How did Neanderthals grow? Does modern man develop in the same way as Homo neanderthalensis did? How does the size of the brain affect the development of the body? A study led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher, Antonio Rosas, has studied the fossil remains of a Neanderthal child’s skeleton in order to establish whether there are differences between the growth of Neanderthals and that of sapiens.

According to the results of the article, which are published in Science, both species regulate their growth differently to adapt their energy consumption to their physical characteristics.

“Discerning the differences and similarities in growth patterns between Neanderthals and modern humans helps us better define our own history. Modern humans and Neanderthals emerged from a common recent ancestor, and this is manifested in a similar overall growth rate”, explains CSIC researcher, Antonio Rosas, from Spain’s National Natural Science Museum (MNCN). As fellow CSIC researcher Luis Ríos highlights, “Applying paediatric growth assessment methods, this Neanderthal child is no different to a modern-day child”. The pattern of vertebral maturation and brain growth, as well as energy constraints during development, may have marked the anatomical shape of Neanderthals.

Neanderthals had a greater cranial capacity than today’s humans. Neanderthal adults had an intracranial volume of 1,520 cubic centimetres, while that of modern adult man is 1,195 cubic centimetres. That of the Neanderthal child in the study had reached 1,330 cubic centimetres at the time of his death, in other words, 87.5% of the total reached at eight years of age. At that age, the development of a modern-day child’s cranial capacity has already been fully completed.

“Developing a large brain involves significant energy expenditure and, consequently, this hinders the growth of other parts of the body. In sapiens, the development of the brain during childhood has a high energetic cost and, as a result, the development of the rest of the body slows down,” Rosas explains.

Neanderthals and sapiens

The cost, in terms of energy, of anatomical growth of the modern brain is unusually high, especially during breastfeeding and during infancy, and this seems to require a slowing down of body growth. The growth and development of this juvenile Neanderthal matches the typical characteristics of human ontogeny, where there is a slow anatomical growth between weaning and puberty. This could compensate for the immense energy cost of developing such a large brain.

In fact, the skeleton and dentition of this Neanderthal present a physiology which is similar to that of a sapiens of the same age, except for the thorax area, which corresponds to a child between five and six years, in that it is less developed. “The growth of our Neanderthal child was not complete, probably due to energy saving”, explains CSIC researcher Antonio Rosas.

The only divergent aspect in the growth of both species is the moment of maturation of the vertebral column. In all hominids, the cartilaginous joints of the middle thoracic vertebrae and the atlas are the last to fuse, but in this Neanderthal, fusion occurred about two years later than in modern humans.

“The delay of this fusion in the vertebral column may indicate that Neanderthals had a decoupling of certain aspects in the transition from infancy to the juvenile phase. Although the implications are unknown, this feature could be related to the characteristic enlarged shape of the Neanderthal torso, or slower brain growth”, says Rosas.

The Neanderthal child

The protagonist of this study was 7.7 years old, weighed 26 kilos and measured 111 centimetres at the time of death. Although the genetic analyses failed to confirm the child’s sex, the canine teeth and the sturdiness of the bones showed that it to be a male. 138 pieces, 30 of them teeth (including some milk teeth), and part of the skeleton- including some fragments of the skull from the individual- identified as El Sidrón J1, have recovered.

The researchers have been able to establish that our protagonist was right-handed and was already performing adult tasks, such as using his teeth as a third hand to handle skins and plant fibres. In addition, they know who his mother was, and that the child protagonist of this investigation had a younger brother in the group. Furthermore, this child was found to have suffered from enamel hypoplasia when he was two or three years old. Hypoplasia (white spots on the teeth, especially visible in the upper incisors), occurs when the teeth have less enamel than normal, the cause usually being malnutrition or disease.

Discovered in 1994, the El Sidrón cave, located in Piloña (in Asturias, northern Spain) has provided the best collection of Neanderthals that exists on the Iberian Peninsula. The team has recovered the remains of 13 individuals from the cave. The group consisted of seven adults (four women and three men), three teenagers and three younger children.

Previous studies have been carried out by a multidisciplinary team led by the paleoanthropologist Antonio Rosas (CSIC’s National Museum of Natural Sciences), the geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, run by CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University) and by the archaeologist Marco de la Rasilla (University of Oviedo).

Millions of people are being subjected to “appalling” levels of slavery in India’s brick kiln industry, including endemic presence of debt-bondage and child slavery, a rights group says in a report released Sept. 20.

The report by Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest rights group, surveyed workers and brick kilns across Punjab, India, and found that the recruitment and payment systems underpin this cycle of slavery, trapping seasonal migrant workers in bonded labor year after year.

The report found that 96 percent of brick kiln moulders have taken loans and all had their low wages withheld for an entire season lasting eight to ten months; whilst having to work an average fourteen hour a day in the summer months.  Some 65 to 80 percent of children under 14 were working about nine hours a day in the summer months.

These practices affect a huge number of people, with at least 100,000 functioning brick kilns in India employing an estimated 23 million workers.

“We have found appalling levels of bonded labor and child labor in Indian brick kilns. Young children are working for nine hours a day in dusty air filled with chemicals rather than going to school, said Sarah Mount, Anti-Slavery International’s Asia Program Manager.

The report revealed that brick kiln workers are regularly cheated out of promised wages, live in cramped conditions and argues that the recruitment and payment systems are at the heart of the exploitation.

Jai Singh, director of Volunteers for Social Justice, Anti-Slavery International’s partner organisation in the research, said systemic change is needed.

“It is time that the government takes … responsibility and ends this exploitation that shouldn’t be taking place in the 21st century,” he said.

(RFE/RL) — Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, in his first address before the UN General Assembly on September 21, rejected the new U.S. war strategy in neighboring Afghanistan while praising China’s growing economic role in the region.

An important component of the White House’s recently unveiled strategy to try to win the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was a threat to withdraw aid and other support for Pakistan if Islamabad does not shut down what U.S. officials say are Afghan Taliban “safe havens” on its territory.

“Taliban ‘safe havens’ are located not in Pakistan, but in the large tracts of territory controlled by the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Abassi said, repeating Islamabad’s warning that Pakistani is “not prepared to be anyone’s scapegoat.”

Abassi said Islamabad is ready to work with Kabul to “end all cross-border attacks,” and it will continue pursuing its domestic war against terrorists, which he claimed has “cleared out tribal areas of almost all militant groups” at the cost of thousands of civilian and military lives.

“What Pakistan is not prepared to do is to fight the Afghan war on Pakistan’s soil. Nor can we endorse any failed strategy that will prolong and intensify the suffering of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.

“Apart from the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and its people have suffered the most from four decades of foreign intervention and civil wars in Afghanistan,” he said. “These wars have blighted our country with the flow of extremists and terrorists, guns and drugs as well as an influx of millions of refugees.”

“Having suffered and sacrificed so much,” he said, “it is especially galling for Pakistan to be blamed for the military or political stalemate in Afghanistan.”

Abassi asserted that neither side of the Afghan conflict will be able to win the war through military might, making peace negotiations the only way to end the 16-year conflict.

“No one desires peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan,” he said, noting that his country currently hosts over 3 million refugees from Afghanistan.

While criticizing White House policies in his speech without specifically naming the United States or U.S. President Donald Trump, Abassi spoke with warmth about China’s leader and Beijing’s growing role fostering economic growth in his country and the South Asian region.

“The vision of shared growth spelled out in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative offers a solid path to prosperity and a model of South-South cooperation worthy of emulation,” he said.

“Pakistan’s economy has recorded a remarkable revival in the past four years. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will further contribute to our economic upsurge,” he said.

“This will expand exponentially as the Pakistan-China partnership extends beyond energy and transportation to many other sectors,” he said. “Pakistan’s integration into the Eurasian Belt and Road network will provide a firm foundation for Pakistan’s rapid economic development.”

British commentator, comedian, and author Russell Brand has presented a short summation of some benefits from legalizing currently illegal drugs. Brand, in a new video commentary, presents the summation in response to Stephen Glover’s Wednesday editorial in the Daily Mail that criticizes Britain’s Prince William for questioning publicly if drugs should be legalized while visiting with illegal drug users.

Brand, in the video commentary, calls the prince a “rogue,” yet commends him for both “meeting with addicts” and “asking an intelligent question.” “My personal experience is making drugs illegal simply inconveniences addicts, turns addicts into criminals, and exacerbates the problems,” says Brand.

Continuing, Brand argues that, “by legalizing drugs, you would be able to address the problem at its essence — a mental health problem, a problem of need, a problem of loneliness and loss.” Also, in response to the editorial’s message that “parents groan” at the idea of legalization, Brand responds in part, “I’m a parent, and I think I’d rather my kid grew up in a world where drugs were legalized so we can have an honest, clear conversation.”

Given the scheduled October 3 release of Brand’s book Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, we can expect to hear more from Brand regarding the drug war and drug legalization in the coming weeks.

Watch Brand’s video commentary here.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Filip Rudic

Serbian President claims Donald Trump will visit Belgrade in 2018, after Trump reportedly told Aleksandar Vucic that he thought such a visit would be ‘a good idea’.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic claims US President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to Belgrade, after Trump reportedly told him a visit would be “a good idea”.

“If and when Trump will come – I am sure he will, but when – depends on his agenda and other things,” Vucic told the Serbian media.

Vucic was attending a reception on Wednesday that the US President and his wife Melania organized for world leaders who had gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly.

The Serbian President boasted that he shook Trump’s hand “four times”, and said that the US President’s visit was most likely to happen in 2018.

“When I gave the invitation … I spoke about the feelings that citizens of Serbia have for him, how they would welcome him, as well as the fact that his visit would show how much Serbians want this friendship,” Vucic told the press.

He added that Trump had told him he looked “like an NBA player” and asked him if he ever played basketball, to which Vucic answered that he was “too short and weak” and had tried to play in the past “without success”.

“I had a little more time than other guests to spend in his company, thanks to the chat we started, maybe also because I’m from the same region as his wife,” Vucic said, referring to Melania’s home country of Slovenia.

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

In a significant yet unexpected ‘arrival statement of sorts’ on the national scene without notice, Sri Lanka’s Northern Province Tamil Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran called on the Sinhala-Buddhist majority’s high priests in Kandy, and followed it up with a visit to the local prison, where some ex-LTTE militants were being held. At the much-publicised meeting with the Mahanayaka Theros of the Asigiriya and Malwatte Chapters and the Buddhist-clergy Sangha, the retired justice of the nation’s Supreme Court made out a case for ‘federalism’ as against the existing ‘unitary’ State character of the Constitution.

Wigneswaran’s current reiteration of his forgotten position in the matter assumes greater significance for more reasons than one. In his immediate surroundings, he is fighting a battle of nerves and of supremacy viz the traditional, moderate leadership of the ruling Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Comprising four Tamil parties and led eternally by the oldest, ‘Ilankkai Tamil Arasu Katchi’ (ITAK), otherwise known as the Federal Party (FP), the TNA is now facing a rebellion, with none other than Wigneswaran leading it from the front and all sides.

In this, Wigneswaran has the qualified backing of the three unsure non-ITAK partners in the uneven coalition, and also a vocal ‘Tamil civil society’ of his own making.  Some observers of the Tamil political scene in the island-nation dub the ‘Wiggy thinking’ as the post-war moderates’ equivalent of the youth militancy of the seventies, escalating into monolith LTTE terrorism, war, violence and ultimate defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan State and armed forces.

Some of them have already cited Wigneswaran taking with him hard-liner woman-minister of the Northern Province, Anandhi Sasidharan, wife of a missing LTTE second-liner, whom the Chief Minister inducted into his Board of Ministers, defying the existing TNA ban on her. Some of them are miffed at the Buddhist prelates allowing her onto their presence.

 ‘Unitary’ phrase, character

“Federalism is not a call for division of the island. We demand devolution in an undivided country,” Wigneswaran reportedly told an astonished Sangha, which had no immediate response to offer – either in support or Opposition. Obviously, they wanted to be seen as not having patience to hear other views, not stopping with their own hard-line Sinhala-Buddhist ideas and ideology in the matter. Incidentally, this is not the first time that the Chief Minister is talking about federalism as different from separation. He did so in the northern Vanni in April 2016, and also before and after that, but they were seen only as a hard-line position.

“We have no intention of dividing the country,” Wigneswaran added, for effect, armed as he was with a Tamil civil society document prepared at his instance – and not the official TNA submission, made to the relevant sub-committee of the nation’s Constituent Assembly. The declared TNA position of relative recent origin is that the Tamil people were ready to have the ‘Unitary’ word continue in the Constitution, as long as their demands for ‘power-sharing’ were effectively addressed.

Not a bad word: SC

What makes the distinction between Wigneswaran’s earlier pronouncements and the present one is not just the setting and his seeking to claim the upper-hand in intra-Tamil politics. Anyway, it has been the traditional position of the ITAK, whose anglicised title, ‘Federal Party’, says it all. A less-publicised Supreme Court verdict in early August this year declared that ‘federal demand’ is not the same as a demand for separation’, implying that ‘federalism’ was not a ‘bad word’ under Sri Lankan laws and the Constitution.

“Advocating for a federal form of government within the existing State could not be considered as advocating separatism,” the Supreme Court said. So saying, the three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Priyasath Dep upheld the existing Election Commission (EC) recognition for the ITAK, challenged by a Sinhala citizen in 2014. It is another matter that then Chief Justice, K Sripavan, a Tamil by birth, had recused himself from hearing the case though his predecessor, Mohan Peiris and current incumbent Dep, saw it fit for the CJ to be presiding over the Bench.

Incidentally, as Canada-based Sri Lankan Tamil journalist-columnist D B S Jeyaraj brought out in his fortnightly analysis in Colombo-based Daily Mirror, the Supreme Court verdict came on August 8, 2017, the 34^th anniversary of the Sixth Amendment.

In dismissing the petition against the ITAK, the Supreme Court declined to accept his submission that the phrase, ‘Inaipaatchi’, the 2008 Tamilised version of the original ITAK bye-laws of 1949 in Sanskritised-Tamil, did not tantamount to a demand for ‘confederation’, which again the petitioner had equated to an anti-thesis to the existing ‘Unitary’ character of the Constitution. The equivalent Tamil word in the original was ‘samashti’. The court also cited the ITAK counter-affidavit, which referred to other translations of the kind between the original and the 2008 version, and pointed out that the Government’s Official Translation Department had also concurred with the ITAK submission in the matter.

On substantive issues before the Supreme Court, the bench observed that “there is a clear distinction between words ‘federation’ and ‘confederation’… The labelling of States as Unitary and Federal sometimes may be misleading. There could be Unitary States with features or attributes of a Federal State and vice versa…Therefore, sharing of sovereignty, devolution of power and decentralisation will pave the way for a federal form of government within a Unitary State.” The judgment referred to the India-facilitated Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and said it (only) “devolved powers on the Provinces”.

Indian concerns

From a purely contemporary Sri Lankan perspective, the Supreme Court verdict has not only distinguished between ‘federalism’ and ‘separation’, but also between ‘federalism’ and ‘confederation’, possibly indicating that the latter was closer to ‘separation’. This could become a problem for Wigneswaran in particular, as among his civil society allies are traditional political parties like the Ceylon Tamil Congress (CTC), the forerunner even to the ITAK, whose present-day leaders have been talking about ‘confederation’ as an ‘acceptable alternative’ to ‘separation’.

From the perspective of the Sri Lankan state and the majority Sinhala polity, any going back to the days prior to 13-A, even as a negotiations-point, could open the Pandora’s Box, where even innocuous phrases like ‘federalism’ stood for ‘separation’, even in the then prevailing Tamil mindset.

From the Indian side, the real concerns about Wigneswaran’s possible rise in the Tamil political firmament in the southern neighbourhood should not be about what is happening out there, but who his real backers, especially among the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) Diaspora, are. Going a step further and farther from its continued wooing of Tamil Nadu politicos and peripheral pan-Tamil radical groups on the lines of the extinct LTTE parent, the self-styled ‘trans-national government of Tamil eelam’ (TGTE) has since condemned the ‘NEET-induced suicide’ of medical-aspirant Antia in the south Indian State.

The TGTE, with its self-styled ‘prime minister’ Visuwanathan Rudrakumaran, a professional lawyer and American citizen based in the US, otherwise a strategic ally of India, has also gone a step further to institute a scholarship in the name of Anita, the Tamil Nadu girl who recently committed suicide over the medical entrance exam issue.  They have, however, not announced it. In the end-years, as may be recalled, the LTTE had extended/forced scholarships for young SLT boys and girls to acquire higher/professional education overseas, a more benign way of recruiting them for eternity.

Most Sri Lankan State and Sinhala majority concerns over the SLT demand for federalism flow from their continued anxieties that it may be only the beginning of separation, and not end thereof. In earlier negotiations with the Government of the day, both the Tamil moderates and the LTTE have not accepted any checks-and-balance approach of the Indian kind, for the Union to devolve more powers and repose greater trust on the States.

The Tamil moderates, as much as the defunct LTTE, had consistently opposed all moves for an equivalent of India’s Article 356, for the dismissal of ‘errant State Governments’ and the dissolution of the respective State Assemblies’. Their combined knowledge, understanding and hence acceptance of the post-Bommai verdict (Supreme Court of India, 1994) Indian position for suo motu judicial attestation of any presidential initiative under Article 356 is also next to nil.

Alongside such concerns, the Sri Lankan State and more so the Sinhala-Buddhist hard-liners are even more worked up about the possibilities of their own Tamil political leadership typing up with their ‘umbilical cord’ brethren across the Palk Strait, in Tamil Nadu, to claim a ‘greater Tamil eelam’, if only in the distant future.

Considering that neither India, not even the US host, have not recognised anything even remotely close to the TGTE – and have continued to ban the LTTE – swift and sure action is required at the earliest, if TGTE-like groups were not to use the ‘Anita episode’ as a trial-balloon, and further their cause, reach and presence, in India, too.

In the midst of all this comes reports from Geneva, where UNHRC chief, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has declared, almost threateningly that “the absence of credible action in Sri Lanka to ensure accountability for alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law makes the exercise of universal jurisdiction even more necessary”.  From inside Sri Lanka, the immediate Sinhala-majority and Sri Lankan State concerns are that with blessings of the UNHRC kind and continuing confusing signals from the Government in Colombo, the Northern Provincial Council, under Wigneswaran’s control, could well end up passing a resolution in the matter and/or set up an independent war-crimes probe of its own

Such concerns have only increased, what with the controversial war-time army commander and present-day Central Minister, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, charging his successor, Lt-Gen Jagath Jayasuriya, with committing ‘war crimes’ and offering to offer testimony to the effect. This has already caused ripples, both within the armed forces, with incumbent commander, Lt-Gen Mahesh Senanayake, considered a Fonseka loyalist, telling his former boss, not to bring in his personal prejudices into the matter.

The Government itself has stopped with distancing itself from Fonseka’s comments. In a similar matter pertaining to the China-funded Hambantota Port, the senior UNP partner of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe got SLFP President, Maithiripala Sirisena, to sack the former’s party colleague, Wijeydasa Rajapakshe as the Ports Minister. Incidentally, Fonseka is at present a member of the UNP and a ‘Nominated MP’ of the party, apart from holding organisational posts, as well.

Recently, Turkey signed an agreement with Russia to purchase the S-400 Triumf air defence system. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Turkish media that Ankara has put down a deposit of US$2.5 billion on the sale after it found options from Western countries “too expensive.”Turkey will receive two S-400 batteries under the deal.

Many observers view the S-400 deal as a part of increasing military and political ties between Turkey and Russia and gradual estrangement between this key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and Western powers. Turkey has the second-largest army within NATO. This article examines the implications of the S-400 deal in the context of regional strategic dynamics.

The S-400 and NATO

Manufactured by the Russian arms firm Almaz-Antey, the S-400 system has a range of 400km (248 miles) and can shoot down up to 80 targets simultaneously, aiming two missiles at each target. It is a highly potent weapon system developed after the S-300 series of surface-to-air missiles and was first deployed by Russia in 2007. Russia also deployed the S-400 at the Hmeimim air force base near Latakia, Syria, in December 2015 after Turkish jets shot down a Russian Su-24 warplane on the Syria-Turkey border. The incident caused a major diplomatic rift between Moscow and Ankara, which was ‘remedied’ months later by President Erdoğan during a trip to St Petersburg.

It appears that NATO was not informed about the S-400 deal. The alliance reacted sceptically to the decision, saying the system was not compatible with its air defence systems as no NATO ally currently operates the S-400. However, some observers are viewing Turkey’s missile deal as a rebuff to NATO after the US and Germany withdrew Patriot air defence batteries from the country.

In 2015, Turkey urged its NATO allies to keep their Patriot batteries positioned on the Turkish-Syrian border. At that time, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US all had their missile systems deployed in Turkey. Currently, only Spain’s Patriot and Italy’s Aster SAMP/T batteries remain in Turkey, both of which are under NATO’s command and are integrated into the alliance’s air defence system. If the S-400 are procured, Turkey could have an air defence system operating outside NATO command.

Earlier in 2013, Turkey announced that a Chinese firm had won the bid to supply an air defence system, the FD-2000. However, in 2015, the US$3.4 billion deal was shelved entirely as a result of strong reactions from NATO members, primarily the US, due to questions of security and compatibility with NATO’s air defence framework.

Geopolitical Implications

The decision to buy the S-400, which will pose compatibility issues during its integration into NATO’s air defence system, appears to be less operational and more strategic. It is no surprise that Russia felt that the S-400 contract with Turkey was “strictly compatible with our [Russia’s] strategic interests.”

While Turkey has been establishing closer links with Russia after its recent souring of ties with the US and the EU, the former also objects to US military support for the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG) Syrian Kurdish rebels, who are linked to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. The S-400 deal also took place before the next round of the Astana Process talks on Syria being held in Kazakhstan. The US, which has observer status at the talks, has been ‘locked-out’ from being the lead player in the process that is being driven by the interests of Iran, Turkey, and Russia.

Turkey’s neighbourhood is increasingly taking on a pro-Russia hue, with several of its neighbours improving their relations with Russia. Strengthened ties with Moscow are becoming an ever more important goal for Ankara, as Turkey no longer expects as much support from the US and the EU. With US lawmakers seeking to withhold the sale of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Turkey, it remains to be seen how the US will react to these developments, including by leveraging the new sanctions bill that imposes restrictions on US allies who buy Russian weapons.

The Indian Context

India is another potential customer of the Russian S-400 air defence weapon system, as is China. India may note with some concern that the Turkish S-400 deal includes Russian consent to jointly produce the second of the two batteries purchased by Turkey. Pakistan and Turkey share a strong and active military relationship that includes arms purchases and weapon systems development. At the same time, arms purchases form a significant component of the India-Russia strategic partnership.

As Turkey moves closer towards Russia and further away from the West and NATO, it may increase its involvement in Central and South Asia, competing for influence with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Furthermore, a stronger Russia-Turkey relationship could constrain the scope of common interests shared by both India and Russia, complicating India’s strategic choices in its neighbourhood.

This article was published at IPCS

By Nopur Siingh*

The current East Asian security dynamics have two determinants. The first is the challenge posed by North Korea’s aggressive nuclear and missile development programmes coupled with direct threats to the US, and the second is the rise of China as a regional power. The complications arising from these factors in the region are further exacerbated by the US’ inevitable and constantly increasing involvement and military presence.

The US and China have long been strategic adversaries. This, in the backdrop of the Trump administration trying to deter the North Korean regime and China’s aspirations to regional supremacy, magnifies the underlying US-China arms race into a regional ballistic and nuclear race. This, in turn, makes East Asia even more volatile to conflict than the Korean crisis alone did.

The lack of a substantive Chinese participation in reigning North Korea in while maintaining bilateral trade relations, could be attributed to three factors:

a) A cost-benefit analysis where DPRK stands as an asset for China
b) Concerns that measures like a trade embargo could lead to a fellow Communist regime’s collapse
c) Fears that the frayed relations with North Korea could be exposed.

Of these, China’s cost-benefit analysis is being severely disturbed by Pyongyang’s frequent nuclear threats to the US and allies which necessitates a reaction from the US – both to protect its local interests and those of its allies, South Korea and Japan. This is in the form of increasing weapons, missile defence systems and troop’ deployment. Currently, 40,000 US troops in Japan and 37,000 in South Korea are stationed on duty. The most immediate demonstration comes in the form of two US B-1B advanced bombers and four F-35B stealth jets flying over the Korean peninsula in a live-weapon, military flight/joint bombing drill/mock bombing military exercise with South Korean F-15K fighters. In addition are a joint urban warfare and frontline rescue drills withthe Japanese military as well as more fighter deployments to the peninsula. The long-term deployments have been the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea and the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system and Aegis Ashore system in Japan.

This now means the three powers are accumulating a formidable air defence system capable of intercepting a significant part of the North Korea’s ballistic missile arsenal. While these deployments can easily be explained as static defensive deployments, the Republic Of Korea Navy (ROKN) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) in addition to the United States Navy (USN) are also significantly bolstering their naval Aegis fleets with ballistic missile interception capabilities. This cumulative force is far greater than what is needed to counter North Korea and naturally becomes a threat for China. Since force is fungible – the fact remains that any missile system capable of intercepting North Korean missiles is also capable of intercepting Chinese missiles, thus pronouncing a threat to China’s strategic missile system.

China has tried to maintain an active and diverse ballistic missile development programme, upgrading its missile forces in number, capability, and type. China has said it will conduct live-fire drills and test new weapons to safeguard its security in response to the US deployment of THAAD in South Korea. This illustrates that improving US missile defence capabilities influence the development of China’s nuclear forces. According to World Nuclear Forces, China has 270 warheads in stockpile that is a minuscule number as against 4,480 in the US stockpile. However several reports hint at a rough estimation of around 500 warheads or higher.

Although the true sophistication of Chinese missile defence technology remains unclear, it possesses approximately 1,200 conventionally armed short range ballistic missiles (SRBM), 300-400 medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM), and an estimated 81 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Traditionally ,China maintained few ICBMs, concentrating instead on IRBMs as these were much more useful in the high-threat situation around its periphery. However, presently, the issue is all these missiles, being an intermediate range, come within the terminal velocities that THAAD and Aegis Ashore are intended to shoot down. This effectively blunts Chinese deterrence calculations and forces it to either innovate on countermeasures or simply expand its arsenal.

The missile and nuclear expansion are now happening in two ways – the first is the expansion of and investment in new ICBMs and the second is the investment in asymmetric technologies. The first investment reinforces deterrence against the US, and the second set enables accurate conventional strikes against large and threatening naval formations that would have previously required tactical nuclear weapons to take out. The first part of this expansion is visible in the newly unveiled DONG FENG(DF)-31AG ICBM, which can carry multiple warheads, meaning the actual number of ICBMs becomes less important as several warheads can be used to overcome anti-ballistic missiles (ABM).

Irrespective, it is also developing two new ICBMs – the DF-41 land-based missile with a possible range of 15,000 km and the submarine based Jù Làng-2 (JL-2) with an estimated range of around 8-9,000 km. This gives China a potent combination of first and second strike capability when taken in its totality. The second part of the expansion – a new way of dealing with regional powers – is evident in the continuing development of ‘carrier-killer’ ballistic missile to threaten US’ fleet of aircraft carriers. It has also recently successfully tested a hypersonic glide weapon – DF-ZF – for the seventh time, and is accumulating a force of well over 1,500 ground launched cruise missiles.

Developments in China’s nuclear deterrent cannot be ignored given the aggressive progress of the conflict between North Korea and the US. The build-up of US assets now and the direct costs it imposes on China’s own defence mean that Beijing’s cost-benefit analysis may have to change. The current Chinese missile investments indicate that it is based on a revised cost-benefit analysis; that China is now retooling its missile forces to re-establish deterrence and deal with a new, possibly more hostile threat environment. Clearly then this is not a Chinese government that does not approve of North Korea’s actions but rather one that was caught unawares and too early by North Korean actions which it quite possibly deemed inevitable.

* Nopur Siingh
Research Intern, IPCS

By Harry Blain*

April 2, 2013 was an unusually happy day at UN headquarters in New York. After years of pressure from civil society groups, the General Assembly adopted a new treaty establishing “the highest possible common standards” for regulating the “international trade in conventional arms.”

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was variously described as a “landmark agreement” (by British Prime Minister David Cameron), “ground-breaking” (by Oxfam), and “a direct win that will help save thousands of lives” (by Amnesty International).

There were good reasons for optimism, with two major victories standing out: the enthusiastic backing of the British government and the United States’ reversal of its long-standing opposition to arms trade regulation. Yet since then, neither of these major arms exporters has reduced weapons sales, nor seriously regulated them.

Instead, their arms companies have cashed in on perhaps the world’s worst humanitarian disaster — the Saudi-led destruction of Yemen.

There, bombings led by the Saudis and backed by the U.S. have left thousands of civilians dead, precipitated a cholera crisis that’s infected thousands, and brought the Arab world’s already poorest country to the brink of famine. Yet neither Washington nor London has turned off the spigot of arms to the Saudi coalition.

What went wrong?

An Unprecedented Achievement

When it was passed, the Arms Trade Treaty was without precedent. Uniquely, it focused on so-called “conventional” weapons — from small arms and light weapons to battle tanks, combat aircraft, and armored vehicles — which do most of the world’s killing and maiming but haven’t received the same international attention as their nuclear, biological, or chemical cousins.

Article Six of the ATT boldly declares that a state should not transfer conventional arms if it has knowledge “that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.”

The fact that a treaty containing this language passed the General Assembly by an overwhelming 154 votes to 3 — and has since been ratified by 89 UN member states — is a testament to the tremendous efforts of the Control Arms campaign that lobbied for it since 2003.

However, the most recent appraisal of the treaty published by Control Arms on September 11 strikes a mixed tone. It highlights “encouraging signs,” including better reporting of arms sales at the national level and the limitation of exports to South Sudan, where a ghastly civil war has given way to famine. Yet the review also describes how, in conflict-zones worldwide, “ongoing arms transfers are playing an acute destabilizing role – nowhere more so than in Yemen.”

Yemen, it continues, represents “one of the most urgently concerning cases in which arms transfers have continued despite information of clear risk of negative consequences.” No fewer than 19 state parties and three signatories continue to export “arms, ammunition parts, and components to Saudi Arabia” despite “mounting evidence” of war crimes. Each of these states is consciously undermining a treaty that they were praising so effusively four-and-a-half years ago.

Record-Setting Arms Sales

Britain and the United States have led the way.

In April 2014, Britain ratified the ATT, with the government promising that it would build on the UK’s “robust” licensing regulations. By December the following year, this claim was tested in a 91-page comprehensive legal opinion on arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

The British government, the authors argued, was “placing undue reliance on Saudi assurances that they are complying with international law” in Yemen, even though these assurances were “not supported by independent evidence from reliable sources.” Their conclusion was clear: “the UK Government has misdirected itself in fact and law in relation to its obligations arising under the ATT.”

While Britain licensed $3.7 billion worth of arms sales in the first year of the Saudi air campaign, the United Nations documented 119 Saudi-led sorties violating international humanitarian law, including airstrikes on targets such as refugee camps, weddings, buses, medical facilities, schools, and mosques. At the same time, as the director of Physicians for Human Rights has put it, the Saudi-led coalition has sought to “weaponize” disease by imposing a harsh blockade which has deepened Yemen’s cholera and malnutrition crises.

If Britain has disregarded the Arms Trade Treaty, then the United States — which is a signatory but not a party — has been even more dismissive. In May, President Trump sealed the largest arms deal in American history with Saudi Arabia, helping the State Department to set an all-time record for arms sales in the 2017 fiscal year.

Yet President Obama — who signed the ATT and attempted to get it through Congress — was if anything even more complicit in the destruction of Yemen, providing the Saudis with almost unquestioned support from March 2015, when the bombing started, to the end of his second term.

During the Obama era, Human Rights Watch cited numerous examples of U.S.-produced weapons striking civilian targets in Yemen, including a March 2016 attack on Mastaba market, which killed at least 97 civilians, and an October 2016 attack on a funeral hall which killed over 100. By the time he left office, President Obama had “overseen more sales of military weaponry than any other president,” Mother Jones reports. Saudi Arabia was among the top five customers.

A False Distinction

With such obvious disregard of its core principles, the Arms Trade Treaty is looking toothless. Critics anticipated this in 2013, pointing to the treaty’s lack of proper enforcement mechanisms. This, however, is a charge that can be made against all international treaties, which ultimately rely on the actions of self-interested and often duplicitous governments.

Instead, there’s a deeper problem with the ATT: its insistence on distinguishing between the “legitimate” and “illicit” arms trade. The treaty pledges to “eradicate” the latter, while protecting the former.

Although the black-market gun runner makes for a good movie plot, the biggest and most lethal arms dealers are governments. Legal sanctions don’t make a missile less deadly — as any Yemeni will tell you. Twenty-six countries legally sold weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war, as the two countries nearly bled each other to death. And — at least according to the UK high court — there’s nothing illegal about selling weapons to the Saudi regime as it crushes its far poorer neighbor.

This is the “legitimate” face of the international arms trade. Until it is seriously confronted — nationally and globally — noble efforts like the Arms Trade Treaty will fail.

*Harry Blain is a PhD student at the City University of New York majoring in International Relations. 

By Drew Armstrong*

On June 28th, 2015, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a Dragon resupply ship not into space, but rather into the Atlantic Ocean. It was a catastrophic failure that cost taxpayers $112 million. The payload that was meant to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) went up in a huge plume of smoke and flames. However, even though SpaceX did not complete their mission, they still received all but twenty percent of the full payment. Standard NASA protocol is to release a report on every launch accident, but to this day — two years later — there is still no formal statement as to what went wrong on the SpaceX accident.

Per NASA, there won’t be one released anytime soon. The Agency recently announced that it will in fact not publicly release a report on their investigation into the disastrous explosion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. They had originally committed to reporting their results by the summer of 2017, but have instead passed the buck to the FAA.

“Since it was an FAA licensed flight, NASA is not required to complete a formal final report or public summary, and has deferred any additional products related to the matter at this time,” the agency’s Public Affairs Office (PAO) stated. “The data is important for historical purposes, but the mishap involved a version of the Falcon 9 rocket, the version 1.1, that is now no longer in use.” Apparently, the fact that SpaceX is no longer using that version of the Falcon 9 after this $112 million “mishap” of taxpayer funds means the American taxpayers have no right to know what happened. Strangely, that storyline did not work for a competing firm’s similar failure that occurred eight months prior.

On Oct. 28th, 2014, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket was loaded with NASA Supplies aboard a Cygnus cargo ship worth $51 million bound for the ISS. Upon lift-off, the booster exploded, and the payload was lost, severely damaging the launch pad. Just like the SpaceX flight, the Orbital rocket was an official FAA-Licensed commercial launch. Both the Antares and the Falcon 9 launches were conducted under the same NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. And just like the Falcon 9, the Antares was part of an expiring line of rockets. Yet, NASA completed and published an executive summary within one year of the Antares incident.

The smell of hypocrisy has never been so potent.

After the report on the Antares accident was released, the explosion was traced to a failure of a turbo pump on an aging AJ26 first stage engine that was originally built for the Soviet Union’s lunar program more than 40 years earlier. Two months after the accident, Orbital announced it would replace the AJ26 engines with newly manufactured RD-181 engines which would require substantial modifications to Antares. The company learned from its mistake, as it should have been expected to do.

The same cannot be said for SpaceX. The only report NASA has made public regarding the Falcon 9 accident was an audit conducted by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. This report focused only on the loss of Dragon on NASA’s resupply program. The audit spent less than one page discussing the cause of the accident without presenting any conclusions.

This glaring hypocrisy between the handling of the Orbital and the SpaceX cases has not gone unnoticed. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote a letter just after the SpaceX accident to NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, expressing his belief that this “discrepancy … raises questions about not only the equity and fairness of NASA’s process for initiating independent accident investigations, but also the fidelity of the investigations themselves.”

The lack of a full investigation into the SpaceX Falcon 9 accident begs the question: Why is SpaceX given such preferential treatment? It appears that NASA is playing favorites with SpaceX. Considering the high risk and astronomical cost of the space program, shouldn’t all those involved be held to the highest standards?

Instead of getting to the bottom of the problems leading up to the SpaceX explosion, NASA responded by giving SpaceX a new long-term contract. The contract included discounted prices for future cargo missions and other “significant considerations,” but it still gives the impression that NASA has chosen to reward failure. The whole process raises questions about how NASA handles launch failure investigations, manages risk for cargo flights, and assigns cargo for those missions — not to mention their standards of accountability to the taxpayers that are funding the space program.

While there is no doubt that SpaceX has implemented some innovative, cost-cutting solutions for NASA, it should not be held to a different set of standards. Over the years, there have been various amendments proposed to completely ban the use of the company’s competition. For instance, in the FY 2018 NDAA, the House Armed Service Committee has proposed limiting funding for Russian rocket engines, as well as funding for new launch vehicles and launch vehicle systems. Competitors like the United Launch Alliance (ULA) are working on new, competitive evolved expendable launch vehicles (EELVs) that use American-made rockets, but the NDAA in its current form would kill their progress and give SpaceX a monopoly.

About the author:
*Drew Armstrong, a graduate of California State Fullerton, is a freelance political journalist based out of Orange County, California.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By George W. Croner*

(FPRI) — Amidst the myriad political issues dominating the congressional calendar, Congress faces a decision on renewing the FISA Amendments Act^[1] originally enacted in 2008, extended in 2012, and now set to expire on December 31, 2017.

Among the provisions up for renewal is Section 702 (50 U.S.C. § 1881a) of the FAA titled “Procedures for Targeting Certain Persons Outside the United States Other Than United States Persons.” Since it was passed by Congress in 2008, the collection program conducted under Section 702 (the “Section 702 Program”) has steadily grown to become arguably the most significant collection tool available to the U.S. Intelligence Community. By 2011, the National Security Agency (NSA), the agency responsible for conducting the nation’s signals intelligence activities, was acquiring more than 250 million internet communications each year pursuant to Section 702.^[2] By 2014, it was estimated that more than 25 percent of all foreign intelligence reports issued by NSA concerning counterterrorism included information based in whole or in part on Section 702 collection.^[3] Although similar calibrations of Section 702’s value remain classified, neither the volume of Section 702 collection nor its ubiquity in intelligence reporting is likely to have diminished since 2014.

Yet, despite its apodictic value as an intelligence tool, Section 702 has its critics who insist that it transcends constitutional bounds and that Congress should allow the program either to lapse or renew it only with significant changes.^[4] This paper examines the historical antecedents of Section 702, the concepts underlying the statutory language used in Section 702, and the actual operation of the Section 702 Program in the context of the constitutional debate that surrounds it to conclude that there is no compelling reason for Congress to materially disturb the statute as written, or the Section 702 Program as conducted by the Intelligence Community.

A Brief Review of the Evolution of Authority to Conduct Electronic Surveillance for Foreign Intelligence Purposes

Under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president is designated as the commander in chief of the armed forces and the principal actor for the Nation in the protection of its national security and the conduct of its foreign affairs. Until the 1960s, presidents relied upon this constitutional authority as the basis for authorizing, without a warrant or the involvement of the courts, electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.

In 1968, responding in part to a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions impacting the use of electronic surveillance as a law enforcement tool, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act.^[5] This law established a specific statutory framework governing the use of electronic surveillance for law enforcement purposes and making such surveillance subject to prior court order predicated upon a detailed application and carefully circumscribed conditions of use. Reflecting the unsettled division of authority between governmental branches in the area of foreign intelligence matters, a proviso to Title III disclaimed that any provision in the act was intended to “limit the constitutional power of the President to take such measures as he deems necessary to protect the Nation against actual or potential attack . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States, or to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities.” 18 U.S.C. § 2511(3).

In U.S. v. U.S. District Court (the “Keith” case),^[6] the Supreme Court considered the legality of an Attorney General-authorized warrantless surveillance of a U.S. citizen accused of bombing a CIA office building. The Court ruled that the above-cited proviso in § 2511 was merely a disclaimer of congressional intent to define presidential powers in matters affecting national security and did not represent a blanket grant of authority to conduct warrantless national security surveillance. With this as a predicate, the Keith Court concluded that electronic surveillance in domestic security matters must comply with Title III standards requiring a warrant, but the Court specifically declined to address the scope of the president’s authority to authorize electronic surveillance in matters relating to foreign powers or their agents.^[7] Thus, Keith represented the first departure from unfettered executive discretion in the conduct of electronic surveillance arguably related to national security. After Keith, at least in cases of domestic security investigations, a warrant was required.

Subsequent congressional investigations in the 1970s, principally through the inquiries of the “Pike Committee” in the House of Representatives and the “Church Committee” in the Senate,^[8] led to further calls for controls over executive discretion in the conduct of intelligence activities. Two particular NSA programs, Project Shamrock and Project Minaret,^[9] were revealed to involve the acquisition of the communications of U.S. persons without warrant or any judicial oversight. In response to these and other revelations, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (“FISA”)^[10] which sought to provide judicial oversight for the conduct of electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.

An Overview of FISA’s Requirements

Subject to certain prescribed statutory exceptions,^[11] FISA is “the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance and the interception of domestic wire, oral or electronic communications may be conducted.”^[12] In FISA, “electronic surveillance” is a defined term requiring the acquisition of the contents of a wire or radio communication by the use of an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device.^[13] As originally enacted in 1978, FISA’s scope embraced the conduct of electronic surveillance (as defined in the statute) for foreign intelligence purposes in the United States. FISA mandated that (with certain exceptions) such surveillance be conducted only pursuant to an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)^[14] based upon an application by an appropriate federal official with such order issuing only after a finding by the FISC (1) that there was probable cause to believe that the target of the surveillance was a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; (2) that each of the facilities at which the surveillance was directed was being used or about to be used by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, and (3) that the minimization procedures proposed for use with the surveillance satisfied FISA’s standards.^[15] In terms of the substantive standards governing the conduct of electronic surveillance, FISA remained largely unchanged until 2008.

Consequently, as originally structured in 1978, Congress excluded three types of foreign intelligence collection from FISA: (1) electronic communications outside U.S. borders; (2) intelligence collection inside the U.S. and abroad that fell outside the statutory definition of “electronic surveillance;” and (3) incidental collection of U.S. person communications.

Electronic Surveillance in the Aftermath of 9/11 Leads to Passage of the FISA Amendments Act

While FISA remained substantively static over the next three decades, world events and evolving telecommunications did not.

Telecommunications technology and accompanying changes in infrastructure altered the communications environment in ways unanticipated when FISA was enacted in 1978. For example, FISA contemplated an environment in which most local (i.e., domestic) communications would be carried by wire while the majority of international communications would be transmitted via radio.^[16] By the early 2000s, however, the shift to undersea cables (generally fiber optic) for international communications and the vastly expanded domestic cellular network had essentially reversed FISA’s technological assumptions deleteriously impacting the NSA’s ability to conduct its signals intelligence mission, especially given the dramatically different threat environment captured in its most horrid manifestation in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.^[17]

In an effort to address the intelligence needs directed towards the terrorist threat environment following those September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly implemented the highly classified President’s Surveillance Program which included a component known as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (TSP), codenamed Stellar Wind, in which the NSA collected both the contents of certain international communications and in bulk non-content (i.e., “metadata”) about telephone and internet communications.

In 2005, public disclosures of the existence of the TSP led the government to pursue authorization for the program from the FISC but certain restrictions in the FISC’s approval of the collection created, in the government’s view, an “intelligence gap” prompting the government to pursue legislative authorization for the program. Moreover, the government also had found that the fluidity of suspected terrorists’ movements and the rapidity with which they changed communications facilities were proving difficult to address under the existing FISA structure that required, for a FISA order, a probable cause showing that the suspected terrorist was an agent of a foreign power and was using or about to use a particular communications facility.

Given the inefficiencies perceived by the government in obtaining FISC approval for continued TSP collection, in the spring of 2007, the Bush administration proposed modifications to FISA. The Director of National Intelligence informed Congress that FISC modifications to the program had resulted in “degraded” acquisition of communications.^[18] This, combined with reports of a “heightened terrorist threat environment,” accelerated Congress’ consideration of these proposals.^[19] In August 2007, Congress passed and the president signed the Protect America Act of 2007, a legislative forerunner to what is now Section 702 of FISA. The Protect America Act was a temporary measure that was set to expire 180 days after its enactment.^[20]

Shortly after passage of the Protect America Act, the government renewed its efforts to replace it with a more permanent statute. Initially, efforts became deadlocked over the issue of immunity for telecommunications providers, many of which were in litigation focused on their cooperation with the TSP. Congress finally agreed to provide telecommunications providers with blanket, retroactive immunity and, in July 2008, the legislature enacted the FISA Amendments Act.^[21]

With the passage of the FAA, the government transitioned the collection activities that had been conducted under the Protect America Act to the authority of Section 702 and, where appropriate, other sections of the FAA. The provisions of the FAA were renewed in December 2012^[22] with a sunset provision mandating that, absent further legislative action, the FAA will expire on December 31, 2017.

About the author:
*George W. Croner previously served as principal litigation counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency. He is also a retired director and shareholder of the law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C., where he remains Of Counsel, and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
^[1] Officially titled the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008” and referred to in this paper as the “FISA Amendments Act” or the “FAA.”

^[2] Memorandum Opinion [Caption Redacted], [Docket No. Redacted], 2011 WL 10945618, at *10 (FISC October 3, 2011) (“Bates October 2011 Op., 2011 WL 10945618, at __”).

^[3] Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Report on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hereafter, the “PCLOB Report”), July 2, 2014, at 10.

^[4] See, e.g., Laura K. Donohue, “The Case for Reforming Section 702 of U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 26, 2017 (“Section 702 violates citizens’ rights, creates a situation ripe for abuse, and undermines the balance of power between the branches of government.”).

^[5] Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act governing the use of electronic surveillance is contained at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2520.

^[6] 407 U.S. 297 (1972)

^[7] Id. at 321-322.

^[8] Officially, the “Pike Committee” was the colloquial name for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the “Church Committee” was the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.

^[9] Project Shamrock had NSA receiving daily access to copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting international telegrams via Western Union, RCA and ITT. Project Minaret involved the creation of ‘watch lists’ with NSA collecting the electronic communications of those persons contained on the ‘watch lists.’ Neither Shamrock nor Minaret was conducted with any sort of warrant or judicial oversight.

^[10] 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801, et. seq.

^[11] All of the exceptions relate to the conduct of electronic surveillance in connection with law enforcement which is the subject of chapters 119, 121, and 206 of Title 18, U.S. Code.

^[12] 50 U.S.C. § 1812.

^[13] 50 U.S.C. § 1801(f).

^[14] FISA created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (“FISCR”) as part of its statutory scheme. The FISC consisted of 7 (later expanded to 11) judges drawn from the federal district courts and appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 50 U.S.C. § 1803(a). The FISCR is staffed by three judges drawn from the federal district courts or courts of appeals, and also appointed by the Chief Justice. 50 U.S.C. § 1803(b).

^[15] FISA’s minimization requirements are codified at 50 U.S.C. § 1801(h).

^[16] Hearing on the Protect America Act of 2007 before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, September 20, 2007 (Statement of J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, at 5-6).

^[17] Id.

^[18] See Senate Report No. 110-209, at 5 (2007) (stating that “the DNI informed Congress that the decision … had led to degraded capabilities.”).

^[19] Id.

^[20] The foregoing description of the events leading to the passage of the Protect America Act of 2007 is largely drawn from the recounting provided by the PCLOB in its 2014 report on the Section 702 Program. See PCLOB Report at 18-19.

^[21] FISA Amendments Act of 2008, Pub.L. No. 110-261 (2008), codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 1881-1885.

^[22] FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 112-238 (2012).

In pursuit of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s new mantra that Ease of Doing Business can bolster the Make In India initiative, NITI Aayug, think tank and adviser to Government of India, conducted a survey — “Ease of Doing Business – an enterprise survey of Indian State” — jointly with IDFC Institute,a Mumbai base think tank, in 2016 . The survey result was the testimony of Ease of Doing Business. It unveiled that the states which achieved high growth faced less regulatory policy hurdles and bureaucratic red tape for different approvals required to start a businesses than low growth states.

The high growth rated states were Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Goa, Telangana, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, according to the survey

The Indian reforms in 1991 made a breakthrough in the economy. There were profound changes, yielding strong parameters of the economy. Successive government payed attentions to gear up the reforms to attract investment. Nonetheless, there remained many impediments. By and large, India remained a tough place to do business even after I991 reforms.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi mandated to take India within top 50 in the World Bank ‘s Ease of Doing Business in three years from the rank of 130 in 2016. Morgan Stanley Vice – Chairman Tom Nides reposed confidence on Modi’s leadership .

Despite dismantling License Raj and opening the economy to private sector largely in 1991 reforms, bureaucracy continued to haunt the ease of doing business with multiple impediments. Locked in crossfire between personal loyalty to mantrizi for quicker promotion and concern over Prevention of Corruption Act, reluctance to take timely decision and passing the buck to others were the common practices of Indian bureaucrats. Indian bureaucracy was rated the worst among 12 Asian countries, according to a survey by Hong Kong –based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy firm.

The Modi government set a three point formulae to dismantle the present bureaucracy, which was embroiled in red rape than delivery of governance, and gear up Ease of Doing Business. He invoked simplified and paperless procedures to prop up the ease of doing business. First, it was to cut down the multiple level of human interfaces between the entrepreneurs and bureaucrats; second, to gear-up on-line procedures for applications and submissions of documents, replacing the manual system and , third to initiate convergence and integration of different ministries for quicker decision making processes.

The three point formulae yielded results. The number of Central government services through e-BIZ Portal increased rapidly, providing more opportunities for single window clearances. Government installed a portal of Government eAuction System. The auctioneers can participate in the auction online through this portal. On-line submission and processing of applications for environment clearances and on-line payment of Provident Funds and Employee’s State Insurance Contribution were introduced. Ministry of Environment and Forest launched On-line application system for environment clearance. Following the Centre, 19 states set up On-line application system for environment clearance. Majority of the projects are cleared at State level . In this perspective, it was a significant step for speedy clearance of the projects.

The NITI Aayug survey covered 3027 entrepreneurs . The survey results revealed the entrepreneurs’ opinion of the impact of ease of doing business measures during the three year tenures of Modi government.

The survey covered both High Growth and Low Growth states and Union Territories. The parameter to gauge the states’ growth status was the annual average of State GDP growth during the ten years period of 2003-04 to 2013-14.. Besides high GDP growth, the components which reboot the growth trajectories of High Growth states were significant presence of computers, electronics and pharmaceuticals, the survey said.

There were five major categories of approvals, required for establishing a manufacturing operation in the country. These approvals are the measuring rods to determine the level of Ease of Doing Business. They are a) Setting up business, Land acquisition, Construction, b) Environment, c) Labour, d) Infrastructure and f) Taxes. Land acquisition and labour approvals are considered the toughest and time consuming procedures.

Several amendments were made to farmers’ consent and social impact assessment clauses in Land Act 2013, with an eye to make land acquisition easier. But, the amendments were stuck in Rajya Sabha due to NDA minority. This led the BJP government to initiate reforms at state level since land is in the concurrent list of Constitution of India. Tamilnadu and Gujarat have moved ahead to prepare the their own State Land bill and Rajasthan is ready with the Bill. Under the new Land Act 2013 during UPA, not a single land was acquired.

Factory rules were eased by reducing the mandatory requirements of filing multiple forms. At present, a factory owner has to fill 16 forms on regular basis. Now, after the reform the factory owners were required to fill only one form.

The survey revealed an wide gap between High Growth and Low Growth states in terms of land allotment approval. While the average time taken for land allotment in High Growth States is 115.8 days , it is much higher with 136.5 days in Low Growth states. Similarly, wide gaps exist in between High Growth and Low Growth states with regard to approvals for construction permits, NOC’s for construction, environment and infrastructural approvals such as electricity connection, sewerage connections and water connection.

For Construction Permits, the average time taken for approvals is 68.7 days in case of High Growth states, against 86.3 days for Low Growth states; for NOC’s for Construction it is 49.2 days against 67.5 days, for Environment clearance it is 69.4 days against 76.2 days , for electricity connection it is 42.8 days against 62.3 days, for Sewerage connection it is 45.4 days against 53.6 days and for Water connections it is 39.8 days against 51.8 days respectively.

The survey also revealed that power shortage which is a crucial bottleneck for manufacturing operations affected less the High Growth states than Low Growth states. The average time taken for power shortages is 31.3 hours per month in case of High Growth states against 41.6 hours per month in case of Low Growth states.

Thus, the survey suggested a virtuous link between Ease of Doing Business and higher growth of states.

Views are the author’s own

Saudi Arabia’s 85th birthday could prove to be historic — one that could put to the test opposition to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform plans, even if he has cracked down on potential critics in recent weeks.

Saudi women, barred from stadia, are being allowed into Riyadh’s King Fahd International Stadium for the first time. Granted not to watch a soccer match from which they remain banned, but to attend national day celebrations. The move comes six weeks after Saudi Arabia announced that physical education for girls would for the first time be included in school curricula.

To accommodate the kingdom’s strict gender segregation, sections of the stadium are being delineated into sections for men and for families, much like what happens in other public spaces. The notion that if women can attend national day celebrations, they can also watch soccer matches will strengthen the hand of long-time proponents like the head of the Saudi Arabian Football Association (SAFF), Ahmed Eid Al-Harbi, of a lifting of the ban.

The move knocks down a psychological barrier even if it is primarily designed to project the kingdom in a more favourable light amid fierce criticism of its human rights record and conduct of the war in Yemen and to promote Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform agenda of greater economic diversification and greater social freedom.

Granting women access to the stadium also constitutes a testing of the waters. Prince Mohammed’s proposed reforms, articulated in his Vision 2030 plan, have largely been welcomed by Saudi youth, who account for more than 50 percent of the population, but criticized by religious hardliners.

Prince Mohammed’s popularity rides on expectations that his reforms will produce jobs and loosen social restrictions that he has yet to fulfil. His reforms involve a unilateral rewriting of Saudi Arabia’s social contract that amounted to a cradle-to-grave welfare state in exchange for surrender of all political rights and acceptance of Wahhabism’s strict moral codes.

Many Saudis have vented their frustration and anger on social media, the one space in which the kingdom until recently tolerated a limited degree of criticism. In one instance, Saudi writer Turki Al Shalhoub, who has 70,000 followers on Twitter, tweeted in April a cartoon showing Saudis being crushed under newly imposed taxes. He referred to prince Mohammed’s plan as “the vision of poverty.”

Grumbling and online protests persuaded the government in April to roll back some of its austerity measures and restore most of the perks enjoyed by government employees.

“The problem is that Vision 2030 has become synonymous with cutting salaries, taxing people and stop-ping benefits,” said Mark C. Thompson, a Middle East scholar at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, who conducted a survey of young Saudi men.

Ultra-conservative backlash has pockmarked every bend of Prince Mohammed’s path. Saudi Arabia’s Middle East Broadcasting Center Group (MBC Group), owned by Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, scion of a family with close ties to the Al Sauds, was forced to revoke and apologize for a campaign aimed at empowering women. Some viewers called for a boycott of MBC.

A crackdown in recent weeks on the prince’s potential critics, involving the arrest of scores of popular Islamic scholars, academics, intellectuals and judges, and the dismissal of university staff believed to support the Muslim Brotherhood, makes it easier for Prince Mohammed to test the waters.

To maintain support for his agenda, which is as much designed to initiate badly needed economic and social change as it is intended to prevent any form of political liberalization, Prince Mohammed has in recent weeks employed two strategies: using soccer to boost his image in a football-crazy country, and building an entertainment industry in a kingdom in which concepts of fun were long frowned upon, if not banned.

Sports is a key pillar of Vision 2030 as part of a bid to improve health in a country that has some of the world’s highest obesity and diabetes rates.

In line with a long-standing practice of Arab autocrats to hitch their popularity to their country’s soccer success, Prince Mohammed earlier this month granted fans, men only, free access to the stadium to attend a World Cup qualifier against Japan. Prince Mohammed made sure that he was in the stadium to witness the national team’s success.

The sensitivity involved in granting women access to the stadium for the national day celebrations became evident when a imam was criticized for describing Saudi Arabia’s defeat of Japan that paved the way for the kingdom’s participation in the 2018 World Cup as a blessing from God.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly in the last five tears floated the notion of granting women access to stadiums, only to drop the idea because of hard-line religious opposition. In bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow women to compete in Olympic games, the kingdom fielded women athletes for the first time in 2012. It has since said that women would only be allowed to compete in disciplines mentioned in the Qur’an.

Saudi Arabia’s Shura or Advisory Council earlier this year rejected a proposal to establish sports colleges for women.

In a bid to cater to aspirations of Saudi youth, the government announced that it was investing $2.7 billion in the creation of an entertainment industry in a country that bans cinemas and theatres. As part of the initiative, the government plans to build beach resorts, hotels and residential units on about 160 kilometres of sandy coastline on the Red Sea. It was not clear whether the region would adopt more liberal social codes on issues such as women’s dress.

“By the end of 2030, the company’s projects aim to serve more than 50 million visitors annually and create more than 22,000 jobs in the Kingdom, which will contribute around 8 billion Saudi Riyals ($2 billion) to the GDP,” the state-owned Saudi Press Agency said.

The kingdom’s religious establishment has repeatedly criticised Prince Mohammed’s social liberalization effort, including introduction of modern forms entertainment, but largely endorsed his economic plans.

A 24-year-old speaking earlier this year to The Guardian, noted that ultra-conservatism maintain a hold on significant numbers of young people. “You know that the top 11 Twitter handles here are Salafi clerics, right? We are talking more than 20 million people who hang on their every word. They will not accept this sort of change. Never,” the youth said

Prince Mohammed’s crackdown is likely to pre-empt any criticism of women entering the stadium for national day. That, however, simply pushes criticism out of the public eye. If anything, the crackdown suggests that Prince Mohammed feels less confident and reverts to Arab autocratic tradition: repress rather than engage.

Iran has been a topic that is very high on the Trump Administration’s foreign policy agenda. In President Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he was not satisfied with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany that was ratified in July of 2015, that created a new path for negotiations to not only crack down on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but to further integrate them with the world.

In addition, President Trump’s speech hinted at the United States pulling out of the deal even though every country including the US has certified that Iran has been complying with the agreement. It will be very interesting to see how the US will handle its foreign policy towards Iran, and how the world will respond if the US does pull out of the JCPOA. So far, there are signals from Tehran that they are sticking by the deal and they will continue to stick with it even if the US pulls out.

Throughout the campaign and his presidency, Trump has threatened to pull out of the JCPOA. It seems clear that President Trump is looking for a way out of the deal, and he even hinted that something will come soon. That thing is the October 15 deadline in which President Trump needs to certify to Congress that Iran is living up to its commitment to the nuclear deal. From the perspective of many senior officials in Washington, not only does President Trump need to analyze that Iran is complying with the deal, which it is, but they also have to analyze the deal as a framework that is favorable to securing U.S interests in the region, and to continue using sanctions relief in the totality of the US-Iran relationship. Within the Beltway, we hear that the Iranians are not living up to the ‘spirit’ of the deal, but what does that mean? President Trump is someone trying to find a way out of the JCPOA that will not only isolate the United States within the global community, but a US withdrawal from the agreement can create loopholes in its relationships with the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians.

During his speech, President Trump made an unprecedented move by calling out Iran as “an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos”.i He even called the Iran deal one of the “worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into” and an embarrassment to the United States.ii This is very harsh language from Donald Trump, but we have to remember that the United States is not the only signatory to the July 14th framework, but Iran and the p5+1 also unanimously agreed to abide by the deal. If the United States pulls out of the deal, it will be their fault and they will be bearing the cost of destroying the deal, a deal that had strong support from not only the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, but from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), an organization that consists of a majority of the global community who recognizes Iran’s right to a nuclear weapon as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The JCPOA has very strong international support, but it is not about picking a fight with Tehran. Instead, the US pulling out of the deal will be picking a fight with the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians who were all involved in the lengthy negotiations, and the exhausting process of ratifying a deal that is fair for the global community. The JCPOA was more of an achievement than an embarrassment because we had an international conflict that was on the verge of becoming a military confrontation being resolved peacefully without a single shot or angry tweet by President Trump being fired.

Another significance of the deal is the fact that usually, we see diplomacy coming in after military confrontations, but this deal achieved diplomatic efforts that prevented a conflict. The United States will also be isolating itself, but will the deal itself survive if the US pulls out? If the US does pull out and starts reimposing sanctions on other countries possibly European firms who are mindful of their trade with Iran, European businesses could be potential targets for US sanctions.

As the world’s most influential superpower, the United States passes laws for the entire world, and it punishes other countries from doing business with Iran, and it also excludes other countries from financial transactions in the international financial system. The United States would not sanction its own companies, but it could target companies from other western powers who do business in Iran, and if other western powers cannot be protected, the Iranians will not get the economic benefit of being compliant with the deal. If the Iranians don’t get the economic benefits of being in compliance, they will stop being compliant with the deal.

It is true that we have to wait until October to see how Congress will respond to Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, but government officials in Washington cannot pretend to say that Iran is not in compliance. The ultimate authority which determines that Iran is in compliance is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and it has issued eight reports pointing out that Iran is abiding by the nuclear agreement. Many people within the Trump Administration like to say that Iran is in violation of this or that, but where are those violations, and why has the IAEA not been able to point out Iran’s violations of the agreement? If the Iranians were violating the so-called spirit of the deal, why can’t President Trump explain what the spirit of the Iran deal is? From the American perspective, Trump objects Iran’s regional policies, but we cannot allow the geopolitics of the Middle East to be one dimension of engaging Iran with the world. The United States is simply getting out of the deal for reasons that are unclear and preposterous that it shifts the blame onto the Iranians.

The rumors of a US-Iran confrontation are so far-fledged that nobody benefits, and a confrontation between the US and Iran will never happen. According to international consensus, the JCPOA was a great achievement of diplomacy that allows Iran to engage and negotiate with the west that can create a framework towards a possible normalization of relations.

The fact that the Iran deal diffused the United States from another ‘invasion of Iraq’ moment was remarkable and the JCPOA should be a role model for carrying out diplomacy in a way that has diplomatic options rather than just military options. Even French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron supports multilateralism within the JCPOA, and he disagrees with Trump’s position on the deal. The deal went through a unanimous agreement within the UN Security Council and Germany along with Iran, and the deal went through a clearance from the US legislature.

If the JCPOA were to be criticized, it should be taken to the IAEA, and it should not be left to Congress to show that Iran is or is not complying with the agreement. However, there are two countries in the world that do not want to see a diplomatic settlement with Iran. The countries acting behind the scenes are two of the United States’ closest partners in the region that receive billions of dollars in western arms, and cause chaos in the region, they include Israel and Saudi Arabia. The agendas coming from Tel Aviv and Riyadh are pushing Trump to create a conflict with Iran, but the US should be smart enough to not reach the boiling point of military confrontation. The Middle East has enough problems and a war with Iran will only cause more instability in the region.

After Trump’s disturbing speech at the United Nations, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that “Trump’s ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times-not the 21st Century UN -unworthy of a reply. Fake empathy for Iranians fools no one.”iii Hopefully, there is engagement between Iran and the United States because the tensions will not be resolved unless there is diplomacy, but there are several different factors to be worried about. First, the atmosphere for negotiations to continue are souring and it is going to be much more difficult for the United States to step up to the plate as a leader because it lacks the credibility and the trustworthiness of being an effective negotiating partner for the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians.

Washington’s credibility in the nuclear deal is extremely important and a president that constantly behaves like he did in his first U.N speech to threaten to withdraw from the agreement does not inject a lot of confidence in continuing the negotiations. And finally, the competence coming from the US government to engage in such complex dialogue diplomatically with anyone, whether its nations we don’t like or we are partners with is very worrying especially when it boils down to the JCPOA issue. A withdrawal from the JCPOA deal will only hurt US interests in the Middle East, isolate the United States as a trust broker around the world, and whether the United States does or does not like the Iranian government, Washington must accept Iran as a regional player that will always have a seat at the negotiating table on global issues.

Notes:
i. Politico Staff, “Full text: Trump’s U.N speech transcript” September 19, 2017 Politico http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/19/trump-un-speech-2017-full-text-transcript-242879
ii. Politico Staff, “Full text: Trump’s U.N speech transcript” September 19, 2017 Politico http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/19/trump-un-speech-2017-full-text-transcript-242879
iii. Javad Zarif, September 19, 2017 Twitter https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/910205888677470208

The total price of official agreements signed during the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), which ended in Vladivostok on Thursday, September 7, amounted to about 2.5 trillion rubles, significantly exceeding the figures of 2016.

“Half of all the agreements signed are related to the implementation of industrial production projects. The remaining agreements concern such areas as transport, logistics, mining, agriculture, fisheries, and tourism, among others,” said Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Far Eastern Federal District, and Chairman of the EEF Organizing Committee Yuri Trutnev.

According to him, the biggest projects included the construction of the Amur Gas Processing Plant, an investment project to build oil refining and petrochemical facilities for the production of Euro-5 motor fuel and other petrochemical products as well as the construction of the Nakhodka Mineral Fertilizer Plant.

“One could say a second stage of the Far East’s development has commenced. We have learned how to attract investments and will continue to help investors implement their projects. Now we need to focus on the comprehensive socioeconomic development of the region. Our priority should be to improve the quality of life in the Far East and create the necessary infrastructure for future employees of the enterprises that are being built”, Yuri Trutnev stressed.

Speaking at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that dynamic growth and renewal of the Far East region is an essential part of “strategy to improve Russia’s competitiveness, its economy, and human capital.”

“The results are there for everyone to see: over the past three years, the increase in industrial output in the Russian Far East has outpaced the average growth rates in the Russian Federation which stand at 8.6%. The gross regional product grew by 4.2%. The dynamics remain positive this year as well. Moreover, they are improving with investment in fixed assets up almost 20% as of the end of the first six months of 2017,” the Russian leader said.

Commenting on the main results of the EEF, Nobuhide Hatasa, Professor, Nagoya University of Economics, expressed the opinion that this year the forum has become an effective platform not only for concluding major contracts, but also for discussing the current political agenda.

“Due to North Korea’s nuclear bomb testing conducted just a few days before the Third Eastern Economic Forum, this year’s forum was much paid attention by western side media to the political maneuvering among Russia, Japan, and Korea,” he told PenzaNews.

According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have similar views on the situation on the Korean peninsula, but still could not achieve “political harmony.”

“Although the both leaders agreed with the growing threats of North Korea and shared common concerns on the missile and nuclear bomb testing by Kim Jong-un, they were not able to reach the same conclusion regarding how to stop these North Korea’s military provocations. While Prime Minister Abe stressed the tightening of economic sanctions against North Korea as the first priority, President Putin emphasized the importance of mutual dialogues among the concerned countries,” Nobuhide Hatasa explained.

In his opinion, the event resulted with successful economic achievements.

“Actual economic results of this year’s forum were rather marvelous compared with previous year as business people from twice more countries came to Vladivostok and much larger amount of investment contracts was made through the forum,” the analyst said.

According to him, Northern Territories [the Japanese name for the Russian Southern Kurils] problem was another important and difficult theme of the EEF in Vladivostok.

“Contrary to the mater of North Korea, Japan and Russia are fortunately having the shared ideas of how to tackle on this territorial issue. The both have already reached agreement that the first step of approaching this daunting task is “economic cooperation”. This is the reason why Abe has assiduously participated in this forum for the second consecutive year and been meeting with Putin very frequently in recent years. Thanks to these Abe’s continuous efforts, economic cooperation projects between Japan and Russia are slowly but steadily moving forward, and these are the most effective tangible outcomes that the Government of Japan as well as Japanese businessmen have gained from the forum,” the professor at Nagoya University of Economics said.

Meanwhile, Hironori Fushita, Research Fellow at Japan Institute of International Affairs, said that during the forum a number of agreements were signed, as well as a memorandum encouraging further investment cooperation with Russia.

“At the same time, the difference between Japan’s and Russia’s approaches to joint economic activity in the Far East and the Northern Territories became obvious. If Russia is interested in implementing such an ambitious project as the construction of a railway and road tunnel between Hokkaido and Sakhalin, and in the developing of infrastructure in the Kurile Islands, Japan would like to expand the presence of its private business in the markets of the Russian Federation, including the Far East, and participate in the diversification of the Russian economy as a whole,” the expert explained.

From his point of view, countries should find common ground in the region, and such an annual international forum as the EEF can play a very significant role in achieving this goal.

“The EEF is a unique event. During the economic forum, political leaders held meetings, where they discussed serious issues, for example, related to the DPRK,” the analyst added.

In turn, Grant Newsham, Senior Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, with experience as a US Diplomat and US Marine Officer, said that he is always skeptical about these sorts of events.

“The idea of developing Russia’s Far East has been around for decades. I remember it being ‘talked up’ back when Boris Yeltsin was President. Ultimately, there has to be a business case to be made for investing in Russia — and in the Far East that is a tough case to make — not least owing to geography, demographics, and infrastructure limitations,” the expert said and stressed that holding the forum is not going to remove these difficulties.

According to him, the forum that has not much of political influence demonstrated a number of foreign policy trends.

“The Japanese, for example, showed how keen they are to use the Russians to off-set Chinese influence and advances in East Asia and beyond. Shinzo Abe also still holds out hope that by getting close to Vladimir Putin he might able to cut a deal over the disputed Northern Territories. Abe will no doubt keep trying, even though his chances of success are slim,” Grant Newsham said.

Meanwhile, in his view, the fundamental issue in the Russian Far East remains the relationship between Russia and the PRC.

“Despite superficial harmony, these two countries are fundamentally at odds and leery of each other. This will never be a relationship of equals — for both economic and psychological reasons. Moreover, the Chinese have the advantage in terms of population and economic clout — and increasing military power. Russia ought to be worried that any deals it might cut with China will be stacked in the PRC’s favor,” the analyst said.

Meanwhile, Lak Chansok, Researcher, Cambodia Maritime Silk Road Research Center (CMSRRC), Royal University of Phnom Penh, expressed confidence that the forum was a positive step for Russia to develop and revitalize its economic relations, especially with East Asian countries.

“The forum ended with a wide range of economic outcomes including advanced special economic zones, cultural tourism, greenhouse farming, free port of Vladivostok and economic regulation enforcement. This biggest economic forum held in Russia has demonstrated Russia’s commitment to revitalize its strong economic cooperation especially with East Asian countries through both multilateral and bilateral dialogues and discussions despite US and EU continuing sanctions on Russia. This forum serves as a discussion platform for building confidence and trust among leaders to boost trade, as well as among private enterprises to access to markets in Russia’s Far East and in Asia,” the expert said.

Moreover, according to him, the EEF can also serve as a diplomatic and political platform to address regional political and security concerns.

“Amid the growing tension in Korean Peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced the concern of US increasing presence and its counterproductive [actions] in the region to intensify North Korea’s military hysteria. Moreover, this forum is also significant for Russia to build political confidence with East Asian countries to address existing political and security challenges. For example, Russia and Japan are at another level to tackle the Kuril Islands dispute and find a peaceful solution to promote economic activities on those disputed islands,” Lak Chansok concluded.

The Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) was held in Vladivostok for the third time. This year it was held on September 6–7.

The EEF was attended by over 6 thousand people from more than 60 countries. The participants were not only the heads of international companies and owners of large businesses, but also high-ranking officials.

The annual forum was also attended by states’ leaders, including the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the President of South Korea Moon Jae-in.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/64528-2017

North Korea tested the world’s patience with its latest missile test, which flied over Japan. The missile, thought to be a Hwasong-12, was launched just four days after the United Nations had unanimously agreed on new sanctions against Pyongyang.

While China has been considered as a main factor in solving the North Korea problem, the United States has also sought other avenues of resolving tensions.

While Switzerland is said to be involved in the ongoing imbroglio, Vietnam has also been considered as a mediator in the US–North Korea conflict. This is because Hanoi is also one of the most trusted friends of Pyongyang,  and both communist countries are seeking ways to exit China’s orbit.

North Korea fears of isolation

Dragged into tensions with the US, North Korea is increasingly isolated by Washington’s allies. Besides bigger names, examples even smaller countries lining up — Kuwait ordered the North Korean ambassador to leave, as well as Peru teamed up with the Philippines and Mexico to take diplomatic measures against North Korea. Lima declared the North Korean ambassador Kim Hak Chol persona non grata and order him to leave within five days. The Philippines suspended trade relations with North Korea over Pyongyang’s repeated missile tests and Mexico gave the North Korean ambassador Kim Hyong Gil 72 hours to leave the country, citing its “absolute rejection” of North Korea’s nuclear activity.

Together with diplomatic pressure, North Korea’s economy prospects are bleak, after the latest sanctions by the United States, coupled with those of the United Nations.

China, the closest ally of North Korea, has meanwhile made clear its stance: Beijing does not want to be blamed for issue of a regime that it is said to be no longer in control. Just as US President Donald Trump signed an executive order for tighter sanctions, China announced that its banks would halt doing business with North Korea.

China wants to re-establish the six-party talks regarding the Korean peninsula issue. This was reflected by the recent BRICS joint statement of association of five major emerging national economies, which stated: “We express deep concern over the ongoing tension and prolonged nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula and emphasize that it should only be settled through peaceful means and direct dialogue of all the parties concerned.”

Yet this scenario is not what the US seeks. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in March said: “We don’t want to get back into the six-party talks.” President Donald Trump, a day after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan, declared “talking is not the answer.”

North Korea doesn’t want this either, unless you can imagine reasons why Pyongyang pulled out of the six-party talks in 2009, risked hurting its economy and diplomacy for eight years, and then suddenly returned back to the talks.

Kim Jong Un seems to go too far. The more North Korea is isolated, the more Pyongyang depends on China –  and given that China has long said that it “has a plan for a North Korea collapse,” Pyongyang must seek alternatives.

Directly talking to the US is not a bad choice, and in this regard Vietnam can be considered as a mediator.

Vietnam has motivation

In 2016, Vietnam condemned North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear test. It was usual, and widely seen as a move to strengthen the relationship with Barack Obama’s administration. The former US president at the time was taking efforts to lift the Vietnam weapons embargo.

But the condemnation also reflected the flexibility of Vietnam’s policy. Professor Vu Duong Ninh, former dean of international studies at Vietnam National University, said that Vietnam’s foreign policy is to make the most of all resources, and to avoid being dependent on anyone. Therefore, Vietnam keeps in touch with the US, while at the same time it approaches North Korea at a moderate level.

Both Vietnam and North Korea are communist countries and they have both had wars with the US. At one time, North Korea even looked to Vietnam as an economic reform model, according to the Brookings Institution.

North Korea under leader Kim Jong Un, pursuing the “Byungjin” policy (pursuing parallel goals of national defense and economy), also is making efforts to diversify its economy.

In fact, international observers argue that Vietnam is keeping North Korea at a certain distance because it does not want to risk economic relations with Japan and South Korea. But in the context of all parties’ concerns about a military conflict, or at least, an arms race in the peninsula, a reconciliation is in the interests of all.

Vietnam once proved its worth. In the past Vietnam served as neutral ground for talks between Japan and North Korea on the issue of family reunions and kidnapped Japanese.

“If Vietnam cannot play the role of mediator that does not prevent it from providing a venue for secret talks,” said Carlyle Thayer, Emeritus Professor at The University of New South Wales and a leading expert about South China Sea, China and Vietnam.

Although at the present time the conditions do not seem ripe for talks between Pyongyang and Washington, the participation of Vietnam in North Korea–US relations at any level could allow Hanoi to bring satisfaction to all parties, and benefit itself as well.

Almost at the same time that North Korea is facing condemnation, Vietnam has had to deal with pressure from China’s unexpected live-fire drills in the Paracel islands from the end of August to earlier September.

This year has been hard for Vietnam, too. Despite the strong words against China’s claims over the South China Sea at the ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines last month, the Philippines – the rotating chairman of ASEAN, seems to be silent about the South China Sea. Vietnam has also been dragged into diplomatic spats with Germany, as Berlin accused Hanoi of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a businessman who lived in Berlin.

That is to say, the North Korea crisis inadvertently opens an opportunity for Vietnam to contribute its role, strengthening its position in the international arena, helping Hanoi regain its prestige as well as gain other potential diplomatic, military and South China Sea issue benefits.

“In order for Vietnam to play the role of mediator in the current crisis on the Korean peninsula four things are necessary. First, Vietnam must be willing to give this matter high priority and be willing to invest diplomatic time and effort. Second, North Korea must be willing to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis and trust Vietnam. Third, the United State must also trust Vietnam and be willing to meet with North Korea. Fourth, South Korea must approve of Vietnam as a mediator,” Thayer added.

It appears that Vietnam being considered by President Trump, who called Vietnamese and other ASEAN leaders in April to discuss North Korea. Now, he can think about such solutions in his upcoming visit to Vietnam for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam in November.

*Du Nhat Dang is a Vietnamese reporter who works for Tuoi Tre newspaper, Vietnam. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and Communication, University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. He is a fellow at the ASEAN Foundation’s Reporting ASEAN program, which supports articles about ASEAN. His articles are also published on the Diplomat Magazine.

The creation of a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in the EU will not improve the security of the European countries, NATO-members. This is stated in a study by Katarzyna Kubiak, the expert of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, entitled Missile Defense: Prospects for Cooperation with Russia.

According to the research paper, the deployment of the missile defense system is explained by a nonexistent threat and seriously complicates the relations of European states with the Russian Federation.

“If NATO still wishes to maintain territorial missile defense, the project of cooperation with Russia must not be rejected. Only if Moscow is convinced that the NATO missile defense system is not a threat to Russia, NATO missile defense will provide the European allies with a comprehensive security advantage. A new start for cooperation with Russia would therefore be sensible,” the paper says.

Meanwhile, Ilgar Velizade, Head of the Baku-based South Caucasus Club of Political Scientists, said that Europeans view the American system as an effective tool for ensuring their own security.

“The current difficult geopolitical conditions lead to growing suspicion in relations not only between Russia and its eastern neighbors, but also between Russia and other Western countries. The sanctions regime and the reasons why these sanctions are introduced do not help to defuse the situation. Naturally, in such a situation, projects like BMD in Europe are in demand and are realized under conditions of symmetric measures on the part of Russia,” the political scientist said.

At the same time, in his opinion, the effectiveness of these steps, and, in particular, the effectiveness of BMD in Europe is disputable.

“It is even more difficult to talk about security, when you realize that your actions can serve as a reason for counteractions of a possible adversary. In general, in this situation, the whole system of European security, relatively speaking, is put under attack. A new conditional or explicit ‘iron curtain’ is being formed, and neighbors on both sides begin to feel more and more uncomfortable,” Ilgar Velizade said.

According to him, further similar actions in this direction will lead to an even greater complication of the situation.

“I do not think that in the foreseeable future the BMD system will be used by the West and the East. At the same time, further deployment of this system, equipping it with new technically advanced air defense weapons, will undoubtedly contribute to complicating the military and political situation in such regions as the Baltic, the Black Sea basin and Northern Europe,” the expert said.

Commenting on the validity of the NATO missile defense system in Europe, Pal Steigan, Norwegian politician, publisher, writer, independent entrepreneur in the field of culture and information technology, reminded that this system was originally sold as a defense against incoming missiles from Iran.

“This was a thinly veiled bluff to begin with, since Iran didn’t have that kind of capacity or intentions. After the nuclear agreement with Iran the bluff is in the open for anyone to see. These missiles are directed against Russia and with the deployment of the missile batteries close to Russia’s borders it is all the more evident. This is not an instrument of defense, but of war of aggression,” the politician said.

According to him, the participation of European countries in the implementation of this project contradicts their own interests.

“In Norway there is no such missile battery for the time being, but with the new US Air Force base near Trondheim and with the Norwegian satellite radars close to Russia we are included in these preparations for aggressive war. This is obviously against the interests of the people of Norway and of Europe,” Pal Steigan said.

In his opinion, NATO missile defense is ruining two decades of trust building and is detrimental also for Europe.

“The EU needs peaceful cooperation and trade with Russia, but the war party of Washington does everything in its power to destroy such cooperation. This has to do with US imperial interests,” he stressed.

He also expressed confidence that there are deep conflicts between the US and Europe.

“The European countries do not want to foot the bill, and with the trans-Atlantic estrangement between EU and the Trump administration Germany and other countries see the opening to act for better relations with Russia and China. The war cries of the neocons are dangerous and we even risk a big war by mistake,” Pal Steigan explained and added that Europe badly needs a strong mass movement against this war policy.

In turn, Hiromichi Umebayashi, Special Adviser, Peace Depot; Visiting Professor, Nagasaki University, called the NATO missile defense system a major obstacle to any efforts to improve the relationship between US and Russia.

“The improvement of the Russia-US relationship is vitally important to the world because the world has to see the next START negotiation to succeed the current one whose target year for reduction is 2018,” he explained.

The expert shared the view that the agreement with Iran radically changed the situation around this project.

“The rationale for the current European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) has been lost with 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement with Iran. And if they [Europeans] really care about the possible threat and want to defend themselves against it, a system with mutual cooperation with Russia seems to be a best choice,” Hiromichi Umebayashi stressed.

From his point of view, it is difficult to predict further development of the situation.

“Trump administration may want to get along better with Russia, but also may want to pursue interests of US defense industry. Only I can wish is that public voices in Europe and the US will rise strong enough to change the course,” the Japanese expert said.

Meanwhile, Ian Anthony, Head of SIPRI’s European Security Program, paid attention to the fact that, according to NATO, the BMD system has reached an “initial operational capability.”

“This means that the systems in the field are able to work together under NATO command and NATO control. This includes the missile interceptors in Romania, Spanish ships equipped with the Aegis missile defense capability, a radar station in Turkey and a command center in Germany. In the future additional capabilities will be added, both on land – in Poland – and at sea – with Dutch ships integrated into the system,” the analyst said.

According to him, the current priority for NATO is to link all of the parts into one fully integrated air defense system that also includes short-range missile defenses and combat aircraft.

“The purpose of the system is to defend NATO Allies against limited ballistic missile threats from the South. NATO has repeatedly explained that the system cannot defend against a much more sophisticated and numerous missile capability, such as the Russian capability, and it is not designed to do that,” Ian Anthony reminded.

He also stressed that Russia’s concerns are focused on the wider issue of the United States missile defense capability, of which the NATO system is only one part.

“Russia’s perspective is that the European capability cannot be seen in isolation from this overall missile defense system and that, in the future, this overall system might undermine the deterrent effect of Russia’s nuclear forces. Therefore, Russia seeks legal constraints on United States missile defenses, which the US is not willing to give. In the current political and military conditions, closing this gap in perspective and reaching a shared understanding must be considered to be very unlikely,” Head of SIPRI’s European Security Program said.

Meanwhile, Seth Baum, Executive Director, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute; Research Affiliate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge University; Research Scientist, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, presented a broader vision of the situation, speaking of the importance of NATO’s missile defense system for relations between Russia and the West.

According to him, many security problems are generated because of lack of consensus on Russia’s place in the world order that would be respectful to Russia’s desire to be an independent center of power and establish friendly relations with the West.

“The failure to achieve this goal following the Cold War is what caused the problems we see today about missile defense and many other issues. The United States takes much of the blame for that failure,” Seth Baum said.

According to him, the United States will not be able to achieve any meaningful progress in relations with Russia as long as Donald Trump is president, however, in the short term, the parties should try to resolve the main contentious issues.

“As a researcher in the field of nuclear weapons risk, as an American, and as a human being, I have a strong desire to see better relations. Heightened tensions increase the probability of nuclear war and decrease the prospects for cooperation across a wide range of important global issues. Russia is a large and important country. For its own sake and the sake of the world, I hope we can make progress in relations,” the American expert said.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/64432-2017

We are told ad nauseam that education empowers women, and that they have a right to know everything and anything about their bodies. We are also told that women have a right to safe medical care, and are entitled to competent service by well-trained physicians.

Then why are feminists working overtime to keep information from women about their bodies? And why are they trying desperately to prevent them from receiving first-class medical care? To be blunt, they are jeopardizing women’s health.

Feminists at Planned Parenthood oppose laws that require women seeking an abortion to see pictures of the baby they are planning to abort. This is the one exception to the “education empowers women” mantra.

Planned Parenthood, along with the ACLU, is now suing Maine seeking to undo a law—which three-fourths of the states have—requiring all abortions to be performed by a physician. This is the one exception to a woman’s right to “competent service by well-trained physicians” mantra.

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are so zealous about abortion rights that they would sacrifice the lives of pregnant women—to say nothing about their babies—in exchange for increasing the number of abortions. To be exact, they want nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to perform first trimester abortions, thus increasing the pool of abortionists.

According to the ACLU statement on its joint lawsuit, the current law means that “some rural women are being forced to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion.” That problem would be eliminated if nurses could do the job.

Forgetting about the psychological consequences that many women endure following an abortion, what about the health risks that often accompany abortion?

In a 2013 article published by Denise M. Burke, Vice President of Legal Affairs for Americans United for Life, “Regulating Abortion Facilities and Providers: Combating the True Back Alley,” she recounted how first-trimester abortions can lead to serious medical problems.

“Potential complications for first-trimester abortions include, among others, bleeding, hemorrhage, infection, uterine perforation, blood clots, cervical tears, incomplete abortion (retained tissue), failure to actually terminate the pregnancy, free fluid in the abdomen, acute abdomen, missed ectopic pregnancies, cardiac arrest, sepsis, respiratory arrest, reactions to anesthesia, fertility problems, emotional problems, and even death.”

So what exactly is Nurse Suzie to do when her patient is hemorrhaging on the table? Call 911? Calling a doctor won’t work: the champions of women’s rights admit he might be “hundreds of miles” away.

Consider a case cited by Burke that occurred in Kansas. A woman bled to death following a two-inch laceration in her uterus. She was crying for help but the medical assistants didn’t know what to do. She died after bleeding for two to three hours. Was there a doctor there? Yes, but he was eating lunch, refused to check on her condition, and left to see his tailor.

Blaming the delinquent doctor misses the point: The point is that the non-physicians were not trained to help the woman. So she died. Now imagine how much more likely this would be if we allow mid-wives to perform abortions when there is no doctor within “hundreds of miles” to treat her?

The lack of hospitals in many rural areas is indeed a problem, but the cause of women’s rights is not advanced by allowing non-doctors to play doctor. It is made worse. That those promoting this policy claim to have the best interests of women in mind makes it all the more sickening.

By Kenneth Worles*

This summer, Los Angeles officials reached a deal with the International Olympic Committee to host the 2028 Olympic Summer Games.

For its trouble, the city hopes to generate hundreds of millions in savings and additional revenues. However, over the past few decades, world sporting events have come with a huge price tag for their host cities’ residents — especially the poorest ones.

After the medals are awarded and the fireworks die down, these are the residents are left to deal with the results.

I can still remember watching Dominique Dawes and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team win the first U.S. women’s gold medal in their sport at the Atlanta games in 1996. However, many Atlanta residents better remember the country’s first project housing project, Techwood, and the neighboring Clark Howell complex being destroyed to make way for this gold medal occasion.

The city relocated 6,000 residents from public housing leading up to the Olympics. After the games, rapid gentrification followed, displacing another 24,000 people, the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions calculates.

The pattern replayed itself in Brazil, which hosted the 2014 World Cup. I remember sitting in my apartment cheering on Ghana and laughing while my friends reenacted the soccer team’s dance moves. What we couldn’t see from our television screens were the stark levels of inequality that blighted the host country.

Though Brazil was ranked 12th globally in social inequality, the government managed to find $14 billion to host the games, money that could’ve been spent to benefit poor and working Brazilians. To make matters worse, more than 250,000 people were either directly or indirectly forced to leave their homes — often violently.

Brazil didn’t learn its lesson, apparently, because more violence followed in advance of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. About 70,000 people were displaced by the Olympics, and almost a thousand poor people — mostly black men — were killed during “pacification” efforts to clean up the city’s image between 2015 and summer 2016.

These examples only highlight a small picture of the inequality these games bring to hosting cities. According to a 2008 report, the six Summer Olympics held between the 1988 Seoul Games and the 2008 Beijing Games forcibly evicted or otherwise displaced more than 2 million people.

Though Los Angeles is famous for its conspicuous wealth, it also has the highest rate of chronic homelessness in the United States and struggles to provide affordable housing to its residents. Even with these issues, LA officials believe they can protect themselves from the dark legacy of world sporting events.

The city will receive $160 million from the IOC to fund youth sports programs in the city. They also plan to use facilities already there, including the new football stadium currently being built, and to use UCLA to host the Olympic Village.

By not having to build new facilities to host the games, officials believe they will minimize displacement. Officials also say the 11-year wait will give them an opportunity to develop a failure-proof plan.

L.A.’s bid committee estimated it will cost $5.3 billion to stage the games. But if they’re wrong about displacement, imagine the cost to the families left without homes.

*Kenneth Worles is the Newman Fellow at the Institute for Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

In recent days a foolish controversy has swirled regarding President Donald Trump. At issue is whether or not he can be labeled a white supremacist. There is no need for conjecture on this point. He most certainly is a white supremacist. But asking the question is utterly useless in a country whose very founding was a white supremacist project. Racist structures impact every facet of life in this country. Race determines where we go to school, live, work, or even if one is employed at all.

Recently released data showed that black Americans are the only group in the country whose median income has decreased since 2000 . Asians, whites, and Latinos have all experienced some degree of income growth during this period. Income inequality is worse for black people now than it was in 1979 . Even black families who manage to scrape their way into middle class status are more likely to see their children slip back into poverty .

But anti-black racism is the sine qua non for all discriminatory practices. It is the most persistent and pernicious of all the biases extant in American life. Black people are at the bottom economically because we face more discrimination than anyone else. The never ending settler colonial project is dedicated to oppressing black people at every juncture of their lives.

It is true that racists no longer feel the need to hide their ideology. Not that they hid it very well before the Trump presidency. It is true that racists are now emboldened as individuals and that danger to black people cannot be minimized.

But what was life like for black people before inauguration day in January 2017? Before Trump became president we had the worst outcomes economically, the greatest risk of being incarcerated, or of being treated badly in a multitude of ways on a daily basis.

It is an error to be swept up in useless argument about whether the current president is a white supremacist without also discussing the racist underpinnings of American society. Trump made overt racism acceptable and that does change the precarious nature of black life in the country. But we always live on the edge, hoping to improve our lot as individuals without falling victim to the worst the system can mete out to us.

The self-proclaimed alt-right have upped the ante by triggering faux outrage. The outrage is phony because it never speaks to the ways in which racism makes life easier for white people every moment of their lives. Their most mundane activities are often tinged with race-based privilege.

Inherited wealth gets them money, property and educational opportunities for their children. White people get jobs because their friends and relatives get them in the door. Yet most of them would bristle if they were told that these actions are in fact racist. That is the danger in asking whether or not Trump or any other individual is a white supremacist. The system allows every white person to be a supremacist as they carry out their daily lives.

No one should be allowed to pat themselves on the back because they dislike Donald Trump, march around in a pink pussy hat or pull down a Confederate monument. He and his most racist supporters are the lowest hanging fruit. The banality of business-as-usual racism is rarely called into question. And that makes it every bit as dangerous as Trump’s presence in the White House or the love he gets from self identified white supremacists.

We had a white supremacist nation even when the president was black. Barack Obama was indeed the more effective evil. He is now proving it by doing what former presidents always do. He is lining his pockets giving speeches to the banksters who stole what little wealth black people had managed to earn. But he had better manners than the erratic and, yes, bigoted Donald Trump and he went out of his way to make nice even as he worked to enhance the neo-liberal and imperialist projects.

Obama never prosecuted killer cops or thieving bank executives. He destroyed Libya, Africa’s most prosperous nation. But white racists still hated him and he benefited from their animus. They gave him the Teflon coating that Trump can only dream about.

Donald Trump has singlehandedly managed to both boost and minimize white supremacy. It is true that David Duke and his ilk are back in the news. But the most entrenched aspects of white supremacy are minimized in favor of shooting fish in the barrel of Klansmen and neo-Nazis.

Trump is the white supremacist leader of a white supremacist nation. Racism existed before he was elected. It will continue when he leaves office because millions of people profit from this system and see no reason for it to change.