By Peter St. Onge*

The value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, just like any other kind of money, comes fundamentally from what you can do with it. As a follow up to What Backs Bitcoin, I want to dig into that value.

The idea, which comes from Austrian economist Carl Menger, is that just as a shovel’s value comes from its ability to dig, a currency’s value comes from its ability to help you do two things: transactions and savings.

Think of transactions as the money you carry in your wallet or checking account, and savings as the rest of what you have in the bank or buried in the yard. It’s worth mentioning here that that vast majority of money demand is indeed savings, making up 90% or more of all money demand.

The reason this matters is because if we know what transactions cryptocurrencies are good at, we can estimate how much money demand they’ll start pulling from fiat or gold, and therefore how much those cryptos will increase in price.

For transactions, some features that matter are cost and speed of transaction, anonymity, reversibility, counter-party risk, regulatory treatment. For savings demand, those factors are overwhelmed by the specific question of how well the currency keeps its price.

Supply and Demand Determine Price — Always

Price, as always in economics, is simply a matter of demand and supply. When demand is rising faster than supply, the currency will go up in price. And if demand is rising slower than supply, price will go down.

Since bitcoin was born in 2009, it has generally enjoyed demand rising much faster than supply, hence price has soared. While the US dollar, say, has gone down — has “price inflated” — because demand failed to keep up with dollar creation.

Those are the features, now what are the applications: what are people using money for?

When we’re looking at a currency’s price, because we’re looking at total demand we don’t care about the number of transactions rather the total amount transacted.

And here, the vast majority of money moving around in the economy is not goods and services — buying a cup of coffee, or a plane ticket — rather financial movements. Paying salaries, buying and selling stocks or bonds, investments and dividends. These occur mostly by bank transfer, which account for 80% of all money moved in the US. Another 15% goes by check, leaving just 3% for credit or debit cards, and 4% for paper cash.

Bitcoin Still under 0.01% of Global Transactions

A final part of the puzzle, what’s the competition to cryptocurrencies? Most money payments worldwide are, of course, denominated in fiat currency like dollars or yen — about 99% by amount. With the remaining 1% made in gold.

Note that fiat has both physical and electronic forms, such as credit cards and bank transfers. Even gold payments can be made with paper rather than physically moving the gold, including gold-based securities that trade in financial markets (so-called “paper gold”).

Now we’re ready to go through those features for each currency. On cost and speed of transaction, bitcoin’s fees nowadays average about $1, and don’t vary by amount you transfer.

You can send one bitcoin, worth $5,000, or 1,000 bitcoins, worth $5 million, and the fees are still a dollar. In contrast, banks typically charge a percentage of the transaction, which adds up on million-dollar transfers. Meanwhile, on speed bitcoin is much faster than banks; between 10 minutes and an hour to confirm a transaction, while banks take days.

So bitcoin beats on the most important application of money: financial transfers. The one caveat here is exchange costs. Just as you pay fees and spreads when you exchange your dollars for yen, every time you convert dollars into bitcoin you’ve got to pay fees and spreads.

This means that bitcoin’s low fees only really dominate if both the sender and receiver are keeping the money in bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s Exchange Rate Woes

On the other hand, if you have a bunch of dollars and want to buy a house from somebody who likes to keep dollars in the bank, then you’ll have to convert your dollars into bitcoin, send the bitcoin for a buck, then the other guy converts the bitcoins into dollars again. You saved on the transfer itself, but you had to exchange the money twice.

So, bitcoin as a technology is superior for the main type of transaction by value, but in reality that advantage is eroded if people are keeping their wealth in fiat. This isn’t really a flaw of cryptocurrencies per se, it’s just a standard penalty suffered by any minority currency — having to pay for conversion into the dominant currency.

To finish up on cost and speed, obviously physical cash or physical gold are fantastic on both cost and speed, but only if buyer and seller are touching each other. Given paper cash has only a 4% share today, touchable buyers and sellers is a very small part of demand.

