengthening preventive measures is of utmost importance when dealing with the propensity of grand corruption.^[viii][ix] Court sentences in hindsight seem to do little to prevent corruption, especially when generous plea deals are proposed, limiting the risks involved when individuals and corporations decide to pursue these practices. Corruption itself and the exposure of corruption, was and continues to be, detrimental to developing economies in Latin America. Although concealed corruption gradually degrades the quality of investment spending, and ergo societies well being; the exposure of corruption results in the loss of investors confidence, and hence, a rapid reduction in investment.^[x]

Money Laundering Circuit

In 2015, an anonymous source leaked over 11.5 million documents from the Mossack and Fonesca (M&F) legal firm’s database, now known as the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal. In them, more than 12 heads of states and over 140 politicians were proven to have used offshore tax havens. A grand total of 214,000 companies were established for 14,000 of M&F’s clients.^[xi] The sheer number of documents may prove, as the investigation unfolds, that many more politicians, mobsters and other criminals may be involved. Odebrecht, unsurprisingly, was one of the largest clients of the firm, whose services included the design and implementation of a complex money laundering circuit. These large transfers of funds across national boundaries provided means of transferring funds discreetly for bribes and other devious purposes.

In order to pay for executives Paulo Roberto Costa, Pedro Barusco, and Renato Duque of the Petrobras semi-state-owned oil company,^[xii] Odebrecht, with the help of M&F, transferred the bribes via a multilayered system of international money laundering in order to secure public contracts and receive preferential treatment. In this particular circuit, three layers have been uncovered. The first layer has its origins in the Swiss bank accounts of the Constructora Norberto Odebrecht S.A., alongside other company owned subsidiaries. With the use of offshore companies, established by M&F in the Virgin Islands and Uruguay,^[xiii] Odebrecht was able to transfer the money.^[xiv] This money would be ‘off the books,’ hidden through overpriced project budgets, fake purchases, and other techniques to inflate spending in order to funnel money into the bribing scheme.

The second layer has been described as the ‘linked accounts’ nexus. The first offshore companies would transfer money to other offshore companies internationally using bank accounts outside of Switzerland. These linked accounts were central to the circuit; the Meinl Bank, as well as other banks in Antigua and Panama, helped hide the funds true origin, free of scrutiny.

The final layer would transfer the money to shell companies in Panama, whose bank accounts were owned by Paulo Roberto Costa, Pedro Barusco, and Renato Duque.^[xv] Shell companies are corporations without active business, which are often used as vehicles for concealing illegal activities.^[xvi] Different accounts and shell companies disseminated across the globe, in addition to the hashing of the total sum of bribes into several smaller transfers, all helped scramble the path from briber to bribee. M&F has been identified as the main facilitator, however, its protagonism has also been proven in many other circuits. The following section will devise an in-depth analysis of the ‘linked accounts’ and of the middle man’s importance within the bribing system.

Concealing Odebrecht’s Financial Distribution

Odebrecht established the “Division of Structured Operations,” as a separate off-book communications system for the transfer of illicit payments. Referred as the “Department of Bribery,” by the U.S Department of Justice, the division organized illicit payments through the use of secured emails, instant messaging, codenames, and passwords. The division distributed the funds through offshore banks, cash payments, wire transfers, and suitcase deliveries. In exchange for the payments distributed by the “Division of Structured Operations,” Odebrecht and its subsidiary, Braskem, received preferential rates for buying raw material, government contracts, favorable legislation, and tax breaks. In addition to the political leverage gained, Odebrecht profited $3.336 billion and Braskem $465 million from bribes. Norberto Odebrecht, CEO Marcelo Odebrecht’s grandfather and founder of the conglomerate, remarked that bankrolling political campaigns was necessary to get the best contracts, “[Everything] that was happening was normal, institutionalized… in how all those political parties functioned.”^[xvii]

Antigua is one of the most heavily implicated countries in facilitating the wiring of illicit funds through the “Division of Structured Operations.” In 2010, the Antigua & Barbuda Honorary Consul to Brazil, Luiz Franca, was complicit with helping Odebrecht in acquiring 51 percent of the Austrian Meinl Bank in Antigua. Additionally, according to a testimony from Franca, by 2010 Odebrecht operations sent more than $1 billion through the Antiguan Overseas Bank (AOB). Odebrecht’s involvement in Antigua was extensive: 33 banks fed Odebrecht bribe money to 71 different bank accounts.

