By Ann Garrison

On November 18, Rwandan President Paul Kagame inducted seven thieves without borders and one medical doctor into his “National Order of Outstanding Friendship,” presenting them with medals for “exemplary service” to the nation, meaning himself and his ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

Kagame is a modern day exemplar of French King Louis XIV’s theory of government: “L’état, c’est moi.” His list of honorees showcases the skill sets that keep any neocolonial kleptocracy in business. Agility with shell companies and offshore accounts are highly valued, and a boundlessly self-righteous sense of entitlement is absolutely required. As with all things Kagame, connection to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation are an added plus. Here’s some of what’s known about the Kagame Eight:

1. Hezi Bezalel, Israeli businessman and Rwanda’s Honorary Consul in Israel. Kagame’s newspaper, The New Times of Rwanda, praises Bezalel for building ties between Israel and Rwanda over the years, and says that “he arrived [in Rwanda] in the middle of 1994, a time when most international figures turned away.” Hard to know just what that could mean because on July 27, 1994, after Kagame had won the war that led to the massacres, the New York Times ran the headline U.S. Is Considering A Base In Rwanda For Relief Teams, and reported that:

“The United States is preparing to send troops to help establish a large base in Rwanda to bolster the relief effort in the devastated African nation, Administration officials said today.

“Setting up a staging area in the capital, Kigali, would mark an important new phase, committing American troops in Rwanda for the first time. Military officials said 2,000 to 3,000 troops could be sent into Rwanda, in addition to the 4,000 that Washington has said would join relief efforts outside the country.”

Relief efforts are sort of like “evacuating embassy personnel”—always a good excuse for sending troops. But whatever, maybe Hezi Bezalel arrived a few weeks before the US troops, more precisely at the midpoint of 1994.

In “Sex, Guns and Big Bucks,” the Israeli outlet Haaretz describes Bezalel in the context of his bid for the license to become Israel’s sixth mobile phone operator:

“Bezalel made his fortune in Africa, including through arms dealing. Bezalel represented Israeli defense companies in various African countries and reaped profits from the fees he charged. His associates say he worked only with governments, not with rebel groups. Now he wants to make himself into a legitimate businessman in Israel.”

Last April Israel’s Communication Minister granted Bezalel the license to go legit with his Xfone 018 telecomm company.

In 2014, Arutz-Sheva-Israel National News reported that Bezalel helped defeat the Palestinian Authority’s UN Security Council resolution that called for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria:

“The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s draft resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria failed in a UN Security Council vote Tuesday night – and an Israeli businessman may have contributed to the resolution being shelved.

“Businessman Hezi Bezalel has been working in the past few weeks behind the scenes to ensure that the draft resolution would fail to gain crucial support, Arutz Sheva has learned Wednesday.

“Only eight countries supported the proposal: Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxembourg, Argentina and Chile. The United States and Australia opposed. Five countries abstained: United Kingdom, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania and South Korea.

“Bezalel operates primarily abroad, mostly in Africa, and has a special relationship with the leaders of those countries. Bezalel currently serves as honorary consul of Rwanda in Israel.

“This is not the first time that Bezalel has worked for the State of Israel in the UN and in African countries. In recent years, he has quietly helped defend Israel from foreign interests looking to harm the Jewish state.”

Israel and Rwanda have had a special relationship for more than two decades. Both benefit from the false equivalence of the Holocaust and the 1994 massacres known as the Rwandan Genocide. The late Professor Edward S. Herman and co-author David Peterson analyzed the false equivalence in “The Politics of Genocide” and “Enduring Lies: Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later.” On New Year’s Day 2016, Professor Herman explained it to Pacifica/KPFA Radio’s Project Censored, and the transcript of that conversation was published in various outlets beginning with the San Francisco Bay View.

Zionists benefit by the false equivalence, which gives them opportunity to chastise the international community for failing to keep its “Never again” promise by stopping genocide in Rwanda, while at the same time deflecting accusations that they themselves are guilty of Palestinian genocide.

The Kagame regime, in turn, uses it to bring the full weight of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and its inescapable association with the Nazi war against the Jews to “the genocide against the Tutsi,” its official, legally enforced description of the 1994 massacres. Rwandans who tell a more complex story including Hutu victims and Tutsi perpetrators are imprisoned and even extradited from nations where they’ve taken refuge.

Israel endorses Rwanda’s laws criminalizing “genocide denial,” which are modeled after European “Holocaust denial” laws but are far more harshly and frequently enforced.

2. Howard G. Buffett, multi-billionaire son of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, philanthropist and agribusinessman. Kagame’s newspaper thanks Buffett for his “significant contribution to Rwanda’s agricultural transformation, national parks, as well as security across the Great Lakes Region.”

One of Buffett’s contributions to Rwanda’s “agricultural transformation” has been a $500 million investment in replacing subsistence agriculture with export agriculture—in a country where 90% of the population relies on subsistence agriculture to survive. It’s no surprise that he’s never spoken out for Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire, who called for a return to subsistence crops during her ill-fated 2010 attempt to run for president: “I would give priority to the subsistence food crops,” she said, “rather than cash crops which benefit mostly traders from urban areas. For example, if people cultivate only maize – if you ask them to cultivate only maize for export – what will they eat? This is why I will give priority to enough food to my people.”

Buffett acknowledges that his farming methods involve GMO seed and chemical-intensive, no-till farming in which chemical herbicide spraying is greatly increased to control weeds in place of tillage. He grows GMO corn and soybeans on his research farm in Nebraska, and idolatrous press actually suggest that he’s on a mission to feed the world.

After the 2012 UN Group of Experts Report that documented Rwanda’s command of the M23 militia ravaging Congo’s North Kivu Province, Western donors temporarily suspended $245 million in aid. Buffett then joined Tony Blair to pen a Foreign Policy op-ed: “Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali.”

He then played a remarkable role in the “peace talks” that ensued: he funded them. On December 17, 2012, the Rwanda News Group, another Kagame outlet, reported:

“The [$500,00] contribution was announced by Howard G. Buffett, President of the Foundation, upon returning from one-on-one meetings in the region with DRC President Joseph Kabila, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Uganda leader President Yoweri Museveni, who is also the facilitator of the talks.

“In a joint statement released Monday, the leaders said the grant will pay for transportation, lodging and communications costs incurred by the government of Uganda in taking on this role, with the goal of ensuring all parties engaged in the negotiations are provided the opportunity to participate in a fair and inclusive process.”

To its shame, the big corporate and state press regurgitated press releases about the “peace talks,” and even about Buffett’s generous “contribution” to them, without ever pointing to his flaming conflicts of interest. No one scanning the wires would have imagined that this multi-billionaire, self-interested, self-appointed diplomat with extensive resource interests in the region was not paying for the peace talks out of the goodness of his heart. Or that he was in fact a staunch protector of the principal perpetrator—the Rwandan president and commander-in-chief who commanded M23.

The Congolese army was reported to have defeated M23 in November 2013, but the Congolese people gained nothing in the Buffett peace process. In the end, it produced a document that promised to honor all of M23’s territorial claims in Congo’s North Kivu Province, which were actually cover for Rwanda’s.

Colonel Mamadou Moustapha Ndala, the Congolese commander who had won the hearts of eastern Congolese, was killed in an ambush less than a month later. His anguished supporters cried foul, but Howard Buffett appeared not to notice. Colonel Ndala had not only been a winning military strategist but had also refused to tolerate resource trafficking by his troops.

After the talks’ conclusion, Loyola University Professor Brian Endless told me that he thought it had all been political cover for the governments of Rwanda, Uganda, and DRC. “They’ve been trying to legitimize the conflict for years now, really, since Rwanda and Uganda put the first Kabila in charge in Congo, or what was then Zaire, and turned into Congo again. So I really think that they’re just looking to pull attention away from the fact that all of the international reports have implicated Rwanda in particular, Uganda to a next extent, and even DRC’s own government troops in a lot of the violence that’s going on there, with Rwanda and Uganda pretty clearly driving the violence. That wasn’t talked about at all in Addis Ababa. This was really a showpiece much more than anything else.”

Endless also said that the UN Security Council, which mediated between the African nations, had demonstrated no real interest in peace in DRC, where its most powerful members, like Howard Buffett, have resource interests.

Buffett’s involvements in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere in Africa could be the subject of an entire book. He even created the Howard Buffett International Women’s Media Foundation to “reshape the narrative” in conflict zones, especially DRC. Its mission statement is pure pablum about “the potential of women journalists as champions of press freedom” and “news with a diversity of voices, stories and perspectives as a cornerstone of democracy and free expression.”

Lastly, and like so many others in Kagame’s new Order of Distinguished Friends, Howard Buffett has Clinton connections. According to an August 2, 2017 Judicial Watch release, the entire Buffett family donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation and Howard in particular may then have received official favors related to his agribusiness interests:

“A number of emails show the free flow of information and requests for favors between Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation and major Clinton donors.

“For example, Howard Buffett, Jr., grandson of Warren Buffet, sought a meeting for his father, Howard Sr., with Hillary Clinton to discuss “food security.” The Buffett family, including Warren, his son Peter, and his late wife, Susan, through the Susan Buffett Foundation, all donated heavily to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. On behalf of Howard Buffett Jr., Bill Clinton aide Ben Schwerin asked [Huma] Abedin to get Howard Buffett Sr. a meeting with Clinton. He says, ‘Any chance of a brief meeting?’ Abedin replies, ‘we will take care of this.’”

3. Gilbert Chagoury, Nigerian billionaire, philanthropist, “counselor to world leaders,” major donor to the Clinton Foundation, and St. Lucia’s Ambassador to the Vatican. Kagame’s newspaper describes Chagoury as an “envoy of goodwill” who “played a great role in fostering ties between Rwanda and the Vatican at a time when relations were shaky.”

In “He was a billionaire who donated to the Clinton Foundation. Last year, he was denied entry into the U.S.,” the Los Angeles Times called Chagoury “part of a dictator’s inner circle,” meaning that of General Sani Abacha, who seized power in Nigeria in 1993, stole billions in public funds, and made Chagoury fabulously wealthy with development deals and oil franchises. Chagoury developed “a high-level network of friends from Washington to Lebanon to the Vatican” and tried to persuade the US government to think well of Abacha and take Nigeria off a US list of nations that encouraged drug trafficking.