For remote orders, then, bitcoin carries lower fees than credit and debit cards, but again with that double-exchange problem unless both buyer and seller are staying in bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s Potential to Outperform

Next up are some secondary benefits: anonymity, reversibility, counter-party risk, regulatory treatment.

Briefly, bitcoin is nearly anonymous unless the US government cares enough about you to put some serious people on you. In this sense it’s essentially like using cash, but with the advantage you can use it over long distances with those low fees.

In practice, the closest alternative is probably a pre-paid debit card that you buy at 7/11, which can cost several dollars in addition to the merchant fees, and isn’t going to work for large amounts nor overseas.

As for reversibility, the question is whether the buyer can cancel his payment. A problem for online vendors who get scammed by people who buy the product, get it in the mail, cancel the order and keep the goodies.

Credit card companies or Paypal famously always side with the customer, which can suck for the honest vendor getting ripped off online. Bitcoin, again like cash, is irreversible once it’s confirmed — so about 10 minutes to an hour. That’s slower than cash, but faster than Paypal or credit cards where buyers can reverse months later.

Fourth characteristic is counter-party risk; the idea that your bank could go under, taking your money with it. Remember bitcoin was invented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, where bank failures were common.

Because bitcoin is distributed across many computers and isn’t managed by a central organization, it has no single point of failure. On the other hand, cryptocurrencies do still have potential technical glitches that probably more than make up for that risk.

Regulation: Not If but When

Finally, regulatory treatment. This is where we’ll probably see a lot of change over the next couple years, as governments digest cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

So far cryptos have enjoyed mostly benign neglect from regulators; tolerated, neither discouraged nor encouraged. On the bright side this has meant little regulatory burdens or fees, although this is changing in places like New York.

On the down-side, this regulatory grey-zone has meant a lot of companies and institutional investors are afraid to use, or even to buy, bitcoin. So increasing regulations could actually boost bitcoin demand, as those regulated users become unafraid to play.

As for what happens in the future, countries are gradually drifting into two camps: broadly enthusiastic (Japan, Dubai, Taiwan, Switzerland), broadly skeptical (China, Korea), with the USA and European Union still lurching between the camps.

Cryptos: For now, Only for Adrenaline Junkies

Now, given how much savings dominate money use, the elephant in the room is would you feel comfortable keeping your life savings in bitcoin.

As we mentioned, the key point here is how its price will hold up, meaning will demand grow faster than supply. While bitcoin has knocked the socks off dollars or even gold, rising 800% in the past year alone, even this soaring growth has come with the major downside that bitcoin also fluctuates a lot — easily up or down 50% in a month.

However, as with any product, service, or medium of exchange, the value of cryptocurrencies will depend on the future choices of countless users and consumers — based on their subjective valuations of the currencies themselves. Those who can successfully guess what will become more valuable in the future will become wealthy. But risks always remain.

About the author:
*Peter St. Onge is an assistant professor at Taiwan’s Fengjia University College of Business. He blogs at Profits of Chaos.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.

Spain received on Friday 15 Syrian refugees from Turkey within the framework of the European Union re-settlement program for asylum-seekers.

This group of refugees, made up of three men, four women and eight children, arrived at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport on Friday.

The refugees will be re-settled in Madrid (10) and Zaragoza (5).

Spain has now taken in a total of 2,649 applicants for international protection, 1,301 under the relocation program and 1,350 under the resettlement program, 425 from Turkey and 923 from Lebanon.

The Spanish System for the Reception and Integration of applicants/beneficiaries of international protection offers its beneficiaries a stay at a reception center of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security or of an NGO (subsidized by the government) at which they are guaranteed lodging, meals, legal advice, psychological assistance, social care and advice, accompaniment to education centers, public health and social centers, language learning and basic social skills, guidance and intermediation for vocational training and job reinsertion, cultural activities and economic aid.

Sri Lanka Army is sending 200 members from its Combat Convoy Company (CCC) for a UN Peace Keeping Mission in Mali.

Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake, Commander of the Army soon after assumption of office in July this year initiated several rounds of discussions to this effect to expedite the deployment of the UN mission in Mali and explore possibilities of enhancing the UN quota for Sri Lankan troops in future too to be equal to that of a Brigade.

The latest Sri Lankan contingent leaves for Mali under specified categories in groups, considering prioritized requirements in Mali. The first CCC of the Army for UN Peace Enforcing Mission under the Chapter 7 of the UN charter as scheduled leaves the island for Mali early in December for a period of one year.

This 200-member strong CCC of the Sri Lanka Army, comprised of 10 Regiments of the Army is to be commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kalana Amunupure with Major Hasantha Hennadi as his Second-in-Command.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Sunday that the country will launch its own cryptocurrency, called the “Petro,” which will be backed by the country’s vast natural resource reserves.

“Venezuela is announcing the creation of its own cryptocurrency. It will be called The Petro. It will allow us to innovate towards new forms of international finance for the economic and social development of the country,” Maduro said Sunday in a statement on state broadcaster VTV, as cited by El Periodico.

Appearing on the weekly television show, “Sundays with Maduro,” the Venezuelan president announced the new cryptocurrency, whose value will be pegged to the country’s vast reserves of oil and gas as well as its mineral wealth, including gold, and whose purpose will be to “to advance the country’s monetary sovereignty, to carry out financial transactions and to defeat the financial blockade against the country.“

Amid an ongoing raft of economic sanctions, spearheaded by the United States, Venezuela’s national currency, the Bolivar, has lost approximately 57 percent of its value in the last four weeks alone, Reuters reports.

“We are facing a financial war against the country which we have denounced and the opposition has denied. There are businesspeople who are unaffected by Donald Trump’s blockade. With this, we will join the 21st century,” Maduro added, as cited by Panorama.

Maduro also approved the creation of a BlockchainBase observatory to oversee the development and rollout of the new cryptocurrency, reports La Patilla.

OPEC member Venezuela boasts the largest proven reserves of crude oil in the world, but has struggled against the plunge in oil prices which began in 2014.

The WTI benchmark currently sits at $58.36 per barrel, while Brent is faring marginally better at $63.73. Venezuela’s sour crude basket price currently sits at $50.15, an unsustainable level given the country’s dismal economic outlook and overreliance on US refineries to process its oil.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency markets, led by Bitcoin, are experiencing a boom, with record highs and major volatility grabbing headlines across the world in recent weeks.

Lebanese soprano Hiba Tawaji is preparing to perform her forthcoming concert at the King Fahd Cultural Center in Riyadh on December 6.

She will be the first Lebanese singer to perform in the Kingdom and has already expressed her pride via Twitter for participating in the event.

Tawaji found the concert a historic step in the Saudi cultural openness project.

As the concert approaches, the Lebanese star, who two days ago released “Sawt El Eid” or “Voice of the Feast” from her new album “Hallelujah,” announced that she had prepared a repertoire including songs from her three albums, in addition to famous international and Arab songs, with video and “graphics” accompanying her songs on stage.

In an interview with Sayidaty, Tawaji reiterated that the openness in Saudi Arabia is very positive.

She said: “It augurs well in all areas, especially for decisions concerning women, which have long supported their rights, provided they do not conflict with the basic principles, such as the preservation of femininity and significant and respectable principles.”

She added: “I am very happy and I am honored to be the first Lebanese singer to perform in Saudi Arabia, especially as the concert will be supported by the General Entertainment Authority, which is a landmark in women’s rights and cultural openness.”

She said she was preparing a new album in both French and English, and that some of the songs would be released next year.

“At the same time I prepare for a group of performances, but all of them are under study, in addition to the Christmas album, which is entitled ‘Hallelujah’ and will be released sooner. It was produced by Osama Rahbani. We have released ‘Eid El-Hobb’ or ‘Valentine’s Day,’ but all songs will be released successively,” she concluded.

(RFE/RL) — U.S. President Donald Trump has lashed out at the FBI following revelations that one of its agents was removed from a team investigating Russia’s alleged election meddling because of anti-Trump text messages.