By mid-2015, the transferring of funds through the Meinl Bank in Antigua was raising suspicions around Obedrecht’s financial activity. According to the United States District Court Eastern District of New York hearing in 2016, “Odebrecht Employee 4 attended a meeting in Miami, Florida, with a consular official from Antigua […] Odebrecht Employee 4 requested that the high-level official refrain from providing to international authorities various banking documents that would reveal illicit payments made by the Division of Structured Operations on behalf of ODEBRECHT.”^[xviii] According to the District Court, the Antiguan official, Ambassador of Antigua to the United Arab Emirates, Casroy James, received a total payment of $4 million for his cooperation. The meeting in Miami was also intended to politically sway the Antiguan Prime Minister to reject Brazil’s request to conduct an official investigation into the Meinl Bank. In a press statement, James confirmed receiving money from Odebrecht and agreed to repay the funds acquired, stating that he did not go to Miami as an Antiguan official to meet with Odebrecht.^[xix] Instead, James asserted that he traveled to Miami as an independent consultant for his own consultancy firm “Global Residency and Advisory Services Ltd.” contracted by the Meinl Bank.^[xx] The veracity of James statement that he worked as an independent consultant in Miami is questionable, as no trace of “Global Residency and Advisory Services Ltd.” could be found on any search engines.

On March 30, 2017, U.S District Judge Paul Engelmayor ruled that shareholders of Braskem American Depository Receipts (ADRs) may pursue claims of defrauding Braskem investors from deceptively buying and selling naphtha^[xxi] at below market price through Petrobras. This was a key mechanism in facilitating the Braskem corruption scheme.^[xxii] ADRs are financial certificates, issued by a U.S. bank, that represent a specific number of shares on a foreign stock trade denominated in U.S dollars. ADRs are used as a means to decrease the cost of currency exchange and international regulatory differences on stock exchanges. Following the 2008 financial crash, the U.S. regulatory body, Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), amended section 12(g) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. The amendment exempted paper application requirements for the regulation of ADRs, and only required foreign firms to provide non-U.S. financial disclosure documents.^[xxiii] These changes in “over-the-counter” stock regulation aimed at liberalizing international stock exchanges; however, they have facilitated money laundering through the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The ease with which Braskem, and ergo Odebrecht, could launder money through the NYSE reveals the need for stronger regulatory measures from the SEC.

 The Impact of Odebrecht’s Corrupt Business Ventures

A number of Odebrecht’s projects resulted in pernicious outcomes for the environment, for the displacement of peoples, and for local economies. Odebrecht’s use of bribery and other forms of political influence made it particularly difficult for critics of these harmful projects to be heard. In Peru for instance, Hitler Ananías Rojas Gonzales, an agricultural activist and mayor of the town of Yagen, situated in the northern part of the country, was assassinated in December 2015, after receiving several death threats. Gonzales was a fervent environmental activist who opposed the construction of a dam on the River Marañon awarded to Odebrecht, also known as the ‘Chadin ii project.’^[xxiv] Gonzales argued that if the project were to be finalized, many farmers from the region would no longer be able to maintain their livelihood. Many would be forced to relocate, since 32 square kilometers of Amazonian forest would be flooded.^[xxv]According to locals, Odebrecht had successfully infiltrated the local political elite, and with their help, tried to coerce the populace into signing an agreement to allow the project to continue. Government officials have both used physical force during protests and threatened to cut social programs, in order to satisfy  Odebrecht’s agenda.^[xxvi]

Similar human rights abuses have been noted in Brazil with the Belo Monte dam in the state of Pará. The funding for this dam was jointly made by the Andrade Gutierrez, Camargo Corrêa and Odebrecht firms.^[xxvii] This monumental dam set to be the fourth largest in the world could, according to critics, displace 20,000 people.^[xxviii] The dam was approved without the consent of indigenous communities in the region, which is in violation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.^[xxix] The resulting reservoir would cover 193 square miles of virgin Amazonian forest.^[xxx] The impact on the biodiversity of the region and the Xingu river could translate into the loss of hundreds of species.^[xxxi]

Nonetheless, the macroeconomic consequences have been much more alarming. The economic downturn Brazil experienced directly correlates with the public outbreak of Operation Car Wash. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), real GDP growth decreased sharply from 3.01 percent in 2013 to 0.5 percent in 2014.  2015 marked the start of a recession which averaged a negative 3.85 percent growth until the beginning of 2017. By the end of 2017, projections calculate Brazilian growth will reach 0.68 percent, showing first signs of a possible recovery.^[xxxii] The Brazilian Ministry of Finance has argued that the decline of Petrobras’ investments, due to the large-scale scandal in the domestic economy, has subtracted around 2 percentage points from the GDP growth in 2015 alone.^[xxxiii] Although corruption is not the sole factor in the decline of the Brazilian economy, it has sharply contributed to the recession alongside the fall of global commodity prices in the recent years.^[xxxiv] The rest of the region might feel the ripple effect from the downturn in Brazil, and decrease in foreign investment, due to the loss of trust in Latin American politicians. Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynsk, who is also suspected of corruption, has promised a gradual disentanglement from Odebrecht in Peru. In March, he stated that in light of recent developments, many of the projects undertaken by the conglomerate will be terminated within the next six months.^[xxxv] Other countries may take similar measures, which based on their level of commitment with the Brazilian company may translate into the loss of investments and distort GDP growth projections. As a result, declines in growth may manifest themselves in the region.

Provisions to Combat Grand Corruption

Odebrecht’s involvement in bribing government officials for preferential treatment of public works contracts, facilitated by an intricate web of international money laundering, was truly pervasive throughout Latin America. Merely criticizing the actions of Odebrecht is simply not enough; it is essential that governments take a proactive stance when combating grand corruption. The following five provisions could help in this pressing endeavor.

Firstly, the adoption and enforcement of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, as a means of increasing government transparency is a preventative measure towards reducing corruption activities. Freedom of Information laws give citizens the right to access government information at the national level. Adequate FOI laws can increase democratic participation, protect the rights of citizens, increase functionality of governing bodies, and improve access to past legal disputes.^[xxxvi] By increasing politicians’ risk of exposure, transparent FOI laws reduce the expected utility of corruption.^[xxxvii]

Secondly, it is necessary to develop sound democratic institutions as a preventative measure against grand corruption. A quantitative study, Natural Resource, Democracy and Corruption, measured 124 countries between 1980-2004, and found that “natural resource rents increase corruption if and only if the quality of the democratic institution is below a certain threshold level.”^[xxxviii] The findings present that sound democratic institutions are central to fighting corruption, irrelevant of regulating rent seeking activities.

Thirdly, although plea deals reduce time-consuming investigative work, such leniencies drastically decrease the risks associated with individuals choosing to partake in corruption. In other words, the benefits undertaken when engaging in these illicit activities greatly outweigh the costs (i.e prison time); thus, there are no real incentives for corruption to cease. The ‘big fish’ tactic recommends punishing high-profile corrupt individuals as harshly as possible, demonstrating a real desire to apply anti-corruption reforms to the public and deter possible future instances of corruption.^[xxxix] Others have proposed to adjust punishment in proportion to the bribes received by public officials, as well as proportional to the profits obtained by the briber as a result of his illicit payments.^[xl]

Fourthly, past international agreements have proven inefficient in countering grand corruption. The Organization of American States has drafted an Inter-American Convention Against Corruption signed by 33 parties. It has stated two objectives: promoting mechanisms to combat corruption across member states and enhance cooperation to detect, prevent, and punish instances of corruption.^[xli] Many other international institutions offer similar promises and cooperative measures, such as the International Monetary Fund, Interpol, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, to name a few. Nonetheless, relying exclusively on the current information-sharing and evaluation services that these institutions provide, is insufficient to prevent grand corruption. The need to manufacture an effective ‘carrot and stick’ approach has yet to be formulated. Governments who would allow international institutions to investigate freely within their jurisdictions, and willingly agree to implement anti-corruption reforms would be rewarded with preferential tariffs, financial aid, and other benefits. If they refuse, they would be excluded from these economic and diplomatic benefits.^[xlii]

Finally, pervasiveness of international capital flows has incentivized offshore preferential tax regimes, known as tax havens. Although tax havens increase international investment in poorer countries, this has made such countries more susceptible to money laundering. Therefore, money laundering prevention should be addressed through stronger regulatory measures of offshore financial centers.^[xliii] Regulation from within financial sectors is sometimes weakened in order to maintain competitiveness with other tax havens.^[xliv]It is necessary for tax haven regulation to be implemented from the “outside-in,” creating an internationally-level playing field. The OECD report Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue, concluded that “[Member countries] need to act collectively and individually to curb harmful tax competition and to counter the spread of harmful preferential tax regimes.”^[xlv] Collective regulatory agreements, like the OECD project, could counteract negative preferential tax regimes which can result in money laundering and other illicit financial activities.                  

Right wing parties in Brazil, alongside other countries, have used Operation Car Wash as a defamation strategy to gain momentum. However, this has backfired as individuals within their ranks have been associated with the scandal. This might translate in an increase in vote shares for fringe political parties on the right and left. Future incumbent governments regardless of ideological inclination, should address the elimination of systemic grand corruption in order to restore legitimacy. This is not the time for articulate political rhetoric, rather, detailed policy formulation should be proposed to the constituency to ensure a sound economic development in the region, free from corruption.

*Sheldon Birkett and Tobias Fontecilla, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Dr Charles H. Blake, Senior Research Fellow, Mitch Rogers, Extramural Contributor, and Alex Rawley, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

^[i] “Quién es Ángel Rondón Rijo, el empresario citado por la Procuraduría en el caso Odebrecht,” Www.diariolibre.com, January 10, 2017, https://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/quien-es-angel-rondon-rijo-el-empresario-citado-por-la-procuraduria-en-el-caso-odebrecht-FM5961106.

^[ii] Will Connors, “How Brazil’s ‘Nine Horsemen’ Cracked a Bribery Scandal,” The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-brazils-nine-horsemen-cracked-petrobras-bribery-scandal-1428334221.

^[iii]Daniel Gallas, “Brazil’s Delcidio do Amaral: Turncoat or whistleblower?” BBC News, May 5, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36211526.

^[iv]“United States of America Against Odebrecht S.A.,” United States District Court Eastern District New York, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/919911/download.

^[v] Two Portuguese-speaking African nations, Angola and Mozambique, were also involved.

^[vi] “Odebrecht and Braskem Plead Guilty and Agree to Pay at Least $3.5 Billion in Global Penalties to Resolve Largest Foreign Bribery Case in History,” The United States Department of Justice, December 21, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/odebrecht-and-braskem-plead-guilty-and-agree-pay-least-35-billion-global-penalties-resolve.

^[vii]“Odebrecht: The company that created the world’s biggest bribery ring,” CNNMoney, http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/05/news/economy/odebrecht-latin-america-corruption/index.html.

^[viii] “Corruption is behaviour which deviates from the formal duties of a public role because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding influence.” This includes behaviours such as bribery, nepotism, and misappropriation. Grand corruption refers to: “high-level officials pocketing money from kickbacks, theft, embezzlement, insider deals, and the like. Privatizations of public enterprises provide some of the most spectacular recent cases of grand corruption in the region.”.

^[ix] BLAKE, CHARLES H., and STEPHEN D. MORRIS, eds. Corruption and Democracy in Latin America. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.

^[x] Méon, Pierre-Guillaume, and Khalid, Sekkat. “Does Corruption Grease or Sand the Wheels of Growth?” Public Choice 122, no. 1/2 (2005): pg. 69-97.

^[xi] Juliette Garside, Holly Watt, and David Pegg, “The Panama Papers: how the world’s rich and famous hide their money offshore,” The Guardian, April 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-papers-how-the-worlds-rich-and-famous-hide-their-money-offshore.

^[xii] Petrobras happens to be the largest company in Brazil. Jonathan Watts, “Brazil’s largest company, Petrobras, accused of political kickbacks,” The Guardian, September 17, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/brazil-petrobras-scandal-oil-general-election.

^[xiii] Such as Smith & Nash Engineering Company INC, Golac Projects, and Arcadex Corp.

^[xiv] Romina Mella and Gustavo Gorriti, “How Brazil’s Odebrecht Laundered Bribe Money,” InSight Crime | Organized Crime In The Americas, March 30, 2016, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/how-brazil-odebrecht-laundered-bribe-money.

^[xv] Ibid.

^[xvi] “Shell Corporation,” Investopedia, November 26, 2003, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shellcorporation.asp.

^[xvii]Michael Smith, Sabrina Valle, and Blake Schmidt, “No One Has Ever Made a Corruption Machine Like This One,” Bloomberg.com, June 8, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-08/no-one-has-ever-made-a-corruption-machine-like-this-one.

^[xviii]“United States of America Against Odebrecht S.A.,” United States District Court Eastern District New York, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/919911/download.

^[xix]Casroy James, “Press Statement By Ambassador E. Casroy James On The Matters of Odebrecht SA, Meinl (Antigua) Ltd and Antiguan Officials,” Antigua Observer, December 28, 2016, http://antiguaobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Press-Statement-by-Ambassador-Casroy-James-on-the-matter-of-Odebretch-SA.pdf?x35888.

^[xx] Ibid.

^[xxi] Substances such as coal, shale, or petroleum.

^[xxii]Jonathan Stempel, “Brazil’s Braskem must face U.S. lawsuit over Petrobras scandal,” Reuters, March 31, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/braskem-lawsuit-idUSL2N1H80PV.

^[xxiii]Securities and Exchange Commission, “Exemption from Registration Under Section 12(g) of The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 For Foreign Private Issuers,” United States Securities and Exchange Commission, September 5, 2008,  https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2008/34-58465.pdf.

^[xxiv] “Proyecto Hidroeléctrico Chadín II,” BNamericas, https://www.bnamericas.com/project-profile/es/chadin-ii-hydro-project-chadin-ii.

^[xxv]“Environmental Rights Leader Assasinated in Peru,” News | teleSUR English, http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Environmental-Rights-Leader-Assasinated-in-Peru-20151229-0030.html.

^[xxvi] Comunicación, Tejido De, “Perú: Comunidades se pronuncian sobre Central Hidroeléctrica Chadín II en el río Marañón,” http://anterior.nasaacin.org/index.php/informativo-nasaacin/viviencias-globales/6284-per%C3%BA-comunidades-se-pronuncian-sobre-central-hidroel%C3%A9ctrica-chad%C3%ADn-ii-en-el-r%C3%ADo-mara%C3%B1%C3%B3n.

^[xxvii] Jonathan Watts, “Brazil: insider claims Rousseff coalition took funds from Belo Monte mega-dam,” The Guardian, April 8, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/brazil-rousseff-corruption-belo-monte-dam.

^[xxviii]“The Belo Monte Dam,” The Belo Monte Dam | AIDA, http://www.aida-americas.org/our-work/human-rights/belo-monte-dam.

^[xxix]Ibid.

^[xxx] Ibid.

^[xxxi] Sonia Barbosa Magalhaes, “Experts Panel Assesses Belo Monte Dam Viability,” October, 2009,http://assets.survivalinternational.org/documents/266/Experts_Panel_BeloMonte_summary_oct2009.pdf.

^[xxxii]“Domestic product – Real GDP forecast – OECD Data,” The OECD, https://data.oecd.org/gdp/real-gdp-forecast.htm.

^[xxxiii] “What is driving Brazil’s economic downturn?” European Central Bank, 2016,  http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/eb201601_focus01.en.pdf?64a2cdbd9c4a9c254445668338164746.

^[xxxiv] Henry Sanderson, “Explainer: Why commodities have crashed,” Financial Times, August 24, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/459ef70a-4a43-11e5-b558-8a9722977189.

^[xxxv] “Odebrecht could abandon all projects in Peru within six months: Kuczynski,” Reuters, March 05, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-peru-corruption-odebrecht-idUSKBN16C0VX.

^[xxxvi] David Banisar, “Freedom of Information Around the World,” Privacy International, 2006, pg. 8, http://www.freedominfo.org/documents/global_survey2006.pdf.

^[xxxvii]Daniel Berliner, “The Political Origins of Transparency,” The Journal of Politics 76(2), pg. 479-491, http://www.danielberliner.com/uploads/2/1/9/0/21908308/berliner_jop_2014_-_the_political_origins_of_transparency.pdf.

^[xxxviii] Sambit Bhattacharyya, Roland Hodler, “Natural Resource, democracy and corruption,” European Economics Review, August 12, 2008.

^[xxxix]Robert Klitgaard, “Controlling Corruption,” University of California Press, 1988, pg. 186.

^[xl] Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption: A study in Political Economy, New York: Academic Press.

^[xli] “Organization of American States: Democracy for peace, security, and development,” OAS, August 1, 2009, http://www.oas.org/en/sla/dil/inter_american_treaties_B-58_against_Corruption.asp.

^[xlii]Susan Rose-Ackerman, “International Actors and the Promises and Pitfalls of Anti-Corruption Reform,” (2013). Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper Number 4944. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5954&context=fss_papers.

^[xliii] Peter Schwarz, “Money launderers and tax havens: Two sides of the same coin?” International Review of Law and Economics, January 21, 2010, pg. 46.

^[xliv] Ibid, 39.

^[xlv] “Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, April 9, 1998, pg. 56, http://www.uniset.ca/microstates/oecd_44430243.pdf.

By Angshuman Choudhury*

Bilateral relations between India and Myanmar have historically been uneven and contingent on specific leadership approaches on both sides. Under India’s incumbent Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, this complex relationship has seen renewed commitment within the broader agenda of “Act East” – a timely upgradation of India’s post-Cold War tilt towards southeast Asia and beyond.

Since 2014, New Delhi has made an attempt to proactively reach out to Naypyidaw. The core motivation for this revamped push is to consolidate Myanmar as a strategic bridge between India and Southeast Asia, and as a long-term partner in the Mekong sub-region and Bay of Bengal region. At the same time, this agenda is ostensibly meant to counter China’s growing clout in the region.

On the visible front, cooperation between both countries has taken place in three key domains:

• Regional connectivity
• Multi-sectoral investments and development assistance
• Defence and security

Regional Connectivity

The most consistent marker of India’s bilateral cooperation with Myanmar has been on the regional connectivity front, entailing a host of infrastructural projects, both inside Myanmar and across its dual overland-maritime with India. The foundational drivers behind this policy are greater connectivity between the two countries, and in turn, stronger trade, production, market, and people-to-people linkages.

To this end, the Modi government has ensured significant continuity from the previous administration. It has issued fresh contracts to complete incomplete projects, proposed a Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA); planned construction of nine border ‘haats’ (trading points); and advanced plans for a full-spectrum economic corridor. The most prominent cases-in-point are the 3200-km India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) trilateral highway and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project (KMMTTP), both of which were sanctioned by the previous administrations in New Delhi, but have received boosted attention and expedited timelines only under the Modi government.

As of June 2017, the Sittwe deep sea port – a component of KMMTTP – stands ready to commence operations; and the crucial overland route between the Paletwa inland water terminal – another KMMTTP pivot – and Zorinpuri (Mizoram, India) stands successfully contracted. Extensive repair works on other existing overland routes from Myanmar’s hinterlands to India’s northeast are also underway.

There has also been renewed interest in two key regional groupings: Bangladesh India Myanmar Sri Lanka Thailand-Economic Corridor (BIMST-EC) and the Bangladesh China India Myanmar-Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC). While India separately hosted the BIMST countries alongside the 2016 BRICS summit in Goa, a Joint Study Group meeting of BCIM-EC countries was hosted in Kolkata this April.

Notwithstanding the above, if pushing back Chinese clout remains a core priority for India, New Delhi must do much more and quickly. China’s projects in Myanmar have moved at double the pace of India’s, thanks to its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Meanwhile, not only is the KMMTTP incomplete, but the proposed MVA too is still on stand-by. While the construction of the IMT is back by land acquisition issues, the proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) around Sittwe port continues to face acute challenges of local displacement. These issues will require deeper multi-track engagement with Myanmar’s government.

Multi-sectoral Investments and Development Assistance

The Modi government’s forward push towards Myanmar features significant elements of continuity on this front. The favourable environment for foreign investment and transparent engagement offered by the Thein Sein and Suu Kyi-led administrations has only facilitated the process.

Since 2014, New Delhi and Naypyidaw have inked several MoUs in sectors like renewable energy, oil-and-gas, traditional medicine, financial regulation, banking, insurance, power, IT, agriculture, and transport. India plans to import 100,000 tonnes of pulses annually from Myanmar, and build a seed research and development centre in Yezin. In August 2016, it was announced that India would lay a 6900-km gas pipeline from Sittwe to its northeast via Bangladesh under the “Hydrocarbon Vision 2030” agenda. This is a concurrent response to China’s already-operational pipeline from Kyauk Phyu to Yunnan.

In the development assistance sector, India has extended direct assistance to Myanmar’s new civilian government to facilitate democratic transition, particularly in human resource development, training, and institutional capacity-building. India has also offered humanitarian assistance worth US$ 1 million to Myanmar towards rehabilitation efforts in the strife-torn Rakhine State. This is in line with New Delhi’s diplomatic backing of the Myanmar government’s standpoint on the Rohingya issue at the UN.

However, at present, New Delhi’s investment and assistance framework remains non-comprehensive and confined to the paper. Most of the MoUs are yet to be actualised on the ground, including the Sittwe-Northeast India pipeline. India could do much more on the democratic institution-building front, owing to its own rich experience of post-colonial state-building. Parliamentary exchanges could serve well to bring the governments of both countries closer while ensuring a meaningful assistive framework.

Regarding accepting and resettling Rohingya refugees, the Modi government has reportedly planned to round up what it calls ‘illegal Rohingya settlers’ and deport them. However, this has not happened yet. New Delhi’s diplomatic silence on this issue is largely because of its sensitive nature, which, if tinkered, could damage future prospects of a flourishing bilateral relationship.

Security and Defence

The ‘security and defence’ component of the India-Myanmar bilateral is driven by two key factors: the volatile 1643 km-long land border; and China’s assertive power projection in the sub-region.

While India and Myanmar have had some military-to-military cooperation under the previous administrations, the Modi government has significantly upped the game. Following the June 2015 attack by NSCN (K) rebels on an Indian army convoy in the border district of Moreh, Manipur, several high-level dignitaries from both countries have met on a number of occasions – including Myanmar’s national security adviser’s New Delhi visit in 2017 – to discuss joint counterinsurgency operations and border patrols. However, insofar as dealing with anti-India groups lodged in Myanmar’s northwestern Sagaing Division is concerned, the Modi government has furnished little details in public domain, save for the unwarranted disclosure of the hot pursuit operation after the June 2015 attacks.

The Modi administration has also offered assistance in modernising Myanmar’s armed forces and stated its desire for greater defence cooperation. This plan has been best manifest in the maritime domain, with Naypyidaw slowly but certainly tilting towards India for naval equipment procurement. India was already supplying sonar equipment to Myanmar’s navy, and the Modi government recently inked a US$ 37.9 million-worth lightweight torpedoes deal with the latter. Both India’s and Myanmar’s navies have visited each other’s facilities in the past year. India accepted proposals for capacity-building and training programmes for its counterparts in Myanmar, including setting up of a meteorological facility. India has also begun supplying arms (light and heavy) and communication equipment to the Tatmadaw, with the stated agenda of securing the sensitive border. How the Tatmadaw ultimately uses much of the hardware supplied by New Delhi is unclear.

Overall, the PM Modi-led administration has significantly upgraded India’s outreach to Myanmar across a wide range of sectors. However, the exact dividends India would accrue from this outreach remain unclear. While the current lines of bilateral engagement are a significant improvement from the previous administrations, they are insufficient to ensure long-term viability and consolidation, particularly vis-a-vis countering the rapidly expanding Chinese influence.

While democratisation has opened new avenues for engagement for India, it has also allowed China to move closer to Naypyidaw. New Delhi must pay close attention to the missed opportunities of the past decades and build on them in the future to create a sustainable bilateral engagement.

* Angshuman Choudhury
Researcher, SEARP, IPCS
E-mail: angshuman.choudhury@ipcs.org

Excluding shelter, the core CPI has been falling in recent months.

Even with the economy at or below most economists’ estimates of full employment, it appears that inflation is slowing rather than accelerating. The overall CPI was flat in June, while the core CPI increased by just 0.1 percent for the third consecutive month. Over the last year, the overall CPI has increased by 1.6 percent while the core index increased by 1.7 percent. This is a clear slowing in both measures, which had been at or above 2.0 percent on a year-over-year basis earlier in the year.

The slowing of inflation is even more striking if we compare the annualized rate of inflation taking the price level for the last three months with the prior three months. (This is the rate of price increase comparing the average price level for April, May and June, with the average price level for January, February and March.) The annualized rate for the overall CPI over this period has been -0.3 percent, as declining energy prices have pulled the index downward. The annualized rate in the core index has been just 0.6 percent.

Even this low rate in the core CPI has been driven by inflation in the rental component. The shelter index, which is primarily rent proper and owners’ equivalent rent, rose 0.2 percent in June and has risen 3.3 percent over the last year. A core index that excludes shelter costs was flat last month and has increased just 0.6 percent over the last year. The annualized inflation rate in the core index minus shelter, comparing the last three months with the prior three months is -1.1 percent. In other words, it is only rising rents keeping the core CPI in positive territory.

It is worth looking at rent separately since, like food and energy, it follows a dynamic that is different from the overall CPI. Rents are driven in the short run by the scarcity of housing in desirable locations. In principle more housing can be built, but even in the absence of zoning restrictions there is still considerable lead time between when the need is recognized and the point at which new housing units become available.

The rate of inflation in the owners’ equivalent rent (OER) component had been accelerating gradually since 2010, when it was actually negative. (The OER index is a better measure of pure rents since it excludes utilities that are often included in the index for rent proper index.) It peaked at 3.6 percent on a year-over-year basis in December of 2016 and since then has slowed modestly. The year-over-year increase for June was 3.2 percent. The slowdown is considerably sharper if we compare the last three months with the prior three months. The annualized rate of inflation for the OER over this period was just 2.6 percent.

With even rental inflation now trending downwards, it is difficult to see any major component that could push inflation higher in the immediate future. Inflation in medical care and education, two sectors that have historically been drivers of higher inflation, appears to be well under control. The medical care index has risen by 2.7 percent over the last year, while the education index has risen by just 2.3 percent.

The new vehicle index has been flat over the last year, although it has been falling for the last five months. The used vehicle index has fallen by 4.3 percent over the last year. This decline is driven by a glut of used cars resulting from the repossession of cars purchased with subprime loans.

There is also no evidence of inflationary pressures building at earlier stages of production. The Producer Price Index for final demand was up just 0.1 percent in June. The index that excludes food, energy and trade rose 0.2 percent. Both indexes have increased by 2.0 percent over the last year, down from inflation rates earlier in the year.

In short, all the evidence in this month’s price data suggests that inflation is low and heading lower. There appears to be no basis for concern that a tightening labor market is leading to rising inflation.

By KP Fabian*

We need to contemplate the prospects of relations between India and the European Union (EU) and the rest of the continent keeping in mind the shifting geopolitical equations; the state of EU; the challenges it is facing; and the new world order likely to emerge and replace the departing world order.

We might start with India-EU relations since 2014 when a new government with a comfortable parliamentary majority led by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi assumed office in May of that year. PM Modi visited Brussels in March 2016 and attended the 13th India-EU Summit. The Summit should have been held in 2014 as EU and India had earlier agreed to meet at a summit level once in two years. The previous summit was held in 2012. A few issues, including the case of two Italian marines held in India after they shot dead two Indian fishermen, delayed the Summit. Italy had taken an unreasonable stand in the matter arguing that it alone had jurisdiction as the tanker Enrica Lexie was flying the Italian flag. Italy’s position was not sustainable as the fishing boat was as much protected by United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as the tanker. The EU lent support to Italy – albeit it had no case – out of a sense of EU solidarity by delaying the summit.

The 13th Summit came out with an EU-India Agenda for Action 2020, which provides for cooperation on a variety of issues such as clean energy, climate partnership, water partnership, migration, mobility, and counter-terrorism. The Agenda for Action is ambitious and it is for the two partners to work together to meet the commonly agreed targets.

India wanted the EU’s endorsement of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) first proposed by India at the UN General Assembly in 1996. Though Brussels had suffered a major terrorist attack in March 2016 resulting in the deaths of 32 innocent civilians, EU was unable to endorse India’s CCIT.

Another matter where there was not much progress is the Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA), negotiations for which had begun in 2006. An agreement is yet to be reached over some issues including services, data security, visa facilitation, market access to some goods, geographical indications, and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) relating to pharmaceutical products. Another Summit is due later this year in Delhi.

Even without the BTIA, EU-India trade has grown appreciably with EU being India’s top trade partner, with trade between the two accounting for 13.5 per cent of India’s global trade in 2015-16. The value of India’s exports rose from 22.6 billion Euros in 2006 to 39.3 billion Euros in 2016. India’s imports jumped from 24.2 billion Euros to 37.8 billion Euros during the same period.

As we look at the prospects of India-Europe cooperation, we might start with a clarification. The words “European Union” represent more an aspiration than a reality. The population of Europe is 740 million (as of 2016), but the EU has only a population of 510 million. If and when UK leaves, the EU population will drop by 65 million. The short point is that India should concentrate on its bilateral relations with the member-states on all matters other than trade and investment for reasons explained below.

The EU is facing few serious problems. Brexit, if it happens, will hurt both UK and the EU. The EU’s plans for ‘Common Security and Foreign Policy’ (CSFP) is yet to take off and its prospects for success will be seriously affected by Brexit. The EU has failed to arrive at a common policy on refugees coming from Syria and elsewhere. Its agreement with Turkey on refugees is in danger of unravelling.

Though the election results in the Netherlands and France have shown that the anti-EU political parties have not done well, the fact remains that there is a general trend to look at EU with a degree of disenchantment and the popular dissatisfaction with the Brussels bureaucracy shows no sign of decreasing.

The geopolitical equations are being rewritten. The EU can no longer depend on the US as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the 2017 G20 meeting in Hamburg. We are witnessing a move away from a world where the US played a leading role since the end of World War II. After Donald Trump took office as the US president, there is a radical change in Washington’s policy. With his policy or slogan of “America First,” Trump has withdrawn from the historic 2015 Paris Accord on Climate Change which previous US President Barack Obama had taken the lead in getting adopted. Trump has walked out of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and has raised questions about North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He has questioned the advantage of free trade and globalisation.

The key question is as to what extent the EU or its major member-states and India can work together in shaping the emerging new world order. Both India and the EU want the new order to be based on values they share. But it is unclear whether the EU is able and willing to adopt an independent foreign policy, primarily a policy independent of US policy. It is not being suggested that the EU should begin taking a line opposed to Washington. The fact of the matter is that till now Washington has influenced EU policy and the EU has hardly influenced US policy. What is required for the EU, if it is serious about CSDP, is to be less dependent on the US. While it is almost impossible to work with the US on a basis of equality, there is some scope for making it less unequal.

Let us look at some areas where the EU has made and can make significant contributions. One area of importance is peace-keeping and peace-building. The EU tried to mediate in Egypt to prevent the 2013 Rabaa massacre in Cairo after the military coup against the first democratically elected president in Egypt’s history. EU’s High Representative Catherine Ashton worked hard and succeeded in drawing out an agreement. If Egypt’s military had accepted it, the massacre could have been avoided. What is sad is that though the EU had every reason to be proud of the mediation effort, there is no mention of it in the annual report for 2013, possibly because the EU was keen to cultivate the new regime in Cairo.

The EU has the right credentials to be a trusted mediator and can do more in this sphere. Both India and the EU should consider the potential for working together in this regard. Africa is another area for India and the EU to collaborate. Piloted by Chancellor Merkel, the G20 Summit in Hamburg has endorsed an ambitious plan for Africa’s progress. India, with its historic connections with Africa can be a valuable partner for Germany.

*KP Fabian, Former Indian diplomat, & Professor, Indian Society of International Law