By Siraj Wahab

Kuwait on Thursday expelled Iranian diplomats after the country’s top court convicted a “terror” cell of links to Tehran.

A Kuwaiti Supreme Court ruling last month convicted 21 people of belonging to a cell that had been formed and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The cell’s mastermind was sentenced to life in jail, and 20 others received various prison terms for links with Tehran and Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, plotting terror attacks in Kuwait and smuggling explosives from Iran.

“Iranian sides helped and supported the cell members,” Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

A senior government official told AFP that around 15 Iranian diplomats were expelled. It was not clear if Ambassador Alireza Enayati was among them.

Kuwait also ordered the closure of Iran’s “military, cultural and trade” missions, the official said.
Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Al-Sabah, state minister for Cabinet affairs and acting information minister, confirmed Kuwait had taken diplomatic action against Iran.

“Following the Supreme Court ruling on the case, the government of Kuwait has decided to take measures, in accordance with diplomatic norms and the Vienna Convention, toward its relations with Iran,” he said.

A Saudi Foreign Ministry official expressed the Kingdom’s support for all measures taken against Iran’s diplomatic mission in Kuwait, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

Unlike most of its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners, Kuwait has maintained good relations with Tehran in recent years.

In February, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Kuwait City a month after Kuwait entered into a dialogue with his country in a bid to normalize relations.

Harvard scholar and Iranian affairs expert Majid Rafizadeh said Kuwait’s move is calculated, wise and appropriate.

“Before it was too late, and before Iran had established its terror cell or proxy, as it has done in many nations, Kuwait took action,” he told Arab News.

“Other countries should take similar action. Otherwise, when militias or proxies… are set up in a country, it will be too late to take action,” he added.

“Kuwait and its emir are known for their diplomatic skills. This was the first ever expulsion of an ambassador by Kuwait. This shows that Iran has gone too far in breaking the law and endangering its stability. Kuwait followed diplomatic etiquette and law appropriately.”

Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri, a Riyadh-based Saudi political analyst and international relations scholar, said he was not surprised by Iran’s malign activity.

“Iran’s basic idea has always been to incite trouble in the Gulf states and to undermine the stability of our region,” he said.

“The Kuwaiti emir is a statesman, and he was trying to have good relations between his country and Iran. He was acting as a mediator between the GCC countries and Iran. Tehran didn’t respect what the emir and the Kuwaiti state were doing.”

Al-Shehri added: “Iran isn’t looking for a good relationship. It’s looking to incite trouble, create turbulence, interfere and promote sectarianism. This is the problem with Tehran.”

He said if this is what Iran does to a neutral country, one can imagine what it can do to others. “Having diplomatic ties with Iran, or trying to have normal relations with it, is a waste of time,” he said.

“Qatar and Oman, which have a sympathetic attitude toward Iran, must cut all their ties with Tehran because those ties will one day explode in their face. What happened with Kuwait must constitute a good lesson for them.”

Oubai Shahbandar, a Syrian-American analyst and fellow at the New America Foundation’s International Security Program, told Arab News that the Iranian espionage and terror ring in Kuwait illustrates how Tehran’s regional policy is not run by regular diplomats in the Foreign Ministry.

“Rather, it’s the IRGC that holds the portfolio, and its aim is to use the facade of a normal diplomatic mission to advance its mission of subterfuge and controlled chaos,” he said.

“The IRGC isn’t concerned with diplomatic niceties. It seeks simply to undermine and control, and will use whatever means it has at its disposal to achieve the underhanded objectives of (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamanei.”

Tehran reacted angrily, saying the accusation that it was behind a terrorist cell was baseless. “Iran’s strong objection has been communicated to Kuwait’s charge d’affaires,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said in a statement. “It was reiterated that Iran reserves the right to a reciprocal measure.”

In its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, the US State Department this week said Iran was the world’s “foremost” state sponsor of terrorism in 2016, a dubious distinction the country has held for many years.

It said Tehran was firm in its backing of proxies that have destabilized Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

It added that Iran continued to recruit in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Shiite militia members to fight in Syria and Iraq, and Iranian support for Hezbollah was unchanged.

Tehran used a unit of the IRGC, the Quds Force, “to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations and create instability in the Middle East,” the report said.

By Anthony Harris*

I am often asked if Britain’s role in the Middle East and elsewhere will be diminished by its leaving the EU. I fear the answer is an unequivocal yes. The pointers are already there: Based on the strength of the pound, the UK economy is shrinking; foreign investment in Britain is slowing; economic growth has gone from being the fastest in the G-7 to being the slowest; and such growth as there is derives from consumer spending and personal debt.

I have often heard Leavers say the arguments for and against leaving the EU are equally balanced. This is not true: The UK economy is slowing noticeably. British people are becoming poorer. They are also beginning to realize that their government is unprepared for the complexity of what they are trying to achieve by leaving the EU.

It may well be that the UK economy will one day grow again. One devoutly hopes so. My argument about British influence diminishing is based more on geopolitics than the economy. In 1962, then-US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said Britain had lost an empire and had not yet found a role. I can remember how this upset many leading British politicians at the time, though it was true.

The UK was still recovering from World War II, and was shedding colonies out of political and economic necessity. Joining Europe to boost the economy and help ensure there would be no more wars in Europe seemed the right new role for Britain, and it worked well for 43 years.

Many Leavers seem to be affected by “colonial nostalgia,” since they claim to remember the old days when Britain traded with her former colonies. They argue that distant Australia and New Zealand are among many ready to do special trade deals with the UK. They point to the US as our greatest ally, and to President Donald Trump’s statement last week that he is ready to do “a very, very big, very powerful trade deal with the UK.”

Nothing can happen for two years until Britain has left the EU, and I wish British negotiators luck, since if they read Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal,” they may find it hard, as the weaker partner, to get a good deal.

As for Australia and New Zealand, the clock unfortunately cannot be put back to the early 1970s. Geography now counts for more than language. Australia now does 20 times more trade with China than with Britain, which is Australia’s 21st trading partner in terms of the size of exports and imports.

Power today is concentrated in big countries such as the US, China, India and Russia, and big blocs such as the EU, the largest trading group in the world. Even after Britain leaves the EU, the latter will remain five times bigger than the UK. If Trump or China’s President Xi Jinping should want to consult Europe about international problems, they will first talk to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron or Russian President Vladimir Putin.

They may consult Britain, but since it has no seat in Brussels, and has developed the habit of following the US, it will have little power to influence events. Britain is of course a significant player in NATO, and has always been active in defense matters. The UK makes a valuable contribution in international efforts to combat terrorism, and its friends and allies hope it will continue to do so.

But we should not forget that Britain’s army is smaller than the US Marine Corps, and repeated budget cuts have greatly reduced the size of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The UK has to face up to the fact that other countries have become larger and more powerful: It has to live in the modern globalized world.

My main worry is that the government is now so fixated on leaving the EU that it is forgetting the role Britain played until recently in other parts of the world, notably the Middle East. Its international friends, especially in the Gulf, are wondering why the UK seems to have lost its voice.

Britain’s foreign secretary recently said his country will continue post-Brexit to be a major global player. This is delusional: Britain’s role in this region will continue to shrink if it is obsessed only with domestic affairs, if it abdicates any real interest in the region, and if it stops talking to its friends.

• Anthony Harris is former British ambassador to the UAE and a career diplomat in the Middle East. He can be reached at harrisaddubai@hotmail.com.

Apple once again has claimed the top spot in global profits, according to Fortune’s annual ranking of U.S. companies shaping the world, AppleInsider said.

In Fortune magazine’s 63rd composition of the list of Fortune 500 companies, Apple has seized the third spot in revenue, behind only Walmart and Berkshire Hathaway. However, ranked by profitability, the company destroys all challengers, reaping $45.7 billion in profit and handily dispatching second place J.P. Morgan Chase with $24.7 billion.

Walmart is far behind the pair, at 11th place with $13.6 billion in profit.

Other notable placements on the list overall are Alphabet at fifth for profits, and 27th for revenue, Microsoft at 28th place for profits and seventh for revenue, and Intel at 32nd for profit, and 16th for revenue.

Other newcomers to the list from tech industries are Hewlett Packard’s return after a long absence at 59th for revenue, Tesla at 383, Nvidia at 387, Activision Blizzard at 406, and Adobe Systems at 443.

In total, Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with $12 trillion in revenues, $890 billion in profits, $19 trillion in market value, and employ 28.2 million people worldwide.

Companies are ranked by total revenues for their respective fiscal years. Included in the survey are companies that are incorporated in the U.S. and operate in the U.S. and file financial statements. Excluded are private companies not filing with a government agency, companies incorporated outside the U.S., and companies consolidated by other companies that file with a government agency.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

The crisis between Qatar and much of the new “Sunni” NATO – as some US media already call it today – consists in a formal series of 13 requests that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, the Emirates, Bahrain, and even Mauritius, have made – as an ultimatum – to Qatar:

1) to break off any diplomatic and economic relations with Iran; 2) to immediately close the Turkish military base near Doha and, anyway, put an end to military cooperation between Qatar and Turkey; 3) to immediately close Al Jazeera, an old TV created on the ruins of the BBC broadcasting in Arabic and later de facto monopolized by the Muslim Brotherhood; 4) to make the members of the Qatari Royal House no longer fund networks such as Arabi21, RASSD, Araby al-Jadid and Middle East Eye. “Araby al Jadeed” is a brand-new all-news network created in March 2014 and organized by Azmi Bashara, a former member of the Israeli Parliament, broadcasting from London, Beirut and Doha, with 150 employees, while the above stated Middle East Eye is currently led by David Hearst, formerly foreign editor-in-chief of the London Guardian.

The network Middle East Eye has been blocked by the Saudi authorities and by the other Emirates.

The other requests are the following: 5) Saudi Arabia has asked Qatar to stop funding groups or individuals designated as terrorists by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAEs), Bahrain and Egypt, as well as providing data and information.

Well done. Some terrorists designated as such by Saudi Arabia are defined in the same way also by the West. It is the case of Hajjaj al Azmi, a Kuwaiti citizen who often lives in Doha. In the list of the 13 requests also the “Benghazi Defense Brigades” are mentioned, namely a militia created in June 2016 to oppose the forces of Khalifa Haftar’s Operation Dignity.

The Benghazi Defense Brigades cooperated with the ISIS “Caliphate” in its operations at Suq al-Hout and in Sirte.

The Saudi list includes Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani, former Interior Minister of the Emirate, linked to the 9/11 jihadist operations.

However, let us be honest and face it. Prince Turki bin Faisal was the leader of Saudi intelligence services for 23 years since 1979 until ten days before the 9/11 attack. Is it by mere coincidence?

According to well-known data, Nawaf bin al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mindar, who both arrived in the United States for the 9/11 attack, were managed by the Saudi intelligence services.

Al-Bayoumi, selected by the FBI exactly as a Saudi agent, had huge funds in the United States granted by Saudi Arabia through the company Dallah Alco.

Al-Bayoumi was connected with Fahad al-Thumairy, Director of the Saudi Ministry for Islamic Affairs. However, let us not focus on the 29 pages taken from the US report on Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attack.

This would get us very far and would shed light on many facts and events that are currently taking place, not only in the Middle East.

Strategically, the issue of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism has been long lasting: the jihad – which the West has foolishly favoured – has become the primary geopolitical agent throughout the Greater Middle East and also in the rest of the world.

This was solely Westerners’ fault since they had every chance to force Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, the Lebanon, Iraq and all the other Islamic regional players in the Middle East to be more reasonable and become somewhat milder as to the “sword jihad”.

Nevertheless, Quos Deus perdere vult, dementat.

As things stand now, without a change there is no solution for this situation. We will be confronted with the remote-controlled jihad and later we will ask those maneuvering it for money to be rescued from an economic crisis that is also caused by the crazy geopolitics of the whole West.

Currently Saudi Arabia invests approximately 20 billion US dollars for infrastructure in the United States, as well as six billions for 150 Black Hawk helicopters to be used in the its kingdom.

If all goes well, at the very quick pace recently imparted to reach economic diversification, Saudi Arabia will go ahead according to its program “Vision 2030” by selling, at first, Saudi Aramco on the market.

This is another important fact to understand today’s events.

Nevertheless the project “Vision 2030” also proposes measures which may still generate tension, such as the increase in tariffs, rates and taxes, although with a fall in the unemployment rate from 11.6% to 7%.

Furthermore Saudi Arabia envisages primary support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Saudi public Fund devoted to SMEs, namely Musharakah, has already 4 billion Saudi riyals, equal to approximately 6 billion US dollars.

In short, Saudi Arabia wants to rapidly diversify its oil-dependent economy and grow up to becoming the 15th global economy in 2020.