Trump wrote in a Twitter message on December 3 that the FBI’s “reputation is in tatters – worst in History!”

Trump, who denies that his election campaign team colluded with Russia to get him elected, also issued a fresh denial that he had asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating one of the president’s top aides, Michael Flynn.

“I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn,” he said in a separate message on Twitter. “Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!”

Trump fired Comey in May.

Reports emerged over the weekend that Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading an inquiry into alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, dismissed an FBI officer from the probe during the summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump.

A spokesman for Mueller, Peter Carr, said the officer was removed from the investigating team “immediately upon learning of the allegations.”

Flynn Agrees To Testify

In another recent development in Mueller’s investigation, Flynn on December 1 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition period between the November 2016 election and the time Trump took office in January 2017.

According to media reports, Flynn has agreed to testify that he was ordered by an unnamed senior transition-team official to establish connections with the Russian government.

Flynn faces up to five years in prison for the charge of lying to the FBI, but his sentencing could also depend on the extent of his cooperation with investigators.

Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February after serving in the post for just 24 days amid revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak.

Flynn is the fourth person to be criminally charged in connection with the investigation. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in October on charges that included conspiracy and lying to federal agents. Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, meanwhile, has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents and was cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.

In January, a U.S. intelligence finding claimed that the Russian government undertook a concerted effort to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump.

Moscow denies the charge.

By Aditi Lalbahadur*

The sexual abuse and exploitation of women – in war and peacetime – is one of the most widespread and overlooked phenomena. Frequently exposed to violence and sexual exploitation by armed combatants, women and children have throughout history, been kidnapped, raped and forced into work or to fight on the frontline for causes that are not their own. Only since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda has sexual violence come to be regarded as an international crime, a crime against humanity and, therefore, a grave infraction of the Geneva Conventions.

Exposure to gruesome acts of sexual violence make women and children in conflict-affected areas some of the most vulnerable groups of people in the world and in dire need of protection. It is all the more unconscionable then, when the abuse is perpetrated by United Nations peacekeepers deployed in missions whose mandate is to protect them.

Understanding the scope of the problem

The blight of UN officials involved in sex for food scandal first came to light in the early 2000s. UN aid workers in Sierra Leone and surrounding countries in West Africa were exposed for trading humanitarian aid in exchange for sex. The “food-for-sex” scandal as it is commonly known, was swiftly followed by reports in 2005 of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers in the DRC.

These two events and the ensuing global outrage that they received cast a long shadow over the work of the UN, forcing it to begin a thorough examination of the occurrences of sexual abuse and exploitation in its missions and peacekeeping operations, and its policy responses to them.

While sexual exploitation may not be as heinous an act of violence such as abuse or rape, it is nevertheless treated by the UN as an equally taboo practice. In a 2003 bulletin published by the then Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, sexual exploitation is defined as “any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust for sexual purposes, including, but not limited to profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another”. This definition removes the age of consent as a prerequisite for the comital of a crime, opting instead to highlight the skewed power-dynamic between peacekeepers and victims as the over-arching determining factor of abuse.

Embedded in this position is the recognition that people in post-conflict environments are often living in poverty with limited prospects for employment, and that peacekeepers who earn disproportionately more, are innately put in positions of power that they then abuse when they engage in transactional sexual acts. It takes into account that women and girls are often forced into transactional sexual arrangements because they have no other prospects to earn an income. In some instances money exchanges hands, but in others it is equally common for sex to be traded for food and provisions. The proliferation of these illicit activities has also highlighted the need for peace operations to play a role in improving the employment prospects and employability of local communities, so that women have other options to earn a wage.

Of the 2000 cases of sexual misconduct reported to the UN over the past 12 years, 700 emanate from the DRC. Another report shows that 300 of these 2000 cases involve children. This geographic and demographic spread is however impugned by the fact that UN statistics on this issue (while steadily improving) are notoriously inaccurate. Record collection is impeded by under-reporting and chronically bad record-keeping by the UN.

