After months of bickering and blockades, the coalition ruling at Bosnia’s state level and in the Federation entity has broken up.
Bosnia’s second-strongest Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] national party, the Alliance for Better Future, SBB, on Friday announced the breakup of its coalition with the main Bosniak party in the country, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA.
After months of deadlock, bickering and media mud-slinging, which in various ways involved all of the main political parties, this SBB announcement marked the official end of the coalition that has held power in Bosnia’s Federation entity as well as at the state level.
Increasingly venomous exchanges between the SBB and SDA leaders, Fahrudic Radoncic and Bakir Izetbegovic, in which they accused each other of various criminal acts and blunders, reopened their old personal animosities.
It created a situation in which it was only a matter of time before one or other leader would end the failing marriage.
“The coalition between the SBB and [SDA leader Bakir] Izetbegovic broke apart because of his [Izetbegovic’s] lying to everyone,” the SBB said in an angry statement on Friday.
Since the 2014 general elections, the SDA and the SBB, together with the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, had ruled Bosnia’s Federation entity and held power most of the entity’s ten subdivisions, known as cantons.
A similar coalition, but including a bloc of Bosnian Serb opposition parties, the Alliance for Change, also ruled at the state level.
This latest development adds to Bosnia’s political uncertainty and opens the door for further tensions.
However, it is unclear whether the official collapse of the ruling coalition will bring about any immediate major changes, as the coalition was effectively already blocked by political infighting, which has raged on for almost a year.
Some parties have in the past weeks indicated that by the end of July they might initiate a no-confidence vote in the state government, the Council of Ministers.
However, even if this takes place, it is uncertain whether there will be enough votes in the state parliament to actually topple the government.
The situation in the Federation entity is similar, although there are no signs of any of the main parties intending to officially topple that government.
Moreover, even if the current state government and – or – Federation government falls, it seems unlikely that any party will be able to assemble a new ruling coalition at either state or entity level, until the next general election, due in October 2018.
This situation – and the fact that Bosnia lacks legal mechanisms to simultaneously hold early elections at all administrative levels – suggests that governments will continue to rule at state level and in the Federation without a parliamentary majority, or with technical mandates, until the end of next year.
Turkey’s president said Sunday that friends should not deceive each other, referring to recent remarks by a US general over PKK/PYD “rebranding” itself as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
“We know very well who’s who. Both are the same,” Erdogan told a press conference at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport before starting a two-day Gulf tour in Saudi Arabia.
“What really matters isn’t changing the name plate, but what is inside,” he added.
Saying that Turkey gives no credit to PKK/PYD changing its name to the Syrian Democratic Forces, he said, “Friends don’t deceive each other,” referring to the US.
Last Friday, speaking at a security forum in Colorado, Gen. Raymond Thomas, the head of the US Army’s Special Forces, said that the PKK/PYD had rebranded itself the Syrian Democratic Forces to give it a voice in Syria talks and to assuage Ankara.
The US has supported the PKK/PYD along with several other Arab militia groups under the umbrella of the SDF, long vexing Ankara.
The US views the SDF as a reliable partner in its fight against Daesh and continues to provide it with arms and equipment against strong objections by Turkey, which views the PKK/PYD as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK group.
Turkey and Germany
Also commenting on recent tensions in Turkish-German ties, Erdogan said, “Nobody has right to interfere in Turkey’s domestic affairs.”
After German national Peter Steudtner was remanded in custody by a Turkish court this week, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel denounced his detention, and also signaled a shift in Turkish-German ties, saying they “can’t go on like before”.
Steudtner has been accused for planning provocative events meant to fuel unrest across Turkey.
Erdogan said Turkey will do anything possible to counter those who are involved in provocative acts in Turkey and even try to continue these via their diplomatic services.
On Gabriel’s remarks on Turkish-German ties, Erdogan said, “We are together in NATO. We’re a negotiator state in the EU process. We have been partners for a long time. No step casting a shadow over this partnership should be taken”.
Erdogan also complained that many Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) members are moving about freely in Germany.
“Their names were already given” to Germany, Erdogan said, but they have not been extradited, despite the extradition agreement between the two countries.
“If you give shelter to terrorists escaping from Turkey to Germany, give them the opportunity to promote terror, welcome them when they escape Turkey even though they were tried in Turkish courts and found guilty, reward them by having them speak in various public meetings, host them at the presidential office, I’m sorry but our stance toward you will not be the same,” he said.
While Turkish leaders have slammed German authorities for not showing solidarity in the fight against terrorism, German politicians have criticized Turkey over human rights and press freedom issues.
(Civil.Ge) — US President Donald Trump intends to nominate Wess Mitchell to the position of an Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, the White House said.
Mitchell, who is the President and the CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Washington D.C.-based security policy think tank, is a frequent commentator on NATO and transatlantic security.
As Assistant Secretary Mitchell will be responsible for diplomatic relations with 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia, including Georgia, as well as with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Victoria Nuland, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in September 2013, left the post in January 2017, following President Trump’s inauguration.
Since 2010, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hungary have gone from existing in a resource-scarce environment to one of government pressure, coercion, and targeted attacks. Shortly after the declaration of the US-led “War on Terror” in 2001, countries around the world adopted new and coercive policies targeting civil society, the operations of the so-called “third sector,” with new restrictions on factors critical for the survival of NGOs and their operations. Since that time, governments around the world have assumed newer and stricter regulations regarding NGO funding and funding sources, transparency and accountability, political configurations, and relationships with other government and non-governmental bodies beyond state borders.
Repressive measures against civil society have undergone drastic maturation processes since 2001. Measures of repression and co-option are part-and-parcel to the cultivation of increasingly tense and hostile environments within state borders, and have been observed in both developing and developed countries alike. While countries such as Russia and Turkey, for example, have recently had the uncivil society spotlight cast upon them, Western countries, the United States and United Kingdom for instance, have also contributed to the acculturation of a global environment hostile toward civil society through strict national security measures. The primacy of their roles were strengthened through the pursuit of international terrorist and criminal organizations after 9/11, the advent of which coincided with a sharp turn in government attitude and treatment of domestic and international NGOs.
This environment, while negatively impacting civil society in developed states, has been caustic for NGOs struggling not just to operate but also to stay alive in lesser-developed countries (LDCs), including non-consolidated or new and emerging democracies, and countries heavily reliant on foreign aid and other forms of external support. Since 2010, Hungary’s ruling Fidesz (Magyar Polgári Szövetség or Hungarian Civic Union) party has implemented measures that have culminated in a constrained and even hostile environment for civil society and NGOs, thus extending this backdrop to Central Europe and a region occupying a position within the European Union (EU). Measures and actions undertaken since 2010 have played a pointed role in the direct and systematic targeting of organizations regarded and labeled by the ruling party as “foreign agents” that promote fundamentalist or extremist views.
Government attacks against NGOs reached a feverish pitch in 2014, when Fidesz systematically attacked NGOs and the Norway European Economic Area (EEA) Grants program funded by Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. The campaign began with rhetorical attacks against NGOs with the intention of damaging or destroying their reputations, but eventually led to several police raids on NGOs, and the seizure of personal property including computers as well as files and documents. 2015 presented renewed government efforts to discredit NGOs in the wake of the “refugee crisis” when Fidesz attempted to stigmatize NGOs either working in the fields of migration and asylum, or working with NGOs offering assistance to large numbers of refugees after entering Hungary predominantly through its southern border with neighboring Serbia. It was at this point that Hungary declared a state of emergency in an effort to address its proclaimed “migrant crisis.”
In December 2016, Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, openly stated his intentions to eliminate Soros influence in Hungary. However, pressure on civil society and NGOs in Hungary have preceded Orbán’s 2016 declaration. Extensive auditing procedures, for example, have required NGOs to shift their human resources to fulfilling reporting criteria to the government. This author’s fieldwork, in which several hundred NGOs were surveyed, elucidates the increased operational costs associated with the government’s auditing measures. The shift detracts from their day-to-day operations and has limited their human resources. Several program officers explained that in some cases months worth of time and work were detracted from their primary operations. Most NGOs in Hungary are composed of only a handful, sometimes one or two, paid full-time staff members, who then rely on volunteers for further assistance. Government pressure has also come in the form of financial restrictions and the passing of an “anti-foreign NGO” law in April 2017 – essentially a carbon copy of Russia’s 2012 “foreign agent law” seeking to shut down so-called “undesirable” NGOs – obliging NGOs to register as “foreign supported” or “foreign funded” if they receive more than $26,000 USD per annum. Failure to disclose their foreign funding sources can have severe consequences, including the termination of the NGO.
Government labeling of NGOs can have long-term negative effects, noted an executive director of an NGO working in the field of democracy, transparency, and anti-corruption, by resonating in the minds of individuals within Hungarian society and being compounded by subsequent government attempts to discredit and tarnish the image of the “third sector.” Fidesz’s anti-NGO rhetoric, and efforts to deface the Hungarian-born American philanthropist George Soros and the Open Society Foundations’ (OSF) work to promote democratic societies, have helped foster a small but palpable anti-NGO culture in Hungary. Defamation of NGOs by the government can have dangerous effects given the lack of legal channels through which to respond. The discrediting of civil society and NGOs, whether through government rhetoric, websites, or national referendums, can help to produce a negative image of organizations by linking them to other threats within the country or threat from abroad. People retaining an inadequate awareness about NGOs can become easily and permanently suspicious about the sort of work that takes place in the “third sector.”
Fidesz’s Vice Chairman Szilárd Németh made a public statement in January 2016 calling for the OSF and its partners to be “swept out” of Hungary, signaling the beginning of new efforts to crackdown on civil society in a country ruled by what has been referred to as a hybrid or semi-authoritarian regime. Budapest’s Soros-funded Central European University (CEU) came under fire by Fidesz in April 2017 with legislation that sought to close down the institution indefinitely. Ambitious initiatives of this nature are valuable instruments for testing the limits of Fidesz’s power within the country as well as public reactions. Németh underscored the need for Hungary to resort to all available tools to increasingly resist civil society and social movements linked to Soros and Western or “foreign” funding and interests.
Hungary has recently introduced a range of new counter-terrorism initiatives including the Hungarian Counter Terrorism Centre (Terrorelhárítási Központ [TEK]) and the Counterterrorism Information and Criminal Analysis Centre (Terrorelhárítási Információs és Bűnügyi Elemző Központ [TIBEK]), and has proscribed the Hungarian police forces with extensive reach that overlaps with that of national intelligence authorities. Fidesz has officially and effectively linked NGOs to issues of national security such as money laundering, illegal migration, and international terrorism, and extremism. With more than a dozen NGOs having been “blacklisted” by the government over the past several years, the list of organizations regarded by Fidesz as countering the national (security) interests of Hungary continues to grow. Attracting particularly negative attention by the ruling party are NGOs working in areas sensitive to the government. NGOs focusing on anti-patriarchal dimensions of society, transparency, anti-corruption, minority rights, migration, and LGBTQI+ have received particularly negative attention. The continuity of government calls for increased transparency also continues to provide a strong justificatory basis for assuming a more aggressive posture toward civil society in Hungary, and is being fueled by the type of international terrorism and national security narrative seen elsewhere within and outside of Europe since 9/11 and the advent of the “War on Terror.”
The material context is a major backdrop to this situation in Hungary. NGO financing can be seen as the historic “Achilles heel” of the civil society sector in a country where civil society, civic associations, and volunteerism have shallow and particularly fragile root systems. The so-called “Golden Age” of civil society passed at the turn of the millennium with the resource scarce environment strained further still by government crackdown on NGOs that have the ability still to contest aspects of the ruling party’s power in Hungary. Ideological interpretations of the role of civil society and NGOs are also a key component in Hungary’s anti-organized civil society and NGO character. Government spokespersons have linked NGOs with migrants and migration, the threat of terrorism and flow of terrorists, and the concept of extremism in various forms, such as ideas about the role of liberal institutions, and as the Fidesz party stated, over-interpretations about rights and freedoms, including human rights. This mixture has in other countries led to the systematic and strategic co-option of civil society.
Government actions have fallen in line with the ruling party’s visions for the creation of an illiberal state within the EU, and are congruent with national rhetoric as well as the planning and implementation of illiberal legislation and policy in Hungary. This relationship has led to a situation whereby NGOs and the organized aspects of civil society have become deeply politicized and securitized, so much as that they have been positioned alongside threats to national security, and inexorably linked to views of extremism and terrorism. Although it would be too convenient and simple to connect these events and suggest that the same strategic co-option and crackdown of civil society in the name of counter-terrorism has begun to take place in Hungary, the events have the potential for piecing together with the broader narrative highlighting the harmful character of the “War on Terror” in the context of civil society.
The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published.
(EurActiv) — This week member states will make up their minds on whether or not EU accounting rules on the treatment of public-private energy performance contracts (EPCs) should be changed.
It is a high-stakes decision. A revision would allow massive injections of private sector investment into the EU economy. Yet, there is opposition from some national statistical offices, who have to take a position by 25 July.
At the moment there is an inconsistency in how rules are applied to public/private energy efficiency investments, which are considered ‘on balance sheet’, compared to public /private investment in highways and roads, which are ‘off balance sheet’.
Public sector bodies – cities, local authorities and mayors – currently have to class third party financing for energy efficiency improvements as public debt. This means they often have to turn down good projects or ‘bankrupt’ their books. The reform would unlock the doors on large amounts of private investment – for example, from banks or pension funds investing via energy service companies – with the investment repaid from the savings on energy bills.
This means they often have to turn down good projects or ‘bankrupt’ their books. The reform would unlock the doors on large amounts of private investment – for example, from banks or pension funds investing via energy service companies – with the investment repaid from the savings on energy bills.
This private money would flow into the EU economy, where it is vitally needed to fund warmer buildings, cheaper lighting, cleaner air and increased energy security for EU citizens – all at no risk to the public authorities. At the same time, it would be helping member states implement the Paris Agreement and meet the 2030 climate and energy goals at least cost.
Many EU member states are still experiencing low-growth, low-investment environments. The mantra everywhere is that attracting private sector investment into infrastructure and EU businesses will be key to driving a sustained economic recovery in Europe.
A very wide range of stakeholders, including EU Commissioners, municipalities, businesses, investors and civil society representatives agree that the reform of the accounting treatment of EPCs is one of the key barriers to close this investment gap.
Numerous examples of aborted energy efficiency investment in public buildings from Spain to Slovakia have been brought forward as evidence that a change is both proportionate and justified.
The arguments and evidence have been extensively considered and consulted upon within the statistical community. Eurostat has moved forward to suggest progressive solutions based around recognising energy services provided via EPCs as just that – energy services, with finance solutions and operational risk provided by private sector providers.
A group of progressive countries including France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland recognise the strategic importance of resolving the issue and are committed to moving forward from proposal to reality.
Yet not everybody seems to share the same positive idea. We hear European utilities – whose business models will be forced to a major change to accommodate the rise of a new services-based energy industry if the revision goes through – are actively lobbying against the change. The German statistical office seems to be listening to them. Others, like Sweden or Finland, seem also to be doubtful.
This is not some abstract academic issue. The USA already has an accounting system similar to the one proposed by Eurostat. The US energy services market is worth around $4-6 billion per year, compared to just €150m in the EU at the moment.
The recently published High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance Interim Report singled out the EPC accounting rule issue out as an early priority to resolve, recognising it as a key ‘lever’ the EU can pull to quickly and effectively channel private sector finance to a simply vast investment opportunity that will create new employment opportunities for EU citizens working for EU firms delivering EU infrastructure.
In the aftermath of the financial and sovereign debt crises, and in the face of the very grave threat climate changes pose to our European way of life, all parts of the financial system need to change to deliver the sustainable economy we need. This includes the institutions that govern it.
National statistical offices must play an active role in helping create the new ‘rules of the game’ needed to underpin the EU’s transformation to a sustainable economy. We hope that in the days ahead they will vote for change.
*Monica Frassoni is a former MEP and current President of the European Alliance to Save Energy.
South Asian nations like India and Pakistan have emerged as dangerous places for working journalists. As the year 2017 completes half of its journey, the region has lost over 10 journalists to assailants. The list of victims was also contributed by Maldives and Bangladesh, where as Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka could evade any murder of scribes in the last six months.
The year started with sad news for India as the dead body of a Jharkhand based scribe was recovered on Hazaribag locality in the first week itself. Hari Prakash, 31, whose body was found on 2 January on a roadside, was missing for some days. The family members of Hari, who was a law graduate and used to work for a Hindi daily, alleged that he was kidnapped by the miscreants to finally kill the reporter.
Another bad news was waiting for the media families as a Bihar based journalist was shot dead at Samastipur locality on 3 January by some unidentified goons. Brajesh Kumar Singh, 28, received serious injuries to his head and died on the spot. It was the third assassination of a journalist in Bihar within a year after Rajdeo Ranjan and Dharmendra Kumar Singh were killed last year.
The third and fourth incidents involving the murder of working journalists were reported from Madhya Pradesh. Shyam Sharma, 40, who was engaged with a local evening newspaper was stabbed to death by miscreants at Anshul locality of Indore on 15 May. Shyam received multiple injuries and died on the spot. Meanwhile, the local police have arrested two individuals suspecting their primary role in the murder case.
On the other hand, Kamlesh Jain, 42, was shot dead in his office at Pipliyamandi locality of Mandsaur on the evening of 31 May. Kamlesh was rushed to a nearby hospital, where the attending doctors declared him brought dead. According to the police on duty, two miscreants entered into Kamlesh’s office and one of them shot him. The culprits quickly fled from the location with their motorcycle.
Engaged with a Hindi daily (Nai Dunia), the journalist lately exposed few local people involved in illegal liquor trades through a number roadside Dhabas (restaurants). He was also threatened by those criminals with dire consequences few days back. The police as usual took prompt actions and arrested two individuals suspecting their role in the crime.
Various scribe’s bodies from Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh along with Journalists’ Forum Assam, Indian Journalists Union, National Federation of Newspaper Employees, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) etc expressed serious concern over the murder of the journalists and asked the responsible authorities to book the culprits under the law of the land.
Condemning the assassinations of Shyam and Kamlesh, the IFJ commented ‘two murders in nearly two weeks illustrate the dangerous conditions that journalists in India are facing’. The global media forum called on Indian authorities to immediately and thoroughly investigate these murders and bring those responsible to justice.
In a recent statement, the IFJ disclosed that 93 journalists were killed last year around the world, where India contributed 6 victims to the list. Iraq witnessed the highest number of journo-killings (15), followed by Afghanistan (13), Mexico (11), Yemen (8), Guatemala, Syria, India (all 6), Pakistan (5) etc, added the forum representing over 6,00,000 journalists in 140 countries.
Pakistan lost four professional journalists and a media student to assailants in the last six months. Muhammad Jan, who was working for an Urdu newspaper in Baluchistan province, faced bullets from miscreants on 12 January and died later. A student of journalism (Mashal Khan) fall prey to an angry mob in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on 22 April over the alleged blasphemy charge against him.
Later a television reporter Abdul Razzaque was gunned down by miscreants on 17 May in Punjab province and another news channel scribe Bakhsheesh Elahi was shot dead by unknown gunmen on 11 June in Peshawar.
A senior journalist Zeba Burney, who was associated with journalism for 30 years, was found dead in her residence at Karachi on 19 June.
Ms Burney, who used to work for Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper, was rushed to the hospital, where the attending doctors confirmed that it was a case of murder. Wife of late journalist Naeem Qamar, Zeba was an ex-office bearer of Karachi Press Club and her death invited strong protests from Karachi Union of Journalists.
The CPJ called on Pakistani authorities to investigate all the killings related to media persons and book the culprits urgently. The New York based media rights body also expressed concern over the situation in Afghanistan, where many journalists and media workers got killed in the last six months. The victims, mostly killed in bomb explosions by militants, include Habibollah Hosseinzadeh, Mohammed
Nazir, Amir Khan, Zinullah Khan, Abdul Latif, Md Ghani , Aziz Navin, Omar Arghandewal, Amir Shinwari, Md Zainullah, Sayed Agha etc.
Infamous for many atheist bloggers’ killings, Bangladesh witnessed the murder of one rural reporter at Sirajganj locality. Abdul Hakim Shimul, who used to work for Dainik Samakal, was shot dead on 2 February, when he was covering the clashes between two factions of the ruling party (Awami League). Bangladesh Manobadhikaar Sangbadik Forum strongly condemned the assassination, which was first in 2017.
The tiny nation lMaldives drew the attention of international media recently with the sensational murder of a prominent journalist and human rights defender. Yameen Rasheed, 29, who remained an outspoken critic of corruption and human rights violations in the island nation, was stabbed to death by miscreants on 23 April in the capital Malé and thus putting the small country in the list of risky nations with growing intolerance toward free information flow.
India’s southeast Asian neighbor Myanmar (also known as Burma or Brahmadesh) reported one murder in the first half of 2017. Wai Yan Heinn, 27, a Rangoon based weekly (Iron Rose) editor was killed on 16 April. The reason behind the stabbing of the scribe was however yet to be confirmed for his journalistic works. Besides local media units, the CPJ and RSF urged the Myanmar authorities to identify and bring the culprits to justice at the earliest.
Mentioning about a last year’s case (killing of Soe Moe Tun on 13 December 2016 reportedly for exposing illegal loggings in his locality), the international media rights bodies expressed resentments that the concerned investigation had gone slow. Benjamin Ismaïl, the former head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, recently commented that Soe’s family was still waiting for justice, but in vein.
Lately three Myanmar journalists namely Lawi Weng (The Irrawaddy), Aye Naing and Pyae Bone Naing (Democratic Voice of Burma) arrested by the Burmese Army on 26 June from Shan State and put inside Hsipaw prison. Amnesty International has called the authority to ‘immediately and unconditionally’ release the journalists so that they can resume their journalistic work.
Other tiny neighbors of India including Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka along with Tibet (under China) etc have not reported any incident of journo-killings in the last six months. In contrast, the land of Mahatma-Buddha has emerged as one of the worst places for working journalists, where they are attacked deliberately and justices were rarely delivered to their bereaved families.
The awarding was remarkable given that it came before the first chink appeared in the armour of the seven-week-old UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt had banned Al Jazeera as well as BeIN as part of the boycott.
The ban threatened to deprive fans in the four countries access to broadcasts of the world’s major tournaments to which BeIN holds the regional rights. These include England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the Champions League, the AFC Champions League, the Asian Cup, the CAF Champions League, and the Africa Cup of Nations.
The UAE, in an indication that the hardened frontlines of the Gulf crisis may be softening, lifted days after the awarding the ban on BeIN. It was not immediately clear whether other members of the UAE-Saudi alliance would follow suit. It was also unclear whether Saudi Arabia would push ahead with plans to launch a rival sports broadcasting franchise.
The lifting of the ban on BeIN did not extend to Al Jazeera’s news channels that the UAE-Saudi-led alliance initially demanded should be shuttered. It constituted the second indication in a week that the Gulf crisis may be ever so slowly easing.
Earlier, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash described amendments of Qatar’s anti-terror legislation as “a step in the right direction.” The amendments, part of a decree issued by the Gulf state’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, established lists for individuals and entities accused of involvement in terrorist activities and the criteria for inclusion on them.
The decree also amended the legislation to define what constitutes terrorism, terrorist crimes, terrorist entities and funding of terrorism. It was issued days after Qatar and the United States signed an agreement to combat the funding of terrorism, the first such accord with a Gulf state.
The agreement is believed to provide for the stationing of two US Justice Department officials in the Qatari state prosecutor’s office. Under the agreement, Qatar is expected by year’s end to impose travel bans, enforce surveillance, and freeze the assets of individuals with suspected links to terrorism.
While the agreement at first glance appears to go some way to meeting the demands of the UAE-Saudi-led alliance, the devil could prove to be in the details. The fact that the agreement does not define what groups might be included leaves much open to interpretation. Qatar rejects the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s designations, first and foremost among which the Muslim Brotherhood, a group with which the Gulf state has a long-standing strategic relationship.
The lifting of the ban on BeIN, while projected as a goodwill gesture, also served to pre-empt criticism by soccer fans as well as possible punitive measures by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
The AFC alongside world soccer body FIFA’s African affiliate, the Confederation of African Football (CAF), last month in almost identical statements insisted on upholding the separation of politics and football. They called on football stakeholders to adhere to the principles of neutrality and independence in politics as “part of the statutory missions” of FIFA and its affiliates “as well as the obligations of member associations.”
CAF warned Egypt’s two top clubs, arch rivals Al Ahli FC and Al Zamalek SC, that they could be penalized if they went through with a declared boycott of BeIN Sports, in response to a statement by the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) supporting Egypt’s participation in the UAE-Saudi-led boycott of Qatar.
The Cairo-based, African group subsequently suspended and imposed a $10,000 fine on Al Ahli coach Hossam El Badry for first refusing to address a news conference at which BeIN reporters were present, then refusing to give BeIN an interview, and finally covering BeIN’s microphone and trying to prevent it from recording the press conference.
CAF has yet to respond to a refusal a week later by Mr. El Badry and Al Ahli players to grant BeIN interviews after the club’s African match against Cameroon’s Coton Sport. The players also absented themselves from a post-match news conference in their bid to boycott BeIN.
The decision by the UAE, a driving force of the boycott of Qatar, to lift the ban on BeIN and the apparent softening of positions on both sides of the Gulf divide is likely to make it more difficult for Saudi Arabia and Egypt not to follow the Emirates’ example.
The incidents in Egypt nonetheless suggest that the Gulf crisis will leave deep scars, even if Qatar and its detractors ultimately paper over their differences and end the crisis. The likelihood is that ultimately either Saudi Arabia or the UAE will mount a challenge to Qatar’s commercial grip on the Middle East and North Africa’s sports broadcasting market. It will be both a political and commercial challenge, rooted in a fundamental rift that is likely to play out on the soccer pitch as well as elsewhere long after the Gulf crisis is resolved.
At the 40th annual General Body Meeting of the largest Indian organization Reliance Industries, its chairman Mr. Mukesh Ambani, who is said to be the richest man in India today, announced that Reliance would launch a 4G feature phone in September, 2017 that would be given free to the customers. It was further reported that the announcement was received with huge cheers by the share holders.
So far, in India, products and services are offered free (which go by the name freebie) to the citizens belonging to lower income group, mostly by the governments. To get the resources for such freebies, the governments would increase its income by imposing additional taxes in variety of ways. For the first time, a private sector organization is offering such a freebie (free Jio phone) on a massive scale.
In the past, in India, we have heard many stories about several individuals and private organizations enticing gullible people with various attractive offers, collect huge money and then fade away.
We have heard cases about individuals offering to multiply currency notes and people succumbing to the temptation and handing over hard earned money and finally getting cheated. We have also seen several financial companies offering huge interest on deposits, collecting crores of rupees from gullible people, paying interest for a few months and then fading away from the scene. Several police cases are under investigation all over India. While a few culprits have been arrested and punished, most of them roam free by prolonging the cases in the courts by using the loopholes in the law.
When the free Jio phone offer of Reliance was made, the careful thinking people are bound to doubt as to whether such scheme is genuine and feasible or have hidden elements in them that cannot be seen by the gullible and innocent people, who may fall prey to such schemes without investigation and succumb to the temptation.
While it is said that Jio phone will be provided free, the users are asked to pay a security deposit of Rs. 1500/- that is refundable after three years, when the phone would be returned back. Nothing has been said about the acceptance of the phone that would be returned back after three years, irrespective of it’s condition. In all probability, phones used for three years may have developed some problem, parts may have been replaced and would not be in the optimum standard. Will Reliance guarantee that security deposit would be paid back irrespective of the condition of the phone that would be returned?
The multi-millionaire chairman of Reliance is conspicuous by silence on this point so far.
Of course, if Reliance would sign up 250 million customers and put their security deposit collected in the bank, it would earn around 460 million dollar as interest per year. This could be even much more, if Reliance would use the funds to invest in various other projects that provide high rate of returns.
Today, the cheapest 4G phone available in the Indian market cost around Rs.3000/. It is not clear as to what would be the cost of production of Jio phone that would be produced by Reliance for free distribution. It is said that Jio phone has been developed in house by Reliance but the actual phones would be made by third party equipment manufacturers like Foxconn and Flextronics. It is also not clear as to what extent the phone would be manufactured in India or abroad. This may not fulfill the objective of the Make in India campaign, as claimed by Reliance..
There is a catch in the scheme in that, Reliance insists that the phone will be locked down to work only on R Jio’s 4G network. In other words, the users are denied the privilege of opting for any one of the multiple networks.
Further, it is claimed that Jio phone will offer the users unlimited voice and data just for around Rs. 153 per month. There is no sanctity about this tariff, since Reliance can always increase the tariff over a period of time after ensuring that the targeted number of consumers would be brought in it’s fold, who would have paid security deposit Rs. 1500 and do not have the option of using other network with Jio phone. There is no assurance from Reliance that the tariff would not be increased atleast for a period of three years.
If a consumer would be dissatisfied with the performance of Jio phone or would be unhappy in the event of Reliance raising the tariff after a few months, then what are the options left for the consumer? In such a case, he will have no alternative other than spending more money to move on to some other feature phone and network.
It is naïve to believe that an organization like Reliance which has been extremely clever and tactical in the past in it’s choice of projects, managing government machinery to its advantage and have multiplied its profit and income several fold, would just offer free services without huge and commensurate benefits to it, that may not be visible for the gullible public.
Possibly, Reliance must be calculating that with its free phone strategies, it can eliminate the competitors in the market and become a near monopoly and then have it’s way and dictate the market.
Obviously, Reliance commands huge resources built over several years by operating projects with huge margin and without passing on the benefits to the consumers by price reduction for it’s products. One can expect that Reliance would continue to adopt such practices and ultimately it will have the last laugh.
The faith of Reliance Chairman in the gullible nature of Indian consumer, who fall flat for any freebie scheme, is immense.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte illustrated on Friday the wisdom of the aphorism that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Reuters reports that Duterte said that America is “lousy,” that he would never again visit America, and that “it would be good for the US Congress to start with their own investigation of their own violations of the so many civilians killed in the prosecution of the wars in the Middle East.”
Duterte made his comments in reaction to United States House of Representatives Member James McGovern (D-MA) stating opposition to Duterte, who has garnered much attention due to the many killings in the name of the war on drugs he is pursuing in the Philippines, coming to America to meet with President Donald Trump.
Notably, McGovern has been one of the US Congress members most active in trying to require congressional votes on the continuation of US wars. Still, Duterte’s comments are well-placed. Hopefully, Duterte’s comments will resonate with Americans and help convince more Americans to call for the US government to reject its pro-war foreign policy.
As Duterte’s comments help make clear, a government that kills overseas in a plethora of aggressive wars, raids, and air strikes is behaving more in a despicable fashion than an exceptional fashion. The US government would do well to reject the advice of war advocates, including those who profit from the military-industrial complex, and embrace Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s wise advice to pursue a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Since the trespass by the Indian troops in the Doklam region, China has reiterated its stance many times. Since the independence of India in 1947, the Indian government has repeatedly confirmed this effect. However, India has said that its troops have not trespassed into Chinese territory, but instead have been located at the tri-junction point.
China has claimed Doklam as Chinese territory and under Chinese jurisdiction without disputes. China’s activities in this area have not breached any agreement or undermined the status quo. India has claimed that their role for sending troops over the China-India border is for security concerns and New Delhi has used Bhutan as an excuse to justify its illegal boundary crossing which has trembled on international law and infringed on China’s territorial sovereignty. On the other hand, China has the will to solve the problem through diplomatic means and cherishes peace and tranquility in the border areas. Whilst, the precondition to resolve the Doklam dispute is the immediate unconditional withdrawal of Indian troops to the Indian side of the India-China border.
India’s Position
China has accused India for using the protection of Bhutan as an excuse to stage the incursion into Chinese territory. India’s position on this issue is very contradictory to China’s and it’s two-fold. On one- fold, the Doklam territory is disputed territory between Bhutan and China and not between India and China. New Delhi has a very close relationship with Bhutan and was called in by the Bhutanese to assist.
The second-fold, as India sees it, is China changing the status quo by building a road in this disputed territory. If there had been no road in this disputed territory, then the Bhutanese would have not called India for assistance and Indian troops would have not been there. This is important strategically for India because the Doklam region is very close to a place known colloquially as the ‘chicken’s neck’, which is a narrow strip of territory that connects India’s northeast with the rest of the country. So, the strategic implications of this road being built over the Doklam with negotiations taking place to settle the final status of this dispute is quite high. The fact that Indian troops are spotted in this region is concerning, but it changes the whole dynamic of the military situation on the ground and it is also crucial for China, India, and Bhutan to come to some sort of agreement to avoid any further escalation.
China’s Position
China has said that the Doklam area is Chinese territory which dates back to a treaty it signed with Great Britain, and the kingdom of Sikkim in 1898. The Chinese side is very clear about this area belonging to China and they see India using the so-called territorial disputes between the Kingdom of Bhutan and China as an excuse to send its troops into Doklam.
If the Indian side really wants to build up this case of sending its troops to the Chinese side of the border for many weeks, then the argument from the Indian side would seem to be flimsy. If the Chinese build a road on the Chinese side of the border, and the Indian side claimed that they are being threatened by the road building, then the Chinese will continue building roads on their side of the border and the Indian side will have to deal with it. If you look at the international situation, a country has the right to build a road within its own borders. The solution going forward is for India to withdraw its troops and the longer India keeps its troops there, the more this conflict will turn into a confrontation between China and India at a time when China nor India can benefit if this breaks out.
The Standoff
Bhutan is a sovereign state that enjoys its full independence and India has no right to treat the Kingdom of Bhutan as a protective state. India is sending its troops into the Chinese side of the territory by using Bhutan as an excuse because if this is the case India wants to use, then there is a possibility that a confrontation could break out.
China is demanding the immediate withdrawal of Indian troops and this is serious because India has no legitimate reason to deploy its troops into a foreign territory. What China could do is unilaterally demand India to pull troops back without paying a price. If there is something to be negotiated, it should be discussed between China and Bhutan. At this point in time, China-India relations have been on a downward spiral. If India does not move its troops back, then the China-India relationship will deteriorate and India does not really have the ground to demand a diplomatic payment because the dispute should be between China and Bhutan for border management protocol. Map of Bhutan. Source: CIA World Factbook.
Indian External Affairs Spokesman Gopal Baglay recently called for a de-escalation of tensions in the area, and reiterated that “”differences” should not become “disputes””.i One of the most striking things about this standoff is the difference in tone and rhetoric between Beijing and New Delhi. From Beijing, the statements from the foreign ministry and the state-run media is a great deal of belligerence.
On the other hand, the view from India is much more muted and mature. China and India are no strangers to border disputes and there is still a standoff on Aksai Chin, a region in Kashmir. The way to deal with this issue of Doklam is to talk things through and to not amp up the rhetoric that threatens both countries. In the past, China and India have had a good record of handling border issues, there may not be a conclusion on the issues, but there has not been a shot heard in over forty years. In the future, China and India will deal with Doklam in a mature way and it makes no sense for Beijing and New Delhi to ramp up another confrontation. In addition, China should not position itself as a hostile country and it should not exacerbate the issue into a larger context than it needs to be.
Will Diplomacy Prevail?
The fact of the matter is that the China-India feud in the Doklam is a dispute. Also, what is the Bhutanese claim? The Bhutanese claim is that they want to decide what the nature of its relations with China and India will be. In this case, the Bhutanese feel threatened and they have called upon India in an official statement to the foreign ministry to recognize Bhutan’s interests in this dispute and that is a peaceful resolution to the situation.
China and India are two of the most respective Asian powers in the world with not only large economies, but long borders. However, if you look at the economic and trade relationship, there is some wiggle room for Beijing and New Delhi to reach some sort of peaceful solution to avoid a direct confrontation. There is a lot to overcome in this feud between China and India, but this is not so much in the economic and trade relationship as much in the regional and multilateral relationship.
Both Beijing and New Delhi have a common understanding on many global issues like combating terrorism and climate change while there are some obstacles on regional issues in the Asia-Pacific like the South China Sea dispute. Overall, there is enough for both sides to overcome the Doklam border situation, both heads of state have met frequently, held bilateral negotiations at various forums just recently at the G20 Summit, and this will be a long-term affair on the border that will enhance global governance issues as well as BRICS issues. However, the bilateral relationship will suffer the longer this dispute goes on.
Confrontation or Peace?
It seems unlikely that China and India will turn the Doklam dispute into a direct confrontation, and this conflict will be solved through diplomacy. The status quo must remain for there to be any peace along the border. More importantly, Beijing and New Delhi need to move ahead and work together on other aspects of the China-India relationship. This conflict will continue, but China and India both believe that they have no intention of getting involved in a military confrontation.
There is also a realization that there is too much at stake for there to be anymore escalation between the two Asian juggernauts. The Doklam issue may be a pinprick, but there has been a slow downturn in China-India relations on a geopolitical scale. This could also be a symptom of larger issues and both countries need to re-engage in a resolution through their high-level meetings. Beijing and New Delhi also need to ask the difficult questions. Why is the trade relationship so strong while there are differences on geopolitical issues? The answer to this question is simply shared interests.
In addition, there must be a return to the status quo, but what is the status quo? If we go back to the situation where Bhutan and China were disputing this piece of land and there is no building going on, then it’s a status quo everyone would be happy with. If the military issue keeps going, then there will be some serious shakiness from all parties involved in the dispute.
We also need to acknowledge that the China-India relationship is very complicated. There are so many common political and economic interests, but there are also a lot of disputes on India’s membership into the Nuclear Supplies Group (NSG), the border disputes in Kashmir, and China is somewhat uncomfortable to see the growing India-United States defense ties. At the end of the day, Indian troops must withdraw from Doklam. Even though India has gone out on a limb supporting Bhutan in a place where Bhutan themselves do not hold jurisdiction, India might have gone too far, and New Delhi needs to find a way to get its troops back on its side of the border so then the Chinese and the Bhutanese can bilaterally discuss this border dispute.
Here might be the solution, finally, to solve the problem of numerous issues that humanity is faced with — if we just let the Arts lead the communications of human resources globally. Why? The answer is very simple, if we want to accept it.
1. Art is reflection of the human souls, heritage and expectations.
2. Art does not have prejudices and does not have envies.
3. Art is all about communication.
4. Art might be national, although it is always global. Because of being national.
5. Art is peaceful, provocative and always breaking boundaries of all kind.
As such, Art unifies the social and political diversities of all kinds.
To defend my thesis the easiest way is through the empiric research done on the analyses of the presentation of artists around the world within DIOGEN pro-culture, magazine for art, culture, education and science (USA&BiH), that has presented, since 2009 around 345 authors from more than 60 countries (prose and poetry writers, essayists, stage play authors, short stories authors from all around the globe) plus (so far), 79 artists-painters, photo artists, graphic designers…artists of all Arts in general from around the world.
With a sense of closed spirit within the being of strange suggestions, in front of us are openning various forms of artistic caterwauls. Hristo Petreski, multi-dimensional artist of the written word in the experiment within the comprehensiveness of the image, brush, water, fire and his own screams, coming sobered. In anticipation of cyclical repetitions, whether it is about the oil on canvas or watercolors….
We are all multidimensional creatures and there is a need for a just opening of all pores of our communications within dimensions of our inner soul to be able to, externally, communicate with others in a way of mutual understandings. We have to see our differences, even within own dimensions, allegedly different, as our advantages, because we all are red under our skins. Does anybody have blue and/or green and/or yellow blood? No. Just red. We should start from that point. Slowly, but surely….
Talking about the visual poetics of Marcin Bondarowicz from Polish is very difficult. Now, according to the expressed thought, immediately raises the question: Why? Neither response is not easy. The essence of inner connection of consciousness with perceptual shaped enclosure of the external stimuli that create a vision of creation is a truly condition sine qua non of his artistic work. Empirically speaking, and writing about it, and on, numerous art exhibitions of individual artists of artistic reflection, I had a chance to see that the artist is always facing up to himself, mostly. But at the same time creating an explosive response to external stimuli that, nevertheless, make him, after all, a human.. Although he is the artist….
Provocation sometimes means going inside from outside and by dethroning existing visions might help us to see, and feel, better not just outside, but the inside world of our own. Do we have to be always right? No, and that is why the art for communications might be of big help. Namely, art is not just opening the soul for outside influence, but also help us to see wider picture od that just influence as well….
He was among those who knows a lot. He lived in a dark time as the light that imply the twilight of civilization, warning with a flash the arrival of the final darkness, just announcing with the burials and hangings of that time. Printing of his own footprints, as artistic and as well as ot the scientific visions, Leonardo did not hesitate to reach the limits of knowledge. Wheather he was gifted with a genius or a genius wise man desirous of proving, with presented ambition? Does the power of his knowledge and art was within hidden messages in his art or in the revealed harlotry of the human body of that time – the dark time, which hint the obscurantism of our time…
Artists sometimes gives a light centuries before. The light of hope for the humanity. If we can just accept, not waiting them to die first, that presentation, even through science and knowledge, before their death, we might be able to understand even better art for communications as well. We can do that. Simply, through media literacy for the educators, first and then for those who should be educated. Advantage of healthy society is not making your citizens reach of material things, but to make them reach of understandings differences, humanity in general and world knowledge within the common heritage. No one will take his/her material goods with him returning back to energy (mainly people call it God, Allah, Buda, etc…), but te memory of the world heritage will stay forever due to the presented way of communicating through art for the art of communications. We just need to use it immediatelly as it happens, as I mentioned, developing media literacy – especially through social media.
Through sense of doing, being and work. She found that in the fury of the fingerprint with a slight deflection from everyday life by penetrating deep into the very essence of the issue. Issue? Yes, through our common language, simply put, “the problem of escapism.” She, by the power of action of her camera does not create a new reality, but, pausing her own thought, creates a true reaction, essentially within the realm of existence. Not just her own. But also the nature and personality of civilization of which she is the part. Eleanor-Leonne Bennet, whose photo-art prints we bring the permission of her parents, contacted Editorial board for publishing her visions in our magazine. But we are convinced that we would seek for her if we were able to see. But, blindness is cured now. And we did not think twice, because in front of us is not only the most awarded author in photo-art in the World in 2011/2012.g., but a human…
Very often we have to accept that new comings, new young and indigo people are those who are bringing a new hope, new visions and new intentions. Do not let your youth to be lost within the space if illiteracy of the adults. Allow them to carry the torch, because always, really always, the torch burns our hand at the end of our journey. However, the newcomers will come, always. After developing their skills, they will pass the message further. Please, do not wait for them to get old without having strength of power in their hands. Government today can be led by young ones, even under forties and thirties. They are not poisoned with the hate and exclusivity. They are rich with understandings and hope.
She loved life and has asked for a friends through yearning for survival in the harsh world of everyday life, and the story shows how she left behind, in addition to works of art, many letters for her own lovers. Her works were, for me, her lovers, but her letters were fingerprints of the brush twith which she wanted to intertwine her own appearance with the world of lust towards which she was striving, loving in public one man, but secretly everyone in the world. Through her actions, acts and aspirations…
There is nobody in the world that does not like life, especially within the Arts. Communication loves through Art is an advantage of inspirational people. One proposal: Every time when we decide to get into the fight with other and different ones, please, arrange a meeting of the artists of our own and the others and different ones. You will see, how they will easily agree showing that the “war“ we were planning was absurd above all. Example of Jerusalem might be the best. My proposal is to have a writers and artists of both sides seat down and talk for month and let them come out with proposal of solution for the so call “problem”. You will see that they will have it suitable for both sides.
Not displaying the characters (most of their faces) within the print of eroticism (due to probably the traditional understanding of our (non)revelations in the country (un)burdened with dogmatical orientations), and by interwoven the revelations of Jesus’ body and the postmodern man, his male characters are just a seemingly bizarre image of the world we live in. Still, maybe this is the world in front of us, still within us, that is waiting for the ultimate (un)revelation and occupation of the position that has been silently and cleverly waiting since the 600 years before Christ in China and/or 500 years before Christ in Greece.
Facing with the truth that even homosexuality is not disease (loudly saying by my side although I am a heterosexual person) and that we have to respect it as any other humanity part of living, we will easily accept even new ideas, new thoughts and new solutions. We cannot be loud democrat and liberal and in the same time to say that somebody is queer and fag is contradictio in adiecto. I am usually saying that gay is gay, but politics is a queer and fag. By accepting other and different ones we are accepting the possibility for unifying differences, just as th3 DIOGEN pro culture, magazine for art, culture, education and science has been talking about for almost eight years now.
Why I am saying all of this? Simply because I personally think that much better diplomats and politicians for the benefit of better communication will be artists recognized not just by the side of my people, but also by the side of others and different ones as well. Not to become traitor of our own nation and/or people, but even better, to become ambassadors of a good will for the benefit of all, starting from my own country(ies).
Can we try? Having test period of ten years to see how it will work out.
Using United Nations as a starting point. At least.
Going to college is a good thing, right? That’s at least what I was told as a kid, and what led me to get a college degree. I was the first one in my family to do so.
Yet new public opinion polling shows most Republicans think colleges have a negative impact on the country. Unfortunately, they might be right — but not for the reasons you might expect them to give.
Attending college has been proven to unlock opportunities. A report by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities found that college graduates are 24 percent more likely to be employed than high school graduates — and earn $1 million more over a lifetime.
Those with college degrees are also more than twice as likely to volunteer, and over three times more likely to give back to charity.
College educations also affect the way people vote. Three-quarters of bachelor’s degree holders vote in presidential elections, compared to just over half of high school graduates.
So why might some view college negatively? Well, there’s a lot of reasons — 1.3 trillion, to be precise. That’s how much debt students, current and former, are carrying in this country: $1.3 trillion worth, and rising.
Who’s hit worst by this skyrocketing debt? Women, who owe two-thirds of that amount — and especially black and Latina women.
A recent report from the American Association of University Women found that the average woman who graduated from a four-year university between in 2012 carried $21,000 in college debt. That’s about $1,500 more than the average man. Black women are even more negatively impacted, averaging over $29,000 in student loans.
Worse still, women are paid about 80 cents to every dollar a man makes — a number that falls to 63 cents for black women, and just 54 cents for Latina women, when compared to white men. That means these grads start out deeper in debt and then have a much harder time getting out.
So, is rising Republican opposition to the academy a result of their concern for the economic well-being of black or Latina women? Doubtful.
After all, our GOP-led Congress refuses to engage with potential solutions to close the gender wage gap, which could make huge strides in reducing overall student loan debt. And not a single Republican senator supported the Pay Check Fairness Act, which would make it harder for employers to discriminate based on gender.
Same goes for the College for All Act, a bill put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders to create a debt-free higher education system and help student borrowers refinance their debt. A lot more effort is needed on the federal and local levels to remove this economic burden systemically placed on women.
Unfortunately, the Pew study that showed Republican opposition to universities didn’t dive deeper as to why. However, an old quote from Karl Rove, the Republican mastermind responsible for bringing George W. Bush into office, offers a clue: “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans — unless they have too much education and vote Democratic.”
What else about college might rub conservatives the wrong way?
Colleges provide a space for critical thinking where students can expand their minds and become more knowledgeable of the world. That might be why universities have historically played major roles in the resistance to bad public policy — from Vietnam to Iraq to today’s #resistance to Donald Trump.
Fixing higher education means reducing barriers to college, not increasing them. Greater investment in debt-free higher education and debt relief for the most impacted students, including black women like me, is what’s needed — not mindless broadsides against the idea of education.
*Jessicah Pierre is the Inequality Media Specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org
By Karla Mae G. Pabeliña and Jemimah Joanne C. Villaruel*
South Asia’s foremost security concern is the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan. The South Asian nuclear predicament hangs over approximately two billion lives in the region. India and Pakistan’s longstanding mutual distrust has resulted in a political and security stalemate, with one perceiving the other as a perennial threat in the struggle for regional prominence and status as a nuclear weapon state. The wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999, as well as arms procurement supported by US and China, attest to this.
Balance of terror
India has an estimated stockpile of 100 to 120 nuclear weapons. Its nuclear forces are a mix of land-, sea- and air-based capabilities, including short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, submarine-launched systems, and strategic bombers, among others. An inventory of its stockpile reveals 3.2 tonnes of highly-enriched uranium (HEU), 5.5 tonnes of reactor-grade plutonium, and 0.6 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium. In addition, India is planning to build six fast-breeder reactors that will significantly increase its capacity to produce plutonium for weapons. It is projected to spend USD 80 billion for its military build-up in 2020.
Meanwhile, Pakistan purportedly has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear-weapons program. It currently possesses 130 to 140 nuclear warheads, an approximate stockpile of 1.2 tonnes of HEU, and up to 24 kilograms of plutonium. Pakistan has the highest rate of production of nuclear warheads and is increasing its uranium and plutonium stockpile. Advancing its capabilities at such a substantial rate, Pakistan is projected to exceed the nuclear arsenals of India, China, France, and UK in the next 10 years. Just recently, it successfully test fired its first ever nuclear-capable, submarine-launched cruise missile Babur-III. Babur-III, which has a range of 450 kilometers, features terrain-hugging and sea-skimming flight capabilities that enable it to evade hostile radars and air defenses, as well as other stealth technologies.
Advances in both India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals and delivery systems have upped the ante in terms of possible destruction in the event of a nuclear confrontation. Thus, each state does not want to extend violence beyond skirmishes for fear of possible escalation from conventional to nuclear war, which may ultimately lead to mutually assured destruction (MAD).
Fragility of nuclear deterrence
Since 2003, India has committed to a No First Use (NFU) policy, grounded on the doctrine of minimal nuclear deterrence. India’s nuclear weapons program is considered defensive in nature, aimed at safeguarding the country’s national interest against perceived threats posed by similarly nuclear-armed Pakistan and China.
Nonetheless, the fragility of nuclear deterrence came to the fore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2017 Nuclear Policy Conference. Mr. Vipin Narang, a South Asian nuclear strategy expert, argued that there are many possible scenarios that can undermine India’s policy. For instance, India may resort to a preemptive strike if it believes Pakistan will use its tactical nuclear weapons against it. With the expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, particularly the development of new submarine nuclear forces, there are discussions whether India may shift to a “preemptive nuclear counterforce” posture.
In comparison, Pakistan does not have a clear, articulated national nuclear doctrine. However, Pakistani national security authorities emphasize that it upholds the pillars of restraint and responsibility of its nuclear program, which is spurred by, among other aims, “deterring external aggression, counterforce strategies by securing strategic assets and threatening nuclear retaliation, and stabilizing strategic deterrence in South Asia.” Nuclear weapons would only be the last resort in conflicts.
The risk that the existing nuclear competition between India and Pakistan might escalate parallels the increasing US-China strategic rivalry. While initially reluctant, the US eventually expressed its guarded support for India’s nuclear ambitions and its weapons program, as illustrated by the landmark Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal in 2008. US nuclear policy towards India has moved from non-proliferation to post-proliferation. The US also perceives India as a hedge against China’s rise in the region. China, meanwhile, supports Pakistan by providing nuclear and fissile materials for its nuclear weapons program. With these developments, the trajectory of nuclear security in the region seems bleak as the proliferation and expansion of nuclear weapons of India and Pakistan show no signs of dissipation.
Securing the bomb
There is also the looming concern of nuclear weapons and its components falling into the hands of terrorists. The presence of “extremist Islamic groups within Pakistan and the surrounding region, a history of political instability, uncertain loyalties of senior officials in the civilian and military chain of command, and a nascent nuclear command and control system” continues to be an increasingly worrying prospect. There have also been reported incidents of small-scale attacks outside the Minhas (Kamra) Air Force Base housing the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, which serves as a storage facility for nuclear weapons.
Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear arsenals outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). There are continued doubts on the security of their nuclear facilities and arsenals, as both states do not subject themselves to safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The acquisition of nuclear or radiological weapons by terror units will have crippling and devastating consequences for the state of security not only in the region, but the rest of the world.
Considerations and implications of a nuclear conflict
The specifications of India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal are not disclosed to the public. But judging from their respective nuclear tests in 1998, Pokhran II – the first nuclear fusion bomb detonated by India – produced a 43-kiloton yield. Chagai II –Pakistan’s second fission weapon – produced a 12-kiloton yield. Such numbers are comparable to the Little Boy and Fat Man used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima which produced a yield of 12-23 kilotons. One could imagine the level of destruction if these numbers multiplied into 230, which is the approximate total of both countries’ arsenals.
The fear of nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan is not without justification. South Asia features among the likeliest global nuclear flashpoints. Experts have noted that there are several pathways to catastrophe, including miscalculations, rogue launches, misinformation, and jihadi provocations. If India and Pakistan fight a nuclear war using even a fraction of their arsenals, approximately 2 billion people will die from direct casualties, if not from heat, radiation, or famine.
The study conducted by Dr. Ira Helfand revealed that a limited regional war in South Asia would cause significant climate disruptions worldwide and result in a decline in agricultural output, increase in food prices, and failure of the exports market. More than 2 billion people will face nuclear-induced famine.
There are approximately 8,500 Filipinos in South Asia. Of this number, 1,214 are in India and 1,501 are in Pakistan whose safety and interests must be protected. Despite the geographical distance, Asia and other parts of the globe must also be rightly concerned about the security unrest in South Asia, particularly in a growing economy like India. The instability caused by these unrests have negative ripple effects, such as disturbance in trade and economic relations, as well as creating an environment of unease and unpredictability in the region.
The nuclear conundrum in the region will likely persist, but it is also an opportunity for the international community to show its determination to prevent the further escalation of tensions and the outbreak of a full-on nuclear conflict.
*About the authors:
Karla Mae G. Pabeliña is a Foreign Affairs Research Specialist with the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies of the Foreign Service Institute. Ms. Pabeliña can be reached at kgpabelina@fsi.gov.ph.
Jemimah Joanne C. Villaruel is a Foreign Affairs Research Specialist with the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies of the Foreign Service Institute. Ms. Villaruel can be reached at jcvillaruel@fsi.gov.ph.
Source:
This article was published by FSI. CIRSS Commentaries is a regular short publication of the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (CIRSS) of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) focusing on the latest regional and global developments and issues.
The views expressed in this publication are of the authors alone and do not reflect the official position of the Foreign Service Institute, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Government of the Philippines.
Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990’s progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US’s corporate for-profit medical system into a national ‘Medicare For All’ public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.
Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right.
To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.
We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply involved.
We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from retreat to surrender.
We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives’ large-scale, long-term embrace of far-right ideology and practice.
Progressives by Name and Posture
Progressives purport to embrace ‘progress’, the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption and good governance, based on democratic procedures.
Progressives prided themselves as appealing to ‘reason, diplomacy and conciliation’, not brute force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.
Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward the ‘good society’, free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust wars.
Progressives in Historical Perspective
In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.
They denounced militarism ‘in general’ but supported a series of ‘wars to end all wars’. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.
Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and defended the Bill of Rights.
Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory… until their government went to war.
Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the ‘left wing’ of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil liberties.
Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and electoral means to advance African American rights.
Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.
Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House Un-American Activities Committee.
They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.
In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.
The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970’s when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.
The Retreat of the Progressives
By the late 1970’s the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war, civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).
The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their ‘numbers’ were up, their caliber had declined, as they sought to ‘fit in’ with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President’s party.
Without the pressure of the ‘populist street’ the ‘Progressives-turned-Democrats’ adapted to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took office.
Yet the ability to influence the ‘electoral rhetoric’ was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.
Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party, (their self-proclaimed ‘boring from within’ strategy), they would capture the party membership, neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform the party into a ‘vehicle for progressive changes’.
Upon their successful ‘deep penetration’ the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable ‘centrist’ Democrats. These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.
The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade
Bill Clinton, former President of the United States. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
Progressives adapted the ‘crab strategy’: Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.
Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome.
The election of President ‘Bill’ Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured Israel’s victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction of Lebanon!
Like a huge collective ‘Monica Lewinsky’ robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton’s vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector. When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.
Progressives followed Clinton’s deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he out- sourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve’s free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.
Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats’ ‘hard right’ policies.
US President George W. Bush stands on stage with U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno, commander, Mulitnational Force Iraq, after Bush addressed U.S. military and diplomatic personnel at Al Faw Palace on Camp Victory in Baghdad, Dec. 14, 2008. White House photo by Eric Draper
The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive’s to temporarily trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested Bush’s savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations’ infrastructure.
Progressives embraced Israel’s bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State. They supported Israel’s bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.
Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state decrees by the Republican Administration.
Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender
While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly ‘leveraged’ hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic Party campaign for Barack Obama, ‘Wall Street’s First Black President’.
Progressives had given up their quest to ‘realign’ the Democratic Party ‘from within’: they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers for the election and re-election of the warmongering ‘Peace Candidate’ Obama. After the election, Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives’ historical legacy.
President Barack Obama greets Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq and the Iraqi delegation prior to a meeting in the Oval Office, April 14, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American’s ‘First Black’ President’s bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet and empty.
When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers, while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama’s Presidential decision to protect and reward the mega-swindlers.
Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate. The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when Obama’s ‘kill orders’ extended to the ‘mistaken’ murder of his target’s children and other family member, as well as unidentified bystanders.
The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the ‘first black American President’ when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.
Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors while supporting the policies of their ‘first black President’.
Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were now the price they would pay to remain part of the “Democratic coalition’ (sic).
The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the Obama’s free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the ‘deplorables’.
With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid caveat: the Democratic Party ‘Socialist’ Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.
Bernie Sanders. Photo by Nick Solari, Wikipedia Commons.
Sander’s Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate. The ‘Bernie’ eventually ‘sheep-dogged’ his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral. Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders’ round up of the motley progressive herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton.
The Progressives not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton’s nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda, they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump’s demagogic, nationalist, working class rhetoric which was designed to agitate ‘the deplorables’. They even turned on the working class voters, dismissing them as ‘irredeemable’ racists and illiterates or ‘white trash’ when they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the ‘fly-over’ states of the central US.
Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats’ promotion of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared from their bastardized ‘identity-centered’ ideology.
Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI tactics: “Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?” For progressives, ‘Russia-gate’ defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.
Progressives joined the FBI/CIA’s ‘Russian Bear’ conspiracy: “Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election” – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that ‘their constituents’, the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred ‘the Donald’. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient ‘white trash’ electorate of ‘Deploralandia’.
Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former ‘Director Comey’ of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints.
FBI Director James Comey. Photo Credit: VOA.
The Progressives’ far right- turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of ‘psychologically unfit to lead’ – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential coup d’état on behalf of the Far Right!
Progressives loudly condemned Trump’s overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement and betrayal!
In return, President Trump began to ‘out-militarize’ the Progressives by escalating US involvement in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles ‘Presidential’.
Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama’s actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!
Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being ‘weak’ on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump’s embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!
Conclusion
Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented immigrants to their expulsion under their ‘First Black’ President; from thoughtful mass media critics to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state; from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his ‘dirty tricks’ to camp followers for the ‘intelligence community’ in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.
Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.
Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance to mindless collaboration.
The real reform of the international financial architecture can only be completed when Emerging Economies or the other half of the G20 are fully represented in the decision making and governance of the IMF.
By Jayshree Sengupta
Half of the members of G20 are highly industrialised advanced countries (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and the EU) and the other half are Emerging Market Economies like India, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. Ever since it was formed in 1999 as an offshoot of G7 (the rich countries’ club), it has been dominated by the rich countries.
G20’s primary objective and responsibility since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 was to safeguard and strengthen global financial stability. At the G20’s Washington Summit which took place at the height of GFC in November 2008, it assumed the responsibility of strengthening the international financial architecture so that another financial crisis does not take place in the future. Every G20 meeting is preceded by a finance ministers and Central Bank governors’ meeting to which the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is also invited. The recent G20 meeting in Hamburg was preceded by such a meeting in Baden Baden. In the Hamburg summit, many other issues beginning with climate change, terrorism, antimicrobial resistant viruses and digital economy were added, diluting its main focus.
It was decided at the G20 London summit of 2009 that the IMF would be revamped and refurbished with more funds and it would resume the role of surveillance of global money flows. In the Seoul Summit in 2010, the G20 pledged to reform the IMF in two steps. The first was doubling of quotas of member countries and second was the reform in governance of the IMF and to redistribute seats on the IMF’s executive board away from Europe. The IMF became stronger as a result and along with the Financial Stability Board and Basel Committee on Bank Supervision located in Basel, Switzerland, are responsible for overseeing all global financial flows.
Since the last GFC, there has been a period of lull and slowdown in the global financial flows due to the slow growth of the world economy, but there could be a problem of volatility if US raises interest rates significantly and the FIIs rush back from Emerging Market Economies to the US. G20 is supposed to safeguard against such volatility.
At the St. Petersburg summit of G20 in 2013, members stressed that the IMF’s quota reforms should take place immediately. It wanted quotas to reflect the current weight of Emerging Market Economies in the global economy. Quotas are important for each of the 189 member countries of the IMF. Each member is assigned a quota that determines its maximum financial commitment to the IMF, its voting power and has a bearing on its access to IMF financing. The current quota formula is a weighted average of the GDP (weight of 50%), openness of the economy (30%), economic variability (15%) and size of the international forex reserves (5%). GDP is measured through a blend of a country’s GDP based on market exchange rates (weight of 60%) and Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates (40%).The quotas are denominated in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) which is the IMF’s unit of account.
The largest quota holder is the US with 17.7% or SDR 82.99 billion ($113 billion). India has only 2.75% quota and China 6% and that too since January 2016. Earlier quotas were much lower for both — India 2.34 and China 3.81. The recent revision happened only after the 14th review of quotas was completed in 2016 after waiting for six years since the Seoul Summit of 2010 because the US blocked any increase in quotas for the Emerging Market Economies. US has the sole veto power at the IMF. But it could not stop the Chinese Yuan from being added to the SDR currency basket along with the Yen, Euro, Pound Sterling and Dollar in 2016 due to its strength and use in international transactions.
In the IMF’s present quota regime, the developed (OECD) countries together possess much higher quotas (63%) than the global South and thereby they have a much greater influence on important policies and decisions of the IMF affecting global financial architecture.
In Hamburg, the G20 urged for the quick completion of the 15th General Review of Quotas which is supposed to be completed by October 2017, but now the date has been extended to 2019. The 15th review seeks changes in the governance structure of the IMF with better representation of the Emerging Economies in the Board of Governors. A new formula for granting country quotas is also expected. A lower quota means lower access to loans from the IMF.
IMF loans come with conditionality and countries are allowed to borrow for tiding over their balance of payments problems. IMF’s conditionality includes cutting government expenditure and practicing austerity, devaluation, trade liberalisation, balancing budgets, removing price controls and state subsidies, privatisation, improving governance and enhancing rights of foreign investors vis-à-vis national laws. The stringent conditionality makes it difficult for developing countries to access loans.
India does not need to go to the IMF anymore because it has huge foreign exchange reserves. What it needs is infrastructure financing for which there is BRICS’ Shanghai based New Development Bank. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has revealed that India is seeking $2 billion loans from NDB whose terms and conditions will be better suited for India. Other developing countries will also be able to access loans from NDB. Regional and multilateral development banks will become more relevant for the global South in the future and the G20 has taken note of it.
The real reform of the international financial architecture can only be completed when Emerging Economies or the other half of G20 are fully represented in the decision making and governance of the IMF which remains the main pillar of the global financial system. Similarly in institutions like the Financial Stability Board and Basel Committee on Bank Supervision (BCBS) that have laid out the Basel III norms for banking (which are difficult to implement for developing countries including India), there has to be better representation of the global South. The Hamburg declaration notes that BCBS should not significantly increase the capital requirements for banks. Unless G20 enforces these changes, it will remain a rich countries’ club which only talks on various issues once a year.
In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly designated 30 July as the ‘World Day against Trafficking in Persons (TIP)’. One key objective is to “raise awareness of the situation of victims of human trafficking”. What is the state of TIP and forced labour in Southeast Asia, and what is ASEAN doing about it?
By Helena Huang Yixin and Vincent Mack Zhi Wei*
Southeast Asia is currently the seventh largest global economy with a combined Gross Domestic Product of US$2.4 trillion in 2015. It is also home to around 615 million people, making it the third-largest labour force in the world behind China and India. An active area for international and intraregional migration, the region creates opportunities for human trafficking and forced labour to take place.
The 2016 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons by The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes reinforced their previous findings that a person’s socio-economic profile can be a determining factor in their level of vulnerability. Individuals living in poor or displaced and marginalised societies have a higher tendency to be targeted and offered false work prospects in other countries by traffickers or middlemen recruiters.
Growing Demand for Labor, Growing Vulnerability
Recruiters sometimes charge for the recruiting process, or engage in certain activities that force trafficked victims into situations of servitude. An example is when passports are confiscated and victims have to surrender to long working hours without proper pay, unable to return home.
According to the 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report by the United States Department of State, many of the TIP victims identified in the Southeast Asian region are found in labour intensive industries, including in the fishing and seafood industries and in oil palm production.
The rising global demand for fish has caused an increased need for physical labour onboard fishing vessels. Over a short period of five years, the global per capita fish consumption has risen from 17 kilogram in 2011 to above 20 kg in 2016, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In the Southeast Asian region, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam are among the world’s largest fish and seafood producers. Trafficked victims found in the fish and seafood industry have been identified as coming from neighbouring states, such as Myanmar, The Philippines, Cambodia and Laos.
Manual labour is often needed on fishing trawlers out at sea for long hours and sometimes days, and in shrimp peeling sheds to prepare de-shelled prawns for ready global consumption. With the fishing vessel often out at sea, it is difficult for governments to monitor the working conditions onboard. Workers are sometimes tricked to work on vessels with little or no pay. Being constantly surrounded by water also means that escape is difficult for these workers.
Oil Palm Industry Next
In recent years, the global consumption of palm oil has more than doubled, particularly due to the cheap oil being an ideal raw material in the production of packaged food. As of 2012, Malaysia and Indonesia accounted for approximately 85 per cent of global palm oil production. The steady expansion of land cultivated for palm trees has caused an increase in the manual labour needed for the harvesting process, which is recruited both domestically and from neighbouring states.
In fact, research done by the Schuster Institute and Amnesty International discovered that the increased pressure in demand from consumers is responsible for driving up the numbers for forced labour in the palm oil industry.
Workers on oil palm plantations are not only involved in the cultivation and fertilising of palm trees. They are also responsible for harvesting fresh fruit bunches using long sickles and for collecting fallen loose fruitlets by hand. It is therefore not uncommon for the labour-to-land ratio for each worker to be 10 hectares of land. Labour abuses such as long working hours, passport confiscation, induced indebtedness, contract substitution and non-payment or underpayment of wages have been observed.
Due to the isolated nature of oil palm plantations and the outsourcing of recruitment, it is often difficult to detect labour abuse. This situation is further intensified when ‘kernet workers’ – helpers who have no direct employment relationship with the plantation companies – are hired to meet the harsh demands of harvesting the fruits in their prime condition.
Recent Efforts to Reduce Human Trafficking
In its effort to reduce human trafficking in the region, the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (ACTIP) was introduced and entered into force on 8 March 2017. As the only regional instrument associated with TIP, the ACTIP paves the way and provides guidelines for ASEAN Member States (AMS).
Since the ASEAN Declaration Against Trafficking in Persons Particularly Women and Children was adopted in 2004, ASEAN states have been playing their role in this regional plan. Thailand has implemented amendments to the Fisheries Act by installing Global Positioning Systems (GPS) tracking devices on Thailand-registered fishing boats to assist in the monitoring of fishing vessels.
Malaysia has taken measures to enhance its labour investigations and enforcement activities to ensure employers in the palm oil industry abide by their employment laws. Seven out of the ten member states now have domestic legislations targeted at the investigation and prosecution of TIP.
ASEAN – Moving Forward
To maximise the efforts in combating human trafficking in the region, governments need to continue to pay more attention to the push and pull factors in their own countries. Peoples of ASEAN need to feel secure and confident in their governments and of their future. When they do not perceive a desperate need to seek employment opportunities in other countries, their chances of being trafficked for forced labour decreases.
It is also important for ASEAN to persist in its engagement with civil society organisations and enforcement agencies to counter the trans-boundary nature of TIP. More international organisations and their networks must be utilised to provide education and support throughout the region. It is only with concerted efforts and increased transnational communication that the ACTIP can fulfil its potential in combating trafficking in persons in the Southeast Asian region.
*Helena Huang is a Senior Analyst and Vincent Mack an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
This week’s expected House vote to add more sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a prime example of how little thought goes into US foreign policy. Sanctions have become kind of an automatic action the US government takes when it simply doesn’t know what else to do.
No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not.
Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda.
Why, just weeks after the White House affirmed that Iran is abiding by its obligations under the nuclear treaty, does Congress pass additional sanctions anyway? Washington blames Iran for “destabilizing” Syria and Iraq by helping them fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. Does this make any sense at all?
When is the last time Iran committed a terrorist act on our soil? It hasn’t. Yet we learned from the declassified 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in the 2001 attacks against Washington and New York. Who has funded al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria for years? Saudi Arabia. Yet no one is talking about sanctions against that country. This is because sanctions are not about our security. They are about politics and special interests.
Why is Congress poised to add yet more sanctions on North Korea? Do they want the North Korean people to suffer more than they are already suffering? North Korea’s GDP is half that of Vermont – the US state with the lowest GDP! Does anyone believe they are about to invade us? There is much talk about North Korea’s ballistic missile program, but little talk about 30,000 US troops and weapons on North Korea’s border. For Washington, it’s never a threat if we do it to the other guy.
Here’s an alternative to doing the same thing over and over: Let’s take US troops out of North Korea after 70 years. The new South Korean president has proposed military talks with North Korea to try and reduce tensions. We should get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. If Iran and Russia want to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda at the invitation of their ally, Syria, why stand in the way? We can’t run the world. We are out of money.
President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration.
Trump’s termination of CIA funds to Syrian rebels signals the death knell for Western efforts to roll back Iranian and Russian power in the Levant.
The reassertion of Assad’s control over much of Syria underlines the success of Iran’s policy in the Northern Middle East.
Western efforts to overturn Assad and bring to power a Sunni ascendency in Syria have failed as have efforts to flip Syria out of Russia’s and Iran’s orbit and into that of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The cut off of CIA funding for Syria’s rebels is the raggedy ending of America’s failed regime-change policy in Syria and the region at large.
President Trump called the wars in the Middle East “stupid wars” during his campaign. He called America’s policy of regime-change a “failed policy.” This is his effort to concentrate narrowly on eliminating ISIS and ending Washington’s effort to drive Assad from power by force of arms.
He believes that by working with the Russians, the United States will destroy ISIS more quickly. It should be added that Syria’s military, with Russian backing, has killed hundreds of ISIS fighters in the last several months. It has driven ISIS from territory twice the size of Lebanon in the last two months alone. Further efforts to weaken or destroy the Syrian Army will only slow ISIS’s demise.
This decision by the security establishment has been a long time coming. As it became clear that Assad would not fall or step aside, particularly after Russia jumped into the conflict in Sept 2015, the arming of rebels to overthrow Assad became a vestigial policy. President Macron articulated this position for the EU, when he declared that it was unrealistic to believe that Assad would go.
Support for arming rebels has been waning since radicals began setting off bombs in European capitals.
Trump’s decision to stop support for Syrian rebels will be the final nail in the coffin of those factions which draw salaries from the CIA.
More radical groups, such as those historically connected to al-Qaida and Ahrar al-Sham will also suffer from this decision. The radical militias prey on the weaker ones. They extort arms and money from the CIA-supported factions. The porous Syrian border with Turkey can now also be shut more tightly. The need to push resources to the CIA-vetted militias, kept border crossings open to all rebels, including al-Qaida. Factions merge and regroup with such regularity, that border guards could not know who was fighting for what end.
This is the last gasp for America’s policy of regime-change which has so compromised its efforts to promote democracy and human rights in a part of the world that needs both.
When Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame declared victory for himself ahead of the vote on August 4, he set the stage for an African electoral season that is unlikely to see any surprises or shake-ups for established leaders. But while the Rwandan elections are generally expected to go over peacefully, conditions in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are much more precarious. president Joseph Kabila refused to step down after his two-term limit ended in December 2016, and rising levels of violence, voter intimidation and crackdowns on free speech over the continually postponed elections are plunging the DRC into chaos. The violence is not only exacerbating internal conflicts in the DRC, but threatens to undermine the stability of the Great Lakes region as well.
Since coming to power after his father Laurent Kabila’s assassination in 2000, Joseph Kabila has ruled with an iron fist. When the economy crashed as a result of a fall in copper and cobalt prices (some of the DRC’s most important exports), his response was to tighten the tourniquet around his people. Despite violent protests before and after the general elections in 2006 and 2011, Kabila managed to clinch victory in both. Now he is refusing to relinquish his position after the constitutionally set two-term limited has been reached, citing problems with voter registration and the re-ignition of civil war in the country’s Kasai region. Kabila’s non-committal stance on the issue is only fanning the flames threatening to engulf the entire country.
Kabila is ruling over an increasingly fractured country, but one in which opposition to his reign is very much alive. Unsurprisingly, he is not going down without a fight. Kabila has killed or arrested opposition activists and journalists, while protests against his continued rule have been suppressed by security forces resulting in dozens of deaths. Moise Katumbi, Kabila’s most potent rival in any potential election, is also barred from returning to Congo. Katumbi was forced out to leave the country on trumped up charges of hiring mercenaries, and fearing for his safety, Katumbi recently filed a legal complaint with the UN to receive international protection if he returns to run in a future presidential election. Kabila has ample reason to fear Katumbi’s popularity within the country: the former provincial governor was already the leading presidential contender, even before fellow opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi passed away in February. His approval rating last year stood at 85.8%, outstripping Kabila’s by forty points.
Could the events unfolding in DRC be a foreboding warning to Kagame, who has held onto his position since coming to power in the wake of the 1994 Hutu-Tutsi genocide? Not in the immediate term, at least. In contrast to Kabila, Kagame is respected by the population as a nation-builder, and is regarded as a guarantor of peace and stability. He earned that reputation by maneuvering the country through a miraculous turn-around, ushering in an unprecedented period of peace and stability since the genocide ravaged Rwandan society. This is why he got away with amending the constitution to stay on as president, even after 23 years in power – a feat Kabila may be seeking to emulate. Of course, seeing how the United States pre-emptively threatened to impose new sanctions if elections are not held, a Kagame-style power play would be a surefire way for the Congolese leader to push himself even further into a corner.
While Kagame is expected to claim victory comfortably once again, this will not happen purely on his merits as a leader alone. His fierce intimidation tactics against his electoral rivals play an important role as well. Although calm since the end of the genocide, Rwanda’s peace is maintained through fierce oppression characterized by media censorship and the disappearance of critical journalists. Though the opposition is less organized and lacks a galvanizing figure such as Katumbi, Kagame is going out of his way to ensure things stay the way they are. In the past, opposition figures turned up as corpses in the run-up to elections. In July, Rwanda’s electoral commission moved to disqualify three candidates for the presidential election, claiming they had failed to fulfill specific requirements such as collecting a sufficient amount of supporting signatures.
Now, with numerous armed groups rising amid the DRC’s bloodshed, the brittle peace in the Great Lakes region may be upended. The March 23 movement that wreaked chaos in Eastern DRC, the brainchild of Rwandan military officials, could find fertile ground to rise again. Officially dissolved in a 2013 peace accord, former guerrillas are accused of killings in Uganda, which has prompted the Ugandan government to demand they return to Congo. The DRC has also pointed fingers at Rwanda over an influx of Rwandan soldiers into DRC territory. It was Kagame who helped lift the Kabila clan to power before being double-crossed by Laurent Kabila, who helped the perpetrators of the genocide Kagame had expelled. Indeed, Rwanda has a track record of exploiting Congo’s resources through conflict, and the situation on the ground is favorable to renewed infiltration.
Fighting is already worsening in the central-western Kasai region of the DRC, but a wider breakdown perpetuated by the political crisis could create a situation almost impossible to contain. Considering the complex dynamics at play, could the spill-over effects eventually break the fragile peace imposed on Rwandan society? In any event, the stakes of the DRC election for the entire region’s security cannot be overstated: an escalating regional conflict would constitute a massive setback for all the progress made in the region.
*Tom Wirth is a graduate in International Affairs from St. Gallen with a focus on conflicts in Africa. His articles have previously been published on global-politics.co.uk, a British online journal offering analysis on a wide range of topics in international affairs.
It is said that hardship often brings out the best in the human character, yet the tragic situation at Al-Aqsa Mosque has failed to stir the moral fibers of the religious establishments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Their cold indifference to the plight of Islam’s third holiest site is unworthy of institutions that profess to be the preeminent leaders of Muslims around the world.
Just as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council have stayed silent over the blockade of Qatar, the religious institutions in Makkah, Madinah and Cairo have gone absent without leave despite the dangerous and ever-worsening situation at the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem.
Historically, these institutions have always worked in concert with their political leaders. Seldom have they spoken out without the consent of their political masters who, in turn, never act without the approval of the United States. Washington’s support, they believe, is essential not only for their security but their very survival.
This, however, is only half of the explanation for their disturbing silence on events in Jerusalem. The other half stems from the fact that both countries are now spearheading a regional drive for full normalization of relations with Israel. Their belief and reasoning is that friendship with Israel is the best guarantee of US support for themselves.
As the Americans often say, though, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Everything comes with a price to pay, and the US list of conditions seems to be endless.
Saudi Arabia has been long seen in the West as the main exporter and sponsor of Salafism around the globe. Indeed, the government in Riyadh is currently embroiled in a legal battle to avoid paying compensation to the victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).
Against this background, the Riyadh summit of Muslim countries in May provided Saudi Arabia with what the Americans viewed as a final opportunity to chart a new direction of travel. That Donald Trump chose Saudi Arabia as the first country to visit as President emphasized the importance he attached to reining-in the Kingdom. The two countries signed a joint declaration for the creation of a special commission to coordinate efforts to combat extremism.
What’s more, they inaugurated a Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. One of the missions of the center is to carry out a thorough revision of how Islam is taught and propagated. New religious text books will, therefore, be written in collaboration with the United States, and those already in use will be recalled wherever possible.
Though not represented officially at the summit, Israel emerged as its real beneficiary. To its delight and satisfaction the Zionist state saw the US president stand up in an Arab capital and link the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — with ISIS and Al-Qaeda; it was an outrageous connection to make. This was no ill-considered, off-the-cuff rhetoric by Trump. Clearly, the purpose was to delegitimize and isolate any resistance to Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine.
Having jumped onto the American bandwagon to counter extremism and terrorism, it is thus inconceivable that the Saudi Arabian leaders and their Egyptian hangers-on will ever be in a position to offer any meaningful opposition to Israel’s daily outrages in occupied Jerusalem and Al Aqsa Mosque. Under the guise of countering “extremism”, “incitement to hatred” and “terror”, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have accelerated efforts to close the space in which the entirely legitimate resistance to Israel’s occupation can function. Whether through the closure of borders, detention of activists or the prohibition of websites, the intent and impact have been the same; they have created the conditions favorable for Israel to pursue its objective of Judaising Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque with minimal opposition.
Having endorsed the US view that resistance to occupation is “terrorism” — disregarding the fact that international laws and conventions say otherwise — nothing else that the Saudi and Egyptian governments do will ever be a surprise. What will their position be if the Americans eventually demand that they reject any connection between the holy mosque in Makkah and its twin in Jerusalem, as outlined in the Noble Qur’an?
In the 1980s, these ignominious establishments were prompted by Washington to mobilise Muslim youth to tackle the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and we all know what came out of that, not least a certain organisation called Al-Qaeda. Are they awaiting America’s permission to mobilise the youth again, this time against fellow Muslims? It will never happen.
The Muslim world is crying out for leaders — political and religious — who are prepared to speak the truth about Israel and expose the pernicious nature of its colonial expansionism. Muslims are in dire need of a leadership that is capable of understanding the rules of political engagement; one which will not adopt blindly such ambiguous and ill-defined terms like extremism and terror simply because Washington tells them to.
Moreover, they need a leadership that understands the difference between nation building and neo-colonial rule. A leadership that trusts implicitly and believes in the capabilities of its people. A leadership which understands that befriending Israel and normalizing relations is to consolidate its occupation and condone a massive injustice.
Muslims need a religious leadership that can become the conscience and moral compass of their nations, correcting their political leaders when they deviate and lose focus, as they will; they are, after all, human. More than at any other time in recent history, though, they need a leadership that preoccupies itself with substantive and strategic issues instead of relatively minor and peripheral matters such as the length of a woman’s skirt.
Without such leaders, there is no doubt that Jerusalem and Al Aqsa Mosque will, at the very least, be consigned to another 50 years of military occupation. In fact, if Israel is allowed to carry on unhindered, the mosque itself is likely to be destroyed and replaced by a temple. Such a catastrophe would be the inevitable consequence when both the religious and political institutions which profess to lead the Muslim world become entangled in corruption. Al-Aqsa has been abandoned by such people. It is a shameful state of affairs.
*Dr. Daud Abdullah is the director of Middle East Monitor (MEMO). He is an author and a widely-read commentator.
