Since its founding in 1999, the New America Foundation – an important voice in policy debates on the American left – has received more than $21 million from Google, from its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, and from his family’s foundation.
According to the New York Times, one of New America’s initiatives called Open Markets has been critical of the market power of tech giants like Google. Recently, the researcher who heads that initiative posted a statement on the New America Foundation website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google.
Schmidt communicated his displeasure to the foundation’s president, who accused the researcher of “imperiling the institution as a whole” and shut down the Open Markets initiative.
The New America Foundation isn’t alone. Over the last 3 years:
– A non-profit group devoted to voting rights decided it wouldn’t launch a campaign against big money in politics for fear of alienating the wealthy donors it courts;
– A liberal-leaning Washington think-tank released a study on inequality that failed to mention the role big corporations and Wall Street have played in weakening the nation’s labor and antitrust laws, presumably because the think tank didn’t want to antagonize its corporate and Wall Street donors.
– A major university has shaped research and courses around economic topics of interest to its biggest donors, notably avoiding any mention of the increasing power of large corporations and Wall Street on the economy.
– Comcast has been financing the International Center for Law and Economics, which supported Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner.
– The Charles Koch Foundation pledged $1.5 million to Florida State University’s economics department, stipulating that a Koch-appointed advisory committee select professors and undertake annual evaluations. The Koch brothers now fund 350 programs at over 250 colleges and universities across America. You can bet that funding doesn’t underwrite research on inequality and environmental justice.
– David Koch’s $23 million of donations to public television guaranteed that a documentary critical of the Kochs didn’t air.
The list goes on.
This is not just a problem created by right-wingers like Koch. Wealthy progressives are exerting as much quiet influence over the agendas of think tanks and universities as wealthy conservatives.
Big money should not be influencing what should be investigated, revealed, and discussed – especially about big money, and the tightening nexus between concentrated wealth and political power.
Schmidt was wrong to interfere in the New America Foundation, and the Foundation was wrong to have stopped its research on the increasing market power of Google and high tech.
Sanctions and threats by the United States and other super powers have failed to deter North Korea from developing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities, and hence became the fourth country to possess both capabilities outside the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. North Korea represents yet another failure in global counter-proliferation efforts and sends an encouraging signal to other rising regional actors with expansionist aspirations or fears of existential threats to follow suit.
North Korea is now catching up with China, India, and Israel in accumulating an arsenal of ballistic missiles that can travel across continents and pose a serious threat to countries worldwide. India and Pakistan went public with their nuclear capabilities and bomb testing in 1998, both ignoring international sanctions that proved useless.
Israel in turn is believed to have conducted its first nuclear test in 1979 and has since built a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons along with its series of Jericho ballistic missiles. The United States and the West have chosen to not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear arsenal and to support Tel Aviv’s policy of discretion in the hope of preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. However, the next candidate that would likely join the nuclear club in the next few years is from the volatile Middle East region – namely Iran.
Iran’s nuclear program is now under restrictions imposed by treaty that Tehran signed in 2015 with the five UNSC permanent members plus Germany. The agreement – otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – imposed several measures that affected Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons anytime soon. But the pact ignored Iran’s ballistic missiles program that continues to make progress, and it is only a matter of time before it catches up with North Korea’s program to delivers an intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Tehran continues to pursue an aggressive expansionist policy and its leaders have threatened to walk away from JCPOA if the United States continues to impose sanctions on them.
The UN Security Council’s five permanent members – the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and UK – today find themselves facing a serious dilemma: How to deter a nuclear-armed country regardless of its size? Will threat or imposition of sanctions work all the time? What historical lessons revealed thus far is that sanctions rarely prevent countries from seeking nuclear capabilities and even acquiring them.
Once any of these states become nuclear, they will have no problem throwing their weight around and even threatening a global super power. Whether threats are for real or just means to enhance deterrence is irrelevant when it comes to public opinion and national threat perceptions. Smaller nuclear-capable regional powers like North Korea are now able to step into the international scene to claim more rights they feel they deserve, within their respective regions and even beyond.
Seeking nuclear arms is either generated by the perception of existential threats or by expansionist and hegemonic ambitions. There are several countries that have the know-how and the capability to build nuclear weapons but have willingly chosen not to follow this path – like Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and others. Force was only used against two Arab countries, Iraq and Syria, to prevent them from acquiring nuclear capabilities. Israeli warplanes destroyed in 1981 Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, ending Saddam Hussein’s quest for nuclear capability. In 2007, Israel once again used its air power to implement its policy of preventing its Arab foes from acquiring nuclear weapons by destroying a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor near Deir ez-Zor in the eastern part of the country.
The only country ever to succumb to sanctions and agree to give up its programs to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was Libya, and this occurred at the end of 2003, few months after the United States invaded Iraq under the pretext of removing Baghdad’s WMD program.
Many analysts believe late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi acted out of fear that he would be the next target for the U.S. after Iraq and subsequently decided to surrender his WMD arsenal. It should be noted that Gaddafi’s WMD comprised of mostly chemical weapons and his nuclear program was in early stages. Countries like North Korea may also attach significance to how the Gaddafi regime did not manage to survive long after it had given up its WMD programs.
Therefore, it is safe to conclude that once a country builds nuclear weapons out of a heightened threat perception or for aggressive expansionist objectives it will be almost impossible to force it to fully disarm through sanctions or warnings.
Also, based on India-Pakistan experience, not even sanctions could convince a country with high threat perception to stop its program. Both countries possessed the nuclear technology for years before they decided the timing of their respective nuclear breakout.
Same could be said about North Korea, and possibly about Iran in the future. Tehran could decide one day to abandon the JCPOA and within a short period would be ready to conduct a maiden public nuclear weapons test exercise. Tehran’s conventional and asymmetrical defense capabilities have doubled in the past few years making any preventative military measures to stop its nuclear program very complex and costly. Hence, it is a matter of time and political circumstances before Iran joins the nuclear club.
It should be pointed out that joint defense pacts between nuclear super powers like the United States with allies in the Arab world or Asia could be modified to include a nuclear umbrella as a means to assure these countries and discourage them from seeking nuclear weapons. However, statements by American and Western leaders favoring isolationist policies and reducing commitment to allies subsequently undermines trust between the partners and will prompt some countries to develop their own independent nuclear capabilities to counter their adversaries.
The challenge facing the international community today is how to curb what appears to be an imminent nuclear arms race in the Middle East and the Far East. Rivalry amongst UN Security Council members and East-West strategic competition has created loopholes that have strategically jeopardized global counter-proliferation efforts.
Even international bodies like the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) failed to fully strip the Syrian regime of its massive arsenal of chemical weapons despite extensive work in 2014. The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons several times since then including a major attack with nerve gas in April 2017 that prompted a U.S. military strike against Shiayrat air base suspected of stocking Syrian nerve agents. The UN Security Council failed to take any action against Syria due to complex effects and implications of resurgent U.S.-Russia geopolitical rivalries.
Hence, the WMD counter-proliferation regime has not worked and continues to fail without practical solutions in place to address them. Perhaps it would take a nuclear war – which mankind was able to survive – to have a proliferation regime that the international community would uphold and enforce effectively.
*Riad Kahwaji, is the founder and director of INEGMA with a 28 years of experience as a journalist and a Middle East security analyst.
(RFE/RL) — The United States says it is “deeply concerned” by reports that imprisoned Iranian spiritual leader Mohammad Ali Taheri has been sentenced to death, and it called on the authorities to reverse the decision.
The State Department on September 1 said the charges of founding a religious cult and “spreading corruption on Earth” violate Tehran’s obligations to “respect and ensure his freedoms of expression and religion or belief.”
The statement added that the death penalty should be used “only for the most serious crimes.”
“We call on the Iranian government to take whatever steps necessary to reverse Taheri’s conviction and death sentence,” it added. “We join our voice with those who call on Iran to uphold its obligations under Iranian and international law and to ensure that the human rights of all individuals in Iran are respected and guaranteed.”
The State Department added it was “deeply disturbed” by reports that some of Taheri’s followers had also been arrested on “similar objectionable charges.”
An Iranian court in August sentenced Taheri to death for a second time, two years after an initial death sentence was overturned on appeal.
Taheri’s lawyer, Mahmud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, said on August 27 that Taheri had been sentenced after being convicted of “spreading corruption on Earth” for founding a group called the Circle of Mysticism.
Tabatabaei said he would appeal the ruling within the required 20 days and expressed hope that the Supreme Court would overturn the sentence.
Taheri’s family has claimed the spiritual leader has suffered harassment in prison and was pressured into giving a forced video confession.
Taheri, 61, is a popular faith healer whose group promotes a mystical understanding of the universe.
He was for a time allowed to practice and teach in public, but he came under increased pressure following a warning by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, about “false mysticism that might lure away people from Islam.”
Taheri was first arrested in 2010 and has been in Evin prison in Tehran since 2011, when a court sentenced him to five years in prison for blasphemy.
He was sentenced to death on similar charges in 2015, but an appeals court later rejected the verdict.
Taheri has reportedly gone on hunger strike several times to protest his detention.
Many of his followers, especially around the city of Isfahan, have been detained by the authorities.
This past week the United States informed the Russian Federation that it was going to immediately close the Russian consulate in San Francisco as well as two other properties that house trade missions in Washington DC and New York City, respectively. The Russian Foreign Ministry was told this was a tit-for-tat response to the maneuver done earlier in the summer when Russia literally evicted nearly half of the diplomatic and technical corps of the United States, dropping its number down to 455.
Not coincidentally, this number was chosen by Russia because it meant the number of American diplomats working in Russia would exactly equal the number of Russian diplomats working in America. Call it a personnel parity war. But it is when you look below the surface and follow the thread backward in time that one sees a conflict that borders on the farcically absurd.
Back in December, then President Barack Obama actually closed, without much media fanfare, two Russian holiday retreats for diplomatic staff that were located in Maryland and New York, stating that the residences were instead being used for intelligence initiatives. In addition, 35 diplomatic corps members were expelled from the United States. Most of them were technical members and were at least suspected of being likely involved in the attempts to hack and disrupt the 2016 American presidential election.
The Kremlin of course denied these allegations but by and large did not respond to these maneuvers. Given how tense and strained Russian-American relations were even then, it is plausible the Russians felt it would be better to simply wait out the exiting Obama administration and see what would come from the incoming President Trump.
It is even more likely they considered the possibility of reversing these Obama decisions quite high, given Trump was declaring the need to reestablish positive relations with Russia and his overt passion to overturn just about anything done by Obama. But this is where the stability of American democracy and its system of checks-and-balances got in the way.
As more convoluted and confusing information emerged throughout the first half of 2017 about potential pre-election interactions between Russian officials and Trump go-betweens, it became apparent that Trump dare not risk any major overt initiative towards Russia. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress has grown ever more hostile toward the mounting evidence of Russian electoral interference. It was this hostility which resulted in new sanctions being put upon Russia this summer, basically doubling down on the still-in-place sanctions over the events in Ukraine that have hampered the Russian economy for the last few years.
It was this double-up that forced Russia to finally react and eject several hundred American diplomats from the country (although it is interesting to note that hardly anyone in the media here in the United States has asked why it was necessary for the US to have nearly double the amount of diplomats than Russia had in America). Laughably, this most recent real estate closure initiative does not involve any diplomatic personnel leaving the United States: the only thing effected is the closure of the real estate. People working there can be reshuffled to other diplomatic assets in the United States.
Unbelievably, the State Department has officially said this was done so as to not just maintain the 455 to 455 parity in personnel, but now there will be closer parity between the two nations in terms of property holdings within each country. Even more unbelievably, the US has said not ejecting the personnel from the closed properties was done “in an effort to stop the downward spiral in Russian-American relations.” So, uprooting dozens of people and forcing them to move to another part of the country, where their jobs are likely already occupied by people, for example, in Houston, New York, or Seattle (the other places where Russian consulates are located) is not a worsening of relations? This is horrifically flawed diplomatic logic to say the least. So instead of a personnel parity conflict we have a real estate Cold War and we are supposed to consider it an opportunity for improvement in Russian-American relations.
What we have now is a petulant schoolyard tet-a-tet more focused on each side trying its best to humiliate and hinder the other, while still officially stating before press conference microphones that there is hope relations will improve. Not likely. As is often the case in America, the United States government tends to be highly selective in its use of historical precedent. It traces problems in Russian-American relations currently to the actions involving the secession and reintegration of Crimea into the Russian Federation. Russia, of course, considers the Maidan revolution (which directly preceded and ostensibly caused the Crimea secession referendum) to be a fairly obvious attempt by the United States and European Union to put adversarial authorities and policies right on the very borders of the Russian Federation.
Follow that up with the original Crimea sanctions which have devastated the income and buying power of most ordinary Russians, seeing the ruble lose 100% of its value over a single year. The Kremlin, if you can get it to speak privately behind closed doors, will admit it considers this to be open interference in their domestic peace and prosperity by a foreign power and thus the US ‘earned’ the cyber interference effort in 2016. Thus, we have a fundamental historical analysis problem between the two countries.
Foreign Minister Lavrov expressed his disappointment with the real estate closures, but was hesitant to speak in any concrete terms about consequences or repercussions. But if precedent is any indication over the last five years, we can expect some strange countermeasure within a few months that involves the shuttering of American diplomatic offices or the like in Russia. It will not signal either side moving closer to out and out war, but it will also show that the opportunity for the two sides to find new ground for collaboration is purely symbolic. The Real Estate Cold War is in full effect. It won’t bring about the end of the world in nuclear apocalypse, which is a good thing. But it does keep two major global powers acting like 7 yr old schoolyard bullies trying to one-up each other while the rest of the school suffers the consequences, which is a very bad thing indeed.
About the author:
Dr. Matthew Crosston is Vice Chairman of Modern Diplomacy and member of the Editorial Board at the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.
Inheriting one of America’s longest, and almost inconclusive war, the rise of Donald Trump to power was ostensibly on a promise to put an end to the draining of men, material, money and time in Afghanistan. The things, as they stand today, appear to be running in the reverse direction.
After months of contemplative silence that shrouded US policy towards Afghanistan, Trump administration has done away with the naysayers to tell the world that it will stay the existing course in this conflict-ridden nation. While the details of this ‘staying-put’ strategy have not been disclosed – potentially to spook the spooky insurgents – it is clear the US is indeed interested in not letting Afghanistan to stay as a haven for terrorists, and it is here that lies the major change. In his speech Trump made it clear that the American forces will not be in Afghanistan for nation-building but for killing terrorists.
This decision, coming close on the heels of the ouster of Steve Bannon[i] who was staunchly seeking American withdrawal from Afghanistan, is loaded with implications. At one level, the uncertainty about the way ahead and no pre-announced deadlines – at least in public – has created consternation[ii] about the money, men, material and time that this policy could potentially involve. At another level, the government in Afghanistan has been delivered a strict mandate to demonstrate performance or see the Americans leave. Also, in singling out Pakistan for the safe havens it provides many terrorist outfits and by asking India for greater economic coordination and support in Afghanistan, Trump appears to have laid his plan for Afghanistan (and South Asia) on the table.
The ‘fundamental’ pillars of the American Afghan Strategy
Outlining the ‘new’ American strategy on Afghanistan to the troops at Fort Myer, Trump observed that while his “instincts”[iii] sought withdrawal from Afghanistan, the decisions he took from the Oval Office could not reflect his personal choices alone. That he has decided to keep the forces and even enhance America’s military engagement in Afghanistan is because the absence of any would result in disastrous consequences for the American nation as it once had in September 2001.
Emerging from seven-month long deliberations that were punctuated with ousters, lobbying, and not to forget, the dropping of the ‘mother of all bomb’ in Afghanistan, Trump maintained that his strategy for Afghanistan was to serve the core American interests; a claim that could be seen as a rephrasing of his poll clamor, ‘America first’. As per his speech, there are two vital interests[iv] this Afghan strategy of his would serve to:
Provide an opportunity for an “honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives” and avoid “the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable…as a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists” can exploit to US’ disadvantage.[v]
Focusing American energy on “killing the terrorists”[vi], Trump particularly observed that the involvement of US in Afghanistan is not aimed at nation-building anymore. Holding the Afghan government and the country’s political classes responsible to address “their own complex issues”[vii], Trump emphasized the necessity to make the process of social and political reconciliation essentially “Afghan-led and Afghan owned”[viii].
Trump also delineated fundamental pillars of his Afghan strategy as he spoke. These pillars, however, had little new to offer and could be seen as improvisation over the existing American template on Afghanistan. The first pillar of the Trump policy has explicitly given a big no to deadlines. While there is nothing new about this conditions-based approach – Obama had done [ix] the same – not putting an expiration date to the American commitments is a fundamental departure from the earlier strategy. The element of surprise incorporated into the new American strategy has been summed up by Trump this way: “America’s enemies must never know our plans, or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will”[x].
Once again, while there is nothing new about this intent and the actions that would follow, Trump’s explicit mention of the American strategy as not a “nation-building”[xii] process but as a counter-terrorism offensive looks strikingly different from what the mandate looked like in 2004. Interestingly, it was not Obama[xiii] and but the Republican George W. Bush who had begun talking about Afghanistan in tangential terms.
Dealing with Pakistan[xiv] makes up the third fundamental pillar of the Trump strategy. Upping the ante against Pakistan, Trump was vocal in his speech about how despite providing “billions and billions of dollars”[xv] in the fight against terrorism, it continues to “house the very terrorists we (US) has been fighting”[xvi]. Overall, Trump called upon Pakistan to “demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace”[xvii] by becoming a “valued partner”[xviii] of the US once again. As for India, which according to Trump “makes billions of dollars in trade with the US”[xix], he sought greater cooperation from it especially in the areas of “economic assistance and development”.
The fourth pillar, ostensibly, is the withdrawal of US administration from “micro-managing”[xx] the situation in Afghanistan. The President of US has been clear that his strategy is not about nation-building anymore but about counter-terrorism. He has, thus, decided to “expand authority for American armed forces to target the terrorists and criminal networks that sow violence and chaos through Afghanistan.”[xxi]
Having laid out a strategy, or at least giving us an impression that he has one in mind, Trump’s (mature) words sound all revved-up to take the challenge head on. But the important question is how it would all play out given that Afghanistan has a formidable political crisis within and sits in the midst of global and regional rivalries that make stability an elusive goal.
Dissecting the strategy
There are various levels at which the strategy can be dissected.
Domestically, this summersault of sorts on his earlier vision on Afghanistan appears to have not gone down well with those who had voted for him – at least according to Breitbart[xxii]. In his speech, Trump took particular care in emphasizing the distinction between his role as a private citizen and as the President of USA. Trump mentioned that while he would have wanted to deliver on his poll commitments by withdrawing from Afghanistan, he was hard pressed for choices in actual since abandoning Afghanistan could have unraveled serious threats to the security of USA as it had done in the past. While the public opinion continues to remain wary and weary of increased war efforts, however, as The Atlantic[xxiii] notes, people might give Trump’s policy a kinder evaluation especially as his mature tracing of the evolution of his strategy on Afghanistan made continuous engagement there sound like the least worse off options.
For the regional powers, namely Russia and Iran, Trump’s decision to stay put in this country would yield two significant results. First, the Russian-led meetings for reconciliation in Afghanistan, which are already appearing to be stagnant, might just get derailed. The ongoing conflicts of interest between US and Russia-Iran over Syria would certainly have implications for US-Russia-Iran cooperation over Afghanistan (there hardly was any), especially in the light of American claims that implicate Russians in arming the Taliban. Iran too has the same charges[xxiv] levelled against it – of arming the Taliban and providing it an alternative base to Quetta. Furthermore, since the American President has been particularly unfavorable towards the Nuclear Deal with Iran and Iran has been largely unhappy with the enduring American presence in Afghanistan, Trump’s decision to stay put is likely to compel it to look for greater partnership with the Taliban and support its non-state outfits[xxv] in Afghanistan.
China[xxvi], on the other hand, has been accused of free-riding on US intervention in Iraq, and the same could be said for it in the case of Afghanistan. Providing minimal military support, China has been quick to capture the economic opportunities that Afghanistan provides (in the form of mineral wealth). Given its larger ambitions, which are to provide a conducive atmosphere for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Afghanistan, it is much likely that China would welcome US’ continued involvement in this country. This could very well result in the revival of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group[xxvii] which could, in the initial stages, get the various stakeholders including Taliban, on the same board.
However, it is in the singling out of Pakistan for its continuous support to anti-Afghan, anti-US elements that the weight of Trump’s speech lies. While Pakistan can conveniently survive without the American dole (China is its replacement now), it does realize that China’s impatience regarding the security of its projects – China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and BRI – will compel Pakistan to fall in line.
As for the Indian assistance that has been sought, there are two things to note. One, his seeking of economic support from India was based on what looked like a page out of a book realist relative gains. Sample this[xxviii]: “We appreciate India’s important contributions to stability in Afghanistan, but India makes billions of dollars in trade with the United States—and we want them to help us more with Afghanistan”. In other words, Trump could have possibly been levelling a free-riding charge on India and wants it to cough up more than what it has. Two, Trump administration was careful to seek India’s enhance support in the domain of ‘economic assistance and development’. The lack of mention of security dimension hinted at two things: US awareness of Pakistani apprehension over Indian security involvement and India’s will-sit-out attitude towards Afghanistan emanating largely from the same Pakistani apprehensions since (military) involvement in Afghanistan could create adverse scenarios for its own domestic security.
For the government of Afghanistan[xxix], the American decision comes as a breather. Struggling on various fronts, the increased American offensive presence could mean that the government could focus more on its immediate tasks of administration and governance of the nation, therefore supplementing the American initiatives for stability in a better manner. The absence of deadline in the Trump policy can be read in two ways. One, it has reinforced American commitment to Afghanistan thereby telling those causing trouble that America is here to stay until the problem is weeded out. However, qualifying this support on performance, the American policy has also made it clear that if it ever comes to leaving Afghanistan without meeting the mandate, it would be because the Afghan government has not succeeded in playing its part of the role. No ‘blank checks’ as Trump said.
In the end, we will win?
Trump was careful to mold his decision to stay-put in Afghanistan in ‘America First’ terms. Describing his decision as the one that would ensure greater security for America among other things, Trump’s strategy for Afghanistan has not brought anything substantially new over the existing template. The difference is to be seen in practice, if at all there will be any. His silence on what the path would look like has paradoxically raised both uncertainty[xxx] and hope[xxxi] about the efficacy of American offensive in Afghanistan. Talking tough on Pakistan, seeking greater Indian support and wanting more dedication from the political class in Afghanistan, it will remain to be seen when and how the talk of retribution against those responsible for imperiling the security of Afghanistan, South Asia, US (and in fact, the whole) world would translate into action.
(The author is a Research Assistant at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
[ix] No, Mr. President, Obama wasn’t a ‘nation-builder’ in Afghanistan http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-trump-afghanistan-20170822-story.html
Turkey will launch a new cross-border military operation into Syria if its national security is threatened by Daesh, Kurdish militants and political turmoil in Syria and Iraq.
“We will take all necessary measures accordingly. We are ready,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday. “They should know that whatever we did during Operation Euphrates Shield, we are prepared to do the same again.
“Those who want to corner Turkey by using terror groups will be left alone with these ticking bombs.”
Turkish forces launched Operation Euphrates Shield in August 2016 against Daesh and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia in northern Syria. The operation ended in March.
Turkey considers the YPG, the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a terrorist group, and views both organisations as the Syrian branch of the banned terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The YPG’s partnership with the United States in fighting Daesh is a fault line in the relationship between Ankara and Washington.
Erdogan also criticized the US government for supplying weapons to the YPG that ended up in the hands of Daesh or PKK militants, and could be used against Turkey in the future.
Metin Gurcan, a former military officer and security analyst at the Istanbul Policy Center, said coordination with Russia was the key to any Turkish cross-border military operation. Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said in June that Turkey and Russia may deploy troops to Idlib in Syria to monitor de-escalation zones and minimize possible clashes between the regime and opposition forces.
“In Afrin canton, especially in the Tel Rifaat area, the Russian military presence and build-up continues,” Gurcan said. “If the Russians opt for a military withdrawal there, the possibility of Turkish military incursion increases, but at the moment it is not the case.
“There is serious strategic bargaining between Moscow and Ankara over the fate of Afrin and Idlib cantons. Turkey may offer help to Russia in Idlib with separating radical jihadist armed groups from moderate opposition elements, and it can also play a post-conflict reconstruction mediator role in its relations with the groups in Idlib.”
In return for this, Gurcan said, if Moscow gave the green light, Ankara may try to expand its control over Syrian territories in the Jarablus/Al-Bab/Al-Rai triangle, but only at a limited operational level.
“The approval of Russia is key for this because it has airspace superiority in the west of the Euphrates river, where it dominates. As long as the Russian military presence continues around Afrin canton, which is controlled by the YPG, such a Turkish operation is not likely for the foreseeable future.”
Turkey’s security priorities have changed, said Prof Nursin Atesoglu Guney of Bahcesehir Cyprus University. “This is due to the changed security environment where multiple terrorist threats are coming from Ankara’s southern borders, especially from Syria and Iraq.
“During the six years of the Syrian civil war, Turkey, in the face of different soft and hard security threats, most of the time has tried to deter them by its own means.
“Seeing the rise of multiple terrorist threats like Daesh, PYD and PKK, Turkey is now very much determined to launch a pre-emptive strike when necessary to prevent the formation of a terrorist belt.”
Besides military preparations, Ankara is also engaged in diplomatic contacts at several levels to ensure the success of any military operation, she said. “In this way, Ankara is also hoping to avoid PKK elements in Turkey receiving support from this terrorist belt.”
Guney said that during his recent visit to Turkey, US defense secretary was shown evidence that YPG and PKK weapons found in Turkey were American, and that Turkey viewed this as an unacceptable threat to its security.
Human antidepressants are building up in the brains of bass, walleye and several other fish common to the Great Lakes region, scientists said.
In a new study, researchers detected high concentrations of these drugs and their metabolized remnants in the brain tissue of 10 fish species found in the Niagara River.
This vital conduit connects two of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, via Niagara Falls. The discovery of antidepressants in aquatic life in the river raises serious environmental concerns, said lead scientist Diana Aga, PhD, the Henry M. Woodburn Professor of chemistry in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.
“These active ingredients from antidepressants, which are coming out from wastewater treatment plants, are accumulating in fish brains,” Aga said. “It is a threat to biodiversity, and we should be very concerned.
“These drugs could affect fish behavior. We didn’t look at behavior in our study, but other research teams have shown that antidepressants can affect the feeding behavior of fish or their survival instincts. Some fish won’t acknowledge the presence of predators as much.”
If changes like these occur in the wild, they have the potential to disrupt the delicate balance between species that helps to keep the ecosystem stable, said study co-author Randolph Singh, PhD, a recent UB graduate from Aga’s lab.
“The levels of antidepressants found do not pose a danger to humans who eat the fish, especially in the U.S., where most people do not eat organs like the brain,” Singh said. “However, the risk that the drugs pose to biodiversity is real, and scientists are just beginning to understand what the consequences might be.”
The research team included other scientists from UB, Ramkhamhaeng University and Khon Kaen University, both in Thailand, and SUNY Buffalo State. The study was published on Aug. 16 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
A dangerous cocktail of antidepressants in the water
Aga has spent her career developing techniques for detecting contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, antibiotics and endocrine disrupters in the environment.
This is a field of growing concern, especially as the use of such chemicals expands. The percentage of Americans taking antidepressants, for instance, rose 65 percent between 1999-2002 and 2011-14, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Wastewater treatment facilities have failed to keep pace with this growth, typically ignoring these drugs, which are then released into the environment, Aga says.
Her new study looked for a variety of pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals in the organs and muscles of 10 fish species: smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, rudd, rock bass, white bass, white perch, walleye, bowfin, steelhead and yellow perch.
Antidepressants stood out as a major problem: These drugs or their metabolites were found in the brains of every fish species the scientists studied.
The highest concentration of a single compound was found in a rock bass, which had about 400 nanograms of norsertraline — a metabolite of sertraline, the active ingredient in Zoloft — per gram of brain tissue. This was in addition to a cocktail of other compounds found in the same fish, including citalopram, the active ingredient in Celexa, and norfluoxetine, a metabolite of the active ingredient in Prozac and Sarafem.
More than half of the fish brain samples had norsertraline levels of 100 nanograms per gram or higher. In addition, like the rock bass, many of the fish had a medley of antidepressant drugs and metabolites in their brains.
Evidence that antidepressants can change fish behavior generally comes from laboratory studies that expose the animals to higher concentrations of drugs than what is found in the Niagara River. But the findings of the new study are still worrisome: The antidepressants that Aga’s team detected in fish brains had accumulated over time, often reaching concentrations that were several times higher than the levels in the river.
In the brains of smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, rock bass, white bass and walleye, sertraline was found at levels that were estimated to be 20 or more times higher than levels in river water. Levels of norsertraline, the drug’s breakdown product, were even greater, reaching concentrations that were often hundreds of times higher than that found in the river.
Scientists have not done enough research yet to understand what amount of antidepressants poses a risk to animals, or how multiple drugs might interact synergistically to influence behavior, Aga said.
Wastewater treatment is behind the times
The study raises concerns regarding wastewater treatment plants, whose operations have not kept up with the times, says Aga, a member of the UB RENEW (Research and Education in eNergy, Environment and Water) Institute.
In general, wastewater treatment focuses narrowly on killing disease-causing bacteria and on extracting solid matter such as human excrement. Antidepressants, which are found in the urine of people who use the drugs, are largely ignored, along with other chemicals of concern that have become commonplace, Aga said.
“These plants are focused on removing nitrogen, phosphorus, and dissolved organic carbon but there are so many other chemicals that are not prioritized that impact our environment,” she said. “As a result, wildlife is exposed to all of these chemicals. Fish are receiving this cocktail of drugs 24 hours a day, and we are now finding these drugs in their brains.”
The problem is exacerbated, Singh said, by sewage overflows that funnel large quantities of untreated water into rivers and lakes. In August, for example, The Buffalo News reported that since May of 2017, a half billion gallons of combined sewage and storm water had flowed into local waterways, including the Niagara River.
In less than two weeks, a WhiteHouse.gov petition demanding that billionaire investor George Soros be declared a “domestic terrorist,” and that authorities seize his multibillion-dollar fortune, has garnered nearly enough signatures to force the Trump administration to issue a formal response.
The petition, which has attracted 80,000 signatures so far – just 20,000 shy of the 100,000-signature threshold where a response would be required – accuses Soros of being guilty of sedition by financing groups that help support violent Antifa counter-protesters and other dangerous leftist groups.
Last week, we reported that a similar petition, this one asking that President Donald Trump declare Antifa to be a terrorist group, had reached the threshold. The petition is still awaiting a formal response, but in one promising development, Politico reported that the Department of Homeland Security had described the group’s actions as “domestic terrorist violence” in private memos.
Over the past week, the mainstream media narrative has turned decidedly against Antifa, with the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Atlantic publishing stories criticizing the group’s violent tactics.
Specifically, the Soros petition accuses the Hungarian-born billionaire of using the “Alinsky model” of terrorist tactics to destabilize the US social order. Saul Alinsky was a Chicago-based community organizer who wrote the infamous “Rules for Radicals,” a book meant to be a guide to aid leftists in the violent overthrow of the US government.
“Whereas George Soros has willfully and on an ongoing basis attempted to destabilize and otherwise commit acts of sedition against the United States and its citizens, has created and funded dozens (and probably hundreds) of discrete organizations whose sole purpose is to apply Alinsky model terrorist tactics to facilitate the collapse of the systems and Constitutional government of the United State, and has developed unhealthy and undue influence over the entire Democrat Party and a large portion of the US Federal government, the DOJ should immediately declare George Soros and all of his organizations and staff members to be domestic terrorists, and have all of his personal an organizational wealth and assets seized under Civil Asset Forfeiture law.”
Soros, as Russia Today explains, has funded organizations and projects that have been criticized for their radical tactics. His Open Society Foundation, along with USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, have been accused of fomenting revolutions to install US-friendly governments from Serbia, in 2000, to Ukraine, in 2014 and Macedonia in 2017.
It has long been a commonplace that new members of any religious faith and especially those who have converted from another are more radical in the expression of their beliefs than those who have been members of this or that faith for a long period of time.
But now Sergey Yenikolopov, a psychologist at Moscow State University, says that in Russia today, there is another fundamental distinction between those who have been followers of the Russian Orthodox Church or Islam for a long time and those who have joined only recently (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2017/08/30/73646-cila-samyy-veskiy-argument).
His research shows that the impact of the expansion of the numbers of believers has been “exaggerated” and that those who have been Orthodox or Islamic for a longtime tend to be more “democratic, tolerant and non-aggressive” while “neophytes [in these faiths] are [more] authoritarian and aggressive.”
In an interview with Natalya Chernova of Novaya gazeta concerning the rise of violence in Russian society, Yenikolopov says that serious violent crime appears to have fallen but that although “there are no statistics about crimes at the edge of petty hooliganism,” one has the clear sense that these have become more numerous.
Aggression “at the individual level,” the psychologist says, “is one of the best forms of the defense of one’s own ‘I’ in the broadest sense of this word” and that it is encouraged by both what appears on television and what is taking place around an individual. When there is a lot of violence in both, people tend to become more violent whatever their starting point is.
“However paradoxical it may seem,” he continues, the fact that contemporary Russian society is “a society of free people” makes this situation worse. Russians don’t know how to cope with freedom and so they rapidly move toward anarchy whenever they feel anger or distress and have the chance.
For many, Yenikolopov continues, “the socialization of young people passes through an understanding that force is the most weighty argument,” a feeling that has intensified as people feel frustration that the social lifts they are promised will help them advance no longer work for most people.
They acquire the sense that “there are no established rules of the fame or that the rules are different in different circumstances,” something amplified by the sense of a break between what people are told and what is “the real situation.” They want to strike out, and in everyday language, the rule becomes “If there is no policeman about, then one can do anything.”
The government has devoted very little attention to this because society has devoted very little attention to it either. The regime focuses only on those things that it thinks society is worried about. Thus, the murder of a journalist which gets a lot of media attention gets the regime’s. The murder of someone else is typically ignored by both.
This trend began at the end of the 1980s, the Moscow psychologist says, “In Soviet times, however one relates to them, all the same, a militiaman was a militiaman. The cop on the beat had to work in his area. But how long has it been since you have seen one do that? In Soviet times, the policemen knew when people went on vacation.” No more.
That only encourages people to think they can act however they like. But what may be most fundamental is the attitudes parents pass to their children. In many cases, Yenikolopov concludes, parents communicate the idea that “justice is something ephemeral, but force is a good thing.” Their children are acting on that now.
Even if BRICS faces problems of consensus in the future, New Delhi will be able to concentrate on its efforts of promoting the Indian agenda.
By Aleksei Zakharov*
Since its inception in 2006, BRICS has been in the observers’ spotlight, gaining endorsements as well as receiving criticisms. Along with its members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — this year, the summit will see representations by Thailand, Egypt, Tajikistan, Mexico and Guinea.
While inviting emerging economies is a practice in fostering interactions, Beijing’s initiative to add new permanent members and introduce the BRICS Plus construction doesn’t seem relevant in light of the recent India-China dispute.
Over the years, BRICS has managed to turn into the stable platform for developing nations’ collaborative. To a large extent, implementation of a shared agenda gives reasons for an optimistic view.
There is a huge potential for BRICS to develop new financial institutions. The New Development Bank and Credit Rating Agency can help achieve the aim by creating a real alternative to the Western-led world order, making it far more inclusive.
Over the years, BRICS has emerged as a solely economy-oriented association, engaging in multiple levels of discussion. The range of cooperation spheres is impressive — it includes areas as trade and finance, global development, terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity and Internet governance. The club raises actual issues as the crises in Syria and Afghanistan. In the upcoming summit, member states are likely to adopt a mutual position toward the ongoing situation in the Korean Peninsula.
The BRICS agenda encourages multifaceted interaction since it unites the states’ heads, ministers, national security advisors, parliamentarians, entrepreneurs, academicians, media representatives and young leaders. The dialogue at many levels brings the five states together to create a platform for discussing sensitive issues.
There has always been a shared world view. However, every member state has its own set of priorities, strategic and tactical vision on several matters. When it comes to the resolution of the Syria and Afghanistan crises, Russia, India and China traditionally had higher stakes compared to Brazil and South Africa. It can also be argued that India, Brazil and South Africa are more interested in the reform of the global institutions than Russia and China.
What’s ahead for RIC
Since its inception in 2002, the Russia-India-China trilateral forum (RIC) has managed to overcome divergences, including border incidents between India and China. RIC has helped establish regular dialogue between different foreign affairs ministers. The RIC mechanism broke down in April 2017 when China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi refused to take part in the meeting, possibly because of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of Tibet. It is, in fact the initial point of the India-China discord, following Beijing’s decision to rename six places in Arunachal Pradesh and New Delhi’s boycott of the One Belt One Road summit, and later, the standoff in Doklam.
Being a leading nation in financial and military capabilities, China views itself as a hegemon. China seems to dismiss the golden rule of leadership: “With greater power comes greater responsibility.” Beijing is trying to use its economic and political strength to set its rules and promote its interests. However, territorial disputes in South China Sea and at the Doklam plateau can hardly strengthen global perceptions about China. Neither Russia nor India will come to terms with a China-dominated Asia.
New Delhi is wary of China’s moves in the South China Sea, in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region. It is more concerned about China’s activities in South Asia in context to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. China hasn’t supported India’s bid at the UN Security Council and the NSG membership. However, despite negative trends in Sino-Indian relations, the two countries have managed to maintain close economic ties.
Russia finds itself in a complicated position within this continuing distrust. It is forced to balance between ‘two friends’. Moscow has not spoken officially regarding the dispute between the two sides, but its foreign ministry expressed hope. It said: “[A]s responsible members of the international community, New Delhi and Beijing will be able to find mutually acceptable ways to quickly defuse the tensions that have arisen between them.”
Moscow can play the apparent role of being the connecting link in the RIC mechanism. For one, India and China trust Russia as their strategic partner. Additionally, Russia is arguably the only country in the world who can have an influence on Beijing’s stance. The two states have had good relations.
Objectives of IBSA
IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa tripartite grouping) is balanced in its purview: to strengthen the South-South cooperation. While the group comprises three multi-ethnic, multicultural, multireligious democracies whose strategic interests do not contradict, India, Brazil and South Africa share common goals in the global governance system.
Since the first trilateral meeting in 2003, IBSA has failed to become an institutionalised platform. The meetings of the countries’ representatives are irregular and often coincide with BRICS and UNGA events. The last summit of the three nations’ leaders took place in South Africa in 2011, and since then, the summit, planned to be held in India in 2013, was cancelled due to ‘scheduling issues’. It is still not clear whether the meeting, announced to take place in mid-2017, will go ahead.
The three nations established joint naval exercises — the IBSAMAR. At the same time, developments in military understanding and interoperability between IBSA members indicate immense potential. Being a member of both distinct platforms, India holds a preferable position, having the scope to pursue interests in BRICS, RIC and IBSA. Even if BRICS faces problems of consensus in the future, New Delhi will be able to concentrate on its efforts promoting the Indian agenda.
It is evident that BRICS has hardly represented a united political force so far and the strategic interests of its members are increasingly falling apart. The group should concentrate on fostering geo-economic cooperation, primarily on developing competitive financial institutions, increasing market integration and implementing infrastructure projects. It will be difficult to avoid the issues of finding mutually beneficial solutions; for instance, on the Chinese Belt Road Initiative (BRI). However, the commitment to the idea of the multipolar world with strong and independent governance institutions that created the group, can help mitigate diverging views.
To move to the second golden decade, BRICS indeed needs to build on the achievements of the past, but also retain the legacy of the format and return to its origins.
*The author is a visiting fellow at ORF New Delhi.
In his prescient book World Order, Henry Kissinger raises questions about the importance of reconstructing a world order for a contemporary world whose regions have become pronouncedly distinct and in many ways vying to amend or reduce to insignificance the Westphalian system that heretofore underpinned the international state system. He posits that a required coherent strategy should establish a concept of order within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another, bearing in mind that these goals are not necessarily identical or self-reconciling. He asserts the paramount role of United States in this quest as resting on pairing the celebration of America’s universal principles and exceptional nature with recognizing the reality of other regions’ histories and cultures.
This pragmatic approach to foreign policy takes into account the difficult task of vindicating a common system whose regional components share divergent cultures, histories, and traditional theories of order. Yet, he bases the success of reconstructing such a world order on the ability of the system to reconcile on the individual and leadership levels freedom with order within regions balancing legitimacy and power. As such, the common order needs to be cultivated and not imposed.
Nowhere reconstructing such a system is more complex than in the Middle East. The Middle East has no regional order. Its tenuous past order was shattered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which underscored the limits of U.S. power. The inability of the U.S. to build a new regional order only widened the gap of the region’s divergent cultures, peoples, states, sects, concerns, ambitions and outlooks. At the heart of this region is an Arab Sunni world battered by lack of freedom, legitimacy, education and opportunity. It is a world tumbling forward from one crisis to the next since the sacking of Baghdad as the capital of the Arab Abbasid dynasty by the Mongols in 1258.
True, the West (Great Britain and France) had a negative colonial impact on the culture of the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I; nevertheless, Arab leaderships and politics championed hopes of revival in the name of illusionary ideals and slogans, which only served to protect the survival of Arab regimes. The universal values of Arab nationalism, which marked the initial stages of Arab politics, were superseded by Leninist and fascist-inspired nationalist principles. The Ba’th party (and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party) demonstrated those principles by imposing a totalitarian order in the capitals of high Arab civilizations, Damascus and Baghdad. Coterminous to this totalitarian order, a conservative order emerged in the Arab Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia, which ruled, absent a magna carta, under the twin banner of the Saudi tribe and fundamentalist Wahhabi-Salafist Islam. Eventually, the mask of Arab solidarity fell off and the abuse of power was revealed despite the false claims of protecting the Fatherland from Zionist aggression.
Islam, as the panacea to Arab Muslim political and social stultification, emerged as the clarion call for Islamists. Nevertheless, Islamism, as a political ideology geared to regenerate Muslim society, embraced and justified violence against those who lived in jahiliyah, a concept that transformed the pre-Islamic society in the Arabian Peninsula into a condition that could exist anywhere and at any time where the Islamist ideal had not been actualized. Arab society fell between the hammer of Arab tyrannical rule and the anvil of Islamism’s ruthless protest. Meanwhile, Salafism, as an authentic way of life and ideological means to bring back the glory and pristine state of Islam, evolved into a global religious movement, justifying religious violence in the name of the saved, victorious sect of Islam. Psychological barriers were created to seclude Salafists from non-Salafists, turning them into the infidel others who deserve unrequited death by Salafi-jihadis.
Rebelling against the abuse of power, Arab youth took the street, but little they knew about the resilience of Arab rulers who fine-tuned their machinery of repression. Before long, socio-political grievances stoked simmering sectarian impulses, sinking the Middle East to a new low. Syria has become the playground for settling political, sectarian and regional scores. Significantly, Salafi-jihadi organizations forcefully entered the fray, led by ISIS (lastly branded as the Islamic State) and al-Nusra Front (recently branded Jabhat Fath al-Sham). ISIS established what it called the long awaited Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and called on its Muslim supporters to make the obligatory migration to the Caliphate.
In response, the U.S. organized an international coalition to fight ISIS, which has inadvertently commingled with attempts by international and regional actors to shape the new regional order, further deepening geopolitical and sectarian fault lines.
Paradoxically, mass murder, unspeakable atrocities and forced displacement inured public discourse. The painful truths that many Arab intellectuals tried to conceal in Fouad Ajami’s “The Dream Palace of the Arabs” turned into public outbidding wars of brutality. This is the Middle East reality into which the United States finds itself.
It’s hardly possible that any major U.S. policy would succeed where no freedom, legitimacy or order exist in the Middle East. Washington needs to more or less cooperate with regional and international powers, especially Russia, to manage the Middle East chronic and overlapping conflicts. Only in this way can Washington stem Iranian regional projection of power and reduce to a minimum the scourge of terrorism. In fact, American cooperation with Russia in Syria is more vital than that with American allies and friends, if only because they are beset by deep internal and external problems.
Egypt, the most populous Arab country that had set the tone of Arab politics, is in the throes of an economic and security crisis. Notwithstanding the intelligence and military support Cairo receives from Washington and Jerusalem, Cairo has barely made a dent in the shield of ISIS affiliates in Sinai. Nor has Cairo succeeded in ensuring security and co-existence among its nationals, all at the expense of declining foreign direct investment and tourism.
Turkey’s “Strategic Depth Doctrine,” which aspired to transform the country from a central power to a global power by partly achieving “zero problems” with its neighbors, has catastrophically collapsed. Notwithstanding a governance problem thanks in large measure to President Recep Tayyip Erdoghan’s autocratic and nationalist-Islamist policies, Ankara is intensely preoccupied with both its longstanding Kurdish issue within Turkey and recently in Syria, as well as with Salafi-jihadism, which has seeped into some segments of Turkish society.
Israel, which has achieved miraculous technological advances and resourcefully strengthened its economy, is still consumed by the Palestinian issue and hemmed in by tenuous or hostile relationships with its neighbors.
Saudi Arabia, which has embraced an assertive foreign policy led by a shoe-in brash young prince, has experienced more unsettled open-ended conflicts, especially in Yemen, and serious setbacks, especially with Qatar. Moreover, the Kingdom is clearly pursuing a regional policy not only meant to counteract Iran’s projection of power, but also to forcibly prevent a potential new Arab rebellion. No less significant, the Kingdom remains the promoter of the fundamentalist Salafi-Wahhabi version of Islam throughout the world.
Obviously, Kissinger’s variables for reconstructing a regional order as part of a world order are missing in the Middle East. Hence, cooperation with Russia and potentially with China is necessary to prevent further chaos in the Middle East. To be sure, Russia has played a vital role in Syria, not only making Moscow’s participation in any negotiated settlement indispensable, but also leading the way in trying to broker and set up cease fire agreements and de-escalating conflict zones, respectively. Apparently, Moscow has had a better reading of the political map of the Middle East in general and Syria in particular.
Russia has sustained the Astana talks with Turkey and Iran, whereupon the parties have more or less deescalated the fighting in four conflict zones in Syria. Next, Russia has concluded an agreement with Jordan and United States to deescalate the conflict in South-West Syria. Russia has also concluded a similar agreement with Egypt regarding Ghuta and Homs countryside. At the same time, it has not yet made any arrangement over Idlib, where al-Qaeda affiliates predominate. Russia may be leaving the door open to another agreement with United States involving the defeat of al-Qaeda affiliates there. Reports abound in Lebanon and Syria that Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy forces are not happy with Russian step-by-step approach in Syria, which limited their presence in de-escalating conflict zones and kept their militants far from Jordan and Golan’s borders.
Russia would not have concluded these agreements had it not been for the vulnerable acquiescence of regional actors. Herein, United States has an opportunity to coopt Russian policies as part of an international plan, whereby both countries could draw the red lines with which the regional countries could live. No doubt, it is a herculean task involving addressing a) the future of territories freed from ISIS, b) Kurdish aspirations for autonomy and the countervailing Turkish concerns over the implications of these aspirations for its own Kurdish population, d) protection of Israel and Jordan’s borders from Iranian encroachment, and e) the defeat of ISIS and al-Qaeda’s affiliates.
Simultaneously, Washington and Moscow would discuss the future of the Syrian state as part of a UN-led effort. Conversely, barring cooperation, Russia would be forced to improve its military relationship with Iran and its proxies so that Moscow could protect its interest in the Middle East in general and Syria in particular without deepening Russian military involvement in Damascus. This may entail providing Iran with sophisticated weapons, especially game-changing missiles. For example, in September 2010 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning the sale of weapons, including S-300 air defense systems, to Iran (and Syria) in compliance with United Nations sanctions against the Middle Eastern country. Once sanctions were lifted and despite Israeli concerns, Russia was swift in supplying Iran with the S-300 missiles the minute it became militarily involved in Syria.
This is not to say that Washington should acquiesce to Moscow’s meddling in United States’s internal affairs, including the country’s presidential elections. It means Washington needs to compartmentalize its relationship with Russia with the objective of reducing the scourge of terrorism and instability in the Middle East, without deepening Washington’s capricious military involvement there. In other words, Kissinger’s words ring so true. Washington cannot on its own build a regional order in the Middle East as part of a world order, partly because most states in the region lack freedom, legitimacy and order, and partly because it is difficult to reconcile America’s exceptional nature with the current harsh realities of the Middle East.
*Robert G. Rabil is a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Embattled Neighbors: Syria, Israel and Lebanon; Syria, United States and the War on Terror in the Middle East; Religion, National Identity and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of Islamism; Salafism in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism; and most recently The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon: The Double Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities. He tweets at @robertgrabil.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Aug. 31 pledged to carry on with his war against illegal drugs despite telling soldiers it can’t be won.
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That’s the basic law of a jungle,” he said at anniversary rites of a government vocational education program.
He also dismissed the Western school of restorative justice, saying most convicts return to their old ways.
Prison inmates, Duterte said, “have lost the existence, the essence or existence of a productive person.”
Being in jail also turns them to “latent homosexuals” with an “aberration of the mind,” said the president who is known for shocking remarks.
On Aug. 25, Duterte told soldiers fighting in a southern Philippines city linked to the illegal drugs trade that lack of state resources make his campaign “unwinnable.”
“I promised that I will do away with shabu [methamphetamine]. Now I know it won’t be fulfilled, that this really will not end,” Duterte said during a visit to Marawi City, where fighting with IS-inspired rebels has exceeded the 100-day mark.
Duterte has linked the rise of extremism in Marawi to local politicians who are also drug lords.
“We do not have the equipment” to monitor the entire coastlines, he told military medics in Davao City.
Duterte, who once promised to end the narcotics trade in six months, still promised to expand his drug war. He also attacked United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, for warning about the human cost of his campaign.
Critics have accused Duterte’s drug war of killing 12,000 Filipinos. The police say their operations only account for a quarter, blaming vigilantes, drug gangs and assorted criminals for the rest.
(FPRI) — Although seldom mentioned in the same breath as prolific Western jihadi producers such as France, Germany, and Belgium, Canada has a long and often overlooked history of producing jihadists. From the “Millennium Bomber” and the “Toronto 18” to the “Ottawa 3” and the “Calgary cluster,” jihadis have organized on Canadian soil to carry out attacks, both in-country and around the world. While Canadians have fought on jihadi battlefields as far flung as Afghanistan and Syria, their government has failed to implement comprehensive counterterrorism and deradicalization measures. Lagging far behind its Western allies, Canada implemented its first counterterrorism strategy in 2012 and has yet to create a desperately needed nationwide deradicalization program. The rise of ISIS and lone wolf attacks has increased the need for these reforms.
Though the United States has a Muslim population over triple the size of that of its northern neighbor, the two countries have seen an approximately equal number of their citizens join the Islamic State (see Graph 1 below). Canada is more similar to Italy and Switzerland—European countries far closer to the Islamic State—in terms of fighters sent in relation to its Muslim/overall population than to the equidistant United States (see Graphs 2 and 3 below). The defeat of the territorially based Islamic State will surely herald an influx of Canadian jihadists to their home country. However, the provisions introduced in the Combating Terrorism Act of 2012 and strengthened in the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015, which prescribe lengthy prison sentences for any citizen “knowingly participating in or contributing to any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to commit a terrorist activity,” will do a great deal to mitigate the risks from this group. The greater threat to Canada lies in the radicals who never travelled to the Islamic State, thereby making themselves known to Canadian intelligence services, but instead remain embedded amongst the Canadian population. While there are a number of potential policies that Canada could implement to help combat homegrown jihadism, this analysis posits that a more comprehensive and reformed implementation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (CMA) and the creation of a national deradicalization program offer the two most pragmatic solutions to mitigate the threat posed by Canadian jihadis to Canada.
Graph 1Graph 2Graph 3[1]
Case Studies
Although Canada has produced hundreds of jihadis since the 1980s, this analysis will focus on six specific individuals/groups that epitomize the evolution of the jihadi movement in Canada over the last two decades and the Canadian legislation that failed to adapt to this evolution.
Ahmed Said Khadr: The Dawn of the Canadian Jihadi Movement
While thousands of “Arab Afghan” foreign fighters waged jihad against the invading Soviets during the Soviet-Afghan War, two Canadians, Egyptian-Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr and Algerian-Canadian Fateh Kamal, came to fill prominent roles in the fledgling mujahideen and the jihadi movement that emerged as its derivative long after the Soviets withdrew. Though not a fighter himself, Khadr played a crucial role in funneling desperately needed funds—some of which were provided by the taxpayers of Canada through the Canadian International Development Organization—to the mujahideen through his Pakistan-based charity networks beginning in 1985.[2] A close friend to Osama bin Laden, Khadr and his family became thoroughly enmeshed in the web of global jihad. After Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien personally intervened in 1995 to have Khadr released from prison in Pakistan—a sentence he was serving on the charge that he plotted to bomb the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad—Khadr and his sons continued to work with bin Laden and other “Arab Afghans” who had stayed in country after the Soviet-Afghan War ended in 1989.[3] Though the man known as “al-Kanadi” would be killed in a gun battle with the Pakistani military in 2004, his son Omar continued his father’s jihadi legacy, eventually being detained in Guantanamo for killing an American serviceman in 2005 before being released on bail in 2015. While the Soviet-Afghan War ended in 1989, many of the “Arab Afghans” would travel to wage jihad in Bosnia three years later.
Fateh Kamel: An Example of Canadian Negligence
Although Fateh Kamel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, he only rose to prominence later as a leader of the jihad in Bosnia beginning in 1995. In the last years of the Soviet-Afghan War, Kamel moved to Canada, where despite being a veteran jihadi he was able to obtain citizenship after marrying a teacher. A member of the al-Qaeda aligned Armed Islamic Group (GIA)—a group to which Ahmed Ressam was also a member—Kamel became known as a dashing and efficient operator. After organizing charity work in Canada aimed at filling the coffers of the GIA in Bosnia, Kamel travelled to Europe himself.
Despite coming to the attention of the Italian authorities for his fiery recruitment speeches in support of the Bosnian jihad at Anwar Shaaban’s Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, Kamel was able to travel to Bosnia, where he served as the third in command of Shaaban’s El-Mudzahedin unit. During this time, Kamel was also responsible for coordinating a series of brazen bombing attacks on Paris’ metro stations in 1995 with the GIA, which had gained such a reputation for ruthlessness that even al-Qaeda attempted to disassociate itself from the group.[4] In 1999, Kamel was arrested in Jordan and extradited to France, where he was sentenced to eight years in prison. After serving six years of his sentence, Kamel was released on good behavior whereupon he moved to Canada. Though he has repeatedly applied for a passport, Kamel has not been allowed to leave Canada since returning as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) still considers him a threat. Kamel’s experiences as a foreign fighter reflect the changing realities of an increasingly potent jihadi movement.
Ahmed Ressam: Canada Wakes Up
An Algerian by birth, Ahmed “the Millennium Bomber” Ressam radicalized long before moving to Canada and applying for political asylum there in 1994. Despite the fact that the French had informed CSIS of Ressam’s radicalism, he was never apprehended and eventually traveled from Canada to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda in 1998. After receiving extensive training, Ressam was sent to carry out an attack in the United States on bin Laden’s orders. Ressam was specifically chosen because of his previous residency in Canada. Though Ressam was apprehended before carrying out his planned attack in the United States by Canadian border authorities in 1999, he was able to create explosive devices, meet with fellow jihadis, and plan attacks on America all while being wanted for terrorism-related charges by CSIS. He is representative of the honeymoon period before 9/11 where Canada, like most other countries in the West, did not take the threat posed by jihadis seriously. Ressam’s plot, along with 9/11, showed the Canadian legislature and public the need for expanded counterterrorism measures.
The Toronto 18: Bringing the Jihadi Threat Home
The 2006 Ontario attack, an attack which never came to fruition, would have been the largest in North America since 9/11. Planned by a group of jihadis commonly referred to as the “Toronto 18,” the attack targeted numerous high profile targets such as the Canadian Parliament, the headquarters of CSIS, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Canadian police, in coordination with the country’s intelligence services, penetrated the Toronto 18 and successfully arrested all members. While this operation represented a tremendous success for Canadian counterterrorism agencies, it also reflected a total failure with regard to radicalization prevention and deradicalization on the part of these same authorities.
While the individuals who composed the Toronto 18 had disparate backgrounds, they were all homegrown jihadis in the sense that each was either born in or had lived in Canada for a protracted period of time. Yet, they planned to attack targets that were both embodiments of their native or adopted home country and would have resulted in mass casualties amongst their fellow Canadians. Although Canadians knew that the United States was the chief target for many jihadis, the domestic focus of the Toronto 18’s plot sparked fear of homegrown terrorism with “real consequences for Canadians” in a way that the Millennium Bomber plot never could.[5] While the Toronto 18 formed as a result of pre-existing social networks among its members, the discovery of the group’s 2006 Ontario plot coincides with the beginning of a broader trend in jihadi movements throughout the West away from larger centralized groupings of jihadis and towards more “devolved” formations centered around small groups or individuals.[6] These devolved jihadi formations were far harder for CSIS to monitor, which would come to be especially important with the advent of the Islamic State.
The Calgary Cluster: Exposing CSIS’ Deficiencies
Though Canada enacted its first comprehensive counterterrorism legislation in 2012—legislation which gave CSIS the power to seize the passports of prospective jihadis and detain them for up to three days—it did little to prevent scores of Canadian jihadis from leaving to fight elsewhere. Of the roughly 130 Canadians who left their homeland to wage jihad in Syria, six were members of the “Calgary cluster.” This group reflects both the diversity of the Canadian jihadi movement and the failure of Canada’s counterterrorism policy. Three of the members were Canadian converts, while the other three were from Canada’s Somali, Palestinian, and Pakistani communities.
Though the men did not travel to Syria together, they often worshipped collectively at Calgary’s 8th and 8th Mosque and lived in the same apartment building. After member Damian Clairmont departed for Syria in 2012, many of the other members came under suspicion by Canadian intelligence of planning future trips to Syria; some were even put on the Canadian no-fly list. Despite the suspicions of Canadian law enforcement, however, not a single member of the Calgary jihadi cluster was apprehended before leaving Canada to wage jihad. While many of the jihadis used fake papers, the fact that all were able to travel abroad after being labelled jihadists (with the exception of Clairmont who was unknown to intelligence services at the time of his departure) illustrates how inept CSIS was in handling this case. None of the cluster members have returned to Canada, and five are confirmed to have been killed in action.
Martin Couture-Rouleau: The Rise of Lone Wolf Attacks
As a self-radicalized lone wolf, Martin Couture-Rouleau epitomizes the Canadian jihadist that Canada (and the West as a whole) should fear most. A convert to Islam, Couture-Rouleau gained notoriety after killing a Canadian soldier and wounding another in what has come to be known as the 2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming attack. Before the attack, Couture-Rouleau had been known to CSIS; its agents even confiscated his passport in order to prevent him from leaving Canada to join ISIS. The attack Couture-Rouleau carried out is representative of the larger devolution of jihadism in Canada.
A regular mosque attendant, Couture-Rouleau was not associated with a jihadi cluster. Even though he was inspired by ISIS, Couture-Rouleau was not a member of that group and had not travelled to the Islamic State. Furthermore, the attack itself involved Couture-Rouleau using his car to ram two Canadian soldiers, which demonstrates the logistical simplicity of the lone wolf. Couture-Rouleau, a Euro-Canadian convert to Islam, is not reflective of the failings of Canada’s implementation of the CMA. However, he does illustrate the larger deficiencies of Canada’s counterterrorism and deradicalization policies.
As of 2012, Canada had become aware of and taken steps to prevent its citizens from traveling abroad to wage jihad, yet it failed to understand the danger posed by these aspiring foreign fighters to its domestic security. While CSIS considered Couture-Rouleau so committed to waging jihad that they confiscated his passport, the lack of any accompanying measures allowed him to commit an act of terrorism inside Canada. Attendance at a deradicalization program would have been an invaluable accompanying measure to taking the passport of the young Salafi convert—a group which makes up a disproportionate number of Canadian jihadis relative to their proportion of the Canadian Muslim population—yet none were available in his hometown of Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu.[7]
The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015, partially catalyzed by Couture-Rouleau’s attack, strengthened Canada’s legislation on counter terrorism. The law notably enhanced CSIS’ power to make preventive arrests in cases where jihadis are suspected of planning to leave the country by changing the “tripwire” for preventative arrests from will carry out an attack to may carry out an attack. It also expanded the number of days a suspected jihadi can be detained from three to seven.
Policy Recommendations
Canada is held up by many scholars as an outstanding example of multiculturalism and selective immigration, which is to a great extent accurate. Despite this image, Canadian attitudes are not tolerant towards Muslims: in 2016, only 43 percent of Canadians have a net positive opinion of Muslims in contrast to 61 percent who have a net positive opinion of immigrants; and Muslims perceive discrimination at a higher rate than any other group in Canada, with 51 percent stating that they are discriminated against often and 36 percent saying that they are discriminated against occasionally in 2017. The spread of intolerance in Canada partially reflects the country’s failure to effectively implement the CMA.
There has been a serious performance gap between the tenets laid out in the CMA and its actual implementation. While the CMA should “encourage and promote exchanges and cooperation among the diverse communities of Canada” as the legislation states, the reality is that implementation of the CMA and this tenet in particular often falls short of its stated objectives. This deficiency has enabled the spread of “groupism,” whereby Canadian immigrants have gravitated to and formed communities centered around shared ethnicity and cultural traditions.[8] Groupism can contribute to “us vs them” dichotomies and lead to feelings of resentment and alienation amongst members of immigrant communities. This, in turn, can hinder the efforts of Canadian intelligence and law enforcement to gain the trust of these communities. Some immigrant groups have been more affected than others.[9] Many Somali-Canadians, for example, live in communities so segregated and impoverished that prominent Canadian counterterrorism scholar Lorne Dawson describes them as “Ghettoized.”[10] As a result, though Somalis represent a miniscule five percent of Canada’s Muslim population, they have produced a disproportionate number of Canada’s jihadis.
While feelings of alienation and isolation have catalyzed the growth of jihadism among immigrant communities, positive interactions between radicals and non-radicals have proven to be crucial in preventing radicals from perpetrating violence. This relationship is illustrated in an interview conducted by Gaetano Ilardi with a former Canadian jihadi and Pakistani immigrant, who stated that moving to Canada made him “re-consider his extreme beliefs as a result of his daily contact with regular Canadians.”[11] Thus, positive interactions between Canadians from different backgrounds as advocated by the CMA offer an avenue towards preventing acts of jihadi violence against Canada. Interactions that foster cross-cultural exchange should, however, go beyond tokenistic “multicultural education that focuses only on the superficial celebration of culture through festivals, cultural days, and ethnic costumes.”[12] Rather, they should be centered around the positive day-to-day interactions promoted by diverse schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. While Canada is far better than most Western countries in creating these spaces, it is by no means perfect. Non-white Canadians are twice as likely as their white counterparts to “experience low-income rates.” Although socio-economics is not the primary motivator for radicalization in the vast majority of cases, it can contribute to isolating minorities and keeping them from interacting with Canadians of other backgrounds, allowing feelings of alienation and embitterment against Canadian society as a whole to take root.[13]
There are a variety of ways that Canada can go about better implementing the CMA. Firstly, recent immigrants, especially those who have not come to Canada as a result of selective immigration policies, should be given greater levels of post-immigration support. This support could entail a variety of initiatives ranging from increased language courses for those not already proficient in English or French to assistance in finding permanent—rather than simply temporary as it currently does—housing and job placement, which could help decrease the problem of underemployment that costs immigrants “over 4 billion in lost earnings annually.” Secondly, Canada’s government should take steps to “de-mystify” Islam for its populace. This initiative could utilize a wide variety of platforms such as the education system and social media to address common misperceptions of Islam, which could partially alleviate the sense among the majority of Canadian Muslims that discrimination against them is on the rise.[14] It would be beneficial to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike because many Canadian former-radicals have stated that their lack of basic knowledge of Islam contributed to their radicalization.[15] Together, post-immigration support and a program to demystify Islam as a whole offer two of the most workable reforms to the implementation of the CMA.
A national program that deals with deradicalization and radicalization prevention would complement a reform of the implementation of Canada’s multiculturalism policy and mitigate the threat posed by Canadian jihadis to Canada. Contrary to what some scholars argue, radicalization in Canada is conducted entirely online in very few cases.[16] Rather, as evidenced by studies conducted by Sam Mullins and Gaetano Ilardi, social interaction is still instrumental in the radicalization of Canadians. Radicals can still be identified by family, friends, and faith leaders, instead of exclusively by intelligence services as is the case with many of those who radicalize entirely online. Under Canada’s current counterterrorism policy, however, there is an intervention gap as very little can be done for identified radicals aside from preemptive detention by law enforcement in the most serious instances. Calgary’s ReDirect deradicalization and radicalization prevention program offers a template that could be reproduced on a national scale. ReDirect has been described as “an education, awareness and prevention program aimed at stopping the radicalization of young people toward violent extremism.”[17] While ReDirect is in its early stages, the program is already proving successful as a result of its strong partnership between local police, community leaders, and experts on radicalization. It allows those close to radicals and potential radicals a support system mandated to intervene independently of more heavy-handed intelligence organizations like CSIS. ReDirect epitomizes how partnering with the local Muslim community is imperative for any successful deradicalization effort in order to dispel the clash of civilizations narrative favored by radicals.
There are, however, limits to the effectiveness of community policing. ReDirect’s success is in part due to the Calgary Police Service’s overwhelming favorability with city residents.[18] This stands in stark contrast to the other two deradicalization programs that currently exist in Canada—Toronto’s Focus Rexdale and Montreal’s Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence—which have both been hindered by unpopular police departments, local bureaucracies, and distrust from community members.[19] A national agency dedicated to deradicalization and radicalization prevention would complement local programs and become more involved in areas where community policing proves ineffective.
The expansion of programs to cover towns and midsize cities would be particularly useful given the increasing dispersion of jihadi recruitment to locales other than Canada’s major cities. This expansion would be facilitated by revamping Canada’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSET), which are currently mandated to promote Canadian national security through interagency cooperation and information sharing amongst Canada’s various national, provincial, and municipal agencies such as CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Border Services Agency, and the police. In addition to expanding this program to cover areas beyond Canada’s major cities, INSET offers an existing platform which could be coopted to coordinate between a new national deradicalization agency and INSET’s current participating agencies. The creation of a Canadian national deradicalization program that integrates existing infrastructure like INSET and community policing models like ReDirect is crucial to stymying radicalization and securing Canadian national security.
Securing Canada Will Help to Secure America and the World
While the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015 and the decline of ISIS have resulted in a significant decrease in Canadian radicals travelling to the Islamic State to wage jihad, these two factors have also sequestered jihadis on Canadian soil with few accompanying measures to keep them from committing attacks in their homeland. In addition to its own domestic stability, Canada’s dearth of policy on combating jihadism and radicalization poses a threat to American national security. While scholars such as Phil Gurski argue that the threat posed by Canadian jihadists to the United States is often exaggerated, they concede that this threat remains plausible.[20] Utilizing the expansive and porous Canadian-American border, Canadian jihadists have attempted and carried out attacks on American soil.[21] In addition to Ahmed Ressam—who was apprehended before he could carry out his attack—Amor Ftouhi stabbed an American police officer in a deliberate act of jihadi violence in a June 2017 attack at Bishop International Airport, illustrating how Canadian jihadis continue to pose a tangible threat to the American homeland. Ultimately, the measures posited in this analysis offer pragmatic reforms to Canada’s current counterterrorism and deradicalization policies that should be implemented in order to stop the growth of the Canadian jihadi movement and mitigate the danger its poses to Canada, America, and the world.
About the author:
*Nate Kennedy, an intern at FPRI, is a senior at Haverford College majoring in Political Science
[2] Barry Cooper, “Exposing Canada’s complicity in the export of terrorism,” Calgary Herald, April 28, 2004.
[3] “Khadr’s Father met Osama bin Laden in Pakistan during Soviet War,” National Post Canada, July 16, 2008.
[4] Cooper, “Exposing Canada’s complicity in the export of terrorism,” Calgary Herald, April 28, 2004.
[5] Lorne Dawson, “Trying to Make Sense of Homegrown Radicalization: The Case of Toronto 18,” in Religious Radicalization in Canada and Beyond, eds, Paul Bramadat and Lorne Dawson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 64.
[9] Phil Gurski, The Threat From Within (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 111-112.
[10] Dawson, “Trying to Make Sense of Homegrown Radicalization,” 70.
[11] Ilardi, “Interviews with Canadian Radicals,” 721.
[12] Miriam Chiasson, “A clarification of terms: Canadian multiculturalism and Quebec interculturalism,” [Report prepared for David Howes and the Centaur Jurisprudence Project, Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism] McGill University, 2012, Accessed July 17, 2017, http://canadianicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TMODPart1-Clarification.pdf.
[14] Uzma Jamil, “Trying to Make Sense of Homegrown Radicalization: The Case of Toronto 18,” in Religious Radicalization in Canada and Beyond, eds. Paul Bramadat and Lorne Dawson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 148.
[15] Ilardi, “Interviews with Canadian Radicals,” 724-725.
[16] Mullins, “Global Jihad: The Canadian Experience,” 20.
The tunic Chairman Mao Zedong wore on October 1, 1949, to declare the founding of the People’s Republic of China at Beijing’s Gate of Heavenly Peace, was made of polyester. During subsequent decades, that attire was known to the world as ‘the Mao Suit’, as it went on to capture fashion trends across the world. Today, it is facing a decline in Mao’s own China. The country, however, in the meantime has become the proverbial ‘workshop of the world’ and its textile industry makes up a large part of that workshop.
Industry in general and the textile industry in particular has impacted the environment on a grand scale. The complex aspects of this impact were explored in a panel discussion hosted by the Stockholm Water Institute (SIWI) as a part of its annual World Water Week– Clean and Circular: The Future of Made in China Fashion.The panelists represented on-ground Chinese stakeholders on their action on managing waster water, chemicals, raw materials and waste.
Much of the world’s dirty and thirsty global fashion and materials come from China. the panelists tried to answer the question: Can the Chinese industry survive the country’s move to ‘Beautiful China’ and the new stringent environmental regulations introduced by the Government?
A circular economy manages water and waste as economic assets thereby enhancing its capacity to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, target 5 of the United Nations: ‘by 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse of water.’
The Chinese textile industry is the largest in the world. It exported $274 billion in textiles in 2013, which accounted for 43.1 percent of global clothing exports. A whopping 230 thousand Chinese textile manufacturing companies employ 20 million people. Textile industry, however, is hugely water-thirsty and environment polluting. It adds to already water stressed environment of China which is expected to experience 199 billion m3 shortfall of water during the coming decade.
China’s waterbodies have not escaped devastation caused by industry: 80 percent of lakes are polluted.The main drivers of pollution in China, industry and urbanization, have polluted 19.9 percent of the country’s farmlands. Some 678 million people live in highly water stressed areas.
China’s water story is not all bleak, however, for the consumers buying China’s products across the world. In its quest to become ‘Ecological Civilization’, the government has launched ‘Ten Measures for Water’ plan. The plan puts tough controls on polluting industries–among them textiles–with emission limits and provides stricter supervision from authorities and public.
“Some 400 textile dyeing houses have closed down and around 10,000 have received warnings from the government since the plan was introduced,” said the panelist, Kehua Hu of China National Textile and Apparel Council Deputy Director for Social Responsibility.
Kehua Hu pointed out best practice approaches increasingly applied in the textile industry like ‘water free coloration’ in dyeing process which keeps it free from pollution. Another approach emerging to creating a circular loop is the re-use of textile production in furniture-making and objects for interior designing of spaces. This practice emerged as a response to the new regulation banning re-use of old clothes. Hu said “sustainability is the trend in China now. If you fail to be sustainable, you will face the risk of shutdown.”
International brands are chipping in too to improve things. Hu says, “Brands like Puma, Nike, Adidas H&M have started creating their own supply chains, under pressure from consumers and NGOs.” The road to sustainability is indeed not a straight one.
In Durham, North Carolina, militants of a small Left party destroyed a statue of a Confederate soldier. Takiya Thompson, a member of the Workers World Party, climbed the statue and helped pull it down. She, along with seven other activists, was arrested by the police. Just before her arrest, Thompson said of her action: “I chose to do that because I am tired of living in fear. I am tired of white supremacy keeping its foot on my neck and the neck of people who look like me.”
Hundreds of people marched to the Durham County Courthouse asking to be arrested for the destruction of the statue. This was a largely symbolic gesture. Serena Sebring, who did not go to the initial protest when the statue was torn down, was among the throng who came to be arrested. “All of us are willing to share the cost of our freedom,” Serena Sebring said. She is the regional organiser for Southerners on New Ground, an anti-racist organisation based in Atlanta (Georgia). “All of us are here, and we are willing to take whatever responsibility, whatever consequences come along with the removal of that statue.”
Between 1861 and 1865, a brutal civil war threatened to tear the United States apart. The main fault line was the attitude of the different states in the U.S. towards slavery. The southern States—the Confederacy—were rooted in a plantation economy that relied upon slave labour. The Confederacy was defeated by the armies of the north, which were driven partly by anti-slavery sentiments but also by the interests of industrial elites against those of the agrarian elites of the south. Slavery was substantially ended with the defeat of the Confederacy, although nostalgia amongst southern whites for the plantation era remained powerful.
The statue of the Confederate soldier in Durham was not erected in the immediate aftermath of the war. It dates from 1924, during a period of struggle by African American and other minorities to attain civil rights. The bronze statue was part of a wave of such monuments that were installed in prominent parts of southern cities. When Thompson and others pulled at the statue, it fell and bent at its base with great ease—those statues were cheaply produced in 1924 to be erected hastily across the country as a mark of the resilience of White Power over Civil Rights.
Charlottesville
The conflict in Durham followed that in Charlottesville (Virginia), three hours’ drive north. Not far from the campus of the University of Virginia, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the U.S., sits what was known as Lee Park. The park is dominated by a 26-foot-high (eight-metre) statue of Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Confederacy, on a horse. The statue, like the one at Durham, was not erected right after the Civil War, but in 1924. That year, Charlottesville hosted the conventions of the Confederate Veterans and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Local dignitaries, including the entire higher administration of the University of Virginia, joined the ceremony to instal the statue. Judge R.T.W. Duke, a member of the Sons of the Confederacy and a former Circuit Judge, was the master of ceremonies. He called Lee “the greatest man who ever lived”. From the nearby Shenandoah Valley came President Henry Lewis Smith of Washington and Lee University, named for Robert E. Lee who went there to head the college after his defeat in the Civil War. Smith called Lee a “Christian saint” at the 1924 installation.
Over the past century, small towns and cities across States in the southern U.S. have had to reconsider the monumental legacy of the Confederacy. Serious attempts to remove statues and to rename streets have been scuttled by the old power brokers. The statues in question were not always of Confederate generals or soldiers of the “lost cause” but also horrendous ones such as that of “Uncle Jack the Good Darky” (1927) in Natchitoches (Louisiana). This statue depicts an African-American man who deferentially tips his hat to passers-by. A fight over its presence led it to be donated to the Rural Life Museum, where it greets visitors.
These are not fringe issues. The Confederate flag flew on official buildings after the Civil War—and remains aloft in many places. Fights in South Carolina to remove the flag seized the political imagination and tore the already divided population along race lines. As recently as 2015, the establishment of the American Right fought against the removal of the flag of the Confederacy from public buildings. William Kristol, editor of Weekly Standard, a right-wing magazine, bemoaned the “Left’s 21st century agenda to expunge every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy”. Stoking the idea of “respect” for the pro-slavery wing of the Civil War is one way that the American Right has appealed to white voters. It suggests that the Confederacy and its history of pro-slavery is integral to the heritage of whites in the U.S.
After the murder of Trayvon Martin by the police in Missouri in 2012, Charlottesville city councillor Kristin Szakos went to the Virginia Festival of the Book. At this literary event, she pointed out that it might be time to reconsider the presence of the monuments of the Confederacy. There was a gasp when she made this comment: it was as if, she pointed out, that she had said it was “OK to torture puppies”. Last year, another city councillor, Wes Bellamy, moved the council to remove the Lee statue and rename the park. The council, early this year, agreed to remove the statue and in June named the garden Emancipation Park. The Lee statue’s removal would have been significant because it is perhaps the most prominent of the Confederate memorials.
The election of Donald Trump was widely welcomed by the repellent sections of American politics, from the American Nazi Party to the heritage associations of the Confederacy. At a National Policy Institute conference in Washington, D.C., in November 2016, its leader, Richard Spencer, beamed as his audience chanted “Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!” in an echo of “Heil Hitler”, the German Nazi chant. Spencer and his fascist friends feel that Trump’s comments in favour of “white rights” advantaged them. No wonder then that the various Nazi and Confederate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and militia groups, decided to march on to the campus of the University of Virginia and to Emancipation Park to make their stand against the removal of the Lee statue. Bathed in racism, these groups found it intolerable that the symbols of the Confederacy be touched.
What they did not count on was the emergence of a wide and deep sense of antipathy to their politics. Ordinary people, anti-fascist groups and various Left organisations took to the streets to confront their arrival in Charlottesville. The fascists attempted to provoke violence, and indeed one of their adherents drove his car into the anti-fascists, killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old activist, and injuring many others. Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said plainly: “I’m glad that girl died.” Andrew Anglin, editor of the website The Daily Stormer, wrote that he was also glad that Heather Heyer died because she was unmarried and had no children. Anglin found her life, therefore, of “no value”. The harsh invective from the American Right combines hatred of women with hatred of minorities. It is a kind of toxicity that is familiar from the White House.
Steve Bannon
Donald Trump’s senior adviser, Steve Bannon, hastily left the White House a few days after the events in Virgina. By all accounts, he had planned to leave in the next few weeks. The Nazi rally in Charlottesville, greatly embarrassing for the Republican Party, hastened his departure. Bannon had come to Trump’s side a year ago from his perch at Breitbart News, a pillar of the Nazi-style American Right. He had shouted about the decline of white power and of the erosion of America’s role in the world. Bannon wanted Trump to withdraw from trade deals and to be more aggressive with U.S. military action abroad. Multilateralism and globalism remain the enemies for Bannon. His close association with the “alt-right”, the Nazi variant of the American Right, meant that Trump was being isolated increasingly from even moderate Republicans. Bannon had to go.
But Bannon had already indicated that he wanted to go. He felt that Trump’s agenda had been hijacked by the multilateralists and globalists acting through Trump’s family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. They had been able to influence Trump and bring him closer to the U.S. consensus. Bannon met with his close allies, the billionaire Mercer family, who indicated that they would finance Bannon’s return to his “killing machine” at Breitbart from where he could both go “thermonuclear” against the globalists and put pressure on Trump. It is being said that Bannon might create a mainstream television channel from where he can reach a wider audience than from his website. Bannon believes that “Donald Trump” was his creation and that without him there will be no backbone in the White House.
Resistance
The fight-back in Charlottesville was repeated across the country. Decent people joined the Left groups to ensure that the American Right is not allowed to use the fig leaf of “free speech” to command public space. A massive demonstration in Boston (Massachusetts) ensured that the gathering of the American Right had to hastily disband. It was simply run out of town.
The resistance is not merely in the north but also in the south. In Knoxville (Tennessee), the Vanguard group of Nazis tried to rally for their fetid ideas of white power. They were met by the Anti-Racist Action’s clown bloc. When the Nazis chanted “white power”, the clowns asked “white flour?”. They danced around throwing flour in the air, disrupting the Nazi sternness with calculated fun. When the Nazis repeated their slogan, the clowns changed their question to “white flower?” and danced around throwing white flowers in the air. “White Power”, the Nazis chanted in desperation. The women among the clowns now said “We understand” and unveiled new signs that read “WIFE power”. They skipped about chanting “wife power” as the leader of the Nazis, Alex Linder, was arrested for trying to attack them.
This article originally appeared in Frontline (India) and is reprinted with permission.
President Trump’s pandering executive order reversing an Obama decision to scale back the dumping of surplus military equipment on the nation’s already over-armed police departments includes word that his new “toys (arms)-for-cops” benefit program will include Army and Marine surplus bayonets.
Let’s ponder that for a moment.
The Army gave up bayonets for combat use after the Korean War (the last recorded US bayonet charge was in 1951 in that war). Now, while the Marines still train in bayonet use in boot camp in a bow to tradition, the reality is that nobody actually uses them in combat.
So you have to ask: If the military doesn’t think that bayonets are needed or useful in actual combat, why would police in the US need them?”
It’s a good question and gets to the larger question of why American cops need any of the gear that they’re being offered — once again — by the US military: everything from MRAP “tanks” so heavy that if called out for a SWAT raid, a route has to first be carefully plotted and followed that doesn’t cross over any of this country’s worn-out and and crumbling bridges and culverts (an MRAP weighs 14-18 tons, while local street viaducts in many communities frequently have tonnage limits in the single digits).
Before he retired, I had a conversation with the chief of police of my community of Upper Dublin, a quiet middle-class suburb of Philadelphia, about militaried policing. A thoughtful veteran of the Vietnam War himself, he disabused me of an automatic and commonly shared assumption I had made that local police SWAT teams were probably populated by combat veterans looking for more adrenalin-pumping action. Actually, he told me, combat vets who go into police work — and there are many who do, thanks to the extra points awarded to veterans by most communities in their hiring — don’t want to be playing soldier when they become police officers. “They’ve had enough of war and killing,” he told me. “It’s the ones who have never been in the military who volunteer for SWAT teams.” He explained that such officers are “wannabe soldiers.”
Maybe if police and sheriff’s departments get old Korean War-era bayonets from the Pentagon to put on their semi-automatic rifles, they’ll try launching bayonet charges next time they bust into a house to deliver a bench warrant for a bald tire or missed family court appearance or to look for pot plants, instead of just walking up to the front door in the early morning and bashing it in with a battering ram, as my son witnessed the Savannah Police SWAT unit do trying to arrest a pot dealer who lived next door to him and his schoolmates (the suspect wasn’t home, but his little kids were).
Next we’ll be reading about police stabbings of innocent civilians, instead of their being shot.
Maybe that would be a a good thing. A stabbing victim, I should think, would have a much better chance of survival than someone who is the victim of a barrage of bullets fired by an over-excited cop in the heat of urban, suburban or rural “battle.” That is unless the cop wielding the bayonet decides to engage in multiple piercing of his victim.
Really, this whole thing is getting seriously out of hand.
I was just in England, where I had to spend some time in a National Health Service hospital waiting room, and among other things, I got to see an English version of a reality cop show, where the camera was following a couple of bobbies around on their night patrol. I don’t know what city it was but judging by the size of the railroad station where the portion of the program I watched took place, it must have been a big one.
At any rate, the two bobbies drove up to the train station in response to a call about an apparently deranged man attacking a locked station door and shattering its glass pane. The cops exited their squad car and walked up to the perp. He tried to leave but they gently took him by the arms and restrained him. They kept their voices low and calm and did not draw any weapons (I’m not sure they were carrying guns at all).
“Why did you break that glass?” one cop asked him.
The man had no answer. The other cop asked him where he lived. When he replied that he didn’t have a home, he was told they could take him to social services, which could find him a place.
They told him he had destroyed public property and might have to pay for it. The man said he had no money, so they said they had to bring him in to the station. They then walked him — no handcuffs needed — to the squad car, and helped him gently into the back seat, which is walled off from the front seats, and drove off.
I didn’t get to see the rest of the show as I was called away for some tests, but what struck me was that the cops remained calm at all times through this incident, and that they did not rough the man up. He was not thrown to the ground and piled on by the arresting officers, which is now pretty much standard practice for arrests in the US. And he didn’t have his arms wrenched behind him and cuffed — another US standard police practice that frequently results in injured hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders, and that can also result in more serious injuries if the cuffed person, unale to protect his head, “happens” to fall over, or down some stairs.
The same retiring police chief also told me, back during our conversation about militarized police, that when he first got hired as chief in our town, he found that the department had earlier been supplied by the Pentagon, under the arms-for-cops program of handing out surplus military equipment, enough fully automatic M16 rifles for every cop on the force. This in a town where the biggest violent crime in two decades was whatever the largest barroom brawl was during that period. We did have a restaurant owner murdered in what appears to have been a mob hit, but that is a kind of unique thing that hardly required use of a SWAT team or M16’s to handle. The guy was found shot dead, and it became a job for detectives, including the FBI.
Anyhow, the chief said one of the first things he did was send back the automatic weapons to the Pentagon. He said “We didn’t need police running around with fully automatic weapons.”
True enough, though they still all have semi-automatid AR-15s racked in their SUV patrol vehicles. These weapons only get used, though, for putting injured deer out of their misery. There are no other types of crimes calling for such guns to be unracked in Upper Dublin.
Truth is, most SWAT raids across the US — and there are over 20,000 of them a year across the country, mostly to serve warrents that could be served by a knock on the door, or to search for drugs, which could be done without breaking down doors and terrorizing families — are clearly unjustified, and in fact they have resulted in numerous killings of innocent citizens, sometimes because police raid the wrong address, and other times because the cops don’t do good pre-raid intelligence to see whether their are children in the targeted home. Babies have been killed when police toss flash-bang grenades into windows as part of a raid.
The whole thing should sicken decent people of all political stripes, but we seem to have accepted the idea of cops behaving like occupying troops in a foreign land as normal policing in the United States of 2017.
Trump is catering to that mentality by reactivating the arms-for-cops conveyor belt.
How long will it be before we have the first baby stabbed by a bayonet-wielding cop who will predictably claim he couldn’t see because his visor was fogged up from the tear gas cannister police launched, or smoke from the stun grenade they tossed into the house before rushing in?
It’s time to back this whole thing up. Most of this up-arming of police, and the adoption of brutal and aggressive tactics in arrests is justified as necessary to protect officers from perceived risk of harm. But that’s outrageous and wrong.
Firefighters, are also uniformed public servants — many of them volunteers! — and we expect them to be ready and willing to run into burning buildings if they think there’s any chance that a person might be trapped inside. They do this knowing that they could be running to their deaths. I actually watched two New York City cops do this, kicking open the door of a burning apartmenting in my building and, without a second’s pause rushing in as smoke and flame burst out of the broken-in doorway. It’s almost hard to imagine a firefighter, confronted with a burning building and cries from someone inside the conflagration, just standing there with a hose and doing nothing because he or she was afraid of injury or death. It’s just not what firefighters do.
Yet all a police officer has to do to get off the hook for slaughtering an unarmed person during an arrest is to say, “I feared for my life.” The cop doesn’t have to offer any serious evidence of a threat. It could be a person reaching, in response to an order from the cop, for his wallet (all too common a situation). If the cop says that he or she thought the wallet might have been a gun, that would be enough, and often is, to convince a district attorney not to prosecute, or in the rare instance where there is a prosecution, to convince a jury not to convict.
That’s wrong. When someone becomes what should be called a “peace officer” (now an anachronistic term), that person is hired to “protect and serve” the public, and given the nature of the job, that should entail a assuming a considerable amount of risk, just as becoming a firefighter entails assuming a certain amount of risk. Part of that risk shuould incude not shooting first and asking questions later, and trying to de-escalate conflict situations instead of amping them up by yelling, swearing and trying to “disorient” the subject facing arrest.
We’re going in the opposite direction by offering cops military arms and equipment, as President Trump is doing, which just encourages police to think of themselves as soldiers in a war zone instead of as peace officers in a community.
Recent corruption and sexual scandals involving clergy in Romania’s powerful Orthodox Church are forcing its leaders to be more accountable.
Sunday morning for Monica (not her real name) starts with her attending the service at the People’s Salvation Cathedral Chapel, in the centre of Bucharest.
Although it is already warm outside, a chill is palpable inside the small church, where dozens of the faithful gather to sing hymns, take communion, light candles and cross themselves from right to left.
A priest in a festive robes chants the liturgy, as a fragrant cloud of incense rises into the rotunda, helping believers to feel a mystical atmosphere in the small church.
Monica takes her faith very seriously. ”I need to be part of the Orthodox Church, and believe in God, to lift myself beyond the limitations of myself,” the 34-year-old, dressed in a white head scarf, says.
More than 85 percent of the 19.5 million people in Romania belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church, which remains one of the most trusted institutions in the country.
For most of them, including Monica, a recent wave of scandals concerning corruption and sex, involving the clergy, including some of the highest ranking, poses no risk to the Church’s overall credibility.
“It’s just an aggressive campaign of some media outlets aimed against the Orthodox Church. Of course, there are some errant priests, but it is mainly an issue of the media trying to make scandals in order to get a bigger audience,” Monica says, bluntly.
The facts speak for themselves, however. In May, Archbishop Teodosie Petrescu, a senior official in the Orthodox Church, was put under house arrest.
He will stand trial in due course for fraud for claiming 300 million euros in EU agricultural funds.
On August 20, Corneliu Barladeanu, Bishop of the eastern city of Husi, resigned after the media released a video allegedly showing him having sex with a former seminarian who is currently a priest.
His decision came soon after the Holy Synod, the ruling body of the Church, discussed the matter – the first time it has dealt with a sex scandal in its 92-year history.
That affair surfaced just weeks after a previous scandal, when a priest from the northwest of the country, suspected of attempting the sexual “corruption” of a 17-year-old youth, was thrown out of the Church at the end of July.
The same priest was involved in 2013 in an exorcism, a practice that the Romanian Orthodox Church bans. A Church disciplinary commission then sent him to a monastery to pray and repent.
The abbot of a monastery in the northern region of Maramures meanwhile has been accused by a theology student of trying to seduce him.
The student published a recording of the conversation on the internet. However, the abbot has denied the accusation and has said he will prove his innocence in a secular court.
Facing an unprecedented crisis, Patriarch Daniel, head of the Orthodox Church, decided to take an unusual step.
In a public message last month, “with much pain in the heart”, he asked the Church’s followers for forgiveness.
“I have to apologise for the turbulence produced by public accusations against clerics … who have shown deviations from Christian morals,” Patriarch Daniel said.
Analysts praise the fact that Orthodox Church is now more open and is at least trying to address such sensitive issues, and not cover them up, as often happened in the past.
“It seems that beginning early last year, the Church changed its strategy of public communication and renounced its policy of drawing a veil over reality. Most likely, the Orthodox Church has learned from similar mistakes made by other churches, including the Catholic Church,” Marius Vasileanu, a Bucharest-based professor of History of Religion, said.
In recent years, the Orthodox Church has also started to use new media to get closer to its believers, running a website, a TV and radio stations and its own daily newspaper.
Public demands for more accountability from its leaders are not new in Romania, but they reached an all-time high in 2015, after the dramatic death of more than 30 young people in a Bucharest night club fire.
People demanded an end to the widespread corruption and better governance and some turned their anger also on the powerful Orthodox Church also, accusing it failing to address an outpouring of national grief. Pressure also mounted for a review of its big financial privileges.
Some demanded an end to the allocation of state funds for the construction of new churches and reallocation of the money for hospitals and clinics.
“Romania will not be a real democracy or a secular state until the Orthodox Church loses its privileges and influence over politics,” Madalina Albu, one of the participants at the protests last year, said.
“We want an end to hefty state subsidies, and for the Church to pay tax. And, of course, the clergy should face justice, when this is needed,” she added.
Governments have been wary of challenging the influential Church, however, which some politicians rely on for political support.
Official data show Romania has some 18,000 churches, compared with 4,700 schools and 425 hospitals. Most of the churches were built after the communist regime collapsed.
Last year alone, the government allocated some 10 million euros for the 120-metre-high Cathedral of the Redeemer, a gigantic edifice in Bucharest, built next to former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Palace of the People.
It handed out some 20 million euros for the building and repairing of other churches.
Despite its critics and glaring weaknesses, the Orthodox Church remains important for many Romanians.
But Marius Vasileanu says it must start to change its way to suit the times.
“The Church is facing the final stage of entering the modern era. The recent scandals are like a wake-up call. The Church needs to find a more proper way to fulfil its real mission,” Vasileanu said.
(RFE/RL) — U.S. authorities took control of three Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States on September 2 after Russian staff had complied with orders to vacate the sites within two days.
In an angry response, the Kremlin summoned a top U.S. diplomat in Moscow, handing over a note of protest and denouncing what it called an “unprecedented aggressive action” at one of the facilities.
The U.S. State Department had set a 2 p.m. September 2 deadline for the closure of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, as well as two other diplomatic buildings in Washington, D.C., and New York that are used as trade representations.
The U.S. action came in retaliation for Moscow’s move in August ordering the United States to cut its diplomatic personnel in Russia to 455 by September 1, which President Vladimir Putin said meant cutting 755 personnel.
Descriptions from the Russian and U.S. sides differed on what happened at one of the U.S. sites — a Washington trade annex — as the local deadline passed.
Moscow claimed U.S. officials had threatened to “break down the entrance door” and that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was “clearing the premises.”
The State Department denied the allegations, saying U.S. officials had conducted walkthroughs jointly with Russian staff at all three sites to confirm that personnel had departed.
“These inspections were carried out to secure and protect the facilities and to confirm the Russian government had vacated the premises,” a State Department official said in an email statement.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Anthony F. Godfrey, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, to issue its protest.
The ministry claimed that the search of the Washington site could be used by U.S. special services for “anti-Russian provocations” by “planting compromised items.”
Aleksandr Stadnik, the Russian trade representative in the U.S. capital, was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying that U.S. authorities had taken control of the building in northwestern Washington as of 2 p.m. local time.
He accused Washington of “vandalism” and an illegal “attack on Russian property abroad.”
U.S. security officers could be seen strolling around inside the complex, which is surrounded by wrought-iron fencing, in the afternoon on September 2.
U.S. authorities have not publicly confirmed that they intend to search the premises.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on September 1 that unnamed U.S. agencies planned to conduct a search of its San Francisco consulate and some diplomatic residences the following day in what she called a “direct threat” to Russian citizens.
The ministry on September 2 published videos on its Facebook page that it said showed FBI officials searching the consulate.
The accuracy of that description could not immediately be confirmed.
In an apparent response to complaints from Russian officials that they were given only 48 hours to vacate homes used by diplomats and their families in San Francisco, U.S. officials said they had made “separate arrangements” to give families “sufficient time” to pack belongings and vacate apartments on the consulate grounds.
The State Department said it will control all access to the properties and take responsibility for security and maintenance at the sites.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in the week said his country would study the U.S. order to close the compounds and would decide later on its response.
Relations between Moscow and Washington are severely strained over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
Those tensions raise questions about potential cooperation between the two sides to settle wars in eastern Ukraine and Syria and to pressure North Korea over its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Around 75% of children and adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) also have sleep problems, but until now these have been thought to be separate issues.
Now a in a pulling together of the latest research, scientists are proposing of a new theory which says that much of ADHD may in fact be a problem associated with lack of regular circadian sleep.
Presenting the proposal at the ECNP Conference in Paris, Professor Sandra Kooij (Associate Professor of Psychiatry at VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam and founder and chair of the European Network Adult ADHD) said, “There is extensive research showing that people with ADHD also tend to exhibit sleep problems. What we are doing here is taking this association to the next logical step: pulling all the work together leads us to say that, based on existing evidence, it looks very much like ADHD and circadian problems are intertwined in the majority of patients.”
According to Kooij, “We believe this because the day and night rhythm is disturbed, the timing of several physical processes is disturbed, not only of sleep, but also of temperature, movement patterns, timing of meals, and so on.”
Kooij added that, “If you review the evidence, it looks more and more like ADHD and sleeplessness are 2 sides of the same physiological and mental coin”.
Professor Kooij laid out the links which have led to the synthesis:
In 75% of ADHD patients, the physiological sleep phase — where people show the physiological signs associated with sleep, such as changes in the level of the sleep hormone melatonin, and changes in sleep-related movement – is delayed by 1.5 hours.
Core body temperature changes associated with sleep are also delayed (reflecting melatonin changes)
Many sleep-related disorders are associated with ADHD, including restless-leg syndrome, sleep apnea, and the circadian rhythm disturbance, the delayed sleep phase syndrome
ADHD people often show greater alertness in the evening, which is the opposite of what is found in the general population
Many sufferers benefit from taking melatonin in the evening or bright light therapy in the morning, which can help reset the circadian rhythm
Recent work has shown that around 70% of adult ADHD sufferers show an oversensitivity of the eyes to light, leading many to wear sunglasses for long periods during the day – which may reinforce the problems associated with a ‘circadian shift’.
Chronic late sleep leads to a chronic sleep debt, associated with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. This cascade of negative health consequences may in part be preventable by resetting the sleep rhythm.
Professor Kooij continued: “We are working to confirm this physical-mental relationship by finding biomarkers, such as Vitamin D levels, blood glucose, cortisol levels, 24 hour blood pressure, heart rate variability, and so on. If the connection is confirmed, it raises the intriguing question: does ADHD cause sleeplessness, or does sleeplessness cause ADHD? If the latter, then we may be able to treat some ADHD by non-pharmacological methods, such as changing light or sleep patterns, and prevent the negative impact of chronic sleep loss on health.”
Kooij stressed that they aren’t saying that all ADHD problems are associated with these circadian patterns, but it looks increasingly likely that this is an important element.
Commenting, Professor Andreas Reif (University Hospital, Frankfurt, and leader of the EU CoCA project on ADHD ), who was not involved in the research, said, “A disturbance of the circadian system may indeed be a core mechanism in ADHD, which could also link ADHD to other mental illnesses such as depression or bipolar disorder. But also beyond these pathophysiological considerations, sleep problems and abnormalities of circadian rhythms are a huge problem for many patients, heavily impacting on their social life”
He continued, “More research into the interconnections between ADHD and the “inner clock” is thus very relevant to improve patients’ lives and to shed light on the disease mechanism of ADHD.”
In visual and print media, everyday we find highlighted news about rape, molestation, murder, suicide, dacoity as well as corruption.
Has the country become so bad that only such disturbing incidents are happening every day? Certainly, it is not so.
There are many achievements, praise worthy efforts, magnanimous acts happening in the country and thought provoking views that are rarely highlighted and many times not covered at all.
The fact is that the visual and print media chase only bad and disturbing news and progressive happenings are not of particular interest to them. Editors foolishly think that only coverage of sensational and disturbing news will help them to improve their circulation and sustain the interest of the viewers.
Unfortunately, most of the editors of visual and print media do not understand or do not care that exclusive highlighting of bad events affect the morale of the country men, shake the confidence of the people in the future of the country and embolden the corrupt persons and criminals to continue their activities and finally creating a condition where people particularly youth become insensitive to the negative happenings in the country.
It is high time that a movement should be launched in the social media against negativism in the Indian print and visual media.
![Graph 3[1]](http://i2.wp.com/www.eurasiareview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/kennedy-g3.png?resize=600%2C371)