Since 2014, allegations of sexual abuse and rape of children in the Central African Republic have further scandalised UN operations. In 2015 it even led to the unprecedented high-profile dismissal of the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral in the CAR, Babacar Gaye, for his failure to adequately address the issue. In Africa, reports of sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by UN peacekeepers have come from Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, South Sudan and Somalia.

Fighting the scourge from within

For the UN, battling this scourge within its ranks has been problematic. Administrative and legal hurdles have prevented the organisation from developing sufficient punitive measures – particularly against peacekeeping troops during UN deployments. Status of Force Agreements (SOFAs) between deploying countries and the UN determine the parameters of peacekeeping engagements and ensure that nation-states maintain ultimate jurisdiction over their troops. This means that the decision to prosecute offending soldiers them resides at the national level. This has led to a lack of follow-through by deploying administrations – either from a lack of political will to do so, or because the crimes in question have not been domesticated in home countries.

The organisation’s failure to respond to or prosecute allegations has had the perverse impact of discouraging victims from reporting incidents of rape and sexual abuse. Furthermore, the under-deployment of female peacekeepers hinders reporting, as it is believed that female victims find it easier to report crimes to other females. This is one of the reasons that the case has been advanced to encourage the deployment of more female peacekeepers. So far, only India and Bangladesh have ever lived up to this call. While UN records do reflect rising numbers of female UN peacekeepers, the graph below illustrates how paltry the numbers are in reality:

The UN’s response

In the aftermath of the various scandals that have rocked the UN, it has implemented several preventive and responsive measures aimed at eradicating this phenomenon from its ranks. It has also drafted several resolutions on women, peace and security and sexual violence in armed conflict, and commissioned several independent reports on how best to tackle the matter.

Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, required the Secretary-General to report regularly to the UN Security Council on the issue of women and peace and security. It called for the gendered training of troops. This resulted in practices like educating peacekeeping troops about the consequences of engaging in transactional sexual relation with locals as well as incentives to increase the number of female peacekeepers.

Most importantly, it led to the adoption of Resolution 2272 in March 2016 that deals explicitly with the perpetration of sexual violence by UN peacekeepers. This resolution makes significant strides is advancing the UN’s position on sexual violence by peacekeepers by first clarifying and reinforcing the Secretary-General’s authority to repatriate and replace peacekeepers when there is sufficient evidence to suggest sexual exploitation by members of national contingents. In June 2017 600 peacekeepers from the Republic of Congo were repatriated from CAR as a consequence.

Secondly, the resolution tasks member states to investigate and report on allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in order to hold perpetrators accountable and to keep the UN Secretary-General appraised of the progress of investigations. In a similar vein, civil society organisations are lobbying for an end to impunity for peacekeepers. The Code Blue campaign, for instance, has called for the establishment of a special courts mechanism within the UN to prosecute perpetrators.

Reforms

When Secretary-General António Guterres assumed office in January 2017, he also announced sweeping reforms designed to make the global body more efficient and streamlined. Reforms, followed by an extensive review process also provide a precipitous opportunity to review the UN’s approach to sexual abuse and exploitation in peacekeeping. Indeed, recent efforts, crystalised in Resolution 2272, provide new impetus and support to the broader reform agenda.

While laudable progress has been made, there lies much work in rolling out the initiatives of Resolution 2272. For this to be successful, sustained political will is a prerequisite. The UN needs to also address some of the pitfalls that might emerge – for instance, how to balance the need to rapidly deploy peacekeeping troops, with the extra time it takes to vet soldiers and the bureaucratic administration that comes with this. Another potential pitfall related to more stringent measures relates to how to sustain levels of troop contributions in the face of greater bureaucracy, administration – and perceived impediments to their jurisdiction.

While these are hurdles are not insurmountable, they pose more challenges for the UN in attempting to strike a balance between the need for boots on the ground and to provide security to citizens. The march toward progress may be slow, but it is worth bearing in mind that peacekeepers are mandated first and foremost to protect citizens. Always, peacekeepers must be protectors, not predators.

About the author:
*Aditi Lalbahadur is the programme manager of the Foreign Policy Programme. This article was first published with Africa Portal.

Source:
This article was published at SAIIA.

The former President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has been killed by Houthi fighters. Meanwhile, violence rages in the capital Sanaa following the breakdown of Saleh’s alliance with the movement last week.

Saleh’s death has been confirmed, both by his own General People’s Congress party and the Houthi-backed media. According to media claims, the movement has now gained the upper hand in the capital.

“The ministry of interior statement announces that they have taken over all the positions and strongholds of the treacherous militia in Sanaa and the surrounding areas, as well as other provinces in order to impose security,” Houthi TV reported adding that “Saleh and his supporters” had been killed.

In a statement on Monday, Saleh declared that Yemen “had to be saved from the madness of the Houthi group.”

Houthi sources reported that Saleh, who led the country from 1978 until 2011, was ambushed while attempting to flee the capital towards the province of Marib. His car, which was also carrying the secretary-general of his party, Yasser al-Awadi, was allegedly first hit by an RPG, and then riddled with bullets as Saleh tried to escape on foot.

Unverified images allegedly depicting a dead Saleh with a fatal gunshot head wound have surfaced online. A video was uploaded to social media, in which fighters cried “Praise to Allah!” as they showed off the dead 75-year-old’s body to the camera operator.

Other reports said that Houthis had blown up Saleh’s home in Sanaa, and wounded and captured his son, Khaled.

Saleh, who was deposed as part of the Arab spring that swept through the region over six years ago, had formed an uneasy alliance with the Houthis against the Saudi-led coalition after war broke out in the country in 2014. But in the wake of a falling-out with the Houthis sparked by a dispute over control of a mosque in Sanaa on Wednesday, Saleh said that he was prepared to turn a “new page” with the Saudis, provided they lifted the debilitating blockade of the country.

“I call upon the brothers in neighboring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded and we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighborliness,” he said.

The Houthis immediately labeled him a traitor. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross more than 125 people have died in fighting between the two factions over the past six days.

The intensified fighting, during which the US-backed Saudi force shelled the Iran-supported Houthis to reinforce their new-found ally, has “completely paralyzed humanitarian operations” in the Yemeni capital, AP reported Monday citing an adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, Suze van Meegen. “No one is safe in Sanaa at the moment,” she said.

(RFE/RL) — The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s travel ban on six mainly Muslim countries to go fully into effect.

Seven of the nine justices on December 4 granted the administration’s request to lift injunctions imposed by lower courts.

The order said that the ban can fully take effect pending appeals against the policy.

The measure applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Lower courts had limited its scope to people without certain family or other connections to the United States.

Trump has issued three versions of the controversial policy since taking office in January.

The latest version also covers people from North Korea and government officials from Venezuela, but lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect.

Two appeals courts in California and Virginia are set to hold arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

By Siraj Wahab

Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi on Monday rallied his countrymen in areas controlled by Houthis to rise up against the Iran-backed militia, who had just murdered their erstwhile ally former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In a televised address, Hadi said the Yemeni Army, which has surrounded Sanaa, was ready to support all efforts that aimed to eradicate the Houthis. The legitimate Yemeni government had extended its hand to all sincere Yemeni citizens to start a new page in the country’s future and to establish a new Yemen, based on pluralism, democracy and freedom, he said.

“Yemen is passing through a decisive turning point that needs our unity and steadfastness in the face of these sectarian militias,” Hadi said. “Let’s put our hands together to end this nightmare.”

Saleh was assassinated on Monday by Houthi militias, two days after he broke ranks over disagreements with his allies.

The militias overran Saleh’s home in the capital, Sanaa, and the former leader fled south toward his home village of Sanhan. Houthi gunmen halted his four-vehicle convoy 40 km from the city and opened fire. Saleh, 75, was killed along with Arif Al-Zouka, secretary-general of the former president’s General People’s Congress party, and Al-Zouka’s deputy Yasir Al-Awadi.

Video posted on social media showed Saleh’s motionless body with a gaping head wound, his eyes open but glassy, and blood staining his shirt under a dark suit. The footage showed Houthis carrying the body in a blanket and dumping it in a pickup truck.

Saleh ruled Yemen for more than 30 years, stitching alliances and playing off one tribe against another. He once described governing the country as like dancing on the heads of snakes.

The former president was replaced in 2012 by his deputy, Hadi, against whom he joined forces with the Houthis to stage a coup. Saudi Arabia formed a military coalition in 2015 to restore Hadi’s internationally recognized government. On Saturday, Saleh had turned his back on the Houthis and offered talks with the Saudi-led coalition.

Rajeh Badi, a spokesman for the Hadi government, said it was a sad day in the history of Yemen.

He said the assassination was “yet another crime added to the bloody record of the Iran-backed Houthi militias. The gravity of the inhumane murder of Saleh should move all Yemenis to stand behind the legitimate government against the coup militias who have brought only chaos and destruction to Yemen, to the Yemeni people, and whose aim is to implement a sectarian Iranian agenda in the region.

“The act is further proof that these militias adopt an ideology of exclusion. We call upon the Yemeni people to make the assassination of Ali Abdullah Saleh a turning point in the country’s history and encourage all people to join ranks with the legitimate government and against the evil terrorists.”

Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri, a Saudi political analyst and international relations scholar in Riyadh, said Saleh’s death was sad news but would unite all Yemenis against the Houthis.

“It is very clear now that this is a fight between Arabs and Persians. All Arabs and Muslims will unite against the machinations of Iran,” he told Arab News. “This will turn out to be the death-knell for Iran.”

Al-Shehri said Saleh had miscalculated when he aligned himself with the Houthis. “He thought he could share power with them. He should have known better. The Iranians never share power. They want everything for themselves or else they kill — which is what happened with Saleh.”

Saleh’s supporters “need a leader tonight to rally them and the Yemeni people against the Houthis,” Al-Shehri said. He suggested Saleh’s son, Ahmed, commander of the elite Republic Guard and former ambassador to the UAE, where he now lives.

“There can be no better leader than Ahmed, who Saleh was grooming as his heir, and who will want to avenge the death of his father and restore stability to Yemen.”
Saudi writer Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, writing in Arab News, said: “Saleh paid with his life for defying the Iranian-backed Houthi militias. Many Yemenis have met similar fates when they dared to stand in the way of the Houthi project.”

Aluwaisheg said assassination was a favorite tactic of the Houthi militias and other pro-Iranian groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria.

“Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafiq Hariri met a similar fate in 2005, as did many prominent Lebanese political figures, journalists, writers and religious leaders,” he said.

Meanwhile, fighting and air strikes have intensified in Sanaa, where roads were blocked and tanks were deployed on many streets, trapping civilians and halting delivery of vital aid including fuel to supply clean water, the UN said on Monday.

Some of the fiercest clashes were around the diplomatic area near the UN compound, while aid flights in and out of Sanaa airport had been suspended, the UN said after its appeal for a humanitarian pause on Tuesday.

“The escalating situation threatens to push the barely functioning basic services … to a standstill. These services have already been seriously compromised with the latest shock of the impact of the blockade,” it said, and fighting had also spread to other governorates, such as Hajjah.

Pope Francis lost a historic opportunity to truly set his legacy apart from his predecessors. Alas, for him too, political expediency trumped all else. In his visit to Myanmar on Nov. 27, he refrained from using the word “Rohingya.”

But what’s in a name? In our frenzied attempts at understanding and articulating the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, we often, perhaps inadvertently, ignore the heart of the matter. The struggle of the Rohingya is, essentially, a fight for identity.

Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and its representatives, including the powerful military and the country’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, understand this well. They use a strictly-guarded discourse in which the Rohingya are never recognized as a unique group with pressing political aspirations. Thus, they refer to the Rohingya as “