Special Economic Zones will also be created and foreign direct investment (FDI) will rise from the current 3.8% to 5.7% .

According to Al Saud’s plans, the private sector is expected to reach 65% of GDP as against the current 45%.

If Saudi Arabia does not bring the whole Peninsula and the Sunni world up to speed according to this program, “Project 2020” is clearly doomed to failure. Another rational motivation for the anti-Qatar diktat.

Let us now move to request 6.

Against this background, Saudi Arabia asks Qatar to “break off relations with Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the “Caliphate”.

Let us analyze data.

In 2008, the leader of Qatar, Emir al-Thani, held a meeting between all parties present on the Lebanese political scene, by showing clear support for the Shiite movement of the “Party of God” and its allies, especially for the many Iranian foundations operating in Beirut.

It is worth recalling that exactly in 2008, the Sunni Lebanese leader, Rafik Hariri (whose economic fortune had started in Saudi Arabia), was killed, probably by a joint operation of some Shiite countries.

Recently the Qatari Emir has also spoken of Hezbollah as a “resistance movement”, adding that it is “not wise” to oppose Iran.

Al-Thani has also said that such news were manipulated, but obviously this just exacerbates the situation.

The issue, however, is not only geopolitical, but also economic.

Qatar is a relatively small, but not irrelevant oil producer, with 620,000 barrels a day. However, it is the first natural gas supplier in the world and – according to 2016 data – it exports 77.2 million tons mainly to the East.

However, why is there no OPEC for natural gas, which would avoid the politicization of the search of market shares between producers?

Meanwhile, the United States is becoming the largest natural gas producer in the world, with a 2016 extraction level equal to 23%, while in 2001 the share of shale gas in North American extraction was a mere 1%.

Hence it is obvious to imagine how prices and market shares will change with this mass of liquid gas in Europe and Asia. It is also easy to imagine how the economies depending on natural gas in the Middle East would end up if the United States became more aggressive on the global liquid gas markets.

European markets’ net dependence on African and Middle East gas imports and rigid pricing of liquid gas on Asian markets, as well as the huge investment needed for extraction and transport infrastructure, are all factors which – unlike what happened for oil – prevent the creation of a global natural gas market protected by a single producer cartel.

This is why there is no OPEC for gas and this is particularly the reason why the oil exporters floundering in the financial crisis want to back the large gas extracting countries into a corner and later possibly expropriate them.

Hence Saudi Arabia’s and its allies’ current crackdown on Qatar poses a major economic problem for al-Thani’s Emirate, considering that all the ships flying the Qatari flag have been forbidden to dock in the Saudi and Emirates’ oil and gas terminal of Fujariah in the Persian Gulf.

For the time being the Emirate “punished” by Saudi Arabia has reassured its customers, especially the Asian ones and the major one, namely the Japanese Jera buying Qatari gas with long-term contracts, about the regularity of supplies, but nothing prevents delays and additional costs from occurring, which will soon affect Italy as well.

Furthermore the oil price fall had created a 98 billion US dollar deficit in Saudi Arabia’s public finances.

In a logic of looting, which Quran rules permit, the easiest solution is to put a strain on the richest opponent.

However, besides creating debt securities, Saudi Arabia will sell significant shareholdings of its oil companies, but above all of Saudi Aramco – and this is a central factor, as already mentioned.

Economic diversification is therefore an immediate need for Saudi Arabia and this explains most of the current internal conflicts among the “Seven Sudayri” of the Al Saud family, who have been ruling and deciding the fate of much of the Arabian peninsula since the time of the Wahhabi uprising.

However let us continue with the requests made by Saudi Arabia and its allies to Qatar.

Again to continue the discussion of “request” 5 to Qatar, we are talking about 59 individuals and 12 institutions which, according to Saudi Arabia, support, organize and fund terrorism.

The list of organizations obviously include the charities linked to al-Thani’s family, but there are also Saraya al-Ashtar, an organization of “occasional terrorists” linked to Hezb’ollah in Bahrain; the “February 14 Coalition”, again operating in Bahrain in favor of the Shiite majority in the country; the “Resistance Brigades”, again active in Bahrain; Saraya al-Mukhtar, a Shiite League operating in the al-Khalifa’s kingdom, and finally Harakat Ahrar Bahrain.

Judging from this list, it seems that Daesh-Isis is not a terrorist organization and the same holds true for al-Qaeda.

That is true, but they are Sunni organizations.

Moreover, a few days ago the British media published very compromising documents on the Saudi leaders’ funding to all jihadist terrorist organizations.

Again according to the latest data, the money spent by the Saudi ruling class to spread Wahhabism (and Salafism) in the world – both ideological foundations of contemporary jihad – is currently at least 5.2 billion US dollars.

Hence the oil powers are brutally demanding Qatar, the world’s gas leader, to extradite “terrorists” (but only the Shiite ones) and not interfere in domestic affairs or grant citizenship to Saudi, Egyptians and Emirates’ citizens who are wanted in their countries of origin.

These are requests 7 and 8 of the cahier de doleances issued by Saudi Arabia and its allies, also supported by the short-sightedness of the US intelligence services.

However, it is now well-established that in 1996 the Qatari royal family hosted and protected Khalid Sheik Mohammed, thus saving him from a US arrest warrant issued against him who is considered one of the “masterminds” of the 9/11 attack.

It has also been ascertained that a member of al-Thani’s family provided a safe cover in Doha to Al Zarkawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, during his many transfers to and from Afghanistan.

Later the Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Maliki, openly accused Qatar of backing al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate.

However, why is Qatar supposed to support Daesh-Isis, mainly funded by its Saudi arch-enemy?

Simply because the Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate perpetrated at least three attacks on the Saudi territory in 2015, 2016 and 2017, for which it duly claimed responsibility.

As to request 9, Saudi Arabia and its allies – supported by the United States that found out that the country organizing terrorists is only the Shiite Iran – oblige Qatar to suspend any aid to their internal political enemies hosted by the Qatari Emirate and immediately inform the Sunni authorities (indeed Qatar, too, is strictly Sunni).

Moreover, Saudi Arabia and its allies ask Qatar to align itself with Saudi Arabia and with the other signatories of the diktat list at “economic, political, social and military” levels, following the indications of the Treaty reached between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in 2014.

In particular, the above mentioned Treaty regards Qatar’s end of money and weapon supplies, as well as logistical support, to groups and individuals hostile to Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Egypt and in the various Gulf Countries, obviously including Saudi Arabia.

The 2013 and 2014 agreements were secret agreements, but the topic is primarily the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now secretly operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf – and listens on al- Jazeera the sermons of Shaykh al-Qaradawi, the most authoritative theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is worth recalling that it was exactly a Saudi university professor of the Muslim Brotherhood who radicalized Osama bin Laden who, until then, had been a cheerful Westernized young Saudi tycoon.

The list of the thirteen requests ends with two recommendations: firstly, to undergo monthly supervision during the first year and, for the following ten years, to be monitored, again on a yearly-basis, and anyway decide on the list of the thirteen requests within ten days.

Obviously Qatar, which so far has not accepted the thirteen requests – has immediately turned to Turkey, governed by the AKP, a party born from a rib of the Muslim Brotherhood, and to Iran.

As is well-known, the United States initially supported the Saudi requests – although it later remembered that its central command for the whole Middle East was in Qatar, at the al-Udayd base.

If Qatar loses its tug-of-war with Saudi Arabia and its allies, its large financial reserves will be hoarded by Saudi Arabia to back its project for stabilizing State budgets and rapidly achieving economic diversification, which is at the core of the new King Muhammad al-Salman’s policy line.

Qatar has a sovereign fund of 355 billion US dollars and owns 30 billions worth of securities and shares, as well as an unknown, but definitely huge amount of other investments outside the Emirate.

Moreover, the Saudi royal family pays a high price – with a public debt that would have forced Saudi Arabia into default by 2018 – for the huge funds and loans granted to terrorist organizations in Syria, Yemen and Iraq – all jihadist militias now out of the new balance of power and obviously defeated by the new connection between Russia, Iran, Syria and, in the future, Turkey.

Furthermore, in an already problematic situation, the bloody suicide rush to forcedly reduce oil prices – mainly targeted against the US shale oil – has depleted the public finances and the private incomes of the Wahhabi Kingdom.

Hence, with his victory, President Trump – who played many of his electoral cards precisely on the North American economic recovery to be funded with “unconventional oil and gas” – as shale is officially called – has unintentionally triggered off a tough internal power struggle within the Al Saud family.

The first faction wants to rebuild an effective relationship with Russia and China, so as to stabilize prices and, in the long run, stop pegging the Saudi oil to the US dollar, which will shortly be only the financial instrument of the globalization of North American shale oil – a direct competitor of the Saudi one.

On the contrary, the opposite faction wants to preserve the already strong relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, so as to use the US economy as a carrier for the increasingly necessary and quick diversification of the Saudi economy, which is still heavily oil-dependent.

A factor linked to this new US-Saudi bilateralism is also the Saudi pressure against the New Silk Road of China, which is currently the number one enemy of US geopolitics and that the pro-American Saudis want to drive away from all the Gulf countries.

Conversely, it is almost useless to note that Iran has always been an essential passage point of the One Belt and One Road initiative (OBOR) designed by China.

It is also worth recalling it was Qatar, jointly with Iran, to open the first yuan “exchange centre” throughout the Middle East on April 14, 2015.

In addition to the above-mentioned monetary exchange and clearing centre for the Chinese and Middle East currencies – and it should be noted that yuan-denominated oil contracts between China and Iran are already in place – the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China also operates in Qatar.

If the yuan (and the ruble) became the new benchmark for gas and oil, the US dollar good days would be over since it could no longer lay onto the US-dollar denominated international trade the imbalances and asymmetries of public debt (which, including households’ and companies’ debt, accounts for 345% of the US GDP) and of its trade deficit.

“The dollar is our currency, but your problem” as a FED Governor said to his European counterparts.

Meanwhile, the new Saudi king, Muhammad bin Salman, is planning and designing a new 2 trillion US dollar sovereign fund, with a view to putting an end to the Saudi oil-dependence “within the next twenty years.”

Again according to the pro-American faction of the al-Saud family, the new sovereign fund is expected to invest half of its capital abroad, obviously without ever affecting Aramco, the world’s first oil producer and second holder of world reserves.

Said faction does not show any particular problem with oil price fluctuations, as has already demonstrated by trying – in vain – to push the US shale oil out of the market.

If the oil price increases, there will be more money available to Saudi Arabia for stepping up economic diversification. Even if the oil price decreases there would be no problem: the Saudi oil has the lowest unit extraction cost and the country will always be in a position to sell its products on the fastest-growing and most liquid market in the world, which is currently the Asian one.

Once again Qatar’s primary role in the Japanese and Chinese energy system is very annoying for Saudi Arabia.

Everything will change in the Middle East when, at the end of hostilities in Syria, Israel shall face a number one enemy, namely Iran, which is currently strengthened by the new balance of power prevailing in Syria (and in the Lebanon) and shall also come to terms with what is increasingly becoming the “lesser evil”, namely Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism.

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

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Lawrence Husick*

(FPRI) — “A maritime incident has been reported in the Black Sea in the vicinity of position 44-15.7N, 037-32.9E on June 22, 2017 at 0710 GMT. This incident has not been confirmed. The nature of the incident is reported as GPS interference. Exercise caution when transiting this area.” – United States Maritime Administration

This report originated from the captain of a U.S. merchant vessel in the Black Sea, who reported to the Coast Guard Navigation Center, “GPS equipment unable to obtain GPS signal intermittently since nearing coast of Novorossiysk, Russia. Now displays HDOP 0.8 accuracy within 100m, but given location is actually 25 nautical miles off; . . . I confirm all ships in the area (more than 20 ships) have the same problem.”

The captain sent along the following photo:

In February 2010, FPRI published an E-Note, “Avoiding a Homeland Security Error That Could Leave the U.S. Flying Blind,” that discussed the termination of the United States’ LORAN terrestrial radio-frequency navigation systems. The justification for that decision was that shuttering the broadcasting stations would save approximately $36 million per year. This author argued that LORAN-C stations should have been retained, and upgraded to eLORAN (a newer digital version that is more robust than the older system), if only to serve as a backup to the satellite-based GPS system. At that time, we stated,

Some reasons given include the use of Loran as a reliable backup for GPS, which is prone to interference and possible system degradation and failure; use of Loran to augment GPS for better operational reliability and accuracy in the Continental United States; use of Loran as an alternative timing source for transportation and communications systems including cellular telephone systems that fail without time synchronization; and global leadership and cooperation with allies in providing maritime navigation and safety systems.