The LA Times further reported:

“After Abacha’s death in 1998, the Nigerian government hired lawyers to track down the money. The trail led to bank accounts all over the world — some under Gilbert Chagoury’s control. Chagoury, who denied knowing the funds were stolen, paid a fine of 1 million Swiss francs, then about $600,000, and gave back $65 million to Nigeria; a Swiss conviction was expunged, a spokesman for Chagoury said.

“In the years afterward, Chagoury’s wealth grew. His family conglomerate now controls a host of businesses, including construction companies, flour mills, manufacturing plants and real estate.

“He has used some of that money to build political connections. As a noncitizen, he is barred from giving to U.S. political campaigns, but in 1996, he gave $460,000 to a voter registration group steered by Bill Clinton’s allies and was rewarded with an invitation to a White House dinner. Over the years, Chagoury attended Clinton’s 60th birthday fundraiser and helped arrange a visit to St. Lucia, where the former president was paid $100,000 for a speech. [Nomad Capitalist lists St. Lucia, a Caribbean Island, among “The five best offshore tax havens for bank secrecy.” Chagoury is the island’s Ambassador to the Vatican.] Clinton’s aide, Doug Band, even invited Chagoury to his wedding.

“Chagoury also contributed $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to its list of donors. At a 2009 Clinton Global Initiative conference, where business and charity leaders pledge to complete projects, the Chagoury Group’s Eko Atlantic development — nine square kilometers of Lagos coastal land reclaimed by a seawall — was singled out for praise. During a 2013 dedication ceremony in Lagos, just after Hillary Clinton left her post as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton lauded the $1-billion Eko Atlantic as an example to the world of how to fight climate change.”

Eko Atlantic is in fact an elite, gated, and guarded city. The Guardian wrote that it “augurs how the super-rich will exploit the crisis of climate change to increase inequality and seal themselves off from its impacts.”

4. John Dick, the founder of multi-billion dollar satellite internet company, O3b, and Rwanda’s Honorary Consul to the autonomous island nation of Jersey. Kagame’s newspaper credits Dick with “connecting Rwanda with global business leaders leading to fruitful investment ties,” and calls him a “‘bridge-builder to opportunity.” Jersey made recent headlines as Apple Computer’s newly preferred tax haven.

In Tax Haven Cash Rising, Now Equal To At Least 10% Of World GDP, Forbes situates it within a web of murky financial networks: “a large fraction of the money held in Switzerland belongs on paper to shell companies, trusts, foundations, and personal holding companies incorporated in other tax havens. A significant percentage of the offshore wealth managed by Swiss banks belongs to people whose primary accounts, or entities, are based in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, or Jersey.”

5. Partners in Health founder Dr. Paul Farmer.  Dr. Farmer was honored in absentia “for his efforts in improving the local health sector and drastically reducing mortality rates.”

He is the author of a good book about structural violence titled “Pathologies of Power,” but in its pages on Rwanda, he repeats the legally enforced “genocide against the Tutsi” description of what happened in Rwanda, citing former UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s “The Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide” as the authoritative account. For Power, as for Kagame’s Israeli allies, Rwanda is a reminder that the US must “intervene” militarily to keep its “Never again” promise to stop genocide.

Farmer in no way criticizes Kagame, but to be fair, he wouldn’t be able to work in Rwanda if he did, or if he voiced any qualification of “the genocide against the Tutsi.”

His Partners in Health organization has received millions from the Clinton Foundation.

6. Alain Gauthier and his wife Dafroza Mukarumongi-Gauthier. Gauthier and Mukarumongi-Gauthier were honored for pursuing fugitives from justice for the “genocide against the Tutsi” in France and fighting “the growing global tolerance for genocide denial.” In other words, they collaborate in the relentless witch hunts that make refugee Rwandans fearful of criticizing Kagame or voicing a dissident account of what happened in 1994, even from abroad. In March, Rwandan political asylum seeker Joseph Nwakusi was extradited to Rwanda to stand trial for denying genocide on his blog in Norway. In other cases, like that of Professor Leopold Munyakazi, anonymous Rwandan witnesses suddenly appear to accuse dissidents of genocide crime and initiate their extradition. Professor Munyakazi had dared to say that the Rwandan war and massacres were a class conflict, not an ethnic conflict, and therefore not genocide.

7. British “investigative” journalist Linda Melvern. Kagame’s newspaper describes Melvern as an “archaeologist of the truth” and thanks her for “producing meticulously researched accounts of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.” Whenever anyone, Rwandan or not, mounts a public challenge to that description, Melvern is the first to respond, most often in the London Guardian. After the BBC documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story, a groundbreaking challenge to the dominant narrative, she joined other writers and academics in filing a complaint alleging that it promoted genocide denial. The complaint was rejected by the BBC’s editorial complaint unit.

Belgian scholar Filip Reyntjens responded to a Melvern defender in the comments on his Twitter post about the Kigali awards, which he called “white liars’ medals.”

8. Joseph Ritchie, Chicago options and commodities trader, international businessman, Co-chair of Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council, and former CEO of the Rwanda Development Board. Ritchie organized the first “Rwanda Day” promotional event in the US, and Kagame’s newspaper reported that he “was honored for his role in bringing multiple business people into the country to facilitate economic transformation.”

However, according to Rwandan economist and exile David Himbara, author of “Kagame’s Economic Mirage,” there’s been no transformation for Rwanda’s rural peasant majority, who live in “a world frozen in time.”

“Kagame,” Himbara says, “has grossly exaggerated his social and economic accomplishments of the past 23 years. He says he has built an African economic lion – the Singapore of Africa. In reality Rwanda remains the poorest country in East Africa, except for Burundi. Its per capita income stands at $697.3 versus Kenya’s of $1,376.7; Uganda, $705; and Tanzania at $879. Burundi is poorer than Rwanda with per capita of $277. Rwanda receives $1 billion a year in foreign aid, which is half of its annual budget of $2 billion. This is hardly a spectacular success.”

Ritchie tirelessly promotes the miracle story nevertheless, and the Western press never seems to get enough of it. Reports of political repression, summary executions, assassinations at home and abroad, and flagrant election fraud are always qualified with effulgent accounts of Rwanda’s economic gains, as though they were shared nationwide.

Is it strange that a white options and commodities trader from Chicago would become Co-chair of the Rwandan President’s Advisory Council and CEO of the Rwanda Development Board? Not really. There are similar bonds in other neocolonial kleptocracies, such as Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s with Israeli diamond and mining billionaire Dan Gertler. It makes sense if the Euro partner deals in raw stuff: diamonds, minerals, commodities, options and the like, and Ritchie and Gertler are both deft with offshore instruments.

So where were the Clintons and the Blairs?

Some wondered why Tony and Cheri Blair and the family Clinton were absent at the November 18 ceremony in Kigali, despite the Clinton connection theme. They are, after all, Kagame’s most influential supporters. It may be that Kagame simply has to spread the honors around, or that the Clintons and Blairs have become shy of the attention. Especially the Clintons, now that their foundation is under investigation for corruption.

Princess Lalla Meryem presided over in Rabat on Sunday the inauguration ceremony of the Diplomatic Circle Charity Bazaar, held under the high patronage of HM King Mohammed VI.

Addressing the opening ceremony on behalf of the diplomatic missions, the spouse of Hungary’s ambassador in Rabat Szilvia Tomler Visihanyo thanked Her Royal Highness for her strong support for social projects undertaken by the Circle. A long established custom that has become an opportunity for the celebration of the warmth of our souls, diverse ideas, culture and traditions, which will attract thousands of visitors.

She also voiced her gratitude for Her Royal Highness for this precious help meant to assist poor women and children, underlining that the bazaar brings together several countries, organizations and associations representing different religions, histories and cultures working towards the same goal: helping underprivileged women and children.

The Diplomatic Bazaar 2017 edition was marked by presenting to Her Royal Highness a preview of the Children International Circle, which includes around 40 kids aged 8-16. These children are driven by a spirit of solidarity to share ideas that could lead to conducting charity projects during their stay in Morocco.

The bazaar is an annual event organized by the Diplomatic Circle in Morocco to celebrate friendship and solidarity, an important means to support Moroccan NGOs involved in the fields of education, health and women’s development in rural areas.

Over 30 countries are taking part in this edition via their ambassadors, with the Moroccan club of ambassadors’ spouses and the diplomatic foundation as guests of honour.

The annual bazaar is a multicultural event where participating countries showcase an artistic segment of their nation’s culture through the exhibition of numerous traditional artifacts, handicrafts, handmade accessories, articles of clothing and traditional food items which reflect a nation’s identity. An extravaganza of traditional food, clothing, accessories and everything else from many countries across the world, organised by very dynamic diplomatic spouses wanting to raise funds to support various charities in Morocco.

Colors of the national flags of the member countries welcomed the guests.

Distinguished guests, business representatives and guests from the diplomatic community relished the cross-cultural presentations during the the well organized event offered a rich experience of different cultural activities.

Culture, heritage and arts are doing what politics fail to achieve , bringing world countries together side-by-side under one roof.

A large number of embassies in Rabat convened on Sunday at this Diplomatic Bazaar, an annual event that has become one of the most popular events in Morocco. The bazaar manifests the concept of social responsibility that these missions are committed to translating.

Each of the embassies taking part in the event showcased the finest products from their countries, depicting a rare scene of the world coming together for a noble cause.

Princess Lalla Meryem, along with ambassadors and visitors, toured the bazaar’s stalls at Mohammed V theatre in Rabat.

The Rabat diplomatic circle, set up 30 years ago, is a charity association including spouses of heads of diplomatic missions and representatives of international organizations

By Charlie Neyra

As the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh swells to over 830,000, women are increasingly being targeted by the sex trade, and according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the urgency of addressing the issue “cannot be overstated.”

Human trafficking and exploitation of Rohingya refugees is rife, according to aid agencies, amid reports of more women being forced into prostitution and taken as sex slaves.

According to The Sunday Telegraph, the IOM is even aware of cases of Rohingya refugees being trafficked overseas.

The IOM is part of a network of charities and NGOs working to help refugees in Bangladesh.

Olivia Headon, IOM’s information officer in the emergencies division, told Arab News that the organization “is seeking funding to enhance its counter-trafficking and gender-based violence programming to prevent … abuses from happening and to properly support survivors.”

Myanmar’s military campaign against the Rohingya, which sparked the ongoing refugee crisis, prompted the UN human rights chief to lash out at the situation. In September, Zeid Al-Hussein told the UN Human Rights Council that “the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

IOM is scaling up efforts to offer “safe spaces,” with one already in operation, and a further seven under construction. According to Headon, these are places where “women and girls can go to at any time to feel safer and empowered and have access to information, education, recreational activities, support and services. These spaces support women and girls to recover from violence, form networks and access support, safety and opportunities.”

The situation is “connected to … the issue of forced and early marriage. Early marriage is often seen as a means of protection by the community, but we are concerned that young girls are being married off to older men or men who may already have other wives, leaving the girls open to more abuse,” Headon told Arab News.

The Bangladeshi government is working in partnership with IOM, as well as with local authorities and police in the southeast coastal town of Cox’s Bazar, to enhance protection of Rohingya women and girls. There are IOM teams in five main refugee settlements, as well as a mobile team that covers extension areas and spontaneous settlements, but the inter-governmental organization says more needs to be done, with hundreds more Rohingya refugees arriving daily.

The UN on Sunday said that $434 million is needed to provide assistance to the 1.2 million people affected, which includes those in host communities. According to the UN, only 34 percent of that money has so far been raised.

“Humanitarian partners are working around the clock to respond, but the reality remains that the needs are massive and urgent, and the gaps are wide. More funding is needed. Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but more land is needed to improve conditions in the congested camps,” said Mia Seppo, UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh, in a statement.

A monitoring report released on Sunday said that the risk of disease outbreak is high, and the impact of a cyclone or heavy rain would be massive, adding that there is not enough land to provide adequate living conditions for the refugees in and around Cox’s Bazar.

Released by the Inter-Sector Coordination Group that works with organizations on the ground in Bangladesh, the report says that most refugees are living in 10 different camps, with one camp already the largest and fastest growing in the world. Approximately half a million people are living extremely close to each other without access to basic services such as toilets or clinics.

Mikhail Papiyev, who served as Viktor Yushchenko’s labor and social policy minister, says that the actual population of Ukraine is approximately 20 to 23 million and not the 43 million that Ukrainian government statisticians and officials regularly proclaim.

According to the former minister, some ten million Ukrainians have been forced to go abroad for work, and another ten million are “dead souls, who exist only on paper.” In addition, there are three million or so people in areas Moscow not Kiev now controls (vz.ru/economy/2017/12/3/897886.html).

Papiyev says that the actual number of Ukrainians in Ukraine is thus roughly half of what Kiev claims, and he suggests the major reasons for the difference is national pride – a country of 40 million is a bigger player than one of 20 – and corruption – officials who can get higher numbers accepted can pocket social spending for people who don’t in fact exist.

Many of the post-Soviet states face similar problems and for the same reasons, although in percentage terms, Ukraine may be among the leaders such a discrepancy, one that officials and some others are certain to challenge in the coming days.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering have found yet another remarkable use for the wonder material graphene–tiny electronic “tweezers” that can grab biomolecules floating in water with incredible efficiency. This capability could lead to a revolutionary handheld disease diagnostic system that could be run on a smart phone.

Graphene, a material made of a single layer of carbon atoms, was discovered more than a decade ago and has enthralled researchers with its range of amazing properties that have found uses in many new applications from microelectronics to solar cells.

The graphene tweezers developed at the University of Minnesota are vastly more effective at trapping particles compared to other techniques used in the past due to the fact that graphene is a single atom thick, less than 1 billionth of a meter.

The research study was published today in Nature Communications, a leading journal in the field of nanomaterials and devices.

The world’s sharpest tweezers

The physical principle of tweezing or trapping nanometer-scale objects, known as dielectrophoresis, has been known for a long time and is typically practiced by using a pair of metal electrodes. From the viewpoint of grabbing molecules, however, metal electrodes are very blunt. They simply lack the “sharpness” to pick up and control nanometer-scale objects.

“Graphene is the thinnest material ever discovered, and it is this property that allows us to make these tweezers so efficient. No other material can come close,” said research team leader Sang-Hyun Oh, a Sanford P. Bordeau Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “To build efficient electronic tweezers to grab biomolecules, basically we need to create miniaturized lightning rods and concentrate huge amount of electrical flux on the sharp tip. The edges of graphene are the sharpest lightning rods.”

The team also showed that the graphene tweezers could be used for a wide range of physical and biological applications by trapping semiconductor nanocrystals, nanodiamond particles, and even DNA molecules. Normally this type of trapping would require high voltages, restricting it to a laboratory environment, but graphene tweezers can trap small DNA molecules at around 1 Volt, meaning that this could work on portable devices such as mobile phones.

Using the University of Minnesota’s state-of-the-art nanofabrication facilities at the Minnesota Nano Center, electrical and computer engineering Professor Steven Koester’s team made the graphene tweezers by creating a sandwich structure where a thin insulating material call hafnium dioxide is sandwiched between a metal electrode on one side and graphene on the other. Hafnium dioxide is a material that is commonly used in today’s advanced microchips.

“One of the great things about graphene is it is compatible with standard processing tools in the semiconductor industry, which will make it much easier to commercialize these devices in the future,” said Koester, who led the effort to fabricate the graphene devices.

“Since we are the first to demonstrate such low-power trapping of biomolecules using graphene tweezers, more work still needs to be done to determine the theoretical limits for a fully optimized device,” said Avijit Barik, a University of Minnesota electrical and computer engineering graduate student and lead author of the study. “For this initial demonstration, we have used sophisticated laboratory tools such as a fluorescence microscope and electronic instruments. Our ultimate goal is to miniaturize the entire apparatus into a single microchip that is operated by a mobile phone.”

Tweezers that can ‘feel’

Another exciting prospect for this technology that separates graphene tweezers from metal-based devices is that graphene can also “feel” the trapped biomolecules. In other words, the tweezers can be used as biosensors with exquisite sensitivity that can be displayed using simple electronic techniques.

“Graphene is an extremely versatile material,” Koester said. “It makes great transistors and photodetectors, and has the potential for light emission and other novel biosensor devices. By adding the capability to rapidly grab and sense molecules on graphene, we can design an ideal low-power electronics platform for a new type of handheld biosensor.”

Oh agrees that the possibilities are endless.

“Besides graphene, we can utilize a large variety of other two-dimensional materials to build atomically sharp tweezers combined with unusual optical or electronic properties,” said Oh. “It is really exciting to think of atomically sharp tweezers that can be used to trap, sense, and release biomolecules electronically. This could have huge potential for point-of-care diagnostics, which is our ultimate goal for this powerful device.”

In addition to Oh, Koester, and Barik, other researchers on the team include University of Minnesota Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Tony Low, graduate student Yao Zhang, and postdoctoral researcher Roberto Grassi, as well as Professor Joshua Edel and research associate Binoy Paulose Nadappuram from Imperial College London.

The University of Minnesota research was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, a unique collaborative venture among the University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic, and the State of Minnesota.

Nigel Farage insisted Sunday the “liberal elite” had over-reacted to Donald Trump’s decision to re-tweet Britain First insisting.

The ex-Ukip leader used an appearance on the BBC Andrew Marr Show to claim the reaction has been “out of all proportion” to the offense.

The President’s decision to re-tweet three messages from the far right Britain First group has been widely condemned.

The episode has triggered the worst public clashes between U.S. and U.K. leaders in memory. Prime Minister Theresa May launched a rare direct attack on Trump, branding him “wrong” for his tweets – prompting a bizarre cross-Atlantic spat.

The row took a turn for the bizarre when Trump attempted to reply directly to May on Twitter – only to send his message to the wrong Theresa May account.

Other critics even claimed Trump should be arrested when he next visits Britain and for his planned state visit to be canceled.

Education Secretary Justine Greening added to criticism today, warning any visit by Trump would not be “positive.”

Farage said today: “Do I think those tweets were in good taste? Not particularly, no.

“But the point is that the level of outrage from the liberal elite in this country is out of all proportion with what happened here.”

He added: “Was the story about ISIS throwing people off buildings fake news? No. It wasn’t, it was true.”

Farage also repeated his claim to have “done more than anybody in this country to stop the rise of the far-right in Britain,” by giving BNP voters someone else to vote for.

Original source

By Mark Novales and Felipe Villamor

The Philippines will fast-track the reconstruction of Marawi, a southern city destroyed by the five-month battle with pro-Islamic State (IS) militants, a presidential spokesman said Tuesday while warning delays in rebuilding houses could push young Muslims to extremism.

The first 500 temporary shelters will be finished by mid-December and more than 6,000 others are being planned in the weeks ahead, said Harry Roque, President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman.

“In military parlance that was ground zero, but since there is no more fighting, it is now being referred to as the most-affected area,” Roque told reporters, referring to the city’s commercial district.

“They plan to flatten it and redevelop the whole area,” he told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines in Manila.

The fighting in Marawi, which began on May 23 and was declared over by the Philippine government in late October, uprooted an estimated 200,000 residents, killed more than 1,000 people and razed houses and other buildings in the lakeshore Islamic city on Mindanao island.

An ambitious reconstruction plan aims to transform Marawi into a modern city by the time the president ends his six-year term in 2022, Roque said.

Roque said he was shocked by the scale of destruction when he visited the city.

“What is scary is when I went there, there was not any living creature moving – not a dog – not a cat,” he said. “It is as if everything was killed or simply left the area.”

He said the government’s Marawi reconstruction team would invite “big-time developers” from around the world to a bid in December.

But many longtime residents do not hold proper land titles in Marawi, an 8,700 hectare (21,500 acre) military reservation that has stayed under the control of Muslim families for generations. This potential snag in the distribution of property in the reconstruction of Marawi is a touchy issue that could reignite conflict.

“So the challenge really is to rebuild Marawi as quickly as possible to give hope to the youth that the proper way to move forward is through becoming active participants as citizens of the nation,” Roque said. “And, of course, we need to create economic opportunities for them, so that they will turn their backs on violent extremism.”

Radical groups exploited by IS

The Marawi clashes underscored how violent extremists could cross borders, security experts say, particularly in this part of Southeast Asia where decades of Muslim rebellion spawned radical Islamic groups exploited by IS.

Roque pointed out that those who fought in Marawi were led by Filipino Abu Sayyaf gunman Isnilon Hapilon, who was backed by several members of a radical Muslim family and fighters from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Middle East.

“I think that the fact that the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are cooperating closely on the issue of terrorism and violent extremism will show that the problem really has become a regional concern,” he said.

While IS largely has been defeated in the Middle East, it has spread its tentacles to the region, according to military officials.

In particular, the Philippine military has had to rely on help from former Muslim separatist rebels in going after smaller IS-backed groups who sprung up elsewhere on southern Mindanao Island after the Marawi fighting.

Roque said Marawi has been “pretty much deserted” with only a few brave residents allowed to go back in batches to check on their destroyed homes and properties because troops were still scouring the landscape for unexploded bombs planted by fleeing rebels.

He said the “primordial consideration” for not allowing all of Marawi’s residents back in is that “the structures are not worth repairing or rebuilding.”

“They really have to be flattened and built from scratch. That’s pretty much the extent of the damage there,” Roque said.

Risks of further radicalization

The regional faction of IS could take advantage of feelings of disgruntlement among residents of Marawi and stage scattered attacks, including “revenge bombings” in Manila and the southern Philippine cities of Zamboanga and Cotabato, said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

“The biggest risk lies with further radicalization caused by unhappiness in Marawi reconstruction,” she told reporters recently.

The children and younger siblings of slain militants also could be the next generation of fighters who Manila should worry about, Jones said.

“Who is identifying the families and children of the terrorists killed in Marawi?” she asked, noting there did not seem to be any program to identify them.

Without funding from external sources, militants will now be hard put to keep a militant coalition working together on a regional basis, she said.

“But no one in the Philippines should ignore the fact that Salafi jihadism – the ideology that supports violent extremism – may be here to stay,” she said.

By Fatjona Mejdini

A new Open Society Foundation report sheds light on a quarter-of-a-century of secret ties between Albanian politics and territorial criminal groups.

A new study by the Open Society Foundation for Albania, presented in Tirana on Friday, reveals how organised crime, business, judiciary, and politics have been tied together for years in a complex relationship based on common interests and exploitation for mutual benefit.

“Criminal organisations have ties with politics, and the latter interferes by neutralising law enforcement agencies through the appointment of trusted persons or party militants,” one of the conclusions of the report reads.

According to it, political parties in Albania have benefited greatly from funds from criminal networks, while the relationship has grown more sophisticated since 2005.

The study notes the many different methods that criminal organisations use: extortion of businesses revenues through fines or by offering so-called “protection” from other gangs; support of political candidates or scaring opponents in elections; manipulation of votes and the funding of electoral campaigns in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution.

One of the interesting findings of the study is also the role that former communist officials from state agencies played in the early years of organised crime in multi-party Albania.

“Infiltration of organized crime into weak Albanian institutions ensured the untouchability of figures involved in organized crime. A large number of these had worked in the past as secret service agents, as officers of the Republican Guard, or even as drivers or sportsmen during the previous regime,” the report said, analysing the early 1990s.

The study, conducted by Fabian Zhilla and Besfort Lamallari, is based on analysis of 71 decisions of the first instance court of serious crimes on about 50 criminal structures.

Researchers also conducted 84 interviews with present and former judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police officers, journalists and representatives of civil society.

The research also pointed out that almost all the main cities of Albania have their own structured crime groups that exercise territorial control, and focus mainly on the trafficking of narcotics, and on extortion and debt collection.

The study contains a map of the key criminal structures in Albania, as of 2015. In Tirana, the researchers evaluate three active criminal organisations; in Shkodra four families; in Durres, one criminal organisation and one family; and in Vlore several criminal groups.

In Berat, the report noted three big crime families, while in Elbasan several families and criminal groups were operating.

An estimated 7,099 languages are spoken throughout the world today. Almost a third of them are endangered — spoken by dwindling numbers — while just 23 languages represent more than half of the global population.

For years, researchers have been interested in the similarities seen across human languages. A new study led by University of Arizona researcher Masha Fedzechkina suggests that some of those similarities may be based on the human brain’s preference for efficient information processing.

“If we look at languages of the world, they are very different on the surface, but they also share a lot of underlying commonalities, often called linguistic universals or cross-linguistic generalizations,” said Fedzechkina, an assistant professor in the UA Department of Linguistics and lead author of the study, published in the journal Psychological Science.

“Most theories assume the reasons why languages have these cross-linguistic universals is because they’re in some way constrained by the human brain,” Fedzechkina said. “If these linguistic universals are indeed real, and if we understand their causes, then it can tell us something about how language is acquired or processed by the human brain, which is one of the central questions in language sciences.”

Fedzechkina and her collaborators conducted a study in which two groups of English-speaking-only individuals were each taught, over a three-day period, a different miniature artificial language designed by the experimenters. The two languages were structured differently from each other, and, importantly, neither was structured like the participants’ native English.

In both groups, participants were taught two ways to express the same ideas. When later tested verbally — asked to describe actions in a video — participants, in the phrasing of their answers, showed an overwhelming preference for word orders that resulted in short “dependency length,” which refers to the distance between words that depend on each other for interpretation.

The finding suggests that language universals might be explained, at least in part, by what appears to be the human brain’s innate preference for “short dependencies.”

“The longer the dependencies are, the harder they are to process in comprehension, presumably because of memory constraints,” Fedzechkina said. “If we look cross-linguistically, we find that word orders of languages, overall, tend to have shorter dependencies than would be expected by chance, suggesting that there is a correlation between constraints on human information processing and the structures of natural languages. We wanted to do this research to provide the first behavioral evidence for a causal link between the two, and we did. We found that when learners have two options in the input grammar, they tend to prefer the option that reduces dependency lengths and thus makes sentences in the language easier for the human brain to process.”

What Artificial Languages Can Teach Us

The researchers’ decision to use artificial languages for their study was strategic.

“Traditionally, linguists have studied cross-linguistic universals by going to different cultures and documenting the structures of different languages, and then they looked for cross-linguistic commonalities,” Fedzechkina said. “That research has been transformative in identifying a large number of potential linguistic universals and has generated a lot of theories about why these universals exist, but it also has its drawbacks.”

Among those drawbacks: It has been challenging to tease out the role of the brain.

“If you look, for example, at languages like Spanish and Italian, they share a lot of structural commonalities, but many of these commonalities are there because both languages originated from Latin,” Fedzechkina said. “Also, languages that are related to each other geographically often share structures, too — for example, due to population movement — even if they are not related historically. Once we take into account these historical and geographic dependencies, we might not have enough independent data points to convincingly test hypotheses about language universals.”

By teaching naïve study participants an artificial language that has certain structures that are not present in their native language, and then looking at what kind of structures they prefer after they have learned these languages, researchers can draw inferences about the causality underlying language universals, Fedzechkina said.

“If the pattern is not present in the input artificial language and if it’s not present in the participants’ native language, but they still introduce this pattern, it likely reveals more general cognitive biases humans have,” she said.

The finding gives researchers a better understanding of the role of human cognition in language structure and acquisition.

“We know from work on second language acquisition that learners’ native language influences the way they learn a second or third language, and the fact that our participants relied so strongly on the deeper underlying principle of human information processing rather than on surface word order of their native language was very surprising and very impressive for us,” Fedzechkina said. “We provide the first behavioral evidence for the hypothesized connection between human information processing and language structure, and we suggest that processing constraints do play a role in language acquisition, language structure and the way language changes over time.”

Detailed global maps of key traits in higher plants have been made available for the first time, thanks to work led by researchers from the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS).

Based on measurements of 45,000 individual plants from 3,680 species, and using high-tech statistical mapping protocols, the team created global maps of plant traits including leaf nitrogen concentration, leaf phosphorus concentration, and specific leaf area (a measure of area displayed to intercept light per unit investment in leaf biomass).

These maps, with more than 50,000 pixels, show surprisingly large local variation in trait values that could significantly impact future carbon cycle calculations produced by Earth System models (ESMs). The plant traits mapped in the study are critical for photosynthesis and foliar respiration and serve as input to the ESMs. Incorporating this local variability of plant traits in the ESMs will lead to more accurate modeling of carbon cycle feedbacks.

“The scarcity of field measurements presents a major roadblock in creating high resolution global maps of plant traits,” said Ethan Butler, co-lead author and postdoctoral associate in the Department of Forest Resources at UMN’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS). “This work advances previous trait mapping endeavors by leveraging the largest to-date global plant trait database, TRY, which is three-fold larger than any used before.”

According to Peter Reich, the project leader, “Current ESMs represent variation in plant life using crude averages of trait values of plants; a model might be as simplistic as assuming all leaves in Amazonia or Alaska are identical. The new maps reveal that local diversity is substantial; ignoring this fact is problematic. Incorporating data from these maps into the EMSs will lead to improved carbon cycle models.”

“Despite having an enhanced number of field measurements, the geographical coverage of TRY is still limited with little or no data for much of the tropics, large swaths of Central Asia, Russia, South Asia and much of the Arctic,” said co-lead author Abhi Datta, formerly a PhD student in the Division of Biostatistics at UMN. “Subsequently, sophisticated statistical approaches were used to extrapolate plant trait values using a combination of climate, soil and spatial information. The resulting maps provide a complete characterization of how traits vary within and among over 50,000 50 km x 50-km cells across the entire vegetated land surface.”

People with disabilities face all sorts of discrimination every day. New Cornell University research suggests they may also face it while interacting with the police.

People with disabilities in the study – including emotional, physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities – were nearly 44 percent more likely to be arrested by age 28, while those without had a lower probability of arrest, at 30 percent.

This “disability penalty” was strongest for African-American men.

Black men with disabilities in the study were at a particularly high risk of arrest: 55 percent had been arrested by age 28. In contrast, 27.5 percent of whites in the study who had no disability had been arrested by that age.

The research was published this month in the American Journal of Public Health.

“I expected to find that people with disabilities would be more likely to be arrested, but I was frankly shocked by how large the disparity was,” said author Erin McCauley, a doctoral candidate in the field of policy analysis and management.

“These findings really point to a problem,” she said. “For people with disabilities, particularly men of color, the experience of arrest is extraordinarily common. They are constantly exposed to this risk.”

And because the types of disability were evenly distributed across all races, the difference in the probabilities of arrest between whites and blacks is likely due to racial discrimination, she said.

The findings have public health implications, she said.

For example, police training should put stronger emphasis on de-escalation, minimizing the use of force, and the role of implicit bias in police interactions, she said. In the paper, she wrote: “Police officers should understand how disabilities may affect compliance and other behaviors, and likewise how implicit bias and structural racism may affect reactions and actions of officers and the systems they work within in ways that create inequities.”

And ensuring high-quality care could decrease how frequently and closely people with disabilities come into contact with the criminal justice system, she said.

“For many with disabilities, quality health care is imperative for positive functioning within the community through increasing access to medication and support services,” she wrote.

Attempts by managers to empower staff by delegating different work to them or asking for their opinions can be detrimental for employee productivity, research shows.

Giving employees more authority can have a negative impact on their day to day performance and perhaps give the impression that their boss is just seeking to avoid doing their own work, according to the study.

Managers have increasingly sought to empower workers because they had thought it allowed staff to develop their skills and would result in better job satisfaction. But promoting good relationships between bosses and staff can be a more effective way to make them more efficient, academics have found. However empowering some workers can help with be more creative

The style of empowering leadership, developed two decades ago, has become more popular in the past decade as the organisational structures of companies have become flatter. It involves giving employees authority to get on with their work without regular monitoring, asking for their opinions and letting them participate in decision making.

Research by the University of Exeter Business School, Alliance Manchester Business School and Curtin Business School shows empowering workers can be effective when used for employees who have to carry out creative tasks. Then it motivates them to work harder and to help others, and helps them be proactive. But if used for staff who only carry out routine, structured tasks, empowering them may be counterproductive. There is a danger that they interpret the style of leadership as just a way of their boss delegating more of their workload to others.

Academics examined information about 105 companies around the world, and looked at the performance of 8,500 individual people working in mixture of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, sales, and schools.

The study also found bosses and employees need to trust each other if empowering leadership is to be effective. Bosses need to show they trust their subordinates, and allow them to be creative. Workers need to show they can be trusted to work without being closely supervised.

Dr Allan Lee, from the University of Exeter Business School, who led the research, said: “Using an empowered style of leadership can be detrimental and create uncertainly and even chaos if used for workers who have non-creative tasks.

“Workers have got to feel that their boss supports them to take risks when empowering leadership is being used. But bosses are also vulnerable when they manage people in this way. People could take advantage of the trust put in them. Trust is a powerful factor in how effective empowering leadership can be.

“Being an empowering leader is not just about sitting back and letting people get on with their work. You have to be supportive and willing to listen, and ask for opinions. It must be done in a way which builds trust.”

The research found workers in Eastern cultures had the same views about empowering leadership, and it had a similar impact on their work. It also found people new to their job respond better to empowering leadership and perform better than their more long-standing colleagues when managed in this way – perhaps because they are less cynical and more open to trying new things. Empowering leadership: a meta-analytic examination of incremental contribution, mediation, and moderation is published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

By Maggie Maslak

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, CA has encouraged Catholics in the U.S. to advocate for an extension to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program before the spring deadline.

“As you know, the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will expire on March 5, 2018 unless Congress acts to make the DACA protections permanent,” stated Archbishop Gomez.

“Now is the time for you to contact your Representative in the House… urge your representatives right now to tell the House Leadership – Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy – to do the right thing and make the DACA protections permanent,” Gomez continued.

In Sept. 2017, the Trump Administration announced that it would be phasing out the DACA program.

Showing its support for the DACA program, the Archdiocese of LA created a website to make it easier for individuals to contact their legislators, encouraging Congress to make the DACA protections permanent.

The website links users with their representatives, and prompts them to email or call with a message to make DACA protections permanent by the end of the year.

More than 800,000 people rely on the DACA program, a U.S. immigration policy that makes allowances for undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive a work permit and deferred action from deportation.

Most of the people who are part of the DACA program have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years and were brought into the country by their parents.

“These are the people that live next door. They go to work and we sit next to them at church on Sunday,” Gomez said.

There are 12 business days left for Congress to take action in 2017, but the official deadline is March 5, 2018.

“This is an urgent moment. If we do not reach out to our House members, nobody else is going to,” Gomez said.

“May God bless you for your concern for these DACA recipients and their families.

An airline is looking to expand through an acquisition. Should it acquire another airline in a different region or acquire another product category altogether, such as a chain of hotels?

The best way to answer this question may hinge on an oft-neglected factor: the business model of the acquisition target. Discount, premium, online-only, you name it: how a company “does business” is as important, or more so, than the geographic or product market in a merger. According to research by Timo Sohl and IESE’s Govert Vroom, when two companies have similar business models, they make better partners.

Introducing the concept of business model relatedness, Sohl and Vroom maintain that companies with akin models may share tacit knowledge better. In contrast, companies with unlike models are more apt to suffer from clashing corporate identities.

Looking for Merger Success

While M&As, on aggregate, tend to create value over the long term, most fall short of expectations. That is according a 2016 study by the consultancy Bain. So, how might the losers learn from the winners?

In the Bain survey, 55 percent of executives said that the root cause of deal disappointment was overestimated synergies.

Why might management overestimate merger synergies? One cause is the failure to realize that their unique business know-how is hard to transfer. Another is that conflicting corporate identities destroy value. So much focus is put on the product and the geographic market, how business gets done may be neglected in M&A.

“How?” Is a Key Question

For example, LAN Airlines of Chile merged with TAM Linhas Aéreas of Brazil in 2012. The post-merger LATAM has had a bumpy ride. In the authors’ view, integrating its discount and full-service business models for passenger and freight carriers deserves a share of the blame. The discount and full-service models operate on different logics.

Keep in mind that business model design, implementation and validation all involve know-how that is developed internally and idiosyncratically. This is the specialized knowledge that is valuable yet can be harder to share in mergers of dissimilar business models.

In another high-flying example, easyGroup, owner of easyJet, branched out with a hotel chain operating with a similar discount business model. The corporate identity stayed consistent, and the two lines of business benefitted from each other.

According to Sohl and Vroom, how business gets done is a key question for merger success. Specifically, when two companies’ business models are related, they may have more success sharing their unique expertise in a merger, no matter if they are booking flights or hotel rooms. That expertise may be in efficient customer service or economical IT systems. But if it works for their way of doing business, it will become valuable to share, if the acquired company has a similar business model.

Methodology, Very Briefly

Integrating research on business models, diversification, and acquisition strategy, this study provides a conceptual analysis of how business model relatedness may influence performance implications of M&As.

By S. Samuel C. Rajiv*

A 45 member Indian Air Force (IAF) contingent took part in the multilateral air exercise ‘Blue Flag 2017’ held at the Uvda Air Base in southern Israel from November 2-16, 2017. This was the first time that an IAF contingent has participated in air exercises with the Israeli Air Force (IsAF). The other participating nations were France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and the United States. While France was also a first time participant, Germany was an observer at these biennial exercises in 2015.

The IsAF touted Blue Flag 2017 as the ‘largest international aerial training exercise in Israel’s history’ whose goal was to ‘simulate extreme combat scenarios and coalition flights as realistically as possible’. The Indian participation involved the state-of-the-art Super Hercules C-130J Special Operations transport aircraft and Garud commandos. All the other participating nations took part with fighter aircraft. The Greeks, Poles and Americans brought the F-16 while the French, Italians and Germans brought the Mirage 2000 D, the Tornado and the Eurofighter Typhoon, respectively. The C-130 is a familiar platform to all the participating nations, with a majority of them operating the aircraft (Germany is set to induct the aircraft beginning from 2019).

The absence of fighter aircraft in the Indian contingent could possibly be due to a range of reasons including the need to establish comfort levels before ramping up participation in the next round after two years. Further, the platforms deployed also correspond to the objective of the participation, which, in the present case, was obviously focused on the training of the Garud commandos. In the Indian context, with anti-terrorist operations being a priority for the security forces, the exercise was an important occasion to gain lessons from the Israeli experience. An additional factor could be the issue of over-flight clearance for fighter aircraft from countries in the region that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Blue Flag 2017 adds an important layer to the matrix of bilateral defence cooperation, which has encompassed import of niche technology and equipment, Staff talks, reciprocal visits of chiefs of armed forces, port visits by ships of the Indian Navy, among other interactions. It remains to be seen whether the IAF’s participation in Blue Flag 2017 would lead to future bilateral air exercises on Indian soil. To be sure, both India and Israel participate in bilateral/multi-lateral air exercises with a limited number of countries. India in fact began exercising with other air forces beginning only from 2003, when Garuda I was conducted with France.1 For India (as indeed for most air forces), key operational variables that determine the frequency of such exercises have included finite resources in terms of equipment and budget and focus on internal exercises.

Over the past three years, India has conducted bilateral air exercises with France (June 2014), Russia (August-September 2014; first time ever air exercises were conducted with Russia), United Kingdom (July 2015), UAE (June 2016), Singapore (November-December 2016), Oman (January 2017), Thailand (May 2017) and Sri Lanka (July 2017), apart from participating in the multilateral Red Flag exercises in the US in April 2016. The varied combat platforms that took part in these exercises included fighters, aerial refuellers and transport aircraft, based on the objectives of each exercise.

For Israel, the US is obviously its most significant bilateral exercise partner. US-Israel bilateral military exercises also include missile defence, counter-terrorism, urban warfare, and naval exercises in the Mediterranean. European Command (EUCOM) is the lead US combatant command that partners with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in a majority of these exercises. The other significant ‘air partners’ for Israel include Italy, Greece and Romania, each of which presents unique opportunities for the IsAF to further hone its skills.

The mountainous topography of Romania, for instance, has been touted by the IDF as an important factor for conducting bilateral exercises in that country, specifically as it relates to the training that helicopter crews can gain in search and rescue operations. One of the attractions for Israeli participation in the Red Flag exercises in the US or with the Italian Air Force in Sardinia, apart from the varied nature of the exercises themselves, is the distances involved in getting to the exercise location in the first place and the large air spaces available for training.

For Israel, the Blue Flag exercises are an important effort to enhance its military diplomacy footprint and provide an opportunity for its pilots to train in a multi-lateral setting in their own air space. The IsAF, in fact, began these multi-lateral air exercises ostensibly in response to being denied permission by Turkey to take part in the 2009 Anatolian Eagle air exercises after Israel’s Cast Lead military action in Gaza. Reports, however, note that Israel has since been allowed to resume its participation in these exercises after forging a rapprochement with Turkey.

Israel also takes part in multilateral air combat exercises with countries like Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Israel, Pakistan and four other countries participated in the 2004 edition of Anatolian Eagle held in Turkey. Israel, Pakistan and UAE took part in the US Red Flag exercises in August 2016. Israel, along with the UAE and US, participated in ‘INIOHOS 2017’ held in Greece. While being cognizant of the fact that the choice of countries invited to participate is the prerogative of the host and most of the interaction takes place through host country coordination, it is interesting to note that Israel has taken part in air combat exercises in a multilateral setting with participating countries with which it does not even have bilateral diplomatic relations.

Certain limiting factors, though, could continue to constrain the nature and scope of India-Israel air exercises. India, for instance, has so far not conducted multilateral air exercises in its air space. In case the possibilities of undertaking bilateral exercises are to be explored, the IsAF will have to address the challenge of zeroing in on the optimum route to reach air bases in India, given the distances involved.

Further, Israel’s lack of diplomatic recognition in the region stretching from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan complicates the operational dynamics of the deployment of combat platforms. IsAF’s training purposes are met adequately by exercising with countries like Italy or Greece (apart from the US), which operate similar American aircraft like the F-16. Nevertheless, India’s first ever participation in multilateral air exercises on Israeli soil undoubtedly builds on the path-breaking visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel in July 2017.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*S. Samuel C. Rajiv is Associate Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:
1.See Kishore Kumar Khera, ‘International Military Exercises: An Indian Perspective’, Journal of Defence Studies, 11(3), July-September 2017, pp. 17-40.

The original rationale for daylight saving time was energy savings. This column reveals, however, that the modern empirical literature on the topic finds no savings on average. The extent of savings is related to latitude – regions at higher latitude enjoy slightly more savings, but subtropical regions consume more energy because of daylight saving time. Even in Scandinavia, the savings amount to just 0.3% of annual energy consumption. Policymakers must look at other effects of daylight saving time to justify the continued use of the policy.

By Zuzana Irsova, Tomas Havranek and Dominik Herman*

Most Europeans and Americans are taught at school that daylight saving time (DST) reduces energy consumption. This common wisdom has been repeated by such august authors as Thaler and Sunstein, who praise DST in their book Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein 2008). Of course, daylight saving time was originally adopted by several countries during WWI to reduce energy use, but academic research on the extent of energy savings related to DST in a modern economy is surprisingly thin. We have gone through journal articles, unpublished working papers, energy company reports, government papers, and PhD dissertations and found 44 usable studies carried out since the pioneering Ebersole (1974) report. Unfortunately, a casual look at the literature does not help us. Estimates are all over the place, and are far from converging to a consensus value.

Figure 1 Reported estimates diverge over time

Two existing surveys of the literature – Reincke and van den Broek (1999) and Aries and Newsham (2008) – also show that different researchers obtain substantially different results. One can find evidence in support of energy savings resulting from DST, just as one can find evidence of increased energy demand associated with DST. For example, the most-cited empirical study, Kotchen and Grant (2011), concludes that, contrary to the policy’s objective, DST increases energy use. (The result might be the reason why the study receives so many citations, although it was also published in a prestigious journal, The Review of Economics and Statistics.) Aries and Newsham (2008: 1864) conclude that “the existing knowledge about how DST affects energy use is limited, incomplete, or contradictory”. Indeed, one can find contradictory results even within many individual studies, as Figure 2 demonstrates.

Figure 2 Estimates vary widely both across and within studies

A meta-analysis

In a forthcoming paper, we conduct a quantitative synthesis of the literature: a meta-analysis (Irsova et al. 2018).¹ Our intention is to trace the differences in results back to differences in data, methods, and potentially also general study quality. From the 44 studies on the effect of DST on energy consumption, we collect 162 usable estimates. First, we test for publication bias, which typically exagerrates results in empirical economics by a factor of 2 (Ioannidis et al. 2017). We find no publication bias whatsoever, which is a remarkable finding in itself. Yes, our dataset includes many unpublished studies, but in economics publication bias is typically found even in working papers, as many authors routinely discriminate against unintuitive and statistically insignificant results.

The lack of publication bias means that we can proceed to the main part of our analysis – an examination of why the reported estimates vary so much. To this end, we regress the estimates of the DST effect on factors associated with the context in which the estimates were obtained. For example, we include the number of maximum daylight hours in the region to which the estimate corresponds. Among other factors, we control for the frequency of data on energy use (hourly or daily), estimation technique (simulation, difference-in-differences, simple regression), definition of energy consumption (commercial, residential, lighting only), and aspects that may be related to quality (journal publication, impact factor of the outlet, number of citations).

Figure 3 Factors correlated with the size of the reported estimates

The results show that studies published in more prestigious outlets typically report less energy savings from daylight saving time, and that countries with more summer daylight hours (that is, higher latitude) enjoy more energy savings. The frequency of data and estimation methodology are important as well.

Next, for each country in our sample we compute estimates of the DST effect conditional on best practice in the literature. Essentially, using the meta-analysis results we re-compute estimates as if they were all produced by studies using the difference-in-differences approach, hourly data, and were published in outlets with the maximum impact factor. The best-practice estimates are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 The effect of daylight saving on energy consumption, by country

Negative estimates mean that for these countries DST reduces energy consumption. For some countries with lower latitude, even in Europe, DST seems to increase the use of energy. But all estimates are statistically insignificant and very small. The mean for the entire dataset is almost precisely zero. Norway is the country with the highest benefits from DST, but even there the effect is only 0.5% during the days when DST applies, and therefore about 0.3% of annual consumption.

Concluding remarks

Daylight saving time affects 1.5 billion people around the world twice a year – sometimes fatally, as shown by studies documenting traffic accidents due to time shifts (Smith 2016). With the finding that daylight saving saves no energy to speak of, the original and still commonly used rationale for the policy falls. Perhaps DST really isn’t such a good nudge; dozens of countries have abandoned it in recent decades. Or perhaps the convenience benefits of longer evening daylight hours prevail over the inconvenience of sleep deprivation and even loss of lives resulting from traffic accidents (and possibly from an increased incidence of heart attacks and depression). Or perhaps a year-round DST would retain most of the benefits while removing the many problems associated with time shifts. We simply don’t know. We still await a study that would systematically compare all the different benefits and costs of daylight saving time.

*About the authors:
Zuzana Irsova, Postdoctoral researcher in Economics, Charles University

Tomas Havranek, Advisor to the Board, Czech National Bank; Associate Professor, Charles University

Dominik Herman, Consultant, EY, Public Performance Improvement; PhD Candidate, Charles University

References:
Aries, M B C and G R Newsham (2008), “Effect of daylight saving time on lighting energy use: A literature review”, Energy Policy 36(6): 1858–1866.

Ebersole, N U (1974), The Year-Round Daylight Saving Time Study, Final report to Congress from the Secretary of Transportation, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation.

Ioannidis J P A, T D Stanley and H Doucouliagos (2017), “The Power of Bias in Economics Research”, The Economic Journal 127: F236–F265.

Irsova, Z, T Havranek and D Herman (2018), “Does Daylight Saving Save Electricity? A Meta-Analysis”, Energy Journal 39(2): 35-61.

Kotchen, M J and L E Grant (2011), “Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Indiana”, The Review of Economics and Statistics 93(4): 1172–1185.

Reincke, K-J and F van den Broek (1999), “Executive Summary” in Summer Time: Thorough examination of the implications of summer-time arrangements in the Member States of the European Union, study conducted by Research voor Beleid International for the European Commission.

Smith, A C (2016), “Spring Forward at Your Own Risk: Daylight Saving Time and Fatal Vehicle Crashes”, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 8(2): 65–91.

Thaler, R and C Sunstein (2008), Nudge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Endnotes:
[1] The full paper, together with data and codes, is freely available at http://meta-analysis.cz/dst.

On November 27, the military brokered an agreement between Islamist protestors and the civilian government to end three weeks long Islamabad sit-in. The story was began after a controversial amendment in ‘Elections Act 2017’ and protestors of Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) camped in Faizabad interchange on November 8, 2017.

On October 2, 2017 the Federal Government of Pakistan led by Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) passed the ‘Elections Act, 2017’ containing a controversial amendment in the nomination paper about the finality of Prophethood (Khatm-e-Nabuwat). In the previous bill, the nominated candidate ‘solemnly swear’ that I believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH), however in the new bill the government replaced the words “I solemnly swear” in Form-A with “I believe” in a clause relating to a candidate’s belief in the finality of the prophethood, which termed a suspected move of government to allow Qadiani’s and Ahmedi’s to hold top positions in public offices.

The said amendment sparked anxiety and stir in the country and the issue was widely debated on assembly floor and in general masses which compelled federal government to restore the bill in its true form and on October 5 the National Assembly passed the Election Reforms Amendment Bill 2017.

Although the bill was restored in its true form, but a tail of protests originated from Lahore by the TLYR head Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi. Tehreek-e-Labaik is one of two ultra-religious political movements that have risen up in recent months. The protestors camped out on the edge of the capital and paralyzed the socio-economic life of the city. The leadership of protestors accused Zahid Hamid, Minister for Law for alleged amendment and demanded for immediate removal from his post. Addressing emotionally charged demonstrators, Khadim Hussain Rizvi said they will not end sit-in until the government has sacked Hamid. “We will not allow anyone to change Islamic laws”.

The government made several peaceful attempts to disperse protestors and initiated a dialogue between protestors leadership and government authorities. But the repeated attempts failed to break deadlock due to firmness on demands by both parties. Tehreek-e-Labaik was demanding immediate removal of Law Minister and inquiry about conspirators, whereas the government refused to step down Zahid Hamid and argued that matter is already solved and no inquiry is needed.

At the same time, Khadim Hussain Rizvi was booked by Islamabad police in two cases, the first was lodged by a father for the death of his child who died in an ambulance blocked by the protestors. While, the second case was filled by Magistrate Ghulam Murtaza Chandio for the violation of Section 144 by protestors, along with other charges.

Despite, the repeated peaceful attempts of the government to end sit-in, finally in the morning of November 25th the federal government ordered Islamabad police with the help of Frontier Constabulary (FC) and other law enforcement agencies to launch an operation to disperse the agitators from Faizabad. Roughly 8,500 elite police and paramilitary troops in riot gear took part in the clearance operation and used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protestors. In response the protestors used stones and rocks to attack the advancing security forces, as well as tear gas shells. By the end of day, at least six peoples were killed and over 200 were injured. Unrest in the federal capital spilled over across the country and protestors chanted anti-government slogans and blocked major roads. In many areas, protestors abused LEAs and damaged public property. Meanwhile, a high level meeting of capital administration and police officials, chaired by Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal failed to devise any strategy to control the volatile situation in the capital territory.

Therefore, on Saturday evening, the federal government issued a notification to deploy military in Islamabad under the Article 245 of the Constitution to aid civilian law enforcement agencies. However, the military had agreed to the request, but put forth a series of issues must be deliberated prior to deployment. Director General (DG) Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asif Ghafoor tweeted that the army chief telephoned the prime minister and suggested the clearance operation in Islamabad be handled peacefully, “avoiding violence from both sides as it is not in national interest and cohesion”.

The COAS told PM Abbasi that he is opposed the army’s use of force against its own people since the population’s trust in the institution of the army “can’t be compromised for little gains”. However, he assured the PM to accommodate civilian government to arrange an agreement with the protestors. Consequently, on November 27 an agreement was signed between two parties and the federal government accepted six demands put in by the protestors including immediate removal of law minister, Zahid Hamid and the publication of report prepared by Raja Zafar ul Haq within 30 days and whoever is named in the report for being responsible for the change in the election oath will be acted against under the law. The document of the agreement bears the signatures of Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Interior Secretary Arshad Mirza, TLYR leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi, two other protest leaders and Major General Faiz Hameed, who facilitated the agreement.

Here it is necessary to seek an answer of a question that what military has proved through brokering an agreement between civilian government and protestors? The deal has exposed that even with the completion of nine years of democratic rule at a stretch, power-sharing mechanisms remain subjugated to military influence. The civilian leadership in Islamabad failed to gain control on Khaki Generals in Rawalpindi, and military is still playing overwhelming role in internal and external affairs of the country.

Similarly, the deal disclosed various fault lines that are worsening the existential crisis the state faces, a weak and bitterly divided civilian government is mainly responsible for the mess. It is evident that the Punjab government facilitated the march on Islamabad as part of an agreement with TLYR thus throwing the problem to the central government. On the part of central government, protestors were facilitated to setup camps on Faizabad interchange by not commencing an operation to disperse them.

After the IHC intervention, the government began an operation, but the ill-will and incoherent strategy of authorities threw the entire operation into hostage. The statement by the interior minister distancing himself from the operation demonstrated the prevailing disarray in the government.

The military has employed dual strategy to broker a deal between the civilian government and the protestors. It put the entire responsibility on civilian government to create chaos and disorder and swiftly turned down request of federal government to use force against protestors, but it assured the government to use its influence over Islamist parties to resolve the issue peacefully. The military proved that the political leadership is not enough capable to control Islamists and it is dependent on Rawalpindi. However, the actions of military also proved that it hold considerable influence over Islamist parties and it can use them as a weapon against political leadership.

On the other hand, Islamists and general public applauded the arbitrary role of military and they welcomed the soldiers and took selfies with them. The expression of deep love for military was a signal of distrust on political leadership. Both, the general public and the religious parties recognized that the military is not only guardian of physical borders of the country but it also guard the Islamic ideology and it will not make any compromise on the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH). Khadim Hussain Rizvi praised the role of military and said “we are thankful to him (Gen Bajwa) for saving the nation from a big catastrophe, “the agreement document concludes, crediting the army chief and his representative team for their “special efforts”. Therefore, the recent episode unveiled that the military achieved more than it was expecting. It reminds political leadership that it is still powerful to keep them under control and assured Islamists that they have true friends in Rawalpindi.

*Mehmood Hussain is a PhD Fellow in International Relations at School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA), Jilin University China. His research interests are China-Pakistan relations, foreign and domestic policy of Pakistan, United States and Pakistan relations and the United States Foreign Policy towards South Asia. He can be contacted through mhussain328@gmail.com

By Dan Smith*

Was it a response? Was it not a response? Following a missile test on 15 September, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) went two months without another one. On 20 November, President Trump formally designated the DPRK as a state that sponsors terrorism. On 28 November the DPRK launched what may have been an intercontinental-range missile, reckoned by some reports to be its 20th test-firing of the year. The risk of the US-DPRK leading to conflagration is still not huge but it is increasing. With such high stakes, it is urgent to find a way to cool things down.

The terror list

Let’s take a bit of background first. According to the State Department website, states are designated as sponsors of terrorism if they “have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism“. Three other states are on the list – Iran, Sudan and Syria. Cuba was removed in 2015 and the DPRK was actually removed from the list in October 2008, not because of any view the Bush administration of the day took about the DPRK’s links to terrorism, but as part of a deal that would open up the country’s nuclear research programme to international scrutiny.

That step was intensely controversial within the Bush administration and nobody could look at the nine years since then and think that the deal worked or that coming off the terror list proved much of an incentive. The DPRK had conducted one nuclear test by then – in October 2006 – and the second followed just seven months after it came off the terror list. Four more nuclear tests have followed (2013, two in 2016, and the most recent in September this year).

Questions arise, however, about the practical impact of the move. International sanctions against DPRK have long been in place and have been tightened this year without visible effect. Though President Trump has promised “an additional sanction, and a very large one“, one could be forgiven for thinking that toolbox is now pretty much empty. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the move might dissuade other states from supporting or helping the DPRK but not much else.

Of course, judging potential impact depends in part on knowing the purpose. The administration can cite unacceptable actions by the DPRK such as causing the coma of the imprisoned American student, Otto Warmbier, and his eventual tragic death in June and the murder of DPRK Leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother, Kim Jong-nam, in February, together with earlier actions including alleged cyber attacks. But there are grounds for thinking that, like the de-listing in 2008, putting DPRK back on the terrorism list is primarily about its nuclear and missile programmes.

Either way, there are issues of timing. If it is about terrorism, it seems like a delayed response to the high profile cases of Otto Warmbier and Kim Jong-nam. If it’s about the weapons programmes, the last missile test before the terror designation was two months earlier. That may just have been a result of the DPRK’s scheduling rather than a gesture of conciliation or a response to external pressure. But the speed with which the DPRK prepared another test after the designation was announced suggests it is responsive in its own way to external stimuli.

The rhetoric of force

This year, as I reflected some three months back in this short interview, there has been a distinct ratcheting up of the rhetoric of confrontation on both sides.

That was before Donald Trump’s UN General Assembly speech and “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission.” Which quickly became Little Rocket Man.

Those jibes were followed in turn by counter-blasts from Pyongyang, calling Trump “an old lunatic, mean trickster and human reject” who deserves the death penalty, while Trump sarcastically remarked he would never call Kim Jong Un short and fat.

Beyond the insults a more forcible language has also continued. Trump’s immediate response to DPRK’s September nuclear test was a tweet saying darkly that “they only understand one thing,” immediately followed by mentioning he would meet the military top brass to discuss North Korea.

Tough rhetoric can run away with itself and establish a logic that eventually leads to action. That is especially true when the language of confrontation supports and is supported by commensurate actions such as the missile and nuclear tests, the US simulation of an attack on DPRK’s “core facilities”, or a show of aerial force off its coastline, or the DPRK redeploying key forces in response.

The options for actual use of force are at once appalling in human terms and strategic blind alleys for both the US and the DPRK. That itself makes armed conflict an improbable choice by either side but misunderstanding fed by lack of any communication except hostile rhetoric makes the unwanted war a possible outcome.

And alternatives

So what can be done? There is no lack of options available. A SIPRI report in 2007 identified 57 separate measures that could be undertaken to build confidence between the contending parties on the Korean peninsula. From a technical standpoint, these measures are still relevant and viable.

One priority right now is to reduce the risk of a conflagration starting up accidentally as a result of misperception and misunderstanding. Arrangements to give advance notice of military exercises, manoeuvres and major movements of forces along with some kind of a “hot line” arrangement to handle potentially difficult incidents form one set of measures that would reduce risk. There could also be working groups and eventually agreements on nuclear safety and on the non-transfer to other parties of nuclear technology and know-how.

Quiet “pre-talks” could identify each side’s red lines beyond which no concession or compromise is possible, and thus identify areas where there could be some movement. These would be helped by a calmer tone and, in turn, would help the process of dialling down the rhetoric. More ambitiously, with some risk reduction measures in place, each side could identify what could offer the other a degree of assurance. At present the DPRK has grounds to believe the US and allies want forcible regime change – the overthrow of Kim Jong Un and a change of political system in North Korea. For their part, the US and its allies can reasonably suspect that DPRK’s nuclear ambitions are not limited to deterring attack but actually aim for the leverage with which to reunify the two Koreas into one by force. What would it take to persuade each side that its greatest fear about the other is unwarranted? Or more precisely, what can be done that is both politically feasible and strategically practicable on each side to persuade the other? What is the role of the regional powers in setting up a viable system of risk reduction? How can other governments help from outside the region? These would be worthwhile topics for discussion, if the initial reduction of risk leads onto to a broader effort to cool the confrontation.

The short-term goal in Northeast Asia has to be to avoid the risk of both conventional and nuclear war. That risk is of low probability right now, but nonetheless identifiably increasing. And were it to occur, the impact would be devastating beyond words. There are ways of reducing and eventually minimising the risk and it is time to take them up.

About the author:
*Dan Smith is the Director of SIPRI.

Source:
This article was published by SIPRI.

By Osama Rizvi*

South China Sea is one of the most important regions of the world, geopolitically, strategically and economically. With an annual trade of $5 trillionpassing through the busy water body, it is natural for countries to drool over its possession and/or to gain influence. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Philippines are some of the contestants.

United States is backing them up. But China has already claimed it, turning a deaf ear to the orders by The Hague and international community (saying that the ruling was ill-founded). South China Sea represents a classic case of a region where the jostling between different countries can trigger a global conflict.

The history dates back to centuries. And all the parties have the ability to pull up thick dusty dossiers of evidences wherein the area, ironically, has been shown to be a part of that respective country.

Straits of Malacca is one of the most important gateways to enter the region, which in itself, is one of the most important “choke-points” of the world. Almost 60,000 vessels pass through the Straits annually also the tankers carrying 13 billion barrels of petroleum. The fish stock in the region may account for 10 percent of the global landed catch. In addition it has oil; and gas reserves.

Robert D. Kaplan in his book cum travelogue, Asia’s Cauldron, provides some interesting insights. Not many of us are aware of the muffled arms-race going in the region mostly under or not reported by the media. Vietnam, Philippines and China are experimenting with new submarines, weapons, missiles etcetera. Hidden underneath the friendly, tourist narrative, there is an insidious and precarious tussle for power and hunger for armaments. Another observation in this book is the way the writer has compared South China Sea with Caribbean. History is privy to the fact of how these Latin American countries/islands, to which the writer refers to Great Antilles, were exploited with the help of slaves and cash crops like tobacco, sugar, coffee etcetera provided the European nations with windfall profits.

An article in New York Times very pithily summarizes the thesis of the book mentioned above.

“The parallel Kaplan draws is straightforward and convincing. Between 1898 and 1914, the United States defeated Spain and dug the Panama Canal. This allowed Americans to link and dominate the trade of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, transforming the meaning of geography. “It was domination of the Greater Caribbean Basin,” Kaplan concludes, “that gave the United States effective control of the Western Hemisphere, which, in turn, allowed it to affect the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere.” In a rather similar way, he suggests, the South ­China Sea now links the trade of the Pacific and Indian Oceans; consequently, “were China to ever replace the U.S. Navy as the dominant power in the South China Sea — or even reach parity with it — this would open up geostrategic possibilities for China comparable to what America achieved upon its dominance of the Caribbean.” ­Because of this, the South China Sea is “on the way to becoming the most contested body of water in the world.”

“China’s position vis-à-vis the South China Sea,” he suggests, “is akin to America’s position vis-à-vis the Caribbean Sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Hence, what Caribbean was to US, is South China Sea to China. However, Chinese do not have a history of colonization. Also, in the contemporary world, they cannot exercise the said form of exploitation. But the building of an artificial island with a runway on it as well (according to satellite images) is too much a glaring threat to ignore. Add to this the multibillion dollar project which is part of Xi’s Chinese dream: One Belt One Road initiative and one can easily see Chinese ambitions for regional power.

Sea power has always been an important part of any country’s military strategy. While Britain and France in the eighteenth century can be compared to a whale and an elephant, China is accomplishing to be transformed into a formidable combination of both. Its OBOR plans to connect what is called the Eurasia, through maritime and landlocked routes. In this wake the control of South China Sea qualifies for a crucial and critical task. The Korean peninsula, Japan, magnitude of trade and Chinese mainland, all are located in the periphery of this region.the stakes are high. After all,“East Asia is all about trade and business.”

To conclude, in all these three parts we have wandered across the globe tracing out potential hotbeds of war. However, it will be instructive to note here that these are not the only one. The fact that war may be more likely to spur from these regions/countries is totally another argument. Since, the coming of nuclear weapons the world has been made safe anddangerous, both at the same time. If in one way nuclear weapons serve as a deterrent, due to its inherent destruction explained by the concept of MAD (mutually Assured Destruction), on the other hand it has also made vulnerable to a force whose destruction know no bounds. To add that these weapons are in the hands of humans, and humans by nature are often whimsical and erroneous, further aggravates our worries. Trump, Kim, or others of their ilk, they bear, not by the virtue of their character, but their positions, something that ought not to be under their influence.

It is impossible to obliterate the idea of war from this world. However, we can, by careful observation and analysis, trace out the potential war-zones and thereof act, preemptively to stop matters form being escalated, subsequently bursting into an “all-out war”. That is something nobody wants.

About the author:
* Osama Rizvi, Independent Economic Analyst, Writer and Editor. Contributes columns to different newspapers. He is a columnist for Oilprice.com, where he analyzes Crude Oil and markets. Also a sub-editor of an online business magazine and a Guest Editor in Modern Diplomacy. His interests range from Economic history to Classical literature.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Gregory Bresiger*

In her new book What Happened, Hillary Clinton explains why she lost the presidential election last year.

She blames sexism. She blames Trump’s outrageous conduct. She blames Vice President Joe Biden. She blames Obama. She blames Trump’s “deplorable” supporters. She blames FBI Director James Comey and “those damn emails.” She blames the Russians. She blames The New York Times and other media outlets which generally fawned over her campaign. She blames the laws of physics. She blames white women.

But, of course, she certainly didn’t blame Hillary Clinton. In this no mea culpa memoir, she explains it was many others, but not her. She was the victim of a series of electoral scams that denied her the presidency.

This is the relentless theme that Hillary Clinton sticks to through almost 500 pages in a flawed memoir of why she stunningly lost last year’s election.

Echoes of 1948 and 2000

The presidential election was a unique event; a once-in-our-lifetimes contest. It was an electoral earthquake; one in which Hillary Clinton copied the blunders of Thomas Dewey in 1948 and Al Gore in 2000. (In 1948, many pollsters stopped polling early in the campaign, convinced that President Truman had no chance for re-election. In 2000, we constantly heard in the mainstream media that George W. Bush was a human blank who would be easily bested by the “brilliant” Gore. However, somehow Gore didn’t win the debates and later didn’t even win his home state of Tennessee.)

The parallels to these political upsets are stark. Hillary Clinton, like Gore and Dewey, set out in a campaign with all the advantages one could have. Many Democrats were spooked by the potential power of the Clinton political machine to outspend and ruin opponents. So many middle of the road would be Democratic party candidates — such as Vice President Joe Biden — decided to sit out the campaign.

In the primaries, her strongest opposition came from someone who was not a Democrat, Socialist Bernie Sanders. He ran in the Democratic party primaries with collectivist ideas of expanding our huge federal government even more. Viewed as the only viable alternative to Hillary, he became a popular insurgent.

Nevertheless, Hillary was able to battle through the primaries. And, with plenty of resources — lots of money and support from within the party machine — she began the general election campaign with almost everyone predicting her victory.

A Deck Stacked in Her Favor

She had an administration doing everything it could to help her, but she was still on a unique path to defeat. Both Obamas — who continue to be popular to this day — campaigned for her.

But in the mind of Hillary Clinton, even physics itself was working against her. Every action has a reaction, she explains. So, while Americans were open minded in electing Obama in 2008, they inevitably reacted the other way in 2016.

The other implacable force behind her defeat was the Russian state, which Clinton accuses of interfering with the campaign. However, she has yet to produce one instance in which the Russians or anyone else stole votes.

And, of course, there was the Trump campaign itself, which Clinton claims was unfairly trying to dig up dirt on her.

Were the Trump people trying to dig up dirt on the Clintons? Sure. But I would guess the Clintons were trying to dig up dirt on Trump. So it all reeks. As one wit once said, “politics ain’t beanbag.”

The Boss Daley Test

Nor are stolen votes unprecedented in American politics. This is the kind of thing that was documented in American politics in Hillary Clinton’s youth. For instance, she grew up in the Chicago area and it is proven that the political machine of Chicago mayor Richard Daley stole votes. No one has shown that happened in 2016; that Trump stole his way into office the way Lyndon Johnson did in the Senate election of 1948. In the latter, votes were changed so Johnson could win the election as detailed in many books, with probably the most effective one being Robert Caro’s excellent book Means of Ascent.

So, since we can guess that the overwhelming majority of votes were counted properly, why, in fact, did Hillary lose what should have been the layup election of all layup elections; a contest between an establishment figure who had served as secretary of state and US senator against a politically connected crony capitalist who repeatedly changed his positions?

Why Did So Many Women Not Vote for Her?

One amazing answer: Hillary Clinton couldn’t carry a key constituency the way she should have. She lost the white-women vote! In fact, on the women’s vote overall, she disappointed. Who would have guessed that the first woman to run for president on a major political party ticket would not have obtained a sizable supermajority of women voters?

But millions of women voted against her or indirectly voted against her by staying home.

She was running against a sexist, a political neophyte, someone who lacked her elite educational credentials. Yet she only received 54 percent of the female vote.

In the typical dishonest tone of this book, she glosses over this key metric, saying the 54 percent number was a good performance. “I won women overall by a safe margin.”

The number was actually shocking, especially when she adds in the next sentence, “But I failed to win a majority of white women, although I did better with them than Obama in 2012.”

Moreover, thanks to an inability to relate to normal middle-class Americans, she lost Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and that sealed her fate.

Thus, Vice President Biden, who spoke candidly after the election season was over, was on to something when he warned that the Democratic party had failed in 2016 because it “did not talk about what it had always stood for — and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.”

It Was Just Her Turn

Ultimately, though, the problem may have been the fact that Clinton could never really articulate why she thought she should be president.

As described in the book Shattered, which examined the “doomed” campaign, the authors note the problems included the lack of a theme and a justification for her running.The demand for a raison d’etre for her campaign angered her. She says the media’s harping on her lack of a theme for running was another example of sexism. She claims others never had to meet such a standard as though asking someone why he or she wanted to be president was an example of dirty pool.

But apparently Hillary Clinton had forgotten the Democratic presidential primaries of 1980. Here, Senator Edward Kennedy, who began the race as the front-runner and whose absurd economic populism included a call for the government takeover of the oil companies, was unable to clearly answer a simple question from CBS News’ Roger Mudd about why he was running for president.

Kennedy’s campaign was badly hurt. Some would argue the campaign never recovered.

Kennedy’s presidential hopes were finally finished by that campaign of blunder. I hope we can say the same of Hillary Clinton.

About the author:
*Gregory Bresiger is an independent business journalist who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. He is the author of MoneySense, a forthcoming book of basic of money management with a libertarian point of view.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute