The lesson of the importance of patient, steadfast trust in God and God’s willingness to forgive, taught by the incident of the golden calf, is one of many lessons taught in the Torah (Exodus 32) and in the Qur’an (7:148-153).

The lesson is universal, but the details in the Torah and the Qur’an differ, so that people of faith within the three religions of the Children of Abraham can learn some additional perspectives from each other’s religious tradition; and thus learn greater respect for each other.

Thus, I myself follow the words of the Qur’an that direct Muslims to say, “We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him.” (3:84)

So, I believe that Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders should always try to harmonize differences between the Sacred Scriptures of Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, and avoid claiming that only one Holy Book (ours) can be true. 

I think of myself as a Muslim Jew i.e. a faithful Jew submitting to the will of God, because as a Rabbi I am faithful to the covenant that God made with Abraham – the first Muslim Jew, and I submit to the covenant and the commandments that God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai.

As a Reform Rabbi, I believe that Jewish spiritual leaders should modify Jewish tradition as social and historical circumstances change and develop. I also believe we should not make religion difficult for people to practice.

These are lessons prophet Muhammad taught 12 centuries before the rise of Reform Judaism in the early 19th century.

I decided to retell (adding some humor about Miriam and the cat Goddess) the narrative lesson of the golden cow/calf , combining details from both Islamic and Jewish sources, because I want to show how it is possible to see scriptural differences as complementary rather than contradictory.

This retelling of the golden calf/cow narrative has already appeared on three Islamic web sites, and on my web site also:

Everyone was worried that something bad had happened to Moses. He had gone up on the right side of Mount Sinai more than 20 days ago to speak with God. He had not yet returned. 

Each day when Moses didn’t return more people worried and got more upset.

Aaron and Miriam, the Prophet, urged people not to worry. Moses would surely return in a few days. The Children of Israel should be patient and faithful. But as the days passed and Moses didn’t return more and more people became scared and afraid. 

Only a few months ago the Children of Israel had been slaves in Egypt. Now they were free.

But when their great leader Moses did not come back from the top of Mount Sinai, many of them feared they had been left all alone in the desert.

Without Moses they felt abandoned by God. These fears began to spread to a large number of the Children of Israel. And then it happened.

There was an Egyptian magician named As-Samiri, who along with many other non-Jews had left Egypt with the Jewish people. As-Samiri started telling people that they should make an image of a God to lead them, since no one knew what had happened to that old man Moses.

Actually, As-Samiri and a many of his people, including some Jews, had already asked Moses to make an image of a god to lead them, not long after the Children of Israel had safely crossed the sea of Reeds and entered Sinai’s desolate wilderness.

As-Samiri and his people said, “Oh Moses, make for us a god just as other people have gods”. Moses replied, “You are indeed people given to ignorance… shall I seek a god for you other than the one God, when He has exalted you above all other people.” (Qur’an 7:138)

With these words Moses had silenced As-Samiri, but now with Moses missing, As-Samiri started urging the Children of Israel to force Prophet Aaron, the brother of Moses, to make a statue of a god so they could be safe and secure.

At first, very few people listened to As-Samiri or his friends. But after Moses had been gone for almost 30 days, more people began to agree with him. As-Samiri told people that in addition to the God of Abraham, who no one could see, people need another god that they could see.

“In Sumeria where my family came from, and in Egypt where we all lived, there are lots of paintings and statues of many different gods, both big and small. When you see a picture or a statue of a god, you can feel god is very close to you” As-Samiri said.

When Miriam the Prophet, the older sister of Moses and Aaron, heard what the Egyptian magician was saying she objected strongly. “The Ten Commandments forbid the Jewish people to make any statues or paintings of God. The Ten Commandments forbid us to have any God other than the God who freed us from slavery in Egypt.

God saved you from your enemy, Pharaoh and his army, and made a covenant with you through Moses, on the right side of Mount Sinai. Don’t even think about making an image of our God, or of any other god. There is no other god, and no one can be associated with the one God.

”

One day a large crowd of people, led by As-Samiri and his friends, gathered around Prophet Aaron, and demanded that he either tell them when Moses would return, or make an image for them to revere.

At first, Aaron told the Israelites that the delay in Moses’ return was only a test of their trust in God. Aaron could not tell them when Moses would return because he did not know. More than 30 days had passed since Moses went up to the top of Mount Sinai.

Aaron would not lie to them. They just had to trust in God. Most of the Israelites accepted this; but not the group led by As-Samiri and his friends. 

Aaron was worried that if he openly refused to make the image, the Children of Israel would split into groups who would fight with each other. That could lead to a civil war, something that must be avoided.

If he rebuked them as directly as Miriam the Prophet had, they might rebel and follow the lead of As-Samiri and make a statue, and so disobey both God and His prophets. So Aaron decided to outwit them. He asked the people, “Which god do you want to select for the image?”

One man who had come to Egypt from the distant country of India, said they should make an image of Krishna who was a very handsome young man with blue eyes and blue skin. Another man who had come to Egypt from Greece said they should make an image of Apollo who was the divine son of the God Zeus. 

Since the Jewish people had lived all their lives in Egypt, they wanted an Egyptian God.

But when Aaron asked them which one of the several dozen Gods the Egyptians worshipped they wanted for their image, they began to argue among themselves. 

Some wanted to make an image of Bastet the cat Goddess, while others wanted Amon the ram God. Some wanted to worship Osiris the God of the underworld; some wanted his sister the Isis cow. who gave birth to the sacred Apis bull, and was the Goddess of magic and magicians like As-Samiri.

Others wanted Isis’ son Horus, who appeared as a hawk, and was the ancestor of all the divine Pharaohs.

They argued with each other for several days while Aaron kept hoping that Moses would return. But Moses still didn’t return.

As-Samiri said they should worship either the cow Goddess Isis or the cow Goddess Hathor, who was the Goddess of music, dancing, fertility and childbirth. 

Either Goddess could save them from dying in the desert, and if they made a cow idol each Goddess would think it was for her, and both would help them.

Many, but not most of the Children of Israel were very insecure because Moses had been gone for more than 37 days now, so they decided to follow As-Samiri’s direction.

When they told Aaron they were going to make an image of Isis/Hathor, the cow Goddess, Aaron again tried to stop them by outwitting them.

Aaron told them that the image would have to be made out of gold. Since a cow was very big they would need lots of gold.

They would have to collect all the gold earrings from all the men, all the women and all the children in the camp, so they would have enough gold to make a statue of a cow. 

Aaron was sure that most of the people would refuse to give up their gold earrings. And indeed, none of the woman, and very few of the men were willing to donate their gold jewelry to make a golden cow.

But there were about 3,000 men who did offer their gold rings to As-Samiri and his followers.

Two days later a dozen baskets filled with gold rings were brought to Aaron who was surprised and saddened. Now Aaron was trapped by his own words.

He asked Miriam the Prophet for advice. 

She told him to tell the people that there was not enough gold to make a cow. There was not even enough gold to make a calf, or even half a calf. They should make a statue of Bastet, the cat goddess because they did have enough gold to make a cat.

Perhaps they would realize how stupid it was to select which God to worship based on how big a statue they were able to make.

Aaron did not want to say this because he knew it would cause a violent division among the Children of Israel, and Moses would accuse him of dividing the people into enemy camps.

Also Aaron had no doubt that Moses would return very very soon, and when Moses did return he would strongly rebuke As-Samiri and all of the people who supported him. 

That would be a good lesson for the majority of the Children of Israel who did not want to make the idol. So Aaron told the people they could make a small calf and place it on top of a big stone base, but it would never be a God. It could not hear their prayers nor would the idol teach them how to be better people. Aaron hoped that this would discourage them.

But As-Samiri, the Egyptian magician, told his followers, “I have seen something you are unable to see” and he took a handful of something (they couldn’t see what it was), added it to the gold rings and cast the gold in a fire and formed it as the cow Goddess Isis/Hathor. As-Samiri formed the statue hollow so it would look very big. 

Then As-Samiri secretly made hundreds of tiny pinholes in a line from its nose down its back to its tail. He could see the tiny holes but no one else could. As-Samiri knew that when the wind blew, the holes in the calf would make a mooing sound, and the people would be very impressed.

When the golden calf was done, Aaron felt very sad but he did not give up hope that Moses would soon return. Tomorrow would be 40 days since Moses went up to the top of Mount Sinai. Aaron decided to stall for one more day by saying they would celebrate with the calf the next day.

Early the next morning only about three thousand men, less than one out a hundred of all the Children of Israel, came to eat, drink, dance and even worship the golden calf. As the men stood around watching to see what would happen, the wind blew and the calf made a mooing sound.

“This is your God O Israel who brought you out of Egypt” shouted As-Samiri. “Bow down and worship Isis/Hathor.”

“Don’t do it!” shouted Aaron and his sister Miriam the Prophet, “This stupid statue is an idol.” Miriam stepped forward and punched the calf right on its nose. The calf split in half.

“Half a calf is better than that dead man Moses,” said As-Samiri. “Moses is never coming back, and his God has abandoned all of you.” (Exodus 33:22-25).

Just then Moses appeared on a cliff above them and told them that God would never abandon those who believe in Him. Sometimes they would have to wait a long time without losing faith, but God would never abandon the children of Abraham (Exodus 33:14, Deuteronomy 31:6 & Qur’an 47:31).

The promise of God lasts much longer than any statue of gold or silver.

Their children’s children would read about this calf for more than 120 generations. Long after Isis, Hathor and all the other Gods of Egypt were forgotten, Jews, Christians and Muslims all around the world would read about Moses and the golden calf (Qur’an 38:17).

They would all learn the lesson that faithfulness requires Sabr; both trust and patience, because God will never abandon those who are faithful to Him (Qur’an 2:214 & 14:5). May all those who work for world peace always remember this lesson and patiently work and wait without loosing faith that peace will always come; in the long run.

By Alessandro Gagaridis

During the last few days, one of the most debated issues has been President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw support from the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA. But while certainly being important, President Trump’s decision is not on its own able to sink the agreement, as Congress would have to follow up by voting in favor for restoring sanctions on Iran. What is far more relevant however is the new overall policy direction, and the discourse that Trump and his administration will adopt on Iran and on foreign affairs in general moving forward. This is what will ultimately determine the deal’s political sustainability over the long term. And to properly understand why, it is necessary to consider an important but neglected dimension of foreign policy: rhetoric.

Trump’s rhetoric on Iran: words matter

An important aspect of Trump’s approach on Iran (as well as on North Korea and many other issues) is the aggressive discourse he adopts. In fact, during his speech at the UN General Assembly last month, the president included the Islamic Republic among a “small group of rogue regimes,” calling it a “corrupt dictatorship” and accusing it of “bringing death and destruction.” Later, Trump declared: “the Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence and chaos across the Middle East.” Again, when he announced that he will not certify the JCPOA once more, he defined Iran as a “fanatical regime” and branded it the “number one” threat in the Middle East, replacing Islamic State.

Certainly Tehran is not innocent. It is an active player in the region, one which supports the Assad regime in Syria, groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as various Shia armed factions in Iraq. It is engaged in a fierce competition for regional primacy with Saudi Arabia and is traditionally hostile to Israel, both of which are allies of the U.S. In August, Iran’s parliament approved a bill allocating around 500 million USD to military expenditures (including the missile program) in an attempt to counter the “terrorist and adventurist activities” of the U.S., with MPs cheering and shouting “death to America.” In response to Trump’s speech at the UN, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani defined him a “rogue newcomer to international politics” and condemned his “ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric.” This last declaration is important, as it indicates that words matter; not only because they signal mutual enmity, but most importantly because they deliver a hostile message that builds and reinforces the perception of threat.

Now this point is central. Decision-makers should always examine the opponent’s point of view when formulating a policy – something that Trump is not doing with Iran. As a matter of fact, one should consider why Tehran was pursuing a nuclear program in the first place.

Iran’s nuclear program has a long history, but its current phase dates back to the early 2000s. Initially it was conducted in secrecy, so when it was discovered in August 2002 the revelation raised suspicions that the program had a military dimension. However, Teheran remained in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) because it insisted that its nuclear program had exclusively civilian purposes and was therefore respectful of the non-proliferation regime. To understand the reasons behind Iran’s move, it is necessary to recall the international situation at the time. The Bush administration was in charge in Washington. In the wake of the shock provoked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was advocating for and actively pursuing a “global war on terror,” and vehemently accused those “rogue states” believed to be sponsoring terrorism and proliferating weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Among such countries, there were Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, forming what Bush called the “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address in January 2002. The U.S. had occupied Afghanistan in 2001, and invaded Iraq in 2003. In this context, the other states in the “axis” felt threatened by the administration’s preventive war doctrine, and decided to act in order to ensure its own survival in case of a potential US preemptive attack. North Korea abandoned the NPT and resumed its nuclear weapons program. Iran’s decision to renew its efforts on the nuclear front followed the same logic.

From Iran’s (and North Korea’s) point of view, such actions are perfectly rational. Against the eventuality of a US-led invasion, the best option in the eyes of Tehran was to seek nuclear weapons as the ultimate form of deterrence. Interestingly, the Iranians made their decision in the wake of Bush’s bellicose rhetoric, as it made them feel more threatened. One should also remember that preserving the country from foreign (and particularly American) influences is a top priority of the Iranian regime, and the very constitution of the country contains specific dispositions in this sense; in particular, those indicated in article 152. This is due to the fact that present-day Iran was born out of the dramatic events of the 1979 Islamic Revolution which overthrew the pro-US Shah. Therefore, the regime’s legitimacy largely rests on its ability to keep the U.S. out of the country. According to this logic, adopting Teheran’s viewpoint, it is clear that nuclear weapons represented the best guarantee against a possible American attack, an eventuality that seemed realistic when Iran’s secret nuclear program was first discovered in August 2002. Afghanistan had been occupied the previous year, the invasion of Iraq seemed more likely with every passing day (and in fact it would start in 2003), and tensions with North Korea were mounting as well. These US military interventions made Iran feel surrounded after 2003, thus increasing its sense of insecurity and reinforcing the conviction that nuclear weapons were needed to protect itself.

It is notable that President Trump is adopting the same kind of rhetoric that Bush used back then, almost to the point of repeating the same words. Both defined Iran (as well as North Korea) as a “rogue state” and openly accused it of being a dangerous and destabilizing dictatorship which supports terrorism and acts against the U.S. and its allies. While such claims are to a considerable extent true, this kind of discourse is risky. As a matter of fact, in the eyes of the Iran regime, it reinforces the perception of being threatened, which in turn is exactly the reason that drove it to obtain nuclear weapons in the first place. And even assuming that Tehran is acting out of expansionist ambitions and not in self-defense, this discourse would give it a perfect excuse to abandon its commitment to the deal. In both cases, a similar rhetoric can realistically result in Iran restarting its nuclear program. Naturally, this would mean the failure of the JCPOA and a new crisis on the Iranian nuclear issue, whose outcome would be unpredictable.

Far more than a simple decision on whether or not to certify the deal, it is the discourse itself that risks undermining the Iran nuclear deal over the long term.

Iran’s ballistic missile tests: facts matter as well

Of course, the Iranians have their own responsibilities as well. Even though they have been careful not to violate the letter of the agreement (its specific material clauses), they have nevertheless acted in a volatile way. A considerable problem is the ballistic missile tests conducted in January and September, which prompted Washington to impose new targeted sanctions. Even though Teheran considers them a “deterrent” (as declared by Rouhani himself) these tests appear to the Trump administration as a violation not only of a UN resolution demanding Iran not develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads, but also of the spirit of JCPOA. As a matter of fact, from a strategic point of view such missiles are a meaningful deterrent only if they carry a nuclear warhead or another kind of WMD; therefore, it appears suspicious that Iran still tests them if it has in fact renounced its nuclear program. Tehran responds by pointing out that the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons. This is clearly not enough to remove the air of suspicion, especially when Rouhani himself implicitly declared in August that Iran is ready to resume its nuclear program in case the US imposes other sanctions, and that (thanks to the resources it obtained after the lifting of sanctions) if it does it will be even stronger than before.

But again, the tests and statements from the Rouhani regime reveal that Teheran considers the nuclear program as a response to Washington’s hawkish foreign policy. In other words, it’s a way of protecting the regime from foreign aggression through deterrence. Accordingly, any kind of threatening discourse will produce counterproductive results, as it will only reinforce the sense of threat perceived by the Iranian regime, thus pushing it to resume its nuclear program and abandon the deal even though it is also in Iran’s interests to maintain it.

It’s in this way that the JCPOA’s long-term tenure is strongly influenced by Trump’s rhetoric.

Words are not everything: why the JCPOA may still hold, and how it may collapse

Beyond the risks associated with Trump’s aggressive rhetoric, the situation today is not exactly the same as it was during Bush’s first term. During Obama’s eight years in the White House, the U.S. avoided any new direct military adventure, preferring the “lead from behind” approach and limiting the use of the armed force. And by now the Trump administration, contrary to what President Bush did, has not transformed its discourse against “rogue states” into actual military interventions. As such, the threat perception in Tehran may not reach the critical level that would prompt it to resume its nuclear program.

Moreover, one should also recall that the other powers who negotiated the JCPOA are favorable to keeping it in place, and that following Trump’s announcement about his willingness not to certify the deal for the third time, all other parties expressed their continued support for the agreement. As such, even if the U.S. were to abandon the deal, it may still survive. This would leave Washington isolated, as well as hamper the effect of any new sanctions it may impose on Tehran. If the other parties don’t follow suit, then the U.S. unilateral measures alone are unlikely to have sufficient strength to force Iran back to the negotiating table.

It’s possible that, despite Trump’s rhetoric, Iran will not consider the threat serious enough to resume its nuclear program and invite the economic and political costs of such a move. As a result, the JCPOA may endure, either because the Congress will not restore sanctions or because the rest of the P5+1 group will continue supporting it. Still, if the U.S. abandons the deal, tensions would nevertheless rise in the Middle East, adding further instability in the region with potential deleterious effects. However, there is a factor that may provoke a radical change in Iran’s threat perception and push it to seek a nuclear deterrent once again: a US military intervention in the near future. In that case, as in 2002, the combination of a harsh rhetoric and an aggressive foreign policy will lead Iran to consider the threat of an American attack credible enough to justify the need to acquire nuclear weapons, thus resuming the previous stand-off. In short, if the U.S. refrains from starting any new unilateral military adventures, the deal may last, but if America resumes a policy akin to that of former President Bush, then Iran will respond by seeking nuclear weapons as a deterrence against US military action.

Predicting the future is impossible. But we’ve seen this all before, and we should already know what happens.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published.

Did the United States warn Russia to stay out of Syria?

Yes, they did.

Did they tell the Russians that if they joined the war against ISIS and helped Bashar al Assad the US would make them pay a heavy price?

Yes.

Did US agents and diplomats warn their Russian counterparts that Russian troops would  “come home in body bags” and that the western media would launch a propaganda campaign against them?

Yes, again.

Did US officials say the western media would concoct a phony story about “Russian hacking” that would be used to persuade the American people that Russia was a dangerous enemy that had to be reigned in with harsh economic sanctions, provocative military maneuvers, and threats of violence?

No, but it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which the CIA would pursue such a strategy. After all, the Intel agencies, the media and the entire political establishment have been hammering on Russia for over two years now. Isn’t it possible that elements of these three factions decided to pool their resources in order to poison the public’s perception Russia? Hasn’t the US government dabbled in these type of psychological operations (PSYOPS) many time before?

Of course, they have.  And in prior incidents, the facts were fixed to fit the policy just as they have been in this case.  For example,  the Bush administration had already decided to topple Saddam long-before they cooked up their fake stories about mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, aluminum tubes and “Curveball”. Doesn’t the same rule apply here?  Haven’t the “facts” about collusion, Pokémon Go and Facebook all been concocted after-the-fact to support the original thesis, that Russia meddled in the election?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What we know is that high-ranking members of the US State Department and Pentagon threatened Moscow prior to Russia’s military intervention in October, 2015. US diplomats made it clear that if Russia helped the Syrian government,  Washington would use the media and its other  assets to retaliate. According to Russia’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:

We were asked to pass on to you the most serious warnings that Russia will be hurt by its actions.. We will make sure that Russia really knows what pain is……Keep in mind that everything you do will be manipulated by the media which will cancel out the real (positive) effects of your work. ..You are going to fight terrorists, but you will be made to look like the bad guy.

These threats were delivered to us many times in 2015 as part of the discussions with the Russia’s Representative of Foreign Affairs and his international counterparts. (During Kerry-Lavrov meetings)

We’re talking about the world’s elite who told us these things.

When we told them exactly what targets we planned to strike, they launched a disinformation media campaign against us. Officials from the White House and State Department directly threatened to hurt us.  They promised that we’d “come home in body bags” not only diplomatic representatives but also the Secretary of Defense…..The US showed us that the strongest military has unlimited rights to create evil in the world.”

(See the whole interview on YouTube.

Zakharova’s admission is interesting for many reasons. First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington’s proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.

Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can’t say. When Zakharova says, “everything you do will be manipulated by the media”, she is tacitly acknowledging that the MSM works in concert with the US government shaping a message that best achieves US imperial objectives. In this case, the obvious goal is the removal of Bashar al Assad and the partitioning of the state consistent with US plans to redraw the map of the Middle East. Russian intervention derailed that plan which is why Russia is despised.

Third, Zakharova’s comments suggest a motive for the Russia hacking campaign. Russia has become an insurmountable obstacle to Washington’s plans for global hegemony. It has blocked US progress in Ukraine and rolled backed US proxy-forces in Syria. Additionally, Russia has united the countries in Central Asia (EEU)  and threatens to economically integrate Europe and Asia into the world’s biggest free trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Here’s a quote from Putin that explains what’s going on:

“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new Asia.’”

Putin’s dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That’s why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical landbridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and  pipeline corridors.  Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam’s path to success which is roiling the political establishment in  Washington.

The US wants to retaliate for the defeat of its proxy army in Syria but it’s not prepared for a military clash. Not yet, at least. And, keep in mind, Washington’s Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection:  CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained. The defeat is not a loss for the US Military, but a blot on the record of CIA Director John Brennan, the architect and main proponent of the failed project to remove Assad.  Brennan’s whole scheme has gone down in flames.

Why is that important?

Because it suggests that Brennan had a strong motive to strike back at Moscow. He had “a dog in the fight”, and his dog lost. And since he couldn’t win on the battlefield, his only choice was to launch an asymmetrical attack via the media. Isn’t this where the Russia hacking idea originated?

If it did, then there should be footprints that lead back to Brennan himself, the primary source of the psyops. Check out this excerpt from The Washington Times:

What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.

It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama’s, who provided the information — what he termed the “basis” — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president’s 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.

Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.

But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.

(“Obama loyalist Brennan drove FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer”, The Washington Times)

So it all started with Brennan, the resentful Intel chief who got his nose bloodied by Putin in Syria and decided to seek his revenge.  But then Brennan needed to conceal his lead-role in the drama by drawing other agencies into the loop, so he included the FBI, the NSA and DIA. The strategy helped to obfuscate the real braintrust in the hacking affair,  John Brennan.

According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the “Trump-Russia connection”.. but ..”Former CIA Director John Brennan says he was the one who got the ball rolling.”

Indeed. Brennan appears to be the central figure in this political fiasco, the source from which many of the spurious accusations originated. It was Brennan who first intimated that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents prior to the 2016 elections.

“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” Brennan stated in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May.

This is a deliberate mischaracterization of what Brennan was actually doing. He was spying on the members of the rival party to gain a political advantage. This is how police state operates.  How is it that no one in the media or on Capital Hill has condemned this egregious attack on the democratic process?

So far, none of the four investigations on Capital Hill have produced even a shred of evidence supporting Brennan’s claims.  Just last week, during a press conference with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr bluntly stated,

“The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any.”

There’s no proof of collusion at all. So what’s Brennan’s real motive here? What’s driving this silly propaganda campaign that has failed to produce any verifiable evidence after a massive 10-month, no-holds-barred investigation involving both Houses of Congress, the establishment media, four intelligence agencies and an Independent Counsel?

The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials  who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result, that is, persuading the American people that “evil” Putin is trying to sabotage our pristine democracy and that Donald Trump is not only the country’s lousiest president ever, but also a Russian agent.

That’s not to say, that Brennan’s psyops has not been successful. It has been, amazingly successful. According to a recent CBS Poll, a majority of Americans (57%) now believe that “Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.”  In contrast, only 34 percent of Americans don’t believe there was any Russian interference in the 2016  elections.

What the numbers don’t explain, however, is how one’s own political ideology shapes the results. For example, 71 percent of Democrats believe that Russia interfered, while a mere 18 percent of Republicans agree. In other words, one’s own prejudices (about Trump and Russia)  have a much greater impact on one’s opinion than either facts or evidence.  Propaganda campaigns try to exploit public bias to effectively manipulate perceptions.  The CBS polling data shows that they have succeeded in that regard.

The US government has a long history of (as Robert Parry says) “cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington’s policies.”  That is certainly the case here. Most of the so-called ‘evidence’ is nothing more than baseless accusations that appear momentarily in the headlines only to vanish a week or so later. Brennan and Co. appear to be exploring new frontiers in state propaganda, propaganda  that relies less on semi-credible events or evidence than on incessant repetition of far-fetched allegations (Facebook, Google, Pokémon Go) that reiterate the same underlying claim of Russian meddling. The difference between the fabrications that led up to the war in Iraq (mobile weapons labs, Niger uranium, shadowy connections to al Qaida and aluminum tubes) and those of Russian hacking suggests that the perpetrators of this charade are convinced that frequency trumps credibility. The American people are being carpet-bombed with dodgy, almost-comical disinformation to see if it has the intended effect. Recent surveys indicate the plan is working.

The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda (In 2013, Obama gutted the Smith Mundt Act  “unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.” (Foreign Policy Magazine) In 2016, Obama paved the way for more domestic propaganda by passing the Orwellian-named  “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.  Ostensibly, the bill lays the groundwork for responding to “fake news” overseas, but in reality, it marks “a further curtailment of press freedom” and an ambitious attempt to suppress accurate, independent information.)  The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state.  But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.

On October 1, a referendum on independence was held in Catalonia. It is an event that attracted significant attention by the media, especially since the moves by the Spanish central government to block it and the political debate that followed its results.

My intention here is not to examine the political debate around it in Spain and in Europe, to assess its economic impact, and even less to determine “who is right” and whether Catalonia should become independent or not. Instead, what I wish to do is to raise two often neglected but extremely important aspects of the issue, namely the historical roots of the Catalonian separatism and the problem’s nature from the perspective of international law.

The Original Institutional Order: The Medieval Period And The Fueros

To understand the whole issue, it is necessary to start from history, as it is an important aspect here (as it always is).

During all the Middle Ages, today’s Spain was divided in various kingdoms, among which there were the Kingdom of Aragon and the Kingdom of Castile. With time, these two polities became the most powerful ones in Spain and they began ruling other minor political entities. As a consequence, their nature slightly changed: as a matter of fact, they became the Crowns of Aragon and Castile. Simply put, a Crown is a confederation of smaller polities ruled by the same king, thus forming a single Kingdom. As an example, the Crown of Aragon was nothing but the union of a series of entities (Kingdom of Aragon, Principality of Catalonia, Kingdom of Majorca and many others) that were all ruled by the King of Aragon. The situation changed again in 1492, with the marriage between King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. As a result of their marriage, the two Crowns of Aragon and Castile practically merged and became the Kingdom of Spain, which has the former Crown of Castile as its political pillar.

Still, significant forms of autonomy remained to Aragon and its subordinate political entities, thanks to a system of privileges known as fueros, which were granted by the monarchy to Catalonia as well as other regions of Spain. In particular, the Principality of Catalonia continued having its own Constitutions, which were a system of juridical norms that had to be approved by the Cortes, the Principality’s legislative organ. After his coronation, the King of Spain even used to summon the Cortes and swear on such Constitutions. This system granted a notable degree of autonomy and self-ruling to Catalonia, as well as to the other areas of Spain where is was applied.

The Suppression Of The Fueros

Things would change dramatically at the beginning of the XVIII century, with the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1714). Now, let me open a parenthesis. This conflict is a major event in modern European history, but unfortunately it is often ignored. It is a complex war with multiple implications; but here, I will only talk about its impact on Spain.

In short, the war was sparked by a succession crisis over who were to become King of Spain. The conflict opposed two rivals. The first was the grandson of King Louis XIV of France; he was crowned as King Philip V of Spain in 1701 and he ultimately prevailed. The other was the Archduke Charles of Austria (later Emperor Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire). The two men represented not only the interests of two different powers (France and Austria) and their allies, but also two different governance systems: Philip V supported the absolute monarchy model that his grandfather had established in France, which was based on the centralization.

Of course, this would imply the end of the fueros and the concentration of power in the hands of the King, resulting in more power to the central government in Madrid and less to Catalonia. On the contrary, Charles wanted to continue applying the ancient system of the fueros, and preserve the autonomy of Catalonia and other regions (notably, this kind of governance was closer to that existing in Austria and the Holy Roman Empire). So, it is not surprising that most Castilians supported Philip, whereas the Catalans were largely pro-Charles.

However, the war turned bad for the Catalans. Charles had to renounce to his claims on the Spanish throne, and he withdrew his support to Catalonia. Nevertheless, the region decided to continue its resistance against the central government, but its struggle ended in a dramatic way. The troops of Philip V besieged Barcelona and, despite its firm resistance, the city was conquered on September 11, 1714; a date that marked the collective conscience of the Catalan people and that still has a major importance for it. With a series of legislative acts known as Decretos de Nueva Planta, the King abolished the fueros system in the regions that had supported his rival Charles. The Catalan fueros were suppressed in 1716, just two years after the siege of Barcelona.

Symbolic Importance Of 1714-1716 Events For Catalan National Sentiment

Previously I mentioned that the long historical digression would be important. Here you will see why.

As mentioned before, the dramatic events of Barcelona’s fall and the suppression of the Catalan fueros had a deep impact on the national sentiment of the Catalonian people. In fact, September 11 marks the National Day of Catalonia, known in Catalan as Diada.

This date is seen as a founding episode of the Catalan national conscience, the apex of its heroic struggle to preserve its identity and liberties from Philip’s absolutism, and it celebrates the values for which the Catalans fought for. Today, those values are recalled in the discourse of the Catalan political forces in favor of greater autonomy or (even more) independence.

It is interesting to note that the defenders of Barcelona in 1714 claimed to be fighting for freedom; and not only for them, but for the whole of Spain. This is demonstrated by the famous announcement (Catalan and Spanish texts here) published by the Catalan authorities in the last phases of Barcelona’s siege, when they called the people to fight “for their Homeland and for the freedom of all Spain”.

Now, I am not an expert of the political debate on independence inside Catalonia, but it seems that this kind of discourse still exists still today: as this article suggests, the Catalan pro-independence forces still claim to be struggling for freedom and for a more equal and open society against the conservatism and centralism of the government in Madrid.

Today as in 1714, the Catalans affirm to be protecting not only their freedom, but that of Spain as a whole, in an effort to build a better country. Therefore, the problem is not (only) about Catalonia, but about Spain’s entire political-institutional order, about its very nature as a polity. As such, beyond the ethnic-linguistic divides, the issue is about the future of Spain; and not only because of the risk that it may lose one of its most economically prosperous regions, but because its institutional system is put under discussion.

¿Restablecer Los Fueros?

And this brings the fueros back. As a matter of fact, the whole issue about Catalonia can be seen to some degree as an attempt to restore the fueros that were lost in 1716. Since then, virtually all political upheaval involving the region was linked to its struggle to regain the autonomy it once enjoyed. This was the case of the three Carlist Wars during the 19th century, a series of civil wars during which Catalonia fought for the traditional values against the liberal and secularist tendencies of the central government; and again of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) that saw Catalonia becoming the stronghold of republican and communist forces against Franco’s nationalists (however, it should not be ignored that both the Carlist Wars and the Civil War were complex conflicts with multiple socio-political implications).

Even today, significant voices among the Catalan call for a restoration of the fueros, and this may indeed be a possible solution. Of course, they would need to be re-adapted to the contemporary context; but at the end this is the core of the problem: finding a new institutional order for Spain as a whole, and one that is capable to preserve the equilibrium between Catalonia and the central government, as the ancient fueros had been doing for centuries.

It is not up to me to say how this new political balance should look like, as I have neither the authority nor the competences to do so; and naturally, this would not be an easy task. After all, Catalonia currently has its own self-government organs (the Generalitat) and it enjoys a good degree of autonomy, but despite this its authorities still decided to move ahead with the independence referendum. But this very fact indicates that the present situation is not deemed satisfactory, and that there is the need to find a new center-periphery equilibrium that satisfies the demands of the Catalans all while preserving the unity of Spain.

Again, the recent escalation shows that such an agreement is very difficult (if not impossible) to reach; otherwise the stand-off would not be so serious. Still, this proves once more that the issue is not only about Catalonia, but about Spain as a whole; and that the ancient fueros still play an important role today, to the point that restoring them (albeit in a renewed and modernized form) may be the solution to the problem.

International Dimension Of Independence Referendum: Right To Self-Determination?

At this point, I can move to the examination of the issue from international law’s viewpoint. Beware that it is a complex issue that is largely based on (political) interpretations, but I will try to be objective in presenting my statements.

Now, a recurrent statement about Catalonia’s independence referendum is that it is conducted in the name of self-determination (see, for example, the article mentioned above). But even if it is so often presented as an exertion of this principle, is it actually so from the point of view of international law?

To answer this question, it is necessary to make some preliminary consideration. First, Catalonia is a region belonging to Spain, which is a sovereign state. Therefore, like all states, Spain exerts its sovereignty on its territory, including Catalonia; meaning that it has the right to exclusively exert its governing power on that territory. This also implies that Spain holds the monopoly of force on its territory, meaning that it has the juridically legitimate authority to use force to impose law on it.

This is particularly true in the case a state employs force to preserve its own territorial integrity: the secession of a given territory would be in clear violation of the state’s sovereign rights on it, thus making it legitimate for the state to use coercive force in order to maintain its power on that territory.

As such, Spain can legitimately oppose Catalonia’s independence, and even use force to prevent it (but always in respect of the norms on human rights and similar). Now, I do not want to take a position on “who is right”, nor I want to “justify” the measures taken by the Spanish government to block the referendum and the independence process: I am simply analyzing the situation on a juridical basis. And according to it, Catalonia has not the right to secede: it could legally become independent only with the consent of the Spanish state and in respect of its constitutional norms. In short, if Spain does not want Catalonia to become independent, it has the right to oppose it and the latter cannot unilaterally secede.

But what about the right of self-determination, so often evoked to justify Catalan independence and frequently mentioned by media reports on the referendum?
Well, the situation is controversial and debated, also (and mostly) because it is heavily politicized. Still, it is possible to make some considerations. First, it is necessary to remind what the self-determination principle is actually about. Basically, it is the right of peoples under foreign domination to become independent, associate with or be integrated into an independent state, and in general to freely choose their political regime. Now, one may argue that the Catalan people can evoke this right because it is dominated by Spain; but this would very likely be a politically-biased and hard-to-prove statement.

But even assuming that it is actually the case (and this is a big “if”), there would still be another considerable obstacle; actually, an insurmountable one, unless the very application of the self-determination principle is modified. As a matter of fact, the principle is not retroactive, therefore it can only be applied to cases of foreign domination which materialized after the norm was established and consolidated; which practically means after 1945 (the end of WWII). Now, as we have seen, Catalonia became part of the Kingdom of Spain centuries before that date. As a result, it is not possible to evoke the self-determination principle to justify Catalonia’s quest for independence on a juridical basis. You can state it is “just” in ethical, political, or economic terms; but self-determination (as it is conceived today in international law) is not applicable.

Of course, you will find plenty of voices affirming the contrary, such as this DIPLOCA report and this statement from UNPO. Still, most of times they are not impartial (in the cases above, the report was written by a Catalan law professor and the statement comes from an Organization supporting the cause of underrepresented populations…). You will also find others firmly refusing this right, like this article. Again, I do not want to say what is “just” and what is not; but on the basis of the current interpretation of international law, it is not possible to argue that Catalans have a right to self-determination.

Conclusion

To conclude, it is possible to summarize the situation as follows:

• The Catalan question has deep historical roots.
• Today as in the past, the issue is not only about Catalonia, but about Spain as a whole and its nature as a polity.
• “Restoring” the fueros in a modernized form may be the key to solve the problem by finding a new equilibrium between the Catalan Generalitat and the central Spanish government.
• The Catalans cannot legitimately invoke the self-determination principle to juridically justify the referendum and more broadly to push ahead toward independence.

About the author:
*Alessandro Gagaridis runs the website Strategikos, and holds a Master’s degree in “International Relations: Professional Focus Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution” at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium).

Additional readings
A page on the War of Spanish Succession (in Spanish), it is from a blog but it is detailed: https://senderosdelahistoria.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/la-guerra-de-sucesion-espanola-1701-1713/

A brief overview of the War of Spanish Succession (in Spanish): http://www.historiasiglo20.org/HE/8a.htm# and on the centralization which occurred after the war: http://www.historiasiglo20.org/HE/8b.htm

An article on the siege of Barcelona and its historical importance [in Spanish]: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/historia/grandes-reportajes/sitio-barcelona-guerra-sucesion_10653/1

Another brief page on the War (in English): https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-the-Spanish-Succession

Wikipedia’s page on the War [in English, but the Spanish version is also well-made]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession

Since World War II most of the world’s conflicts have revolved around struggles for independence against Western and Japanese colonial/imperial regimes

Following formal independence, a new type of imperial domination was imposed – neo- colonial regimes, in which the US and its European allies imposed vassal rulers acting as proxies for economic exploitation. With the rise of US unipolar global domination, following the demise of the USSR (1990), the West established hegemony over the East European states. Some were subject to fragmentation and sub-divided into new NATO dominated statelets.

The quest for a unipolar empire set in motion a series of wars and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic States, North Africa, Asia and Western Europe – leading to ethnic cleansing and the global mass refugee crises.

The break-up of nation states spread across the globe as the rhetoric and politics of ‘self-determination’ replaced the class struggle as the flagship for social justice and political freedom.

Many of the prime movers of empire-building adopted the tactics of dividing and conquering adversaries – under the liberal pretext of promoting ‘self-determination’, without clarifying who and what the ‘self’ represented and who really benefited.
Sectional, regional, cultural and ethnic identities served to polarize struggles. In contrast ‘central’ regimes fought to retain ‘national unity’ in order to repress regional revolts.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the national and international forces behind the slogans of ‘self-determination’ and the larger international and regional consequences.

Basic Concepts: Ambiguities and Clarification

One of the striking aspects of the process of globalization and national development is ‘uneven and combined development’ (ICD). This takes several forms – uneven development between regions, within and between countries, and usually both.

Imperial countries concentrate industries, commerce and banking while colonized/neo- colonized countries are left with export-linked, resource-based enclaves and low-wage assembly plants. Frequently, the capital cities of colonized and de-colonized countries concentrate and centralize political power, wealth, infrastructure, transport and finance while their provinces are reduced to providing raw material and cheap labor by subject people. Infrequently political power and administration – including the military, police and tax collection agencies – are concentrated in economically un-productive central cities, while the wealth-producing, but politically weaker regions, are economically exploited, marginalized and depleted.

Combined and uneven development on international and national levels has led to class, anti-imperialist and regional struggles. Where class-based struggles have been weakened, nationalist and ethnic leaders and movements assume political leadership.

‘Nationalism’, however, has two diametrically opposing faces: In one version Western backed regional movements work to degrade anti-imperialist regimes in order to subordinate the entire nation to the dictates of an imperial power. In a different context, broad-based secular nationalists struggle to gain political independence by defeating imperial forces and their local surrogates, who are often ethnic or religious minority rent-collecting overlords.

Imperial states have always had a clear understanding of the nature of the different kinds of ‘nationalism’ and which serve their interests. Imperial states support regional and/or ‘nationalist’ regimes and movements that will undermine anti-imperial movements, regimes and regions. They always oppose ‘nationalist’ movements with strong working class leadership.

Historical Experience

Imperial Perfidious Albion, the United Kingdom, slaughtered and starved millions of people who resisted its rule in Asia (India, Burma, Malaya and China), Africa (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, etc.) and Europe (Ireland).

At the same time, British imperialists promoted regional conflicts arming Muslims to fight Hindus, Sikhs to fight Muslims, Gurkas to oppress Malays and create various warring religious, ethnic and linguistic groups throughout the Indian subcontinent, Burma and Malaya.

Likewise the UK promoted conflicts among religious, secular nationalist and conservative groups throughout the Middle East.

The imperial powers naturally operate through the strategy of ‘divide and conquer’, labeling their adversaries as ‘backward’ and ‘authoritarian’ while praising their surrogates as ‘freedom fighters’ which they claim are ‘in transition to Western democratic values’.

However, the strategic issue is how imperial states define the kind of self-determination to support or repress and when to change their policies: Today’s allies are dubbed ‘democrats’ in the Western press and tomorrow they can be re-assigned the role of ‘freedom’s enemies’ and ‘authoritarian’, if they act against imperial interests.

The Two Faces of Self-Determination

In contrast to the imperial practice of shifting policies toward dominant regimes and separatist movements, most of the ‘left’ broadly support all movements for self- determination and label all opponents as ‘oppressors’.

As a result the left and the imperialist regimes may end up on the same side in a massive ‘regime change’ campaign!

The libertarian left cover-up their own fake ‘idealism’ by labeling the imperial powers as ‘hypocrites’ and using a ‘double-standard’. This is a laughable accusation, since the guiding principle behind an imperial decision to support or reject ‘self-determination’ is based on class and imperial interests. In other words, when ‘self-determination’ benefits the empire, it receives full support. There are no abstract historical, moral precepts, devoid of class and imperial content determining policy.

Case Studies: The Myths of the “Stateless Kurds” and “Ukraine’s Liberation”

In the Twentieth Century, the Kurdish citizens of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran have made claims of ‘self-determination’ and fought against established nation-states in the name of ‘ethnic liberation’.

But who defines the real ‘self’ to be liberated?

In the case of Iraq in the 1990’s, Kurds were sponsored, armed, funded and defended by the US and Israel in order to weaken and divide the secular-nationalist Iraqi republic. Kurds, again with US support, have organized regional conflicts in Turkey and more recently in Syria, in order to defeat the independent government of Bashar Assad. Leftist Kurds cynically describe their imperial allies, including the Israelis, as ‘progressive colonialists’.

In brief, the Kurds act as surrogates for the US and Israel: They provide mercenaries, access to military bases, listening and spy posts and resources in their newly ‘liberated (and ethnically cleansed) country’, to bolster US imperialism, which ‘their warlord leaders’ have chosen as the dominant ‘partner’. Is their struggle one of national liberation or mercenary puppetry in the service of empire against sovereign nations resisting imperial and Zionist control?

In the Ukraine, the US hailed the cause of self-determination when it engineered a violent coup to oust an elected regime, whose crime was its commitment to independence from NATO. The coup was openly funded by the US, which financed and trained fascist thugs committed to the expulsion or repression of ethnic Russian speakers, especially in the eastern Donbas region and Crimea with the aim of placing NATO bases on Russia’s border.

The overwhelmingly Russian-speaking people of Crimea opposed the coup and exercised their right to self-determination by voting to rejoin Russia. Likewise the industrialized Donbas region of eastern Ukraine declared its autonomy, opposing the oppressive and grossly corrupt US installed regime in Kiev.

The violent US-EU sponsored coup in Kiev was a blatant form of imperial annexation, while the peaceful vote in Crimea and the militant Eastern Ukraine (Donbas) exercise of self- determination presented a progressive response by anti-imperialist forces.

Thwarted in its project to turn Eastern Ukraine and Crimea into NATO launching pads for aggression against Moscow, US/EU condemned this response as ‘Russian colonization’.

Tibet and the Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang Province

Separatist groups have been actively engaged in armed uprisings for many decades in Tibet and Xinjiang, Western China. While they claimed to be ‘independent’, their feudal warlords have long been hostile to the positive advances of the Chinese revolution (including the abolition of slavery in Tibet, as well as opium trade and bride price and the extension of universal education in feudal Moslem regions). They collaborated with the US and expansionist India (where the Dalai Lama established his palace and camps of armed supporters, trained and armed by Western imperial agencies).

While the West advertises the Dalai Lama as a peace-loving holy man giving platitudinous speeches to adoring crowds, this saint never condemned the genocidal US wars against fellow Buddhists in Vietnam, Korea or elsewhere.

The well-funded Western pro-Tibet and pro-Uighur celebrity/victim circuit has ignored the links between the Dalai Lama and his imperial patrons, which ultimately defines the operational meaning of ‘self-determination’.

Kosova: Self-Determination by Terrorist White Slavers

After World War II, Yugoslavia, liberated from its vicious Nazi collaborators by the Communist partisans, embarked on becoming a peaceful self-managed, multi-ethnic socialist society. But in the 1990’s, the overt military intervention of NATO forces deliberately engineered the violent break-up of Yugoslavia into ‘independent’ statelets. The experiment of a multiethnic socialist state in Europe was destroyed. After massive ethnic cleansing of its non- Albanian populations, a new NATO puppet-state, Kosova, came under the control of an internationally recognized terrorist, white slaver, narco-US vassal Hashim Thaci and his Kosovo Liberation Army thugs.

With the massive US bombing campaign against Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities and with NATO military support, Kosova achieved ‘self-determination’ – as a huge land-based US aircraft carrier and ‘R&R’ center (Camp Bondsteel) with discounts at KLA-run brothels for the GI’s. Because Kosova serves as a mercenary outpost run by vassal thugs, Washington and Brussels endorsed its claims as a ‘liberated independent state’. It has also served as an international discount depot for the gruesome trade in human organs for transplant. Viewing the ethnically cleansed mafia state of Kosovo, then NATO commander, Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, later admitted: ‘We bombed the wrong side’.

The break-up of Yugoslavia, led to multiple separatist mini-states, each of which fell in line with EU-economic domination and US military control. In Western jargon this was dubbed ‘democratic self-determination’ – the ugly reality is that of massive ethnic cleansing, impoverishment and criminality.

Catalunya’s Independence and Neo-Franco Spain

Spain is under the rule of a regime descended from the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. President Mariano Rajoy and his misnamed ‘Popular Party’ (PP) and his royal sidekick, King Felipe VI, have engaged in massive corruption scandals, money laundering and fraudulent multi-million euro public–private building contracts. Rajoy’s neo-liberal policies significantly contributed to a financial crash which resulting in a 30% unemployment rate and an austerity program stripping Spanish workers of their collective bargaining power.

In the face of Catalunya’s pursuit of self-determination via free and democratic elections, Rajoy ordered a police and military invasion, seizing ballots, breaking heads and asserting total control.

The Catalans’ peaceful exercise of self-determination via free elections, independent of imperial manipulation, was rejected by both the EU and Washington as ‘unlawful’– for disobeying Rajoy and his neo-Franco legions.

Self-Determination for Palestine and US Backed Israeli Colonization and Subjugation

For a half-century, Washington has supported brutal Israeli occupation and colonization of the Palestinian ‘West Bank’. The US consistently denies self-determination for the people of Palestine and its millions of displaced refugees. Washington arms and finances Israeli expansion through the violent seizure of Palestinian territory and resources as well as the starvation, incarceration, torture and assassination of Palestinians for the crime of asserting their right of self-determination.

The overwhelming majority of US Congressional officials and Presidents, past and present, slavishly take their cues from the Presidents of the 52 Major Jewish (Israeli) Organization who add billions to the coffers of colonial Tel Aviv. Israel and its Zionist surrogates inside the US government manipulate the US into disastrous wars in the Middle East against the self-determination of independent Arab and Muslim nations.

Saudi Arabia: Enemy of Yemen’s Self-Determination

Saudi Arabia’s despotic regime has fought against self-determination in the Gulf States and Yemen. The Saudis, backed by US arms and advisers, have dispossessed millions of Yemeni civilians and killed thousands in a merciless bombing campaign. Over the past decade the Saudis have bombed and blockaded Yemen, destroying its infrastructure, causing a massive plague of cholera and threatening starvation for millions of children in an effort to defeat the Houthi-led Yemeni liberation movement.

The US and UK have provided over a hundred billion dollars in arms sales and give logistical support, including bombing coordinates to the Saudi tyrants while blocking any UN- sponsored diplomatic action to relieve the immense suffering. In this grotesque war crime, Washington and Israel are the Saudi Monarchy’s closest associates in denying self- determination to the oppressed people of Yemen who have long resisted Saudi control.

Conclusion

The US imperialist state, like all aspiring empire-builders, represses or supports movements for self-determination according to their class and imperial interests. To be clear: Self-determination is a class-defined issue; it is not a general moral-legal principle.

Imperialism’s selective use and abuse of self-determination is not a case of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘double standards’, as their left-liberal supporters complain. Washington applies a single standard: Does this movement advance Empire by securing and buttressing vassal regimes and their supporters? The language of ‘liberation’ is a mere gloss to secure the allegiance of vassals opposed to independent states.

For decades, Eastern European, Balkan and Baltic countries were encouraged to struggle for ‘self-determination’ against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, only to later embrace the yoke of vassalage under the command of NATO, the EU and Washington. In many cases their sovereignty and standard of living collapsed followed by ethnic cleansing, including the mass expulsion of Serbs from Croatia and Kosovo and the cultural-linguistic repression of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Ukraine.

The Kurdish ‘freedom fighters’, followed ethnic warlords who were funded by the US and Israel, and took over town, cities, oil resources and territory to serve as imperial military bases against the sovereign governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria.

In this context, the Kurdish warlords and oligarchs are loyal vassals and an integral component of the long-standing US-Israeli policy aimed at dividing and weakening independent allies of Palestine, Yemen and genuine liberation movements.

Clearly the criteria for deciding whose claims of self-determination are valid require identifying whether class and anti-imperialist interests are advanced.

Beyond the immediate conflicts, many independent regimes, in turn, become oppressive rulers of their own minorities and native critics. ‘Self-determination’ ad infinitum can ultimately lead to schizoid individuals – extolling their mythical people while oppressing others. Today, Zionism is the ultimate parody of ‘self-determination’. Newly independent countries and rulers frequently deny minorities of their own right to self-determination – especially those who sided with the previous power.

To the extent that the ‘national’ struggle is limited to political independence it can lead to a mere ‘changing of the guard’ – maintaining oppressive class exploitation and introducing new forms of cultural-ethnic and gender oppression.

In some instances the new forms of class exploitation may even surpass their previous conditions under imperial vassalage.

Kurds, Tibetans, fascist Ukrainian nationalists, Uighurs and other so-called freedom fighters turn out to be military Sepoys for aggressive US incursion against independent China, Iran and Russia. Leftist backers of these dubious ‘liberation movements’ tag along behind the empire.

Capitalist ‘globalization’ is today’s greatest enemy to authentic self-determination. Imperial globalization supports fragmented statelets – all the better to convert them into new vassals with their own flag and anthem!

The exodus of Rohingyas from Myanmar affected Bangladesh and India the most. But, there is little information that they made their inroads into Nepal.

By Hari Bansh Jha

During last few years, if any minority community in the world that has caught maximum international attention, it is the Rohingyas of Myanmar. With a population of nearly 1.1 million, the Rohingyas are predominantly Muslim ethnic group living in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. A smaller community of the Rohingyas also lives in countries like Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia. As per the estimate of the World Bank, 78 per cent of the Rohingyas live in abject poverty and are considered to be a most oppressed ethnic community in the world.

The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation view that Rohingyas have been living in Arakan, which is now called Rakhine, since time immemorial. But the Buddhists who constitute around 80 percent of Myanmar’s population view them as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. They feel that those people came to the Rakhine state of Myanmar following its annexation by the British in 1826. ^[1] So they don’t even figure in the list of 135 officially recognised ethnic groups and are denied citizenship since 1982.

Reports are that the Myanmarese army and Buddhist mobs have been massacring the Rohingyas; while the latter have been attacking with arms on the Myanmar police and military posts. Violent attacks on the Rohingyas was common during the military junta rule in Myanmar, but the crackdown intensified following the incident in August 2017 in which the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which is labelled as a terrorist group in Myanmar, allegedly attacked border checkpoints and killed nine officers and nearly 400 people. ^[2] Since then, clearance operations resumed to establish the rule of law in Rakhine villages. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas had to leave Myanmar for neighbouring countries by land or boat to save their life. ^[3]

The rights groups hold the security agencies of Myanmar responsible for the killing of the civilian population in Rakhine. Echoing this voice, the United Nations Human Rights office also perceives that the security forces of Myanmar have brutally driven out half a million Rohingya from Rakhine state. Reports are that the homes, crops and villages of those people have been torched to prevent any attempt by them to return to their native land. ^[4] Even women are reported to have been raped. Therefore, the wave of Rohingyas exodus from their country continues unabated.

Recently, Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations, termed the situation in Myanmar as “brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority.” ^[5] However, Myanmar’s second Vice President Henry Van Thio has claimed that the internal situation in his country was improving as there had been no noticeable clashes since 5 September. In the meantime, Min Aung Hlaing, the most powerful Army General in Myanmar, has stated that the Rohingyas have not been the natives of Myanmar, but they are the local Bengalis who made attacks on the security forces and the common people under the leadership of ARSA. ^[6]

From the media reports, it is known that the exodus of Rohingyas from Myanmar affected countries like Bangladesh and India most. But there is very little information that they also made their inroads into Nepal that is at the distance of 1,391 kilometres and they do not have a common border. Nepal and Myanmar are separated by India and/or Bangladesh. It is not yet well known how they have been coming to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, since 2012 to escape violence in Myanmar.

Estimates are that the number of the Rohingyas in Nepal is 500. They are living in temporary sheds on private land at Kapan in Kathmandu and are provided food by the UN Commission for Refugees. But in certain quarters, it is feared that many of them might have mixed up with Muslim communities in different parts of the country, particularly in the Terai region, to avoid any attention from the government authorities.

The media reports in Nepal confirmed that until recently, not even the government of Nepal was informed of the influx of Rohingyas in the country. Therefore, they have neither been recognised as refugees nor are they prosecuted by the law of the land.

But of late, the government has started preventing the entry of the Rohingyas from entering the country. Some of them have even been turned back from Birgunj border point at Nepal-India border when they tried to enter into Nepal. Recently, Ram Krishna, spokesperson of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Nepal, revealed that, “Nepal has increased surveillance at its border to stop more Rohingyas from entering the country after the Rohingyas crisis in Myanmar because we cannot bear any more crises.” ^[1]

Experts feel that Nepal should immediately deport the Rohingyas as they are a potential threat to the security of the country. Former Home Secretary Govind Kusum fears that they might have been influenced by Islamic State and as such they could be a threat to the security to the country. So he warned the authorities concerned against giving them refugee status as granted by the Government of Nepal to the Tibetan and Bhutani refugees.

As the Rohingyas crises deepen, on 11 September 2017, the Muslim community in the Nepalgunj municipality of the Banke district, in western part of the Terai region, took out a rally and submitted a memorandum to the Chief District Officer Ramesh K.C. They wanted the Nepal government to exert pressure on the Myanmar government to stop the atrocities against the Rohingyas.

It is not only Nepal that feels potential security threat from the Rohingyas, but equally, they are perceived as threats in Bangladesh and India where they are living as refugees in far greater number. Bangladesh is affected most by the Rohingyas as nearly half a million of those people have crossed over the Myanmar border and taken refuge there. Each day the government of Bangladesh has to spend the $ 1 million equivalent on their relief and rehabilitation activities. ^[7] Therefore, the opposition parties in Bangladesh, including the Awami League, is most critical to the government.

To deal with the crisis, Bangladesh has made it mandatory for each Rohingya to register themselves with the government. No one from this community is liable to get any benefit from the government if they don’t do so. Also, the Bangladeshi nationals have been asked to inform the government about the activities of those people to the law enforcement authorities.

In her address to the 76^th United Nation General Assembly session, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh wanted the UN to set up ‘safe zones’ under international supervision for the Rohingya in Myanmar territory itself to address the refugee problem effectively. She also wanted Rohingya to return back from Bangladesh to Rakhine of Myanmar under secure conditions.

Next to Bangladesh if any country that is affected most by the Rohingyas is India, which has 1,643-km long border with Myanmar. The number of the Rohingyas in India is estimated at 40,000. Because of the Free Movement Regime between the two countries, the people living up to 16 km on either side of the Indo-Myanmar border have been allowed to travel visa-free in each other’s territory up to 72 hours. ^[8] Taking undue advantage from the porous border, many of the Rohingyas enter into India. Besides, there are around 140 vulnerable spots along the Indo-Bangladesh border, which are also used by the Rohingyas to cross over to India.

India, which is one of the victims of terrorism, is gradually becoming more sensitive towards the influx of Rohingyas. It is suspected that some of them are influenced by the international terrorist organizations. This is one of the reasons why the country is gearing up its efforts to expel them. The Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh does not find any reason why he should not deport them as they are living in this country illegally. In one of his recent statements, he said, “Rohingyas are not refugees, nor have they taken asylum. They are illegal immigrants.” Since India is not a signatory to the UN Refugees Convention 1951, it is not committed to any binding for not deporting the Rohingyas. ^[9] However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, apart from the civil rights activists is highly critical of this intended move. It is perceived that the deportation issue is humanitarian in character and as such the government should think about it more seriously before initiating any action towards deportation.

What is, however, a silver lining is that the Myanmar government has given an indication that it has no problem in taking back those Rohingyas who are its nationals. Myanmar Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi recently stated that the Rohingyas could return to their homeland through the proper verification process. Since Nepal along with India and Bangladesh are affected by the influx of the Rohingyas, they must adopt common stand to find the solution to the crisis. In this context, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s suggestion to set up ‘safe zones’ in Myanmar itself under UN supervision to ensure the safe return of the Rohingyas seems to be a practical suggestion. But it is not known as to how the Rohingyas could be deported to their country where they fear annihilation as there is the humanitarian angle. It will be important for Nepal, India and Bangladesh to strengthen their border vigilance to see that the unwanted elements do not enter into their territories. But more than that they must use their diplomatic efforts to influence Myanmar government to take back the Rohingyas and make them re-settle on their land peacefully for which it will also be important to improve their living conditions.

References:

^[1] PressTV, “Fleeing violence at home, Rohingya Muslims face difficulties in India, Nepal, Bangladesh,” September 17, 2017, in http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/09/17/535440/Rohingya-difficulties-India-Nepal-Bangladesh.

^[1] Kelly, Liam, “Myanmar: Who are the Rohingya,” Newsweek, December 1, 2017.

^[2] Al Jazeera Network, “Myanmar: Who are the Rohingya?”September 28, 2017.

^[3]Ibid.

^[4] Birsel, Robert and Aung, Thu Thu, “Myanmar army chief says Rohingya Muslims “not natives,” numbers fleeing exaggerated,” Reuters, in https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/myanmar-army-chief-says-rohingya-muslims-not-natives-numbers-fleeing-exaggerated-idUSKBN1CH0I6

^[5] Ibid.

^{[6][6] Ibid.}

^[7] Sen, Gautam, “Fallout of the Rohingya Issue on Bangladesh’s Domestic Politics,” IDSA, October 3, 2017.

^[8] Chauhan, Neeraj, “Rohingya exodus from Myanmar: Centre reviews Free Movement Regime at Indo-Myanmar border,” The Times of India, September 25, 2017.

^[9] Ibid.

In 2004, pneumonia killed more than 2 million children worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. By 2015, the number was less than 1 million.

Better access to antibiotics and improved nutrition account for part of the decline. But scientists say it’s mostly due to vaccines introduced in the early 2000s that target up to 23 of the most deadly forms of the bacterium that causes pneumonia, Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Now, a new vaccine under development could deal another blow to the disease, lowering the number of deaths even further by targeting dozens of additional strains of S. pneumoniae, and anticipating future versions of the bacteria responsible for pneumococcal disease, which includes sepsis and meningitis.

The vaccine provoked an immune response to 72 forms of S. pneumoniae — including the 23 mentioned above — in lab tests on animals, according to new research published today (Oct. 20, 2017) in the journal Science Advances. The study represents the “most comprehensive” coverage of pneumococcal disease to date, researchers say.

“We’ve made tremendous progress fighting the spread of pneumonia, especially among children. But if we’re ever going to rid ourselves of the disease, we need to create smarter and more cost-effective vaccines,” says Blaine Pfeifer, PhD, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the study’s co-lead author.

The limitation of existing vaccines

Each strain of S. pneumoniae contains unique polysaccharides. Vaccines such as Prevnar 13 and Synflorix connect these sugars — by the sharing of an electron — to a protein called CRM197. The process, known as a covalent bond, creates a potent vaccine that prompts the body to find and destroy bacteria before they colonize the body.

While effective, creating covalent bonds for each strain of S. pneumoniae is time-consuming and expensive. Plus, this type of immunization, known as a conjugate vaccine, prompts the body to eliminate each of the targeted bacteria types — regardless of whether the bacteria is idle or attacking the body.

Another vaccine, Pneumovax 23, contains sugars of 23 of the most common types of S. pneumoniae. However, the immune response it provokes is not as strong as Prevnar because the sugars are not covalently linked.

“Traditional vaccines completely remove bacteria from the body. But we now know that bacteria — and in a larger sense, the microbiome — are beneficial to maintaining good health,” says Charles H. Jones, the study’s other co-lead author. “What’s really exciting is that we now have the ability — with the vaccine we’re developing — to watch over bacteria and attack it only if it breaks away from the colony to cause an illness. That’s important because if we leave the harmless bacteria in place, it prevents other harmful bacteria from filling that space.”

Jones, who earned a PhD while working in Pfeifer’s lab, has formed a company, Abcombi Biosciences, to bring the vaccine and other pharmaceutical products to market.

Co-authors of the study from UB’s engineering school include Guojian Zhang, Roozbeh Nayerhoda, Marie Beitelshees (also of Abcombi), Andrew Hill (also of Abcombi) and Yi Li; Bruce A. Davidson and Paul Knight III, both faculty members from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB; and Pooya Rostami of New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

How the new vaccine works

Varieties of S. pneumoniae not covered by current immunizations are responsible for a small portion — for example, 7 to 10 percent among U.S. children — of pneumonia, meningitis and other cases of pneumococcal disease.

But officials worry that will change, as these less common forms — and, potentially, yet-to-be discovered antimicrobial resistant strains — replace the 23 more common types targeted by current immunizations.

According to results from the study, the new vaccine provokes a strong immune response (comparable to Prevnar) and is engineered in a way that makes it easy to add sugars (like Pneumovax) for a broad immune response.

Key to the technology is a liposome — a tiny liquid-filled bubble made of fat — that acts as a storage tank for the sugars. Because the sugars are not covalently bonded, it’s possible that the liposome could host all of the sugars that identify individual strains of S. pneumoniae.

The research team added proteins at the surface of the liposome (also non-covalently) which, together with the sugars, provoke immunotherapy. According to tests performed on mice and rabbits, the new vaccine stimulated an immune response to 72 of the more than 90 known strains of S. pneumoniae. In many cases, it outperformed Prevnar and Pneumovax.

“The advantage of our approach is that we don’t have to apply the more complex covalent chemistry that is required for Prevnar,” Pfeifer says. “As a result, we can extend beyond the 13 types of sugars, potentially providing universal coverage against bacteria that cause pneumonia, meningitis, sepsis and other types of pneumococcal disease. It holds the promise of saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year.”

Until recently, glaciers in the United States have been measured in two ways: placing stakes in the snow, as federal scientists have done each year since 1957 at South Cascade Glacier in Washington state; or tracking glacier area using photographs from airplanes and satellites.

We now have a third, much more powerful tool. While he was a doctoral student in University of Washington’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, David Shean devised new ways to use high-resolution satellite images to track elevation changes for massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the years he wondered: Why aren’t we doing this for mountain glaciers in the United States, like the one visible from his department’s office window?

He has now made that a reality. In 2012, he first asked for satellite time to turn digital eyes on glaciers in the continental U.S., and he has since collected enough data to analyze mass loss for Mount Rainier and almost all the glaciers in the lower 48 states. He will present results from these efforts Oct. 22 at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Seattle.

“I’m interested in the broad picture: What is the state of all of the glaciers, and how has that changed over the last 50 years? How has that changed over the last 10 years? And at this point, how are they changing every year?” said Shean, who is now a research associate with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The maps provide a twice-yearly tally of roughly 1,200 mountain glaciers in the lower 48 states, down to a resolution of about 1 foot. Most of those glaciers are in Washington state, with others clustered in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and in California’s Sierra Nevada.

To create the maps, a satellite camera roughly half the size of the Hubble Space Telescope must take two images of a glacier from slightly different angles. As the satellite passes overhead, moving at about 4.6 miles per second, it takes images a few minutes apart. Each pixel of the image covers 30 to 50 centimeters (about 1 foot) and a single image can be tens of miles across.

Shean’s technique uses automated software that matches millions of small features, such as rocks or crevasses, in the two images. It then uses the difference in perspective to create a 3-D model of the surface.

The first such map of a Mount St. Helens glacier was obtained in 2012, and the first for Mount Rainier in 2014. The project has grown steadily since then to include more glaciers every year.

The results confirm stake measurements at South Cascade Glacier, showing significant loss over the past 60 years. Results at Mount Rainier also reflect the broader shrinking trends, with the lower-elevation glaciers being particularly hard hit. Shean estimates cumulative ice loss of about 0.7 cubic kilometers (900 million cubic yards) at Mount Rainier since 1970. Distributed evenly across all of Mount Rainier’s glaciers, that’s equivalent to removing a layer of ice about 25 feet (7 to 8 meters) thick.

“There are some big changes that have happened, as anyone who’s been hiking on Mount Rainier in the last 45 years can attest to,” Shean said. “For the first time we’re able to very precisely quantify exactly how much snow and ice has been lost.”

The glacier loss at Rainier is consistent with trends for glaciers across the U.S. and worldwide. Tracking the status of so many glaciers will allow scientists to further explore patterns in the changes over time, which will help pinpoint the causes — from changes in temperature and precipitation to slope angle and elevation.

“The next step is to integrate our observations with glacier and climate models and say: Based on what we know now, where are these systems headed?” Shean said.

Those predictions could be used to better manage water supplies and flood risks.

“We want to know what the glaciers are doing and how their mass is changing, but it’s important to remember that the meltwater is going somewhere. It ends up in rivers, it ends up in reservoirs, it ends up downstream in the ocean. So there are very real applications for water resource management,” Shean said. “If we know how much snow falls on Mount Rainier every winter, and when and how much ice melts every summer, that can inform water resource managers’ decisions.”

An estimated three million adult American handgun owners carry a firearm loaded and on their person on a daily basis, and 9 million do so on a monthly basis, new research indicates. The vast majority cited protection as their primary reason for carrying a firearm.

Researchers from the University of Washington School of Public Health, the University of Colorado, the Harvard School of Public Health, and Northeastern University produced the study, to be published October 19, 2017, in the American Journal of Public Health.

It is the first research in more than 20 years to scrutinize why, how often, and in what manner U.S. adults carry loaded handguns. It also examines how concealed handgun-carrying behavior differs across states, depending on their laws.

“Carrying firearms in public places can have significant implications for public health and public safety,” said lead author Dr. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, an associate professor of epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health. “An important first step to examining the consequences of firearm carrying at the national level is an accurate measurement of the occurrence of this behavior and characterization of those who engage in it.”

Compared with handgun owners who did not carry, those who did report carrying handguns tended to be younger, and more often male, live in the southern United States, have grown up in firearm-owning households, self-identify as politically conservative, and own more than one type of firearm.

Rowhani-Rahbar and doctoral student Vivian Lyons collaborated with Drs. Matthew Miller of Northeastern, Deborah Azrael of Harvard, and Joseph Simonetti of Colorado. They reviewed handgun-carrying behavior of 1,444 gun owners, using data from a 2015 nationally representative survey designed by Miller and Azrael.

“It was important to study handgun carrying because about 90 percent of all firearm homicides and nonfatal firearm crimes for which the type of firearm is known are committed with a handgun,” said Rowhani-Rahbar, who is also an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Among the findings: 80 percent of surveyed handgun owners who carried their handgun had a concealed-carry permit, and 66 percent said they always carried their handguns concealed, compared with 10 percent who said they always carry their weapons openly.

When comparing handgun-carrying behavior with corresponding states’ laws, researchers found that proportionally fewer handgun owners carried a concealed handgun if they lived in a state whose laws afforded greater discretion to issuing agencies in the review of concealed-carry applications. Some owners nevertheless reported carrying a concealed handgun without a permit in states in which doing so was illegal.

State laws on handgun carrying have become less restrictive over the last 30 years. Many states that formerly gave local governing bodies the authority to review applications have moved to constrain local authorities’ discretion, thereby easing the permit process for adult residents.

In this same time period, the number of U.S. concealed-carry permit holders has increased significantly.

Rowhani-Rahbar said more research is needed to comprehensively evaluate the impact of increasingly permissive firearm-carry laws. Future studies should focus on analyzing how different concealed-carry laws influence carrying, and characterizing illegal carrying behavior among those who have been denied permits.

Oregon shore crabs exhibit risky behavior when they’re exposed to the antidepressant Prozac, making it easier for predators to catch them, according to a new study from Portland State University (PSU).

The study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, illustrates how concentrations of pharmaceuticals found in the environment could pose a risk to animal survival.

For years, tests of seawater near areas of human habitation have shown trace levels of everything from caffeine to prescription medicines. The chemicals are flushed from homes or medical facilities, go into the sewage system, and eventually make their way to the ocean.

In a laboratory, the PSU team exposed Oregon shore crabs to traces of fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac. They found that the crabs increased their foraging behavior, showing less concern for predators than they normally would. They even did so during the day, when they would normally be in hiding.

They also fought more with members of their own species, often either killing their foe or getting killed in the process.

“The changes we observed in their behaviors may mean that crabs living in harbors and estuaries contaminated with fluoxetine are at greater risk of predation and mortality,” said researcher Elise Granek, a professor in PSU’s department of Environmental Sciences and Management.

By Jonathan Power*

Cambodia is no longer going forward, it is slipping backwards, as it has many times before. Earlier this month the government asked the Supreme Court to dissolve the main opposition coalition. One opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was sent to prison in September and the other, Sam Rainsy, is in exile. The English-language newspaper, The Cambodia Daily, has been closed and the relatively free radio stations leant on and a number closed. The decades-long Prime Minister, Hun Sen, talks about rebels in the capital, Phnom Penh, plotting to overthrow the government.

Good things still happen. The economic growth nearly touches 7% year after year. Land reform has worked. The health and education of the poor has markedly improved. In other countries this might be a prelude to political liberalisation. But not in Cambodia. Hun Sen, who before has won many elections, some reasonably honest, some rigged, now fears defeat at the polls next year.

To understand why Cambodia is so we must go back 47 years before the genocidal movement, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, took over.

In 1970 a pro-American military junta led by Lon Nol deposed King Sihanouk, who had succeeded in keeping his country out of the Vietnam War.

Lon Nol threw his weight behind the U.S. Cambodia became a pawn in the Vietnam War. While he was in power he encouraged the U.S. to bomb the Khmer Rouge movement which roamed in the interior, hitting targets using eight-engined B-52s, each capable of carrying 25 tons of bombs. Napalm was used unsparingly. In the end the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol in his bastion in Phnom Penh.

Ironically, later, the U.S. came to support the Khmer Rouge against the North Vietnamese – “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Without this later U.S. support, argued Sydney Schanberg who was the New York Times’ correspondent in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, which was no serious threat in 1970, “being a motley collection of ineffectual guerrilla bands, totalling at the most 3,000, could never have grown into a murderous force of 70,000.”

Fast forward to 1979. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 with the U.S. defeated. The Khmer Rouge were in power in Cambodia. Besides continuously provoking Vietnam with military incursions, at home they had deported everyone from the cities and made them work 15 hours a day on the farms. Intellectuals and teachers were tortured and murdered. 2 million people were killed.

The North Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, repulsing a major attack by the Khmer Rouge, and installed in power ex-Khmer Rouge dissidents. One of them was Hun Sen who became prime minister in 1985 and has kept that position almost ever since.

Because the hated North Vietnamese installed the Cambodian government, the U.S. persuaded its allies to vote for the Khmer Rouge to keep Cambodia’s seat at the UN. Although from the safety of the Thai border the Khmer Rouge went on slaughtering Cambodians the U.S. did not change its mind until 1990.

To everyone’s surprise the Big Five at the UN decided to make Cambodia a protectorate. They mounted a reasonably fair election. Hun Sen did not win but he refused to step down. A compromise was found with King Sihanouk returning to power and Hun Sen becoming his number three. Before long, after a two-day civil war with the king’s son, he was number one again, and still is. The Khmer Rouge continued with their attacks, boosted by all the help they had received in the past on the Thai border from the US and China.

Despite its U-turn the U.S. (and its allies) have never apologised for their long support of the Khmer Rouge. President Bill Clinton made an apology on a visit to Guatemala for the wrong done in supporting the country’s military death squads. But in Phnom Pen I was told by a senior U.S. diplomat that they were under strict orders by the Obama Administration not even to discuss it.

People from different political perspectives draw different conclusions. I’ve concluded that the long period when the U.S. and the Europeans (except Sweden) supported the Khmer Rouge embittered Hun Sen and most Cambodians. It helped build his popularity. It is that popularity he has drawn upon, together with his skill and ruthlessness in political manoeuvring.

He has made the economy an Asian star. Cambodia attracts a lot of foreign investment. It has decreased the number of people in poverty faster than any other Asian country, apart from China and Bangladesh, Cambodia is reasonably efficient despite high levels of corruption. Hun Sen feels that his opponents are being helped by outside forces. Certainly they don’t get the large amount of money they have available from inside Cambodia.

Those of us who believe in democracy must criticise his effort to fix next year’s election. But it is easy to understand his motivation. [IDN-INPS – 17 October 2017]

*For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune – and a member of the Independent Commission on Disarmament, chaired by the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. He is the author of a newly published book, “Ending War Crimes, Chasing the War Criminals” (Nijoff). He also authored “Like Water on Stone – the History of Amnesty International” (Penguin). He forwarded this and his previous Viewpoints for publication in IDN-INPS. Copyright: Jonathan Power.

By James M. Davitch*

After years of major spending on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collection capabilities, the Intelligence Community (IC) is beginning to make a commensurate investment in technology to improve intelligence analysis.1 However, absent a change that recognizes the increasing value of open source information, the IC will not realize a return on its investments.

This article investigates the origins of the modern IC and its tendency to rely on classified data to the exclusion of publicly available information, the utility of open source information and a new way of thinking about it as the key component for future early indications and warning (I&W), and a recommended way forward for the IC and possible steps for implementation of an open source information–enabled military intelligence force.

Harnessing the analytic potential in open source data, rather than closely guarded secret information, is the Big Data challenge facing intelligence professionals. Open source information may be the first indication of an adversary’s hostile intent in what Department of Defense (DOD) leaders call the likely future threat environment.2 But the IC bureaucracy remains locked in habitual patterns focused narrowly on classified sources. The first step to understanding why requires observation of the IC’s organizational culture.

A Culture of Secrets

The combination of the Pearl Harbor surprise attack and a decentralized intelligence apparatus divided between the U.S. Army and Navy led many to believe the United States was vulnerable to another unforeseen strike. This led President Harry Truman to consolidate the intelligence mission, which, he hoped, would identify preliminary I&W of foreign aggression. Thus the 1947 creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was, in essence, a hedge against future surprises.3 So began the period of Industrial Age intelligence running from 1947 to about 1990.

The IC’s narrow focus on the development and capabilities of the Soviet Union made “national intelligence” the primary feature of collection and reporting. The Soviet Union represented a complicated target and information about it was sparse. But as an intelligence problem it was “comparatively less complex” to today’s globalized, interconnected, and interdependent geopolitical setting.4 The Soviet Union’s closed society and impressive counterintelligence architecture made necessary the development of expensive sensors and platforms to provide highly sought after puzzle pieces in this denied environment.5 In the words of Gregory Treverton, “In the circumstances of the high Cold War, there were powerful arguments for targeting intelligence tightly on the Soviet Union, for giving pride of place to secrets, especially those collected by satellites and other technical means.”6

The primary customer for Cold War intelligence was the President and National Security Council because it was the President who would bear the brunt of the blame if the United States suffered another surprise attack. Sensors and platforms were tailor-made to focus on counting Soviet aircraft, ships, and other military equipment. When the IC looked to open sources, it observed mostly the official messages and propaganda sent from the Soviet high command to the masses; this, it was presumed, might provide insight for the President into the adversary leadership’s thinking.7 However, the IC’s weight of effort for planning and budgeting was geared toward exquisite collection systems.

The IC’s focus on classified sources owes largely to the way it responds to the collection priorities laid out in the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF). The NIPF’s purpose is to provide senior policy officials a vehicle to dictate a prioritized list of “critical interest” issues to the IC.8 But the IC’s toolkit is filled mostly with instruments that produce classified data. Therefore, it attempts to address NIPF priorities with the resources at hand and the methodologies deemed “proven” by victory in the Cold War. This perpetuates the acquisition and development of new sensors and platforms for the production of more classified information. The IC’s method of responding to intelligence problems by looking predominantly to classified sources merits review.9

Breaking the current paradigm is difficult, but essential, if the IC is to assume a more proactive posture. Barriers to this goal include organizational inertia, the fear of untested alternative methods, and the satisfaction of answering simpler questions, no matter how illusory their utility. Large organizations seldom respond to change until after a crisis and instead follow established routines and simple standard operating procedures.10 Under the prevailing intelligence collection construct, professionals perpetuate organizational inertia by engaging only in what Ronald Garst defines as descriptive analysis.11 For example, analytical cells routinely provide statements describing what happened, when, and where, thereby eschewing predictive analysis.12

Not coincidentally, U.S. intelligence sensors excel at providing data that supports descriptive intelligence analysis. But to this end, the IC is reactionary and fails to address what decisionmakers are often more interested in: describing what will happen and why. Daniel Kahneman refers to this tendency as the “substitution heuristic” whereby one simplifies difficult tasks by evaluating a related, easier question.13

The reliance on secret data derived from classified sources lends itself to answering intelligence questions quantitatively, such as the number of missions tasked and images collected and processed. These data are easy to numerically collect and aggregate, but it distracts from investigating qualitative indicators that might determine whether the intelligence process is contributing meaningfully to solving the underlying intelligence problem.14 So the question, “Is our collection posture working to learn more about the enemy?” becomes instead, “How many ISR sorties have we flown in support of the leadership’s priorities?”

It is important to note that while open sources may provide great utility, they are not a panacea for all intelligence problems. Each situation requires the requisite examination of its underlying characteristics. But the failure to address open sources’ potential merits by reflexively dismissing it is, at best, a failure to consider creative solutions. At worst, it signals that the IC is unprepared to tackle the emergent complexity of global geopolitical dynamics and risks missing important I&W of future conflict.15

The 9/11 attacks provided the impetus for moving open source information into the forefront of the value proposition in that its ability to significantly augment traditional forms of intelligence rapidly became apparent in the counterterrorism mission. However, it was not until the advent of open source Big Data’s velocity, variety, and volume characteristics, which became apparent with the explosion of social media, that the potential for greater open source analysis in lieu of an excessive focus on classified sources became a realistic possibility. One now might consider using open sources as the entry point for the intelligence collection process and using classified data to augment the unclassified source, thus flipping the paradigm upside down.

Flaws in the Technical Solution—It’s Not Only About Secrets

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, former CIA director Michael Hayden described intelligence trade as a jigsaw puzzle.16 The metaphor leads one to believe that all the pieces are available awaiting assembly. Unfortunately, this thinking typically translates to a need for more collection sensors that, in turn, promotes the exclusivity of classified information. All of this perpetuates the dubious contention that classified collection provides a window to truth. Moreover, it rewards both the pursuit and creation of more data, which burden analytical efforts. The net result is that the exclusivity of secret intelligence becomes the basis for analysis to the limitation, or even exclusion of, creative thinking.17

Intelligence problems, especially as they pertain to vague indications of impending hostilities, more resemble mysteries than puzzles. Anthony Olcott notes mysteries are difficult, if not impossible, to solve definitively, “no matter how much information is gathered,” classified or otherwise.18 Trying to answer mysteries usually involves uncertainty, doubt, and cognitive dissonance, which most seek to avoid. But embracing doubt and addressing probabilities are essential because so few intelligence problems lend themselves to easy, certain, factual answers. The only certainty with respect to intelligence mysteries is persistent uncertainty, which cannot be alleviated by simply throwing more surveillance sensors at the problem.

Philip Tetlock described the allure of certainty, stating that it “satisfies the brain’s desire for order because it yields tidy explanations with no loose ends.”19 But Kahneman warns against the overconfidence certainty can provide: “Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.”20 Doubt can sometimes be mitigated, though not eliminated, with more evidence that might even come from classified sources. But pointing to evidence exclusively derived from restricted data while claiming to have found truth is like a blind man describing the colors of a rainbow.21

While puzzles requiring the acquisition of secret “pieces” do persist, leveraging open source information is increasingly able to help us better understand mysteries and answer specific, defined problems. Open sources can point to breakthroughs in a nation’s weapons research and development timeline, a task formerly the exclusive province of espionage or technical sensors. Asking questions like “What are the range and speed capabilities of the latest generation Chinese surface-to-air missile?” can be addressed through the lens of open sources.22 Olcott illustrates the commercial, public-sector use of open sources, relating what Leonard Fuld calls the cardinal rule of intelligence: “Wherever money is exchanged, so is information.”23

Considering the likely eventuality that intelligence problems of the future will more resemble mysteries than secrets, analysts will need to employ more creative and critical thinking and use a more diverse assortment of information than before. This will entail a greater mental workload for analysts used to the collect-process-analyze model traditionally centered on the classified collection. The IC’s knee-jerk inclination to accept the answer offered by classified data satisfies what Daniel Kahneman calls our System 1 response, a mode of thinking in which the mind operates “automatically and quickly, with little or no effort.”24 Kahneman contrasts this mode with the concentration required of System 2, which “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it.”25 The uncertainty created by nebulous mysteries that often do not lend themselves to prompt answers, and the creative thinking required to solve them, is System 2 territory.

The IC’s emphasis on classified information may ultimately be a barrier to creative thinking. Access to classified information carries with it the currency of prestige and the “need to know” restriction, which “fosters compartmentalized—reductionist—views of the issues at hand.”26 Josh Kerbel points to the Cold War era “when [the IC] had a relative monopoly on good information,” which “continues to cause analysts to confuse exclusivity of information with relevance to decisionmakers.”27 During the Cold War, prized information was often technical and ephemeral, mainly consisting of communications and electrical emissions. Intelligence professionals often refer to this data as a “detectable signature” of the collection target. Such detectable signatures, fleeting during the Cold War, have exploded in the Information Age.

Wearable technology and the Internet of Things provide precise geolocation of an individual and connects one’s previously private details to the open architecture of the Internet. Moreover, this information does not have to be secretly seized by a high-altitude sensor or through clandestine espionage. In fact, individuals willingly make their data available for observation. As Treverton noted, in the Information Age, “collecting information is less of a problem, and verifying it is more of one.”28 The open source environment provides detectable signatures of the adversary undreamed of prior to the advent of the Information Age.

The influx of open source data, including rapidly growing social media platforms, will only become more vital sources of information in the future. Kerbel notes, “[The IC] must get over its now illusory belief that its value-added comes mostly from information to which it alone has access—secrets.”29 Several open source social media companies are billion-dollar-a-year companies, to wit: Instagram. Founded in 2010, it is arguably the fastest growing social media channel, reaching 300 million users in 2016.30 Alec Ross noted, “Today there are roughly 16 billion Internet connected devices. Four years from now that number will grow to 40 billion Internet-connected devices.”31

Despite these publicly available sources of information, open source intelligence remains a lesser form of intelligence in the realm of intelligence disciplines. Treverton counters, “Intelligence now has . . . vast amounts of information . . . not a scarcity of information that mainly comes from satellites or spies and is therefore regarded as accurate.”32 Publicly available information is not only a valuable supplement, but it is also redefining I&W and should be used as the basis of future intelligence analysis. In essence, open sources should not augment secret information, but the reverse. Doing so may pay dividends toward gaining essential warning in the nebulous current and future operating environments.

I&W—The Open Source Opportunity in “Hybrid War”

In the summer of 2014, “pro-Russian separatists” began appearing in eastern Ukraine. Moscow repeatedly denied that its regular forces were operating on Ukrainian soil, but social media truth gave lie to the Russian government’s insistence. Young soldiers posted “selfies” to Instagram that, presumably unbeknownst to them, contained metadata that geolocated their position within Ukraine’s borders. They provided strong evidence of Russia’s complicity in the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.33 Initial accounts rapidly flowed in from open sources to include pictures uploaded to Twitter and Instagram as well as numerous YouTube videos.34 This type of cueing indication in and of itself does not constitute an “end product,” but it could be used to direct traditional ISR collection assets to verify the open source tip.

Despite the crushing weight of evidence to the contrary, Russian defense outlets improbably assigned blame to Ukrainian forces.35 Russian President Vladimir Putin, seizing the opportunity to win the propaganda war, crisply stated as much, declaring the situation could have been avoided “if Kiev had not resumed its military campaign against pro-Russian separatists.”36 These types of conventional and unconventional incidents mixed with intense public relations campaigns will be the U.S. military’s most likely, and most dangerous, scenarios for conflict into the future.

General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered (also outlined in the 2015 National Military Strategy, see figure) an appropriate definition of this type of information operation: “State and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine.”37 He continues, “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”38

Some have argued the concept of hybrid war in Ukraine is simply a continuation of conventional techniques and procedures.39 Whatever the definition, what we are seeing is the most likely scenario for future conflict because it allows the adversary to do as Sun Tzu recommended: capitalize on the adversary’s weaknesses while maximizing its own strengths. The U.S. military possesses overwhelming conventional might. But by engaging in disinformation and employing non-official military forces, the adversary can keep the conflict below the threshold where the United States might use its conventional advantage. As some have noted, such hybrid war strategies could “cripple a state before that state even realizes the conflict had begun,” and yet it manages to “slip under NATO’s [North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s] threshold of perception and reaction.”

This type of future conflict will not only be confined to the U.S. adversary in Eurasia. Michael Pillsbury describes China’s possible employment of a military doctrine called “unrestricted warfare,”40 which in many ways is analogous to these information operations.41 One possible dangerous course of action in this region might entail the use of “civilian” Chinese fishing boats executing what for all intents and purposes is a military operation to solidify its assertion of territoriality. Such activities are not without precedent. Small-scale “fishing incidents” may become the source of increasing naval tensions. They provide China plausible deniability while remaining under the threshold for spurring greater U.S. military involvement.

As Steven Pifer noted in 2015 testimony before the U.S. Senate, irregular forces presaging larger conventional movements may be the example of future encounters.42 General Philip Breedlove, the former U.S. European Command commander, also articulated these concerns, insisting NATO must be prepared to respond to “special forces without sovereign insignia who cross borders to create unrest” and ultimately destabilize countries.43 However, traditional I&W techniques and ISR systems employed by the IC have historically focused on the deployment of large armed forces. They do so at the risk of missing earlier indications that might forestall conflict.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s intention in pursuing the Third Offset concept is to deter potential adversaries from action. To that end, the IC’s goal should be providing the timeliest I&W of impending conflict to avoid decision paralysis as the United States confronts entities falsely claiming noncombatant status. A sub-goal should be to provide decisionmakers with evidence to counter aggressor propaganda. The best tool for these missions in the future will likely not be a traditional collection platform originally designed to count Soviet tanks; it will be open source–derived information. Cold War–era tactics, techniques, and procedures are not conducive to identifying “little green men,” innocuous fishing vessels, or the funding, arms, and leadership supporting them. Therefore, changing the way the IC conducts operations is warranted. That begins with a focus on open source information augmented by secret-seeking sensors capable of adding detail resulting in open source intelligence.

As the Third Offset implies, there is an important role for human-machine collaboration in this new open source–focused environment, specifically regarding artificial intelligence. While social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are popularly used worldwide, some countries use other social media outlets more predominantly. The social networking sites VKontakte and QZone are the most popular outlets in Russia and China, respectively. Analysts must be cognizant of that fact and adept at deciphering not only foreign languages but also cultural nuances of the society in question. Automatic machine translation tools are rapidly improving and can help with both. In May 2014, Microsoft presented a computer program capable of translating spoken words in real time.44 Describing the application of “deep learning” to machine translation, Maryam Najafabadi et al. relate how Google’s “word2vec” tool can quickly learn complex relationships between hundreds of millions of words.45 Using what are called “word vectors” allows the machine translator to distinguish nuance and context rather than literal translation. Artificial intelligence translation tools directed at social media outlets could provide a wealth of insight into lower level authority structures. Machine augmentation will not only allow us to hear what these individuals are saying, but also understand what they mean.

Recommendations

Major changes are required in the way military intelligence professionals think about problems. A cultural mindset change is warranted that values publicly available information as much as, if not more so than restricted data. For the military, change will begin at entry-level education and training venues. “Digital natives,” the next generation of intelligence professionals that has grown up with ubiquitous technology and social media outlets, will likely find it easier to break from legacy mindsets. However, the lure of the classified source will still be seductive. Intelligence training must support the next generation’s inclination to reach for the open source.

Additionally, future Airmen will require training in the tools available at that time and encouragement to pursue their own innovative ideas to best collect and analyze open source material. Specific analytic training should include problem restatement, causal flow diagramming, weighted rankings, devil’s advocacy, and many other techniques as described by Morgan Jones in The Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving.

The importance of teaching analytical techniques to Airmen for use with the avalanche of data cannot be overemphasized. First, these techniques allow analysts to “show their work,” making their analyses transparent to others. Second, they teach language precision, forcing analysts to frame the problem correctly to ensure it is answerable and not open to interpretation. Last, they can prevent military analysts from falling into the System 1 trap that Kahneman describes. The natural human inclination to grab onto the first plausible explanation is a key challenge for anyone, but especially for intelligence professionals confronted with the time constraints of military operations.

Those in leadership positions will often seek data compatible with the beliefs they already hold. Normally, in military operations, this means a desire for classified information over less glamorous open sources.46 One way to break free from this confirmation bias is to use skills inherent in applying appropriate analytical techniques. With these skills and knowledge, the IC will be able to better respond to decisionmakers, rather than wasting time and effort on mundane production quotas endlessly seeking puzzle pieces.

If the IC is serious about developing critical thinking skills, the right answer is not to dismiss these analytical techniques out of hand but to experiment in accordance with proven scientific methods. Tetlock notes, “The intelligence community’s forecasters have never been systematically assessed” to determine the accuracy of their analytic predictions.47 Were the IC to do so, the entire test would be relatively inexpensive compared to the cost of flying and maintaining ISR platforms. Looking at the results of an open source–based experiment could provide valuable, low-cost information that might better enable future planning and budgetary decisions.

But what to do with “legacy” intelligence analysts? Individuals born prior to the Information Age may be less welcoming of open source material and more disposed to favor traditional sources of collection. But rather than endure the slow movement of time while the next generation ascends to leadership positions, forward-thinking military analysts must break from the classification fixation now. They must realize the relevance of open sources to guide collection, not the other way around. Additionally, individual analysts must want to contribute. But how?

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is an Office of the Director of National Intelligence–sponsored program that challenges participants across the IC to engage in forecasting competitions. A spinoff program called the Good Judgment Project involves any willing participant both inside and out of DOD. The first IARPA tournament began in 2011 and explored the potential of crowd-sourced intelligence. Participants made predictions about real-world events, which were then judged by the precision of their forecast. Perhaps the most interesting outcome of the Good Judgment Project was that individuals with access to restricted information had no advantage over those without. In fact, the opposite was true, possibly due to the cultural bias toward classified information that may have prevented those individuals from forming more holistic predictions. In a Washington Post opinion piece detailing the competition’s results, David Ignatius specified that individuals without access to classified information “performed 30% better than the average for the intelligence community analysts who could read intercepts and other secret data.”48 He continues, “The NSA [National Security Agency] obviously operates on the theory that more data are better . . . but this mad dash for signals lacks the essential quality of sound judgment.”49

Just as the military stresses physical training (PT) culminating in regular tests, so should DOD champion regular “cognitive PT” tournaments. Results from multiple Good Judgment Project competitions revealed, “Prediction accuracy is possible when people participate in a setup that rewards only accuracy—and not the novelty of the explanation, or loyalty to the party line.”50 In other words, competitions like these foster both creative and critical thinking while honing skills on an individual level. Furthermore, competitions may lend themselves to developing and asking questions that can be answered, measured, and scored. Competitive events are not new for the military. For decades fighter pilots have trained against rival squadrons during “turkey shoot” events. Winners receive accolades and the recognition of their peers. DOD needs an open source–focused ISR turkey shoot, challenging participants to form their own conclusions based on publicly available information, thereby granting agency to the individual and allowing motivated professionals to best demonstrate their analytic prowess.

Competition between individuals and units could spur motivation and breed further intelligence excellence. And based on the results of the Good Judgment Project, one might expect open source disbelievers to become converts. At a minimum, participants will learn that classified sources matter less than the rigor one applies to analysis.

Final Points—An Opportunity for Success

Future success in detecting ambiguous clues that may lead to conflict will come through the patient process of creatively analyzing problems and articulating viable solutions. The data feeding those solutions will increasingly be found in readily accessible, yet traditionally stigmatized, open sources. But as a former Operation Enduring Freedom senior intelligence officer wrote, “The intelligence community’s standard mode of operation is emphatic about secrecy but regrettably less concerned about mission effectiveness.”51 Individuals must overcome the classification fixation and focus on the information that best leads to mission success.

Machines can assist the analytical process but they are not a substitute for it. “Machines may get better at ‘mimicking human meaning’ and thereby better at predicting human behavior,”52 but Tetlock argued there is a significant difference between mimicking meaning and deciphering the meaning’s original intent. He concludes, “That’s a space human judgment will always occupy.”53 To that end we must invest in the human mind in the form of analytic training combined with predictive forecasting based on publicly available information. Targeted investments directed toward improving creative thinking and smartly leveraging open sources will ultimately assist leadership decisionmaking and give the IC a strong comparative advantage in the future.

About the author:
*Lieutenant Colonel James M. Davitch, USAF, is the Intelligence Operations Division Chief at Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 87, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:
1 I wish to thank Colonel Jeffrey Donnithorne, Dr. Jon Kimminau, Dr. Lisa Costa, Dr. Robert Norton, Mr. Josh Kerbel, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Folker, and Majors Kyle Bressette and Seth Gilpin for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. All errors found herein are my own. See also Adam Lowther and John Farrell, “From the Air,” Air & Space Power Journal 26, no. 4 (2012), 61–102.

2 Marcus Weisgerber, “Dempsey’s Final Instruction to the Pentagon: Prepare for a Long War,” Defense One, July 1, 2015, available at <www.defenseone.com/management/2015/07/dempseys-final-instruction-pentagon-prepare-long-war/116761/>.

3 Gregory F. Treverton, Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information, RAND Studies in Policy Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

4 Josh Kerbel, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Creativity Challenge,” National Interest, October 13, 2014, available at <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-intelligence-communitys-creativity-challenge-11451>.

5 Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Crown, 2002); see also Bruno Tertrais, review of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, by David E. Hoffman, Survival 52, no. 1 (2010), 220.

6 Treverton.

7 Anthony Olcott, Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World (New York: Bloomsbury Intelligence Studies, 2012), chap. 6.

8 Ibid., chap. 4.

9 One problem with this process is that it results in poor metrics for determining intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance effectiveness. Civilian and military collection managers prioritize their collection requirements, derived from the National Intelligence Priorities Framework at the national level and command-driven intelligence requirements below that, based on the priority of the intelligence needed to support a given mission. Quantitative measures such as the number of missions tasked or the number of images collected and processed are often used as proxy measurements to evaluate the effectiveness of meeting prioritized collection requirements. These data are easy to numerically collect and aggregate, but they distract from investigating qualitative indicators that might determine whether the intelligence process is contributing meaningfully to solving the underlying intelligence problem. It also speaks to a failure both to critically analyze problems and to devise creative solutions. Lieutenant Colonel David Vernal, Air War College student, interview by the author, November 15, 2015.

10 Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999).

11 Ronald D. Garst, “Fundamentals of Intelligence Analysis,” in Intelligence Analysis: ANA630, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Joint Military Intelligence College, 2000), 18–28.

12 The difference between descriptive analysis describing who, what, and where questions and predictive analysis is that the latter does not easily lend itself to statements of fact, thereby inducing greater cognitive stress. Addressing predictive “what will happen” questions forces the analyst to assume more risk by making subjective judgments amid uncertainty. Moreover, these open-ended questions must be answered with a range of possibilities, often tied to equally subjective probabilities.

13 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

14 Vernal, interview, November 15, 2015.

15 Kerbel.

16 Remarks by Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, September 7, 2007, available at <www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html>.

17 As Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stone identified in a 2016 Air War College study, the Air Force does not have the luxury of tapping into a wealth of critical thinking (CT) capability. Pointing to the Air Force Future Operating Concept’s desire for the identification of critical thinkers and metrics to track critical thinking skills, Stone executed a quantitative CT research project. He tested a sample of professional military education students in residence at the Air Command & Staff College (ACSC), School for Advanced Air and Space Studies, and Air War College (AWC). His (statistically significant) results indicated, “AF officers attending ACSC and AWC were below average in CT skills when compared with individuals at the same academic level.” See Adam J. Stone, Critical Thinking Skills of U.S. Air Force Senior and Intermediate Developmental Education Students (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air War College, 2016).

18 Olcott, chap. 4.

19 Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015).

20 Kahneman.

21 Joseph Nye, noting the challenges facing foreign policy analysts after the Cold War, described a mystery as an abstraction that does not lend itself to quick answers or easy analysis. See Joseph S. Nye, “Peering into the Future,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 4 (1994), 82–93. Secrets, on the other hand, are more defined problems that can be answered via espionage or technical means. They lend themselves to satisfying seemingly factual answers and descriptive analysis. However, in the future, as more data become publicly available, proper employment of human-machine collaboration applied toward the open source information environment may yield insights formerly reserved to classified sensors alone.

22 This point was further supported in an interview the author conducted with Robert Norton of Auburn University. Dr. Norton described the potential of monitoring foreign weapon manufacturing through an adversary country’s research and development timeline. He noted that foreign universities emphasize the need to publish in technical journals as much as American higher education centers do. Information concerning technical developments can often be observed slowly building and then rapidly disappearing, perhaps marking that a country has reached the appropriate phase of research to begin transitioning a capability to the operational test and evaluation phases.

23 Olcott, chap. 4.

24 Kahneman.

25 Ibid.

26 Josh Kerbel, “The U.S. Intelligence Community Wants Disruptive Change as Long as It’s Not Disruptive,” War on the Rocks, January 20, 2016, available at <http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/the-u-s-intelligence-community-wants-disruptive-change-as-long-as-its-not-disruptive/>.

27 Ibid.

28 Treverton, 9.

29 Ibid.

30 Matthew Harris, “Marketing with Instagram, the Fastest Growing Social Platform!” The Medium Well, February 19, 2016, available at <http://mediumwell.com/marketing-instagram/>.

31 Alec Ross, “Industries of the Future,” Carnegie Council podcast, March 10, 2016.

32 Treverton, 6.

33 Ralph S. Clem, “MH17 Three Years Later: What Have We Learned,” War on the Rocks, July 18, 2017, available at <https://warontherocks.com/2017/07/mh17-three-years-later-what-have-we-learned/>.

34 “What We Know So Far About the Passenger Jet Shot Down in Ukraine,” Foreign Policy, July 17, 2014, available at <http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/17/what-we-know-so-far-about-the-passenger-jet-shot-down-in-ukraine/>.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Weisgerber.

38 Ibid.

39 Michael Kofman, “Russian Hybrid Warfare and Other Dark Arts,” War on the Rocks, March 11, 2016, available at <http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/>.

40 Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York: Henry Holt, 2015).

41 This is especially true regarding finding asymmetries against a conventionally stronger foe.

42 Steven Pifer, “Russian Aggression Against Ukraine, and the West’s Policy Response,” testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC, March 4, 2015, available at <www.brookings.edu/testimonies/russian-aggression-against-ukraine-and-the-wests-policy-response-2/>.

43 “NATO Flexes Its Muscle Memory,” The Economist, August 30, 2014, available at <www.economist.com/news/international/21614166-russias-aggression-ukraine-has-made-natos-summit-wales-most-important>; Dan Gonzales and Sarah Harting, “Exposing Russia’s Covert Actions,” U.S. News & World Report, April 29, 2014.

44 “Rise of the Machines,” The Economist, May 9, 2015, 18–21.

45 Maryam M. Najafabadi et al., “Deep Learning Applications and Challenges in Big Data Analytics,” Journal of Big Data 2, no. 1 (2015), 1–21.

46 Kahneman.

47 Tetlock and Gardner.

48 David Ignatius, “More Chatter Than Needed,” Washington Post, November 1, 2013.

49 Ibid.

50 Angela Chen, “Seeing into the Future,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2015, available at <www.chronicle.com/article/Philip-Tetlock-s-Tomorrows/233507>.

51 Michael Flynn, Matthew Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor, “Fixing Intel in Afghanistan,” Marine Corps Gazette 94, no. 4 (2010), 62–67.

52 Tetlock and Gardner.

53 Ibid.

By Dr Nan Tian and Pieter D. Wezeman*

On October 20 the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly was scheduled to discuss the annual report by the UN Secretary-General containing military expenditure data submitted by UN member states. In keeping with the trend seen in recent years, the number of UN member states participating in the reporting process for 2017 is comparatively low. However, analysis by SIPRI indicates that many non-participating member states, including countries in sub-Saharan Africa, now release much of the relevant data into the public domain. Thus, the challenge for the First Committee is to encourage member states to submit this data directly to the UN.

Low reporting levels

The UN Secretary-General’s annual report has been published since 1981. The reporting mechanism was created after an agreement between member states that sharing information on military spending would be a useful confidence-building measure, which would increase the predictability of military activities, reduce the risk of military conflict and raise public awareness of disarmament matters.

However, low participation levels have been a long-standing problem—a problem that has worsened in recent years. Participation in the reporting process has declined from annual levels of participation of an average of 40 per cent of UN member states in 2002–2008 to 25 per cent in 2012–16. A total of 49 of the 193 member states submitted reports in 2016. In 2017 the UN Secretariat received reports from 41 governments in time to be included in the 2017 report. As in previous years, it is expected that a few other states will report later in the year.

The functioning of the reporting mechanism has been the subject of discussions by a UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE), which convened for a total of three weeks in 2016–17. The GGE noted that the causes of the low level of participation in the reporting mechanism should be established through an empirical study. Nonetheless, the GGE suggested a number of possible causes, including the following:

• reporting fatigue among government officials involved in international confidence-building-related instruments;
• lack of confidence in the information submitted to the report;
• lack of perceived benefit, in particular when the government information is made available elsewhere in the public domain; and
• lingering concerns about the sensitivity of the data.

The low level of participation is all the more remarkable considering that SIPRI based its military spending figures for 2016 on government documents for 148 countries, most of which are available in the public domain.

The case of sub-Saharan Africa

Published UN records show that, as of September 2017, no sub-Saharan African country had submitted an annual report on its military expenditure to the UN; it was a similar story in 2016. However, while they do not participate in reporting at the international level, many sub-Saharan African countries do make a substantial number of their budgetary reports available at the national level. SIPRI monitors these reports and has found considerable improvements in transparency in recent years, specifically in terms of availability, accuracy, reliability, ease of access and level of disaggregation.

Availability

Only five of the sub-Saharan African countries in the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database had no military spending information for the calendar year 2016 (47 of the 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are currently included in the database). This is a far cry from the complete absence of submissions to the UN military expenditure report for that year. Of the countries that reported military expenditure budgets, 6 also published ‘revised budgets and actual spending’ documents, while an additional 12 published ‘revised budgets’.

SIPRI’s research shows that for the period 2012–16, only two countries (Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea) did not provide official government budgetary documents. Most countries publish documents annually with some releasing them biannually and quarterly. Long delays in publication are rare. Only two countries now seem to delay the release of budget documents by a year (Gambia and Guinea-Bissau).

Ease of access

Ease of access to the relevant budgetary information is essential for true transparency in military expenditure. Of the 49 sub-Saharan African countries, 34 have official budget documents published on their Ministry of Finance (MOF) websites, while 8 countries have no information on their respective government (MOF or other) websites and 7 do not have an official MOF website.

The MOF websites of the 34 sub-Saharan African countries where budgetary information is published are generally easy to navigate, follow a logical order of access to information and do not place restrictions on downloading of budget documents. Problems, however, arise in the case of countries with no information on their MOF website. In most of these countries issues such as poor website design (ease of navigation) and low levels of internet technology capacity (e.g. broken links or poorly maintained websites) all hamper public accessibility. There are numerous examples where governments have announced the release of budget documents but due to website or internet capacity problems the documents are inaccessible (e.g. Botswana and Gambia).

Disaggregation

Information disaggregation breaks down military expenditure into different and more detailed elements offering a more precise picture of the resource allocations within the military sector. Indications that spending is not in line with policy can be the first warning of possible resource mismanagement or corruption. By contrast, spending that is aligned with defence policy is a clear sign of confidence building at the national and regional levels.

At the time of writing, of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa for which military spending information is available for the period 2012–16, a total of 31 have provided disaggregated budgets. Whereas, 16 have provided no disaggregation of their military budget.

Insights from sub-Saharan Africa

The sub-Saharan African example shows that international transparency in military spending is possible. A substantial amount of relevant information exists in publicly available national reports. SIPRI has observed vast improvements in military sector transparency in the past five years. The number of public defence policy documents or white papers continues to grow and useful budgetary information is now also becoming more readily available. Countries such as the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, which previously provided almost no military spending data, now publish disaggregated military budgets and, in the case of CAR, even actual outlays. Others have in recent years constructed public websites where documents can be found.

It is to be hoped that the existence of extensive and relevant budgetary information in the public domain will be highlighted during the First Committee discussions. The challenge for the First Committee is to encourage member states to submit this data to the UN. What is clear from SIPRI’s analysis is that the lack of participation by member states in the reporting process is unrelated to the availability or sensitivity of the information. Since states already report such information nationally, in some cases in a detailed manner, incentives must be offered for these member states to also report to the UN.

The advantages of transparency in the military sector are well known; thus, the discussions on poor participation must focus on the issues of reporting fatigue, the perceived lack of relevance and the required resources (human and capital) in a way that demonstrates that the benefits of collective transparency outweigh the small effort needed to submit already available information.

For more detail on the issues discussed in this Backgrounder see SIPRI’s forthcoming (early 2018) report ‘Transparency in Military Expenditure: the case of sub-Saharan Africa’.

*About the authors:
Dr Nan Tian is a Researcher with the Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

Pieter D. Wezeman is a Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

Source:
This article was published by SIPRI

A rape and sexual assault complaint was filed on Friday in France against Swiss Islamist and Prof. Tariq Ramadan by Henda Ayari, reported Agence France Press (AFP).

On Saturday, Ramadan denied Ayari’s allegations and expressed his intention to sue for “slanderous denunciation” on Monday, his lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, told French media.

Tariq Ramadan is the grandson of Egyptian scholar Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group deemed terrorist by a number of Arab and Muslim countries.

The complaint, filed with the Rouen prosecutor’s office in northwest France by Ayari, now a secular activist, detailed criminal acts of rape, sexual assault, violence, harassment and intimidation, according to a document reviewed by AFP.

The Liberators Association, of which Ayari is president, said on Facebook that she was “a victim of something very serious several years ago,” but did not reveal the name of her aggressor for safety reasons.

In her book “I Chose to be Free,” published in November 2016, she described her aggressor as Zubair. She wrote that she met him at his hotel in Paris after he had given a lecture.

“I will not give precise details of the acts he has done to me. It is enough to know that he has benefited greatly from my weakness,” Ayari wrote.

She added that when she rebelled against him at one point, he screamed at her, insulted her, slapped her and treated her violently.

“I confirm today, that the famous Zubair is Tariq Ramadan,” Ayari wrote on Facebook.

Her lawyer Jonas Haddad said she did not report the assault earlier out of fear.

“After revelations over the past few days of rape and sexual assault claims in the media, Henda has decided to say what happened to her and take legal action,” he told AFP.

By Yossi Mekelberg*

If any part of the world should be worried and aware of the dangers of populist ultra-nationalism it is Europe. If any country in Europe should be worried and aware of the acute threat of populist ultra-nationalism it is Austria (and Germany, obviously).

Only a few weeks ago the election results in Germany caused great concern across the continent and beyond. To see the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party win 12.6 percent of the vote and enter the Bundestag for the first time was to witness a watershed in post-Second World War Europe. Soon to follow suit, and with even more alarming results, was the commanding victory of the radical nationalist parties in the Austrian elections, which eclipsed the electoral outcome in Germany. Between them, Austria’s so-called center-right People’s Party (ÖVP) that gained 31.5 percent of the vote, and the ultra-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) that took 26 percent, are going to set the agenda for the next four years — and it is a xenophobic-chauvinistic one.

Though Austria is a small country with a population of a mere 8.5 million, such a decisive victory for two parties whose campaigns concentrated on outbidding each other over who was more anti-immigration and Islamophobic, and more generally bigoted, is chilling. These results legitimize a vile and opportunistic ideology that has already taken hold on the political margins of other European countries, giving it a strong and frightening tailwind as it creeps into the mainstream of European politics. It is an additional and severe headache for Brussels, which is already struggling to come up with answers to the rightward shift of countries such as Britain on its way out of the EU, and the emergence of nationalist movements in countries such as Germany, Poland or Hungary as major political forces to be reckoned with.

To refer to the ÖVP, led by 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, as center-right is misleading. It might be the case that the FPÖ is more upfront about and explicit in its far-right ideology, but the difference between them is mainly in presentation, not substance. The FPÖ’s leader Heinz-Christian Strache pledged to prevent Austrians from “becoming a minority in our own homeland.” But in what way is Kurz, who called for a ban on Muslim kindergartens, similarly to the FPÖ, and advocated a “burqa ban,” and a law against foreign funding of mosques, any different? It was part of his campaign for tougher measures against what he calls “political Islam,” which for him means any expression of the Muslim faith and its traditions.

Putting the disappointment and trepidation caused by the outcome of its elections aside, we probably shouldn’t be surprised at the rise of the far-right in Austria. The permissive international environment is evidently creating fertile ground for these types of movement, but in the Austrian case there is also a strong sense of deja vu, several times over. It is not just its history during Nazi times in the 1930s and 1940s, but the complete and utter state of denial this nation has adopted about its active and willing collaboration with Nazi Germnay in executing the most heinous of atrocities during those times. Austrians have always falsely portrayed themselves as victims rather than what they really were — perpetrators. In 1986 Austria elected Kurt Waldheim as its president, despite his past as a Wehrmacht officer in a Nazi intelligence unit in the Balkans. In last year’s presidential election Norbert Hofer of the FPÖ lost, but by only by a small margin.

But we shouldn’t really be surprised because Austrian voters have already expressed very similar far-right tendencies in the 1999 elections. Back then the FPÖ led by Jörg Haider won 27 percent of the vote and formed a coalition with the ÖVP. Yet despite vehement protestations by the European Parliament, diplomatic sanctions by the EU for a short while, Israel recalling its ambassador, and the US contemplating following suit, this coalition of hate survived for almost five years.

It remains to be seen whether Kurz will opt to form a coalition with the like-minded Strache FPÖ, or with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) that has been in power for the past decade. Kruz is not short of self-confidence, and his gamble on nationalist incitement paid off at the ballot box. Despite Kurz’s success, Strache is the one in position to become the kingmaker with an option to form a coalition with the SPÖ, as unlikely as it sounds.

The Austrian people have had their say, but now it is for the international community to express its revulsion and rejection of any government in Vienna that includes the Freedom Party or adopts a policy that is blatantly anti-immigrant and xenophobic.

However, unlike 17 years ago when the occupant in the White House was Bill Clinton and in Europe far-right parties were confined to the very margins of politics, now on both sides of the Atlantic they have crept into the mainstream. The results of the Austrian elections, unlike those of 1999, are no longer a European anomaly. It is an old-new discourse, which has haunted this continent for centuries. It proves wrong those who thought that it was eradicated in a bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in 1945, with the Nuremberg trials that followed the end of the Second World War, or with the formation of an enlightened, liberal European Union. It is alive and kicking, and once again Austria is playing its part in it.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

Catholics in a central Vietnamese province have expressed support for a female activist who was arrested for “attempting to overthrow the government.”

Teresa Tran Thi Xuan, a member of Cua Soc Parish, was arrested while traveling to work in her home province of Ha Tinh on Oct. 17.

The Ha Tinh Provincial Public Security Department accused Xuan of “acting to overthrow the people’s government under Article 79 of the Penal Code.”

The department said Xuan is a member of the Brotherhood for Democracy, a domestic civil society which the government sees as reactionary group acting to overthrow the communist state.

The 41-year-old was accused of causing public disorder, infringing upon national security, resisting the Communist Party, calling for protests and conducting voluntary activities among young people.

On Oct. 18, thousands of Catholics attended a candle-lit prayer to pray for Xuan’s justice at Cua Sot Church. They also raised banners saying “Tran Thi Xuan innocent! Free her!”

Others voiced their concerns to ucanews.com.

“We strongly oppose the government arresting Xuan, who actively gives material and spiritual support to poor people and natural disaster victims,” a local Catholic woman said.

She said Xuan has done nothing wrong except for helping the poor. “Can an honest and direct woman attempt to overthrow the ruling system?” she asked.

Some local Catholics said Xuan actively did charitable work in the parish. She and young people in the parish collected used items to sell so to support people in need. They also spoke out against Taiwanese firm Formosa which was responsible for a massive toxic waste spill in the province.

“We demand the government release her,” another Catholic said.

Vietnam’s communist government tolerates little criticism and has arrested 20 activists and dissidents this year.

She was flying Lucky Air, but that wasn’t enough for an elderly Chinese woman who tossed coins at the jet’s engine to wish for a safe flight, prompting authorities to detain her and ground the flight.

The incident occurred on Wednesday at the airport in the city of Anqing in eastern China’s Anhui province, according to authorities, and was at least the second such report this year of a safety scare caused by a coin-tossing elderly Chinese.

Fellow passengers reported that coins were tossed at the engine of a Lucky Air jet during boarding, and ground crew later found coins lying on the tarmac next to the plane, according to various statements by the airline, airport authorities, and transport police.

A 76-year-old woman was subsequently taken into custody, transport police said. It was not clear whether she would face charges. Lucky Air is under the Hainan Airlines group.

The flight, which was to depart Anqing for the city of Kunming in southwestern China, was grounded overnight as a safety precaution. The passengers were subsequently flown to Kunming the following morning, authorities said.

In June, a superstitious 80-year-old woman delayed a China Southern Airlines flight at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport for nearly six hours after she tossed nine coins at the engine from the tarmac while boarding, with one nestling inside.

The woman was detained but eventually spared prosecution because of her age, state media reported. Shanghai airport authorities said she was a devoted Buddhist and believed the act would ensure her safety on the flight to the southern city of Guangzhou.

(Civil.Ge) — The exit poll, commissioned by Imedi TV, showed the ruling Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia candidate, Kakha Kaladze, winning outright victory in the mayoral race in Tbilisi.

According to the exit poll, which was fielded by Tbilisi-based pollster Gorbi, Kakha Kaladze garnered 53% of the vote, followed by United National Movement’s Tbilisi mayoral candidate Zaal Udumashvili and independent Aleko Elisashvili with 14% each. Elene Khoshtaria of the European Georgia garnered 5% of votes.

The results of other mayoral candidates is as follows: Irma Inashvili of the Alliance of Patriots – 4%; Giorgi Vashadze of the New Georgia – 3%; Kakha Kukava of the Democratic Movement – Free Georgia – 3%; and Giorgi Gugava of the Labor Party – 2%.

In the party-list contest for Tbilisi City Council (Sakrebulo) the ruling party leads with 54%, followed by the United National Movement with 16%, the European Georgia with 6%, the Alliance of Patriots with 5%, and the Democratic Movement – Free Georgia with 3%.

The exit poll was carried out in Tbilisi only, involving face-to-face interviews with 6,000 persons.

Imedi TV announced at 19:00, that the results would be published an hour later, immediately after the end of the voting process, but the television channel released the figures three hours later than scheduled, citing the desire to avoid an unnecessary “hype” as the reason for its delay.

(RFE/RL) — Large crowds of protesters have taken to the streets in Barcelona after the Spanish prime minister announced plans to remove Catalonia’s leaders and take control of the separatist region.

Barcelona police said that some 450,000 people had joined a protest in the regional capital on October 21, many of them chanting “freedom” and “independence” and waving Catalonia’s separatist flag.

Earlier in the day, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy outlined plans to remove Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his regional executive, who sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades by holding a disputed independence referendum on October 1.

Spain’s Supreme Court had declared the referendum illegal.

Under the proposed measures, Madrid could take direct control over Catalonia’s ministries and police force, replace its public media chiefs and call for fresh elections.

The measures must now be approved by Spain’s Senate in the next few days.

Puigdemont said the Spanish government’s measures are “incompatible with a democratic attitude and do not respect the rule of law.”

In a televised address late on October 21, Puigdemont called on the Catalan parliament to meet over the crisis.

The speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Carme Forcadell, called Madrid’s plans a “de facto coup d’etat.”

By Zoran Radosavljevic

(EurActiv) — The European Commission sent its officials to the premises of BMW this week for an unannounced inspection, amid concerns of a possible violation of EU antitrust rules by “several German car manufacturers”.

The commission confirmed the inspection had taken place on 16 October at the premises of an unnamed car manufacturer in Germany.

Separately, BMW confirmed to Reuters that EU antitrust staff were in Munich this week to search its offices.

The inspection was “related to Commission concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices (Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), the Commission statement said.

If the inspection confirms the allegations, this would represent one of the largest antitrust cases in German economic history. The car industry has been the pinnacle of the EU’s most powerful economy.

On top of grappling with the fallout of the Dieselgate scandal that shook the continent in 2015, car manufacturers in Europe are bracing for the expected phase-out of fossil-fuel cars and the advent of electric vehicles, as well as for new emission tests and reductions in CO2 standards.

The Commission said its officials were accompanied by their counterparts from the German national competition authority. It explained that inspections were a preliminary step in investigations of suspected anti-competitive practices.

“The fact that the Commission carries out inspections does not mean that the inspected companies are guilty of anti-competitive behaviour, nor does it prejudge the outcome of the investigation itself. The Commission respects the rights of defence, in particular the right of companies to be heard, in antitrust proceedings.”