In 2014, the U.S. Government recognized its mistake in destroying the LORAN system, and a bill authorizing eLORAN was passed. The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2017 (H.R. 2518/S. 1129) includes authorization to implement eLORAN. The current bill requires that eLORAN be operational three years after the passage of the act. Today, three years after first authorization, however, the eLORAN system remains on the drawing board, and no actual implementation has taken place.

While the origin of the degraded GPS signals in the Black Sea is, at this time, unknown, it is likely that it is related to Russia’s deployment of over 250,000 GPS jamming transmitters on cell towers throughout the country. The October 2016 issue of OEWatch explained, “The Russian Ministry of Defense has accepted into the inventory the Pole-21 radio suppression system, which defends Russian strategic facilities from enemy cruise missiles, guided bombs, and unmanned aerial vehicles, which use the GPS . . . satellite systems for navigation and guidance to the target. The latest jammer . . . covers entire regions like a dome that is impenetrable for satellite navigation signals.”

In his May 11, 2017 testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats said, “The global threat of electronic warfare (EW) attacks against space systems will expand in the coming years in both number and types of weapons. Development very likely will focus on jamming capabilities against dedicated military satellite communications (SATCOM), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging satellites, and enhanced capabilities against Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).”

While incorrect navigation of twenty merchant ships in the Black Sea may not seem significant, the United States and its allies face a larger issue: the effectiveness of Russian countermeasures that effectively blinds our “smart” weapons and disrupts the flow of positioning information that is vital to U.S. information superiority. Such jamming technology dates back to at least 1997, when a Russian firm first showed a small portable GPS jammer at the MAKS airshow near Moscow.

As reported by the SpaceDaily website, “At the start of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq not a single cruise missile was able to hit its target. Five days and dozens of lost cruise missiles later the Americans accused Russia of redirecting the Tomahawks towards the desert away from their designated targets. Only after the Americans had located the positions of the Russian jammers and destroyed them in a series of carpet bombing raids, did the Tomahawks manage to regain their smart capabilities.”

The U.S. Army, meanwhile, has acknowledged that it is losing the electronic warfare (EW) race to Russia. Only 813 soldiers (out of over 500,000 on active duty) are trained in EW, and there are only 1,000 positions authorized service-wide. Equipment lags, as well, with U.S. forces unable to match the newly deployed Krasukha-4 jammer now deployed in Ukraine and Syria. According to Ronald Pontius, deputy to Army Cyber Command’s chief, Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, “you can’t but come to the conclusion that we’re not making progress at the pace the threat demands.”

Seven years ago, FPRI pointed out that a single, obscure 30-year old navigation system was being decommissioned to save a relatively insignificant sum of money, but that having a backup for GPS was the wiser course of action. Writing about the recent incident in the Black Sea, Dana A. Goward, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation said, “Assuming Russia is behind this, why would they do such a thing? Maybe it was to encourage use of the Russian GLONASS satellite navigation system or their terrestrial Loran system, called Chayka, instead of GPS. Perhaps it was for some security reason known only to them.”

The U.S. Coast Guard, in a January 2016 safety alert about jammed GPS signals that affected freighters and tankers, gave what may be the best advice about relying on GPS for navigation. Echoing Ronald Reagan, the Coast Guard advised, “Trust, but verify.” For most of us, this advice may mean keeping a paper map in the car. For ships at sea, it means having personnel aboard who know how to use a sextant, chronometer, and sight reduction tables to conduct celestial navigation. For the warfighter depending on smart weapons in a high paced engagement, there may be no fallback from which to easily verify. Regardless, the lesson may be that when it comes to navigation and electronic warfare systems, the U.S. can ill-afford shooting itself in the foot for dubious budgetary reasons.

About the author:
*Lawrence Husick is Co-Chairman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center for the Study of Terrorism. He is also co-director of the FPRI Wachman Center’s Program on Teaching Innovation and a faculty member at the Whiting Graduate School of Engineering and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Graduate Biotechnology Program of the Johns Hopkins University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

By Behzad Khoshandam*

Two years after conclusion of Iran’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 group of countries, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “reconciliatory strategic necessity” is still the main protector of this international agreement. In practice, not merely in theory, the use of diplomacy is the sole sustainable way to settle disputes and maintain balance of powers in West Asia, which pivots around this agreement that was signed on July 14, 2015. After the lapse of two tense years in West Asia, effective productivity and accurate implementation of the JCPOA is now even more connected to domestic policies of those countries, which signed this international agreement as well as Iran’s neighbors. However, predictable limitations are currently creating challenges to the implementation of the JCPOA on the sidelines of global politics.

During this time, the world has witnessed major developments with regard to domestic and foreign policies of Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, in addition to important political developments in the United States. Major developments have taken place in the area of domestic policies of France, the UK, and Germany as a result of which a form of pessimism has grown among the European states with regard to trans-Atlantic relations as well as defense and security reliance on the United States and such international bodies as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Group of Eight (G8), and the Group of Twenty (G20). At the same time in the East, Asian cooperation among major Asian power poles such as China-Russia, India-Russia, Iran-Asian powers and other important actors has been progressing within such important regional and international bodies as the BRICS group of developing countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as through such groundbreaking projects as China’s “One Belt and One Road” initiative.

Despite rapid changes in world politics, it seems that global challenges are still changing and these changes have become even more profound. Among these challenges is the issue of terrorism, which has been a source of concern from 2015 to 2017 for all global actors, who seek a comprehensive and overarching solution to current problems. In addition to the challenge of terrorism, the crisis of immigrants, organized crime, divisionism, secessionism, extremism, and ethnic hatemongering, top global, regional and national agendas. Due to strategic voids caused by these crises, those political actors, which promote Iranophobia, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, have been resorting to negative actions and have been beating the drums of extremism and violence in a bid to create religious, ethnic and racial gaps in the region. Continuation of hysteric and hostile behaviors of Israel and Saudi Arabia with regard to Iran two years after the conclusion of the Iran deal has been a reaction to Iran’s measures to reclaim its normal position in geopolitical, strategic, economic and energy equations in the region at a time that Arab-Arab disputes are expanding in scope. The behaviors of the aforesaid two actors have sometimes even caused confusion in Turkey’s foreign policy in the region. Under these conditions, it seems that on July 14, 2017, the Iran deal is fighting against heirs to Obama’s four legacies for the Middle East, that is, Daesh, proxy wars, immigration crisis, and redefinition of the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916).

The existing evidence shows that Iran’s regional might and responsibility have been retested during the two years that have passed since the conclusion of the Iran deal. Two years after signing the nuclear agreement and based on this claim, Iran is now convincing its regional rivals and partners on the basis of the logic of strategic partnership within its spheres of influence and civilization. At the same time, all reports on Iran produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as other influential global institutions and personalities, including periodical reports by the secretary general of the United Nations to the Security Council, have attested to Iran’s profound, committed and multilayered compliance with the JCPOA as well as Resolution 2231, which was adopted two years ago by the Security Council.

On the occasion of the second anniversary of the conclusion of the JCPOA, the secret to sustainability and productivity of the JCPOA – at least during the year that is ahead of us – is that its content and legal text as well as strategic goals must not be overshadowed by domestic policies and orientations of the P5+1 countries, including the United States, and Iran’s regional rivals.

Despite positions that the new US president took during his election campaign, Donald Trump’s commitment to the choice of reconciliatory strategic necessity with regard to the Iran deal seems to be inevitable. All parties signed the Iran deal on July 14, 2015 on the basis of the win-win logic and strategic necessities, and also in view of stabilizing, security-building and balancing outcomes of the deal.

Without a doubt, it is a new necessity to reassess conformity of domestic policies of those countries, which have been a party to this deal, to its necessities, content, driving forces, and messages as well as to real strategic effects of this international document. Due to high output of the Iran deal in the past two years, such reassessment can play a very important part, especially in increasing effective productivity of this global document, which is a product of multilateral diplomacy. It can even play a role in attracting constructive cooperation of other global players during the third millennium and make them practically committed to a “collective security” system.

By Holly Ashe*

Recently, the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies published an article on the negative effects of Yoga in 350 participants New York, which states that it has caused severe pain in a third of those surveyed. So after 5000 years of standard practice of Yoga across the World, why is it only now people are seemingly becoming susceptible to injury and pain?

If we go back to the birthplace of yoga, and look at some of the most influential yogis and yoginis in India, you will find many have something in common. Take for instance Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, ‘The Father of modern yoga’ who is credited into reviving hatha yoga and being the architect behind the ever popular vinyasa. Krishnamacharya was mainly known as a healer, and used yoga to restore health. Similarly, B K S Iyengar, one of Krishnamacharya’s earliest students, throughout his childhood disease riddled his frail body and turned to yoga to restore his health. Despite 2 heart attacks through his life, he still died at the ripe age of 95, and still able to do a hand stand. Iyengar was a pioneer in bringing yoga abroad and founding the yoga practice known as Iyengar Yoga.

See a pattern? Here’s something interesting. I myself took up yoga, as a sufferer of joint disorders and chronic pain conditions, yoga was something that helped me recognise my body alignment, that paired with weight lifting and one on one coaching has helped me incredibly, knowing my misaligned my joints are and rectifying the problem instantly as I now read my body right. If I do it wrong, I’ll most likely dislocate a joint.

Yoga is theoretically, supposed to heal, restore and maintain a healthy life balance, aligning and strengthening by developing your relationship between mind, body and spirit. Some of the best yoga I have experienced has been more about the connection then the physical exercise and poses. Prana Kriya was something that connected me so much and so overwhelmingly that I cried after the session was over and it was more to do with breath control than long withstanding poses. Yoga is an art that takes time precision and immense concentration and listening to fully get to achieve the full benefits of.

Unfortunately, that’s where it went wrong in the West. Our fast paced lifestyles make it difficult to fit in the desired amount of exercise and relaxation, so when yoga came along, squeezing both together in a 90-minute class was ideal. The discipline quickly grew, and now you can find all sorts of fast and rapid Yoga classes around London, which I think, is part of the problem. The ever growing trend has now gone too far, with London hosting a wide range of different types of yoga, like infusing yoga with striking a pose at Voga, incorporating disco moves with warrior poses in disco yoga (something myself has participated a few times, to my shame), Nude yoga (of course, it’s the West, we have to sexualise everything), introducing pets to yoga like the people at Doga have done or the craziest I have seen yet, beer yoga.

All of these insane concoctions of the western lifestyle immersed with the tradition of yoga is damaging the art and real intention and purpose. The bottomline is, you cannot rush yoga. You cannot put 30 people of different levels in a room and expect one yoga instructor to be able to make sure every participant is in true alignment, and holding their body right. You also can’t expect every participant to know how to hold themselves correctly in poses without the right direction and definitely with distractions like dogs running around or intoxicated with beer. This is perhaps the true reason people are getting injured and suffering from yoga. It is not the practise itself, it is the bastardised Western version. If all 350 who were injured in the survey went to India and practised its true form, then they can claim that Yoga is indeed harmful.

Otherwise this is an exercise in futility (no pun!).

I’m a little ashamed to admit that I have participated in these kinds of classes. I am a Western woman, and we love new fads (Sorry feminists, I don’t give two hoots what you think about me “culturally appropriating” Yoga, I love it and I will continue).

But I also have far too much respect and admiration for the ancient practice. If we thought more like this with other traditions the West has adopted and changed to adapt to our pressured lifestyles, maybe we wouldn’t need to hurry through life as it passes.

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

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

By Marija Ristic*

Three sources told BIRN that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that former high-ranking police officer Goran ‘Guri’ Radosavljevic was responsible for the killings of the Albanian-American Bytyqi brothers in 1999.

Praveen Madhiraju, legal adviser to the Bytyqi family, said he was present at the meeting in the US two years ago at which Aleksander Vucic said that those responsible for the murders of the three Albanian-American Bytyqi brothers were former Serbian police officer Goran ‘Guri’ Radosavljevic and another, unknown person.

“I was present on Sept. 17, 2015 in [Washington] DC at the Serbian Embassy when we met with Vucic and he told us this fact. Also present were Fatose [Bytyqi], Ilir Bytyqi, [Serbian] Ambassador Djerdj Matkovic, Vlada Jovicic and [former] USA Ambassador [to Belgrade] Michael Kirby,” Madhiraju told BIRN in an email.

Radosavljevic is a member of the executive board of Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party.

BIRN reported in 2015 that evidence gathered by Serbian investigators, the FBI and the Bytyqi family’s lawyers suggested that the suspected perpetrators have been known to the Belgrade authorities for years.

In July 1999, US citizens of Albanian origin Ylli, Agron and Mehmet Bytyqi were captured by the Serbian police on the border with Kosovo after the war ended while helping a Roma family to escape Kosovo.

Their bodies were later found in a mass grave at the police training centre in Petrovo Selo in eastern Serbia.

Many witnesses claimed that at the time, the man in charge of the Petrovo Selo training camp was Radosavljevic, although he insisted he was on vacation when the brothers were killed.

Radosavljevic, who now runs several security companies in Belgrade, was briefly investigated over the crime by the Serbian prosecution, but never indicted.

The family of the Bytyqi brothers say they have been receiving promises for years from Serbian institutions that the crime will be resolved, but so far without any tangible results.

“During the meeting, Vucic started off by expressing his sorrow and said ‘If this had happened to my own brother, I would do everything in my power. And this happened to three of yours,” Madhiraju said.

“At one point Fatose was making a suggestion and Vucic interrupted him and said, ‘In my mind, only two people are responsible for these murders – Guri and [one other person he named].’ – that is a direct quote that I wrote down immediately after the meeting,” he added.

Madhiraju’s account of Vucic’s comments at the meeting was echoed by relatives of the murdered brothers.

“President Vucic told us if it were him, he’d do everything he could to find his own brother’s killers. He told us he himself believed that Guri was responsible. Now he’s acting like Guri is his brother and doing everything to protect him,” Ilir Bytyqi told BIRN.

Fatose Bytyqi, another family member who attended the meeting, also said that Vucic referred to Radosavljevic as one of those responsible for the brothers’ deaths.

“This was not the first time that Prime Minister Vucic told me directly that he believed Guri was responsible. Other high-level Serbian officials have told me the same,” Fatose Bytyqi added.

The family disclosure came after eleven US Congress members claimed in a letter to US Vice-President Mike Pence that Serbian President Vucic has admitted that Radosavljevic was responsible for the killings of the three Bytyqi brothers.

In the letter dated July 14, the congress members said that Vucic’s promises to resolve the crime “have not been kept” and that Vucic “continues his close ties to the main suspect, Goran ‘Guri’ Radosavljevic”.

“When the US Ambassador to Serbia, Kyle Scott, and a family member, questioned this relationship, President Vucic responded that the critics ‘should be ashamed’ of themselves,” the letter said.

“This came despite President Vucic’s own assurances that Radosavljevic was responsible for the crimes,” it added.

Radosavljevic has denied any involvement in the killings.

Both Radosavljevic and Vucic did not respond to BIRN’s requests for a comment on the US Congress members’ letter by the time of publication.

The letter was sent to Vice-President Pence ahead of his meeting with Vucic in Washington on Monday, and signed by Congress members Lee Zeldin, Edward R. Royce, Eliot L. Engel, Dana Rohrabacher, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., James P. McGovern, Peter T. King, Grace Meng, Louise M. Slaughter, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Zoe Lofgren.

They urged Pence to put pressure on Vucic to finally resolve the murders of the three Bytyqi brothers.

“After the 2015 meeting, my family put our trust in President Vucic. We believed in his word. Two years later, Guri and he are still attached at the hip and he tells us we should be ashamed for criticising him,” said Fatose Bytyqi.

Vucic this week is on his first official visit to the US since becoming president of Serbia earlier this year, after previously serving as prime minister.

Ahead of his visit, some other US Congress members also expressed concern about the lack of progress in the Bytyqi case.

US President Donald J. Trump intends to nominate John R. Bass of New York to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the White House said Thursday.

Bass is currently Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, a position he has held since 2014.

According to the White House, Bass, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, has served as an American diplomat since 1988.

Bass has also served as Ambassador to the Republic of Georgia from 2009 to 2012.

“Mr. Bass has spent much of the past decade supporting Federal Government efforts to mobilize allies and marshal resources to combat terrorism and instability in Iraq, Syria, and Southwest Asia,” the White House said, noting that he has served at six U.S. Missions overseas and in senior leadership positions at the Department of State. Bass earned an A.B., cum laude, from Syracuse University.

Qatar’s Ambassador to the United States, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al-Thani, said Qatar’s economy has not been damaged by the sanctions imposed by a number of neighboring countries, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt.

“There is no damage to our economy. Qatar is solid in its economy and we are comfortable and we can continue like this forever,” the ambassador said in an interview with CNN, calling for an end to the ongoing siege, which harms all of the region and the fight against terrorism.

Asked about Qatar’s readiness to commit to the six principles that Doha was asked to sign and which are made up of broad requests on fighting terrorism and extremism, HE Sheikh Meshal said “the State of Qatar has demonstrated its constructive approach to resolve this crisis.”

“We have called many times to have a meeting to sit and discuss this … so now it’s up to the boycotting countries to decide and come to the table,” he said.

Al-Thani refused to link the counterterrorism agreement recently signed with the United States to the demands submitted to Qatar by the siege countries, saying that they should be handled differently. The ambassador added that the agreement signed with the United States supports it in its fight against terrorism. As for issues related to the current crisis, he said, Qatar holds a clear stance where, referring to HE the foreign minister who said that “the state of Qatar has adopted a very constructive attitude since the beginning of the crisis. We are trying to act mature and discuss the matter.”

Al-Thani questioned whether the other countries are also adopting a constructive attitude, requesting an answer to the question.

Asked whether Qatar believes the other party is keen on settling the crisis or the issue is more about influence, the ambassador said it is in everyone’s favor to reach a resolution for the crisis because the status quo does not benefit anyone, adding that Qatar has showed seriousness in finding a solution and is hoping that the other countries would show the same seriousness.

The economies of Europe and the United States are inextricably linked and in an ideal world, a number of factors motivate a trade deal such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. This column, taken from a recent VoxEU eBook, argues, however, that given the Brexit referendum in the UK and the election of Donald Trump as US president, as well as a number of other pre-existing complications, achieving such agreements will be highly contentious.

By Nikhil Datta and Swati Dhingra*

The economies of Europe and the United States are inextricably linked, they are the world’s two largest economies, the EU is the US’s largest trade partner (excluding the NAFTA trading bloc), while the United States is the EU’s largest external trade partner in both goods and services.¹ The US Department of Commerce estimates that US exports to the EU support around 2.6 million American jobs, while almost 200,000 European companies sell goods and services to the United States.² Furthermore, the two economies make up around 60% of the world’s inward stock of foreign direct investment (FDI), and over 80% of the world’s outward stock of FDI, a large portion of which is due to flows between the two (European Parliament 2016).

In an ideal world, a number of factors motivate a trade deal such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). However, given the June 23, 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK and the November 2016 US election results, as well as a number of other pre-existing complications, achieving such agreements (now both EU-US and UK-US) will be highly contentious.

Tricky but achievable – tariff cuts

The first obvious point of call in a trade deal is tariffs. Most Favourable Nation (MFN) import tariffs for both the EU and the United States are, on average, low, and there is a good chance the UK will maintain the tariffs it currently operates as an EU member, after Brexit is complete (HM Government 2016). The weighted mean tariff for all products, for both the EU and US is 1.6%, and thus, at face value, it appears changes to tariffs are relatively unimportant.

However, as often can be the case, averages have a habit of hiding some sector specific high tariffs. For example, the EU tariff on motor vehicles is 10%, while the US counterpart is 2.5%, similarly EU tariffs on fish can be as high as 25% while US tariffs on fabrics and apparel are at similar levels. Leaked TTIP documents showed that, as of negotiations at the end of 2015, tariffs would have been reduced by up to 97.5% (von Daniels and Orosz 2016). It’s no surprise that the trade deal received backing from business groups such as the German Association of the Automotive Industry, who estimate that tariffs cost the industry approximately €1 billion per year (IMCO 2015).

Trickier but reasonable – non-tariff barriers

While tariffs are the starting point of trade agreements, the most important motivating factor of modern trade deals is the removal of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), such as regulatory differences, through harmonisation of standards and customs procedures and regulatory cooperation across borders. Examples of divergent regulation include differences in safety standards, environmental and emissions regulations, eligibility of foreign firms for government procurement, and competition policy, while NTBs in customs procedures generally relate to things such as port inspections and rules of origin.

The regulatory divergence between the EU and United States is non-trivial and far ranging. One significant difference is the statutory application of the precautionary principle in EU law, which has no similar equivalent in the US. The precautionary principle, which results in the burden of proof of safety falling on those wishing to take an action in the absence of scientific consensus, has implications for regulations related to environmental, pharmaceutical, agricultural and product standards.

As highlighted by Fontagné et al. (2013), there are some simple solutions to closing these differences, such as an extension of mutual recognition of technical standards and expanded labelling for food products. However, when regulation exists due to a clear difference in preferences, convergence is generally problematic.

A review of studies by Berden and Francois (2015) found the trade cost equivalent (TCE) (i.e., the synthetic ad-valorem tariff equivalent) on all goods between the EU and US range between 12.9% to 13.7%, with some sectors such as agricultural products, beverages and tobacco, pharmaceuticals and processed foods being considerably higher. Importantly, for modern economies such as the US and the UK, where the majority of employment is now in the service sector, they find estimates of TCEs for the service sector ranging between 8.5% and 47.3%, with specific sectors such as business services and financial services facing on average around 30% TCE. All studies reviewed conclude that NTBs matter, and more so than tariffs. A report by ECORYS commissioned by the European Commission (Berden et al. 2009) suggested that between 25-50% of these NTBs could be removed, and, in the more optimistic scenario, exports would increase by 6.1% for the US and 2.1% for the EU. According to a study from the CEPR (Francois et al. 2013), a FTA that removed 25% of NTBs would boost trade by 75% more than a FTA that removed only 10% of NTBs.

These estimates apply to the EU, inclusive of the UK. In a post-Brexit world, matters get somewhat more complicated. The UK government has made it abundantly clear that they wish to exit the EU Customs Union so they can pursue their own trade deals with the likes of the United States (HM Government 2016). This seems like a logical way of making up for the losses in trade and investment that would arise when the UK breaks away from its largest trade and investment partner – the EU. Estimates suggest that wiping out tariffs between the UK and the US would make up for just a tiny share of the losses from Brexit. This is because the US is a more distant market for the UK so there is naturally less trade between them. With tariffs already low, expansion in UK-US trade would need a lot more regulatory harmonisation (Dhingra et al. 2017). Given that the UK currently operates the same regulatory framework as the rest of the EU, the same regulatory divergence problems arise in the UK-US relationship. And, without the clout of the EU, UK trade negotiators would have much less bargaining power in getting a good deal from the US, for obvious reasons (both the US’s GDP and population are approximately five times larger than the UK’s).

The implementation of regulatory cooperation between the US and the UK would also face practical difficulties. Outside of the EU, the UK will need to replicate around 34 different regulatory agencies for various sectors (Fraser 2017), which are currently operated through the EU. This would require a large increase in nuanced expertise and civil servants, and likely be infeasible given the current two-year time frame for Brexit. The UK could stay under the remit of some EU regulatory agencies, and this may well be a necessary part of a new trade agreement between the UK and EU. But this would mean the UK needs to resolve its new trading arrangements with the EU before attempting to lower NTBs with the United States. Furthermore, constraints on this would still apply in sectors that continue to be overseen by EU regulatory agencies, unless an EU-US deal is struck in tandem. Any potential US-UK trade deal is therefore likely to be delayed for at least a couple of years, despite the enthusiasm of their current governments.

The achievable and the reasonable – trade and income impacts

The big gains from a transatlantic deal will come from lower tariffs and NTBs. Estimates from the CEPII (Fontagné et al. 2013) suggest that the impacts of a TTIP-like deal on incomes would be non-trivial. In particular, in the scenario of a complete phase-out of tariffs combined with a 25% decrease in NTBs, the EU would see a $98bn positive impact to GDP while the US would experience a $64bn gain. Estimates from ECORYS (European Commission 2016), suggest similar impacts to GDP of around 0.3% for both areas, while also predicting an increase of 0.5% for wages of both high and low- skilled workers by 2030. In addition, on the labour front, while most models aren’t able to predict employment effects due to assumptions of full employment, some estimates of labour displacement for a 2027 benchmark range between 0.2%, in a less ambitious deal, to 0.65%, in a more ambitious deal (Francois et al. 2013).

These estimates are not without contention however. Civil society organisations have highlighted the failings of estimates of previous trade agreements such as NAFTA (e.g., Hilary 2015). One of the most widely cited studies (Hufbauer and Schott 1992) predicted a large 130,000 employment gain for the US, while another predicted an approximate 0.3% welfare gain coupled with a 0.2% increase in real wages for the US, and a 0.7% welfare gain for Canada (Brown et al. 1992).

When compared with ex post studies, such figures appear highly inaccurate. Recent work finds that the US’s welfare increased by just 0.08%, while Canada’s declined by 0.06% (Caliendo and Parro 2014). Importantly, labour market evidence points to dramatically lower wage growth for blue collar workers in the US, and knock on effects to service workers in their localities as a result of NAFTA (Hakobyan and McLaren 2016).

Domestic policies have already failed to do much for those who have been displaced by increased globalisation and technological change. Amid this distrust of globalisation, additional job displacements and churning would make a transatlantic deal even more unwelcome. But by far the greatest discontent from a future transatlantic deal will be based on how the EU and the US deal with the rights of foreign investors in the agreement.

Avoiding the death knell: Investor to state disputes

Foreign investment is the ‘real driver’ (Gambini et al. 2015) of the transatlantic economic relationship. The EU and the US account for about 40% (Eurostat 2016b) of each other’s inward FDI stock. Any investment-related clause in the trade deal between the EU, the US and the UK therefore has far-reaching implications for firms, workers and consumers.

The TTIP’s proposed mechanism for settling disputes between foreign firms and host governments is its most controversial component. The head of trade policy of the UK’s Labour Party described it as a ‘threat to democracy’ (Hilary 2015) and the greatest threat posed by TTIP. Initial texts contained an Investment State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism (European Commission 2015), which gives foreign firms the right to bring claims against host country governments if they have not been given ‘fair and equitable treatment’.

According to economic theory, investor protections, such as ISDS, enable firms to recoup damages from host country governments, if they engage in policies that reduce the returns to sunk investments made by foreign firms (Blanchard 2015). Host country governments might directly expropriate the assets of foreign firms or put in place domestic policies that harm the profitability of foreign investments.

The WTO disciplines the use of trade-related domestic policies, such as local content requirements or foreign exchange rationing, that favour domestic firms over foreign investors. But it focuses on investment measures that have the potential to restrict or distort trade, and does not cover behind-the-border policies that are not trade-related (Blanchard 2014). TTIP seeks to fill this gap in policy through its proposed ISDS, which would allow foreign investors to dispute any alleged breach of commitments of the host country.

This seems like a sensible approach to attract foreign investments which might otherwise be too risky to undertake in the host country due to its changing political, legal or social circumstances. But one concern is that, under the ISDS, disputes brought by foreign investors are resolved by a tribunal that is outside the scrutiny of the host country’s legal system. Another is that the set of behind-the border policies that affect foreign investors is so broad that the threat of disputes can severely limit the policy space available to governments. For instance, Calgary-based company Lone Pine Resources, which is registered in Delaware, has claimed damages for the potential losses from the Quebec government’s moratorium on fracking. Although a decision is pending, this case has become the poster child for the chilling effects of ISDS on government’s ability to regulate (Beltrame 2013). Many therefore view ISDS as a way of giving foreign firms excessive powers – typically not available to domestic firms – to challenge policies decided by national and local governments, especially in socially sensitive areas like environment, natural resources and public health.

These concerns are also reflected in a recent case against Germany brought by a Swedish firm under the Energy Charter Treaty. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011, Germany announced it would withdraw the operating licences of eight nuclear power plants, which included two plants of the Swedish company Vattenfall (World Nuclear News 2014).

Vattenfall sued Germany at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington DC over the closure of its plants and demanded USD 6 billion as compensation. Meanwhile, the German Constitutional Court ruled that the State has the broad regulatory powers to take such a decision but it must compensate the plants for any unjustified expropriation arising from its decision (Kluwer 2016).

This prompted the question – why must Vattenfall sue Germany through an international tribunal when the domestic legal system is capable of making fair decisions? Civil society groups argue that developed economies with a strong legal system do not need extra-judicial bodies to resolve foreign investment disputes (Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Brauch 2014). As public money is involved, damages should not be decided by arbitrators who are in no way accountable to the public, and whose decisions cannot be reviewed for legal or factual correctness. Prominent cases like these are likely to harden public opinion against TTIP. Already, a YouGov survey from 2016 shows that support for TTIP has fallen dramatically – just 17% of Germans and 18% of Americans believe TTIP is a ‘good thing’, compared to over 50% two years before (Bluth 2016).

Treading the populist path

Citizen groups and academics have expressed grave concerns in public consultations³ about the ISDS, and Parenti (2017) suggests that opposition from member countries like Belgium, France and Germany has prompted the EU to move away from the language of the ISDS. But the EU and the US remain steadfast in their decision to include an investor to state dispute settlement provision in a future deal. This will likely take its cue from the pending EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

CETA provides for an investment court system which addresses some of the concerns with the ISDS such as appointing public judges, having an appeal system and tightening the language on what constitutes fair and equitable treatment for foreign investors.

If the investment court system is ratified under CETA, the key source of contention in a future EU-US deal would be largely bypassed. According to the consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen, which was founded by Ralph Nader, over 80% of US-owned subsidiaries in the EU belong to parent US firms that also have operations in Canada. These US firms would already have access to the investment court system through CETA, and would not have to wait for TTIP’s investment chapter. The EU expects the investment court system to become the model for its investor dispute settlement process in future trade deals (Biel and Wheeler 2016). But questions over the legitimacy of the investment court system persist (Dearden 2016), and its legality will be decided by the end of 2017 (Dentons 2017).

On the US side, the poll findings of Democracy Corps, in the context of the US Trans- Pacific Partnership, are instructive in gauging how a future debate over investment provisions might play out. A majority of the Americans polled were unfamiliar with the agreement or neutral towards it, but a vast majority – 70% – became more opposed to the agreement after hearing the anti-ISDS statements that were read out to them. If the debate over TTIP centres on investment protections, the public might perceive their governments to be favouring big multinationals, and we might yet see another backlash against future deals between the US and Europe.

This would mean that the potential efficiency gains from streamlining duplicate regulations and tariff peaks would be lost in a zeal to give special rights to foreign investors. There is little empirical evidence that these rights increase foreign investments, so an economically sound alternative is the US-Australia trade agreement, which settles investor to state disputes within the domestic court system. This precedent was motivated by Australia pointing out that developed economies with advanced domestic legal systems do not need ISDS-type clauses because their domestic court systems have an established record of upholding the rule of law (Faunce 2015). The US, UK and EU fit this bill. It’s not surprising then that the independent study commissioned by the UK’s Business, Innovation and Skills department concluded that ISDS-type clauses would provide little economic benefit and expose the State to meaningful political costs (Poulsen et al. 2013).

In the current era of strong anti-globalisation sentiments, even small political costs could heighten economic nationalism. Recent political developments – Trump, Brexit and the anti-EU rhetoric – reflect a desire to rebalance economic power and reclaim sovereignty (Colantone and Stanig 2017). After years of uneven economic growth and austerity cuts, people have used their votes to express anger at the political establishment and their failed economic policies (Dhingra 2016). Proposing trade deals that give special rights to foreign investors, based in countries less aligned to the existing preferences of citizens, would alienate people further, and likely derail future transatlantic partnerships.

Editor’s note: This column first appeared as a chapter in the Vox eBook, Economics and policy in the Age of Trump, available to download here.​

*About the authors:
Nikhil Datta, Research Assistant, CEP

Swati Dhingra, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, LSE

References:
Beltrame, J. (2013), “Quebec Fracking Ban Lawsuit Shows Perils Of Free Trade Deals: Critics”, Huffington Post Canada, 3 October.

Berden, K.G., J. Francois, M.M. Thelle, M.P. Wymenga, and M.S. Tamminen (2009), “Non-tariff measures in EU-US trade and investment – An economic analysis”, Rotterdam: ECORYS Nederland BV

Berden, K., and J. Francois (2015), “Quantifying Non-Tariff Measures for TTIP”, Paper No. 12 in the CEPS-CTR project ‘TTIP in the Balance’ and CEPS Special Report No. 116/July 2015.

Bernasconi-Osterwalder, N. and M. Brauch (2014), “The State of Play in Vattenfall v. Germany II: Leaving the German Public in the dark”, International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Biel, E. and M. Wheeler (2016), “The Uncertain Future of the European Investment Court System”, Yale Journal of International Law, Dec 1, 2016.

Blanchard, E. J. (2014), What global fragmentation means for the WTO: Article XXIV, behind-the-border concessions, and a new case for WTO limits on investment incentives.

Blanchard, E.J. (2015), “A Shifting Mandate: International Ownership, Global Fragmentation, and a Case for Deeper Integration under the WTO”, World Trade Review, 14(01), 87-99.

Bluth, C. (2016), Attitudes to global trade and TTIP in Germany and the United States, Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Brown, D.K., A.V. Deardorff, and R.M. Stern (1992), “A North American free trade agreement: Analytical issues and a computational assessment”, The World Economy, 15(1), 11-30.

Caliendo, L., and F. Parro (2014), “Estimates of the Trade and Welfare Effects of NAFTA”, The Review of Economic Studies, 82(1): 1-44.

Capaldo, J. (2015), “The trans-atlantic trade and investment partnership: European disintegration, unemployment and instability”, Economia & Lavoro, 49(2): 35-56.

Chatham House (2015), “TTIP: Shaping the Future of Investor–State Dispute Settlement?”, International Law Programme meeting Summary, 4 March 2015.

Colantone, I. and P. Stanig (2017), The Trade Origins of Economic Nationalism: Import Competition and Voting Behavior in Western Europe, Working Paper.

Dearden, Nick (2016), “Think TTIP is a threat to democracy? There’s another trade deal that’s already signed”, The Guardian, 30 May 2016.

Dentons (2017), What does the entry into force of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) mean?

Dhingra, S. (2016), “Salvaging Brexit. The right way to leave the EU”, Foreign Affairs 95(6): 90-100.

Dhingra, S., H. Huang, G.I.P. Ottaviano, J.P.P. Pessoa, T. Sampson, and J. Van Reenen (2017), “The consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards”, Economic Policy (forthcoming).

European Commission (2015), “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Trade In Services, Investment and E-Commerce, Chapter II- Investment”.

European Commission (2016), “Trade SIA on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA”, Interim Technical Report, prepared by ECORYS.

European Commission (2016a), “Trade Statistics”.

European Commission (2016b), “Final press conference of the TTIP 15th round of negotiations”, [available at: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1553, accessed 25 April. 2017].

European Parliament (2016), “Fact Sheets on the European Union: The European Union and its trade partners”.

Eurostat (2016a), “International trade in services”.

Eurostat (2016b), “The EU, a net investor in the rest of the world”.

Faunce, T. (2015), “Australia’s embrace of investor state dispute settlement: a challenge to the social contract ideal?”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 69 (5).

Fontagné, L., J. Gourdon, and S. Jean (2013), “Transatlantic trade: whither partnership, which economic consequences?”, CEPII Policy Brief.

Francois, J., M.M. Manchin, H. Norberg, O. Pindyuk, and P. Tomberger (2013), “Reducing transatlantic barriers to trade and investment: An economic assessment”, CEPR, London.

Fraser, S. (2017), “The World is Our Oyster? Britain’s Future Trade Relationships”, The Tacitus Lecture 2017.

Gambini, G., R. Istatkov, and R. Kerner (2015), “USA-EU international trade and investment statistics”, Statistics in focus 2/2015, Eurostat.

Hakobyan, S. and J. McLaren (2016), “Looking for local labor market effects of NAFTA”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 98(4): 728-741.

Hilary, J. (2015), “The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership”, War on Want, Brussels.

HM Government (2016), The United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union, London.

Hufbauer, G.C., and J.J. Schott (1992), North American free trade: Issues and recommendations, Peterson Institute.

IMCO (2015), “The Transatlantic Trade and investment Partnership (TTIP): Challenges and Opportunities for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection in the Area of Motor Vehicles”, Directorate General For Internal Policies, European Parliament.

Kluwer, W. (2016), “The German Constitutional Court Judgement in the Vattenfall case: Lessons for the ECT Vattenfall Arbitral Tribunal”, Kluwer Arbitration Blog, 29 December.

Poulsen, L.N.S., J. Bonnitcha, and J.W. Yackee (2013), Costs and Benefits of an EU-USA Investment Protection Treaty, April 2013.

US Dept. Commerce (2016), “Top U.S. Trade Partners”.

United States Trade Representative (2013), “European Union”.

von Daniels, J. and M. Orosz (2016), “Zölle auf Null,” CORRECT!V, 21 February.

World Nuclear News (2014), “Vattenfall sues Germany over phase-out policy”, World Nuclear News, 16 October.

Endnotes:
1 Based on data from US Dept. Commerce (2016), European Commission (2016a) and Eurostat (2016a).

2 Based on data from US Trade Representative (2013) and European Commission (2016b).

3 Letter from academics available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/isds-law-economics-professors-letter-Se…. pdf. See Chatham House (2015) for discussion on public consultations.

By Brian Trautman, Gerry Condon, Samantha Ferguson

On July 7, 2017, the United Nations, in a historic decision, approved a legally binding instrument to ban nuclear weapons, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Months of negotiations involving over 130 countries began in March 2017, culminating in a final draft endorsed by 122 countries. The treaty marks a significant milestone to help free the world of nuclear weapons.

The treaty emphasizes “the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons.” It forbids participating states “to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

Additionally, it explains that the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from international arsenals “remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances.”

In keeping with a history of being unwilling to relinquish its massive nuclear arsenal, the U.S refused to enter treaty negotiations and used its status as the sole remaining international superpower to organize a boycott that influenced approximately 40 countries.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki R. Haley, defended Washington’s absence from the negotiations, stating: “There is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons, but we have to be realistic. Is there anyone who thinks that North Korea would ban nuclear weapons?”

Veterans For Peace (VFP), a nonprofit working since 1985 to abolish war and nurture peace and the only veterans non-governmental organization (NGO) represented at the UN, released a statement in response, strongly criticizing the U.S. refusal to participate, noting that the discussions were a “series of missed opportunities by the United States to use its position as the world’s undisputed military power to change the course of history … and end the danger and peril that nuclear weapons pose to the world.”

Humanity has been at the brink of a nuclear exchange on multiple occasions since the end of World War II, including times when the decision to launch was seconds from happening. An urgent question, then, is why these close calls, as well as the brutal and unnecessary annihilation of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that preceded them, failed to convince all governments that nuclear weapons represent an existential threat to humanity, thus nuclear disarmament must be a top priority?

The Doomsday Clock, maintained since 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is a symbol of the risk of a human-caused global catastrophe, specifically of the rate of climate change and the potential for a nuclear exchange. It is reset periodically depending on global conditions. Presently, the Clock is at 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the closest to midnight it has been since 1953, the start of the arms race between the U.S. and former Soviet Union.

Certainly, the possibility of nuclear war was heightened with the unpredictable brinksmanship of President Donald Trump, who, in reference to nuclear weapons, once asked, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

This is the sort of irrational thinking to which Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity gave rise to the atomic bomb, may have been referring when, in 1946, a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he warned the world of the tragedy nuclear technology would bring: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Previous global action to prevent the use of nuclear weapons has included the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) of 1963, which curtailed nuclear testing but did not eliminate it. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996 would have prohibited “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”

However, despite signing the treaty, the U.S. and other nations, such as India, North Korea and Pakistan, never ratified it. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which was signed by nearly all nations, including the U.S., mandated that all participants pursue nuclear disarmament “in good faith.”

Despite the relative effectiveness of the NPT and the end the Cold War of reducing a sizeable portion of the global stockpile, an estimated 15,000 nuclear warheads are still held by nine nations. Two of these nations — the U.S. and Russia — possess over 90 percent of the total.

The world now has the first-ever treaty to ban all nuclear weapons, and the U.S. remains steadfast in their contempt of the possibility of peace. In a statement released by the U.S., UK, and France, the three nations asserted that they “do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it” alleging that “this initiative clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment.”

The most significant threat to human survival and the biodiversity of our shared planet, apart from climate change, is a world in which nuclear weapons continue to exist. Yet, instead of negotiating in good faith to reduce and eventually eliminate its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. continues to develop new, more accurate, and more lethal nuclear weapons, while deploying “missile defenses” that make a nuclear first strike more possible and more likely.

The ongoing U.S. wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, particularly in Syria, along with the confrontational U.S. military posture toward Russia, China and North Korea, are creating conditions that could all too easily trigger a catastrophic nuclear war.

Veterans For Peace remains committed to transforming U.S. nuclear, military and foreign policy from global dominance to global cooperation. This work includes convincing the U.S to recommit itself to the UN Charter which forbids military intervention and requires respect for the sovereignty of all nations.

One of the founding principles of Veterans For Peace is a call to end to the arms race leading to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. VFP’s Nuclear Abolition Campaign is a feature of this effort. Several notable manifestations of this campaign include a statement released in 2016 calling for nuclear disarmament in our lifetime.

Earlier in 2017, VFP endorsed the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017, introduced by Sen. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Lieu (D-Calif.). Support for the historic Golden Rule antinuclear sailboat, a national project of VFP, continues with the boat’s current voyage down the West Coast, which is dedicated to supporting the UN Treaty. VFP also participated in the Women’s March to Ban the Bomb in June in New York City and worldwide.

The next hurdle is getting all remaining nations to sign and ratify the treaty. The treaty will be open for signature to all States on September 20, 2017 at the UN headquarters in New York. It will go into effect within 90 days of ratification by 50 countries.

These are dangerous times indeed, but such dangers can focus the collective mind and create new possibilities for real change, if activists and organizers are prepared to seize the moment.

Let this be the generation that will finally ban nuclear weapons. It’s not just about peace and justice; it’s about the survival of all life on earth.

By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram*

The transition to market economy and democracy in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s dramatically increased mortality and shortened life expectancy. The steep upsurge in mortality and the decline in life expectancy in Russia are the largest ever recorded anywhere in peacetime in the absence of catastrophes such as war, plague or famine.

During 1987-1994, the Russian mortality rate increased by 60%, from 1.0% to 1.6%, while life expectancy went down from 70 to 64 years. Although life expectancy declined from 1987, when Mikhail Gorbachev was still in charge, its fall was sharpest during 1991-1994, i.e., during Boris Yeltsin’s early years.

In fact, mortality increased to levels never observed during the 1950s to the 1980s, i.e., for at least four decades. Even in the last years of Stalin’s rule (1950-1953), mortality rates were nearly half what they were in the first half of the 1990s.

Economic output fell by 45% during 1989-1998, while negative social indicators, such as the crime rate, murder rate, suicide rate and income inequalities, rose sharply as well, but even these alone cannot adequately explain the unprecedented mortality spike.

Distress

This Russian mortality crisis underscores the impact of stress on life expectancy. Anne Case and Angus Deaton have linked deteriorating American white male real incomes to various distress indicators since the turn of the century. Their careful work helps us better understand the election of US President Trump, thanks to the electoral majorities he secured in the ‘rust belt’ states, so crucial in the American ‘electoral college’ system.

During the Enclosure movement and the Industrial Revolution in Britain from the 16th to the 18th century, mortality increased and life expectancy fell by about a decade – from about 40 to slightly over 30 – due to lifestyle changes, increased income inequalities and mass impoverishment.

Other instances of life expectancy reduction due to social changes – without wars, epidemics and natural disasters – are very few and never involved a fall in life expectancy by five years, from 69 to 64 years, in the three years from 1991 to 1994 for the entire population of a large country like Russia!

This dramatic fall has been obscured in much of the Western media coverage, although some academic research has been more accurate. Thus, the Economist implied that the fall was greater during Gorbachev’s final years (1987-1992) compared to Yeltsin’s early years (1992-1997).

Why premature death?

What kinds of stress did the transition induce, and why did they lead to premature death? Stress is correlated to the rise in unemployment, labour mobility, migration, divorce, and income inequalities.

These stress indicators turn out to be good predictors of changes in life expectancy in Russia during the ‘post-Soviet’ transition. Men in their forties and fifties who had lost their jobs, or had to move to another job and/or region, or lived in regions with greater inequality or higher divorce rates, were more likely to die prematurely in the 1990s.

The major popular alternative ‘explanation’ is increased alcoholism, which does not stand up to closer critical scrutiny for several reasons. First, during some periods, per capita alcohol consumption and death rates moved in opposite directions, e.g., during 2002-2007, death rates due to external causes – including murders, suicides and poisoning – fell as alcohol consumption rose.

Second, according to both official statistics and independent estimates, per capita alcohol consumption levels in the 1990s were equal to or lower than in the early 1980s, whereas death rates due to external causes doubled, and the total death rate increased by half. This simultaneous increase in indicators (total death rate, death rate due to external causes, and alcohol consumption) appear to be driven by another factor, namely stress.

Post-communist transitions varied

But not all post-communist transitions had equally traumatic consequences. Countries which proceeded more gradually – such as China, Uzbekistan and Belarus – managed to preserve institutional capacities and capabilities, thus avoiding or at least mitigating the output collapse and the sudden, dramatic increase in socio-economic stress indicators.

China and Vietnam did not experience any recession during their transitions, while life expectancy in both these countries continued to rise, although more slowly in China compared to before the 1980s, and to other countries with similar per capita GDPs and life expectancy levels.

In the case of Cuba, the 40% output reduction during 1989-1994 did not result in a mortality crisis. Instead, life expectancy in Cuba increased from 75 years in the late 1980s to 78 years in 2006.

*Vladimir Popov was a Senior Economics Officer in the United Nations Secretariat. Jomo Kwame Sundaram was UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development.

Farmers are facing a problem: Honeybees are becoming ever more rare in many places. But a lot of plants can only produce fruits and seeds when their flowers were previously pollinated with pollen from different individuals. So when there are no pollinators around, yields will decrease.

But honeybees are not the only insects that do this crucial job. The various species of wild bees, too, are busy pollen collectors and pollinate a number of crops in the process. However, their importance has long been underestimated. But we now know that the yields of many crops increase noticeably when not only honeybees but also their “wild” relatives are abundant in fields.

Study of rapeseed field landscapes

“So we studied how the number of bees on agricultural land can be increased with sustainable effect,” Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter explained. For this purpose, the qualified beekeeper and Professor of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, together with his team and colleagues from the University of Wageningen investigated several landscapes with rapeseed fields. The study was conducted within the scope of the EU project STEP (Status and Trends of European Pollinators).

The examined areas were located around Würzburg and in the Netherlands. First, the biologists installed so-called nesting aids at the edges of the fields – these are short bundles of reed in which the insects can lay their eggs. Over the next two years, they studied how many brood cells were produced in these nests and from which species.

Flowering plants are important food resources

During the rapeseed flower in May, the fields attract vast numbers of pollinators. So it’s no wonder that the number of nesting aids occupied by wild bees virtually explodes during this time. Afterwards, the nesting activity decreased significantly in both years.

“Flowering plants are the only food resource of wild bees – and that both for the adult animals and their larvae,” Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter said. “The insects can only thrive in the presence of sufficient flowering plants.”

Rapeseed flowers for a few weeks only; afterwards the food on offer declines rapidly. Only wild bees whose activity patterns are during spring are capable of coping with these circumstances.

“In order to settle a greater variety of bees, we have to create sufficient flower-rich areas near the nesting sites – small strips of wild flowers are often sufficient for this purpose,” Steffan-Dewenter said. “We were able to show that such measures but also nature-oriented habitats in the surrounding area have a positive impact on the abundance of wild bees in the fields.”

Simple measures have a positive impact

The availability of sufficient food resources is important, but the provision of nesting aids is also essential as was the case in the study. When enough nesting sites and flowering plants are available, wild bees can reproduce rapidly. “Our work has shown that comparably simple measures have a positive impact on the number and diversity of pollinators,” the JMU biologist explained.

This also helps farmers become more independent of honeybees, especially since wild bees can help boost the yield of many crops. Dr Andrea Holzschuh, co-author and research assistant at the JMU department, mentions other reasons why it makes sense to rely on different species of pollinators: A single bee species is at a much greater risk of being decimated by parasites or diseases; with more species the risk is lower.

Parasites not a big problem

However, wild bees also have natural enemies and are vulnerable to pathogens: The scientists showed in their study that one in six brood cells was attacked by parasites and about as many larvae died as a result of infection. The greater the number of bees, the greater the percentage that fell victim to these problems. However, this effect did not impair the reproduction of the useful insects in the long run.

The sharp eye of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around Mars. Because the moon is so small, it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures.

Over the course of 22 minutes, Hubble took 13 separate exposures, allowing astronomers to create a time-lapse video showing the diminutive moon’s orbital path. The Hubble observations were intended to photograph Mars, and the moon’s cameo appearance was a bonus.

A football-shaped object just 16.5 miles by 13.5 miles by 11 miles, Phobos is one of the smallest moons in the solar system. It is so tiny that it would fit comfortably inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway.

The little moon completes an orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. Rising in the Martian west, it runs three laps around the Red Planet in the course of one Martian day, which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes. It is the only natural satellite in the solar system that circles its planet in a time shorter than the parent planet’s day.

About two weeks after the Apollo 11 manned lunar landing on July 20, 1969, NASA’s Mariner 7 flew by the Red Planet and took the first crude close-up snapshot of Phobos. On July 20, 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 lander touched down on the Martian surface. A year later, its parent craft, the Viking 1 orbiter, took the first detailed photograph of Phobos, revealing a gaping crater from an impact that nearly shattered the moon.

?Phobos was discovered by Asaph Hall on August 17, 1877 at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., six days after he found the smaller, outer moon, named Deimos. Hall was deliberately searching for Martian moons.

Both moons are named after the sons of Ares, the Greek god of war, who was known as Mars in Roman mythology. Phobos (panic or fear) and Deimos (terror or dread) accompanied their father into battle.

Close-up photos from Mars-orbiting spacecraft reveal that Phobos is apparently being torn apart by the gravitational pull of Mars. The moon is marred by long, shallow grooves that are probably caused by tidal interactions with its parent planet. Phobos draws nearer to Mars by about 6.5 feet every hundred years. Scientists predict that within 30 to 50 million years, it either will crash into the Red Planet or be torn to pieces and scattered as a ring around Mars.

Orbiting 3,700 miles above the Martian surface, Phobos is closer to its parent planet than any other moon in the solar system. Despite its proximity, observers on Mars would see Phobos at just one-third the width of the full moon as seen from Earth. Conversely, someone standing on Phobos would see Mars dominating the horizon, enveloping a quarter of the sky.

From the surface of Mars, Phobos can be seen eclipsing the sun. However, it is so tiny that it doesn’t completely cover our host star. Transits of Phobos across the sun have been photographed by several Mars-faring spacecraft.

The origin of Phobos and Deimos is still being debated. Scientists concluded that the two moons were made of the same material as asteroids. This composition and their irregular shapes led some astrophysicists to theorize that the Martian moons came from the asteroid belt.

However, because of their stable, nearly circular orbits, other scientists doubt that the moons were born as asteroids. Such orbits are rare for captured objects, which tend to move erratically. An atmosphere could have slowed down Phobos and Deimos and settled them into their current orbits, but the Martian atmosphere is too thin to have circularized the orbits. Also, the moons are not as dense as members of the asteroid belt.

Phobos may be a pile of rubble that is held together by a thin crust. It may have formed as dust and rocks encircling Mars were drawn together by gravity. Or, it may have experienced a more violent birth, where a large body smashing into Mars flung pieces skyward, and those pieces were brought together by gravity. Perhaps an existing moon was destroyed, reduced to the rubble that would become Phobos.

Hubble took the images of Phobos orbiting the Red Planet on May 12, 2016, when Mars was 50 million miles from Earth. This was just a few days before the planet passed closer to Earth in its orbit than it had in the past 11 years.

People who do not smoke, are not obese, and consume alcohol moderately can expect to live seven years longer than the general population, and to spend most of these extra years in good health, according to a new study published today in Health Affairs.

A new study published today in Health Affairs shows that people who refrain from engaging in risky health behaviours not only have a very long life — longer than the famously long-lived Japanese – but that most of these additional years of life are spent in good health.

The study, which analyzed data for more than 14,000 U.S. individuals, found that never-smokers who were not obese lived 4-5 years longer than the general population, and that these extra years were free of disability.

The results of the analysis further indicated that individuals who also consumed alcohol moderately lived seven more disability-free years than the general population, and had a total life expectancy surpassing that of the population of Japan, a country that is often considered to be a vanguard of life expectancy. The study was conducted by Mikko Myrskylä, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany; and Neil Mehta, Professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan, USA.

Several behaviors have a cumulative impact

“Improvements in medical technology are often thought to be the gatekeeper to healthier, longer life. We showed that a healthy lifestyle, which costs nothing, is enough to enable individuals to enjoy a very long and healthy life,” said Mikko Myrskylä.

He added: “A moderately healthy lifestyle is enough to get the benefits. Avoiding becoming obese, not smoking, and consuming alcohol moderately is not an unrealistic goal.”

This study was the first to analyze the cumulative impact of several key health behaviours on disability-free and total life expectancy. Previous studies have looked at single health behaviours. Mikko Myrskylä and his colleague instead examined several behaviors simultaneously, which allowed them to determine how long and healthy the lives of people who had avoided most of the well-known individual behavioral risk factors were.

Smoking and obesity affect health when aging

The researchers noted that each of the three unhealthy behaviours – obesity, smoking, and unhealthy consumption of alcohol – was linked to a reduction in life expectancy and to an earlier occurrence of disabilities.

But there were also differences: smoking was found to be associated with an early death but not with an increase in the number of years with disability, whereas obesity was shown to be associated with a long period of time with disability. Excessive alcohol consumption was found to be associated with both decreased lifespan and a reduced number of healthy years. However, the absence of all of these risky healthy behaviors was found to be associated with the greatest number of healthy years.

The most striking finding was the discovery of a large difference in average lifespan between the groups who were the most and the least at risk. Men who were not overweight, had never smoked, and drank moderately were found to live an average of 11 years longer than men who were overweight, had smoked, and drank excessively. For women, the gap between these two groups was found to be even greater, at 12 years.

“The most positive result is that the number of years that we have to live with physical limitations does not increase as we gain more years through healthy lifestyle. Instead, healthy lifestyle is associated with a strong increase in physically fit years. In other words, the years we gain through a healthy lifestyle are years in good health,” said Mikko Myrskylä.

“Our results show how important it is to focus on prevention. Those who avoid risky health behaviours are achieving very long and healthy lives. Effective policy interventions targeting health behaviors could help larger fractions of the population to achieve the health benefits observed in this study,” the researcher emphasized.

These results are important not only for individuals, but also for society. In an aging society, the health of the elderly determines the amount of money spent on the health system. In addition, healthy elderly people are better able to participate in the labor market and to perform social roles, such as caring for grandchildren.

The researchers used data from a long-term study conducted in the U.S., the Health and Retirement Study, which covered more than 14,000 individuals aged 50-89 over the 1998-2012 period. The participants were interviewed about their health and behaviors every two years. Those who reported having no limitations in the so-called activities of daily living (walking, dressing, bathing, getting out of bed, or eating) were classified as free of disability. The participants who had a body mass index of less than 30 were classified as not obese.

Those who had smoked less than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime were considered never smokers. Men who had fewer than 14 drinks per week and women who had fewer than seven drinks per week were considered moderate drinkers. The researchers analyzed the ages at which the individuals with these healthy behaviours first became disabled, how many years they lived with disability, and their total life expectancy. The researchers then compared these results with those of the general population, and with those of individuals with particularly risky behavioural profiles.

The US Justice Department announced Thursday the seizure of the largest criminal marketplace on the Internet, AlphaBay, which operated for over two years on the dark web and was used to sell deadly illegal drugs, stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and toxic chemicals throughout the world.

The international operation to seize AlphaBay’s infrastructure was led by the United States and involved cooperation and efforts by law enforcement authorities in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, as well as the European law enforcement agency Europol.

“This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Make no mistake, the forces of law and justice face a new challenge from the criminals and transnational criminal organizations who think they can commit their crimes with impunity using the dark net. The dark net is not a place to hide. The Department will continue to find, arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate criminals, drug traffickers and their enablers wherever they are. We will use every tool we have to stop criminals from exploiting vulnerable people and sending so many Americans to an early grave. I believe that because of this operation, the American people are safer – safer from the threat of identity fraud and malware, and safer from deadly drugs.”

On July 5, Alexandre Cazes aka Alpha02 and Admin, 25, a Canadian citizen residing in Thailand, was arrested by Thai authorities on behalf of the United States for his role as the creator and administrator of AlphaBay. On July 12, Cazes apparently took his own life while in custody in Thailand. Cazes was charged in an indictment, filed in the Eastern District of California on June 1, with one count of conspiracy to engage in racketeering, one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, six counts of distribution of narcotics, one count of conspiracy to commit identity theft, four counts of unlawful transfer of false identification documents, one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud, one count of trafficking in device making equipment, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

Law enforcement authorities in the United States worked with numerous foreign partners to freeze and preserve millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies that were the subject of forfeiture counts in the indictment, and that represent the proceeds of the AlphaBay organization’s illegal activities.

On July 19, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Alexandre Cazes and his wife’s assets located throughout the world, including in Thailand, Cyprus, Lichtenstein, and Antigua & Barbuda. Cazes and his wife amassed numerous high value assets, including luxury vehicles, residences and a hotel in Thailand. Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

According to publicly available information on AlphaBay prior to its takedown, one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced over 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. Around the time of takedown, there were over 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay, and over 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms and fraudulent services.

Comparatively, the Silk Road dark web marketplace, which was seized by law enforcement in November 2013, had reportedly approximately 14,000 listings for illicit goods and services at the time of seizure and was the largest dark web marketplace at the time.

“Transnational organized crime poses a serious threat to our national and economic security,” said Acting Director Andrew McCabe of the FBI. “Whether they operate in broad daylight or on the dark net, we will never stop working to find and stop these criminal syndicates. We want to thank our international partners and those at the Department of Justice, the DEA and the IRS-CI for their hard work in demonstrating what we can do when we stand together.”

“The so-called anonymity of the dark web is illusory,” said Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the DEA. “We will find and prosecute drug traffickers who set up shop there, and this case is a great example of our commitment to doing exactly that. More to come.”

AlphaBay operated as a hidden service on the “Tor” network, and utilized cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum in order to hide the locations of its underlying servers and the identities of its administrators, moderators, and users. Based on law enforcement’s investigation of AlphaBay, authorities believe the site was also used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from illegal transactions on the website.

“This ranks as one of the most successful coordinated takedowns against cybercrime in recent years,” said Executive Director Rob Wainwright of Europol. “Concerted action by law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe, with the support of Europol, has delivered a massive blow to the underground criminal economy and sends a clear message that the dark web is not a safe area for criminals. I pay tribute to the excellent work of the United States and European authorities for the imaginative and resourceful way they combined their efforts in this case.”

ExxonMobil said Thursday it has launched a legal challenge to a finding by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) that it violated US sanctions against Russia in 2014 when the company followed authoritative and specific guidance from the Obama administration that OFAC retroactively changed a year later.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was Exxon’s chief executive in 2014.

“OFAC seeks to retroactively enforce a new interpretation of an executive order that is inconsistent with the explicit and unambiguous guidance from the White House and Treasury issued before the relevant conduct and still publicly available today,” said ExxonMobil’s filing in the U.S. District Court.

OFAC’s action is fundamentally unfair and constitutes a denial of due process under the Constitution and violates the Administrative Procedure Act because market participants, including ExxonMobil, did not have notice of the interpretation OFAC now seeks to retroactively enforce, the filing said.

At the center of the dispute are interactions ExxonMobil had with the Russian oil company, Rosneft and with Igor Sechin in his capacity as CEO of Rosneft.

OFAC alleges that ExxonMobil violated sanctions when it signed certain documents in May 2014 that were countersigned on behalf of Rosneft by Sechin acting in his official capacity as a Rosneft executive. OFAC has acknowledged that White House and Treasury Department officials repeatedly said sanctions involving Sechin applied only to his personal affairs and not to companies that he managed or represented.

A March 17, 2014, White House Fact Sheet said: “Our current focus is to identify these individuals and target their personal assets, but not companies that they may manage on behalf of the Russian state.”

The position was confirmed on May 16, 2014 by a Treasury Department spokesperson, who said by way of example that BP’s American CEO was permitted to participate in Rosneft board meetings with Sechin so long as the activity related to Rosneft’s business and not Sechin’s personal business.

However, according to ExxonMobil, two months later, in July 2014, despite the White House and Treasury guidance that had already been given, OFAC contacted ExxonMobil to say it was still formulating its own policy. Nearly a year later, in June 2015, OFAC notified ExxonMobil through a pre-penalty notice that it had violated guidance that had not been developed when the alleged offences took place. The penalty notice was issued on July 20.

When Sechin was added to the sanctions list in April 2014, the White House and Treasury Department in numerous briefings and media reports specifically stated the sanctions applied to him in his individual capacity and with respect to his personal assets, and not the business he manages.

ExxonMobil said it followed the clear guidance from the White House and Treasury Department when its representatives signed documents involving ongoing oil and gas activities in Russia with Rosneft – a non-blocked entity — that were countersigned on behalf of Rosneft by Sechin in his official capacity. At the time of the signing, those activities themselves were not under any direct sanction by the U.S. government.

ExxonMobil said a 2012 Supreme Court ruling involving drug company SmithKline Beecham is relevant to this matter.

In the case, the court said the following: “It is one thing to expect regulated parties to conform their conduct to an agency’s interpretations once the agency announces them; it is quite another to require regulated parties to divine the agency’s interpretations in advance or else be held liable when the agency announces its interpretations for the first time in an enforcement proceeding and demands deference.”

By Ed West*

At the start of the Syrian migration crisis, an Israeli security official warned of a coming “European intifada.” Few noticed it at the time. But after a series of attacks on largely Jewish targets in France and Belgium, the new reality finally hit home in January 2015, when armed men opened fire at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Since then,  terrorist atrocities have escalated through Paris, Nice, Belgium, Sweden, Berlin, and London. They include the murder of a priest by two Islamists in Normandy as he was saying Mass.

Charlie Hebdo is a tedious and tasteless publication that makes fun of dead children and has predictable 1968 views on almost everything, except one of the most sacred: criticism of Islam. The day of the massacre Hebdo featured as its front page a caricature of Michel Houellebecq, whose controversial new novel was published that week. Soumission is set in a France in the near future in which an Islamist party has come to power with the connivance of both the Left and Right in order to defeat the nativist National Front. Houellebecq, already in trouble for criticising France’s second largest religion in a previous work, has since moved to Ireland, seeing France as no longer safe. Soumission became a mega-bestseller. Also topping the charts that week was a polemic by Éric Zemmour, a journalist of Jewish-North African descent who has criticised mass immigration and the “demographic tsunami” it has brought.

The recent attacks in Manchester and London came as another important book was selling in vast numbers, The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray, which has spent weeks at the top of the Sunday Times charts despite this subject being not the sort of thing one talks about in polite company. Murray’s book follows James Kirchick’s equally bleak-sounding The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Ages. In his book, Kirchick warns:

A Europe unmoored from the Enlightenment values it brought to the world, ignorant of and unwilling to protect its civilizational achievements, captive to chauvinist demagogues, indisposed to defend itself, bereft of its Jews, estranged from America, cowed before Russia, and reverted to its traditional state of nature with nations pursuing mercenary self-interest at the expense of unity would not only spell the end of Europe as we know it. Such a collapse would usher in nothing less than a new dark age.

Despite this, Kirchick is more optimistic than the title suggests. He concludes that the continent may get out of its current mess, if it can pool its resources and enjoy closer integration.

Others are not so optimistic. In Germany, historian Rolf Peter Sieferle has made even more of a splash. His account of German political psychology and its effects, Finis Germania, has enjoyed good sales just as it has been roundly condemned by the prestige press. Die Zeit called it a book of “brazen obscenity.” (He has not been able to enjoy his surprise bestseller, having taken his own life last September.)

A former socialist who grew disillusioned with his generation’s naivety, Sieferle wrote that “[a] society that can no longer distinguish between itself and the forces that would dissolve it is living morally beyond its means.” In fact, he argued, Germans actually want to disappear because of a belief that Germans are uniquely guilty due to the Holocaust – that they carry a blood guilt as “the absolute enemies of our common humanity,” becoming “a scapegoat people.”

This was perhaps why in 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the momentous decision to open her nation’s borders. The numbers involved, and the future implications for our continent, are staggering; the reasons for her decision remain a mystery. Earlier that year the chancellor had told Reem Sahwil, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who wanted to stay in Germany, that if she allowed Sahwil’s family to stay in Germany, all Africans would want to join them. Germany “cannot cope with that,” she said.

Many in the German media criticised the coldness of Chancellor Merkel’s response and so when in late August migration pressure looked like overwhelming Greece and Italy, the Germans snapped. In August 2015, Merkel announced her open door policy, cloaking it in moral terms. “Universal civil rights were so far tied together with Europe and its history,” she said. “If Europe fails on the question of refugees, its close connection with universal civil rights will be destroyed. It won’t be the Europe we imagine.” As she told them, “Wir Schaffen das” – “We can do this.” What followed were scenes of jubilation among Germans as they welcomed refugees into their towns, as Murray writes:

As the trains came into the stations and the migrants got off and went through the crowds some locals wolf-whistled and gave them high-fives. Human chains of volunteers handed out food and gifts, including sweets and teddy bears for the children. It was not just an expression of the Willkommenskultur (“welcoming culture”) that Germany says it likes to practise. These migrants were not merely being welcomed. They were being celebrated, as though they were the local football team returning triumphant, or heroes returning from a war.

In just a year Germany accepted a total of 1.1 million migrants. Most were not Syrian, and most were not refugees as defined by the UN. Most were young men, and most intended to bring their family with them; once those relatives are taken into account, Germany will have experienced nothing short of a demographic revolution. At a time when low-skilled jobs are disappearing this is a potential explosive cocktail.

Kirchick wrote that “historical guilt for the crimes of Nazism inspired an open-door refugee policy as ill considered as it was well intentioned, the negative consequences of which will be felt for generations.” Among the new Germans was the Sahwil family, which was given permission to stay at the end of 2015. The young girl gave a little-noticed interview in which she said she hoped to return home one day … when Israel “is no longer there.”

Merkel’s executive decision was only an acceleration of a long-running trend that began after the Second World War with the first migrant workers in Britain, France, Germany, and the Low Countries. They were there for economic reasons, and people did not expect them to stay, but as Western Europe became diverse, much to the discomfort and opposition of people outside the political class, all sorts of rationalizations were offered. Yet as Murray accurately points out, at the heart of this was a spiritual void.

On a profound level, we imported religious people because of the absence of our own faith. Western Europe took immigrants from the Islamic world just as it was adopting bohemian culture mores, characterised by more liberal attitudes to drug and alcohol use, and extra-marital sex. The new “bourgeois-bohemian” middle class combined this countercultural individualism with the materialistic values of capitalism. Across 10 Western European countries, church attendance fell from 38.4 to 16.6 percent between 1975 and 1998. Europe became a consumerist paradise with an economic model that depended on demographic growth, which only religious societies can provide. In France, Caucasian women who practise religion have a half-child fertility advantage over the non-religious; in Austria self-identified atheists have fertility rates of just 0.86 children per woman.

It was assumed, if unspoken, that Muslim migrants – dressed in suits, often moderate beer drinkers – would become godless or at least less observant upon breathing European air, their children even more so. It’s safe to say there are now few people left who have not been disabused of this notion. Muslims arrived in a continent going through a revolutionary social change which made the path to integration complex and difficult. Unsurprisingly their sons, feeling the sense of alienation common to second-generation migrants sometimes feel little attachment to the national culture, preferring a strong, global brotherhood of faith that offers the comfort of certainty and the heroic narrative. And yet when the UK government repeatedly emphasises “British values” during anti-extremism initiatives, they find it hard to articulate those same values without the obvious one: Christianity. Instead, they limply define Britishness by tolerance and diversity, almost as if these things are a replacement faith.

… Which they sort of are. Diversity offers Europeans a form of redemption, something heavily influenced by the tragedy of 1914 to 1945 but also deeply linked to our guilty culture. When the body of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian washed up on a Turkish beach, it became the most powerful image of the decade. Yet in the Arab world, there was little sense that this was their fault. As Murray writes, “there was not anything there remotely like the introspection and self-accusation indulged in by Western politicians and media.” Indeed, the Gulf Arab states have taken virtually no Syrian refugees.

Europe has a guilt and savior complex. As a result, it seems to be replacing the atonement of the Savior’s death with its own.

Much of Europe’s behaviour since 1945 has been an attempt to exit history, a tired continent looking for peace and inner calm, sick of the wars of religion, ideology and race that have dogged it for centuries; in doing so it can also finally achieve its redemption. The tragedy is that, in doing so, it has almost certainly ensured that their posterity will not get that peace. Murray concludes that “[i]t is always possible that the tide of faith that began its long, withdrawing roar of retreat in the nineteenth century will come back in again.” One must hope. Together with their traditional faith, Europeans must recover their lost Burkean notion of society being a compact between the living, the dead and those yet unborn.

About the author:
*Ed West is an author, journalist and blogger. He writes a regular blog for The Spectator and is deputy editor of The Catholic Herald. He is the author of The Diversity Illusion, Groupthink, and The Silence of Our Friends.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute.

By George Pickering*

“The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion,” Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor Nigel Lawson famously once observed. However, given the swivel-eyed fanaticism with which its supporters will defend it, even from the overwhelming evidence of its shortcomings, at this point it might be more accurate to describe the NHS as Britain’s national cult.

The utterly unparalleled degree of moral outrage which greets any criticism of the NHS bespeaks the decades of propaganda — in the state’s schools, from the state’s politicians, and on the state’s news and media outlets — which have taught the British people to believe that the only alternative to a state-controlled healthcare monopoly is for the poor to die in the streets. So pervasive has this myth become that the Labour party has been able to base its entire electoral strategy, for decades, on painting themselves as the only party that truly cares about ‘our NHS’, and a recent survey found that, when asked ‘What makes you proud to be British’, the NHS was the nation’s most common answer by a considerable margin. All this has led to a situation wherein the desperately needed reforms to Britain’s healthcare system cannot even be discussed, due to the irrational overflowing of blind rage and uncomprehending contempt that greets any criticism of Britain’s ultimate sacred cow.

This baseless self-satisfaction and refusal to consider change is in no way helped by studies such as one which has recently made headlines across the British press, which placed the NHS as “the number one health system”. The study in question ranked the healthcare systems of 11 countries, and found that Britain’s NHS fulfilled the study’s criteria of success most adequately, followed by Australia and the Netherlands, with Canada, France, and the United States languishing at the bottom of its rankings. This positive result might come as a surprise even to those who usually accept the mainstream narrative surrounding the NHS. Indeed, even at the bottom of the BBC’s own triumphalist article on the study in question, they link to related stories with headlines such as “NHS rationing leaves patients in pain”, and “Long waits for surgery have tripled in four years”!

These two headlines hint at the perennial problem of shortages due to price controls which must inevitably exist in a system such as the NHS. For as long as the price of healthcare services is held artificially low (or free) by state intervention, individual consumers will no longer have an incentive to economise and question whether they really need a given service, or whether those scarce resources should go to others in more desperate need. This inevitably leads to a greater number of people clamouring to extract services than the supply can handle, leading to the shortages, long waiting times, and rationing which have characterised the piteous state of NHS services throughout its history. So immutable is the economic law that price controls lead to shortages that, in the words of Ludwig von Mises, “even capital punishment could not make price control work, in the days of Emperor Diocletian and the French Revolution.” The fact that public support for the NHS remains so high, despite these major problems inherent in the nature of the system itself, provides a stark real-life example of the dangers of choosing to ignore the insights of economics.

Unfortunately however, price controls and shortages are far from the only problems which stem from Britain’s state monopoly of healthcare. As Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs highlighted in an excellent recent article, the characteristics of the NHS which Britons mistakenly believe to be a unique source of pride, are actually present in almost every other healthcare system in the developed world; yet these other systems lack the NHS’s hostility to innovation in medicines and practices. Furthermore, the high number of avoidable infant deaths in some of its trusts led to the NHS being brought under government investigation in April for standards of maternal care which regulators described as “truly shocking”. I eagerly await the fundamental reforms that will surely result from the state regulators’ suggestion of a state investigation into the wrongdoings of the state’s own healthcare system.

How is it possible, then, that the NHS should have ranked so highly in this recent study by the influential Commonwealth Fund health think tank, despite all these major problems? The answer is in the study’s careful selection of the criteria used as metrics of success, in order to give the most weight to the few areas in which the NHS actually does succeed. Indeed, the study stands out considerably from all other healthcare system comparisons by the great weight it places on procedure and general system characteristics, with relatively little weight given to the actual outcomes. One might think that the NHS’s place in the bottom 20% for both cancer survival rates and medically avoidable death rates would be seen as a statistic too important to be swept under the rug by the technicalities of this study’s method. The Commonwealth Fund also gives surprisingly little weight to the NHS’s dismally low efficiency in terms of healthcare bang per buck, a fact which undermines those who claim that simply throwing more taxpayers’ money at the system would solve its problems.

In terms of its health outcomes across most common ailments, Britain’s NHS ranks closer to former communist bloc countries like Slovenia than to its Western European neighbours. Even a country like Spain, whose GDP per capita is fully 25% lower than Britain’s, has healthcare outcomes so much higher than those of the NHS that, if the British system were able to improve even to the point that it was merely equal with Spain, 10,000 fewer Britons would die of medically preventable causes every single year. Even the Commonwealth Fund study in question concedes that, while they ranked the NHS as the number one health system overall, its competence in the small matter of actually keeping its patients alive was the second-worst of any country under consideration.

The boundaries of socially acceptable debate still have a considerable distance to shift in Britain before the desperate need for fundamental NHS reform can be calmly acknowledged and reasonably discussed. Until such time, no amount of minor tweaking or extra funding will be able to address the rot at the heart of the system, from which so many of its avoidable failures stem: namely its status as a taxpayer-funded state monopoly. Until this fundamental aspect of British healthcare can be criticised without incurring excommunication from public life, the NHS will continue to fail the British people, just as Britain’s state monopolies in coal, shipbuilding, automobiles, and other industries failed in the 1970s.

In the words of the great Chicago economist Thomas Sowell, “You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that, for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” Indeed, you can never understand the NHS until you understand that, for as long as British healthcare continues to be run as a government bureaucracy rather than a consumer-facing business, the very lives of British people will continue to be just another ‘outcome’ for the state to ignore.

About the author:
*George Pickering is the Almoayyad Fellow in Residence at the Mises Institute this summer, and is a student of economic history at the London School of Economics.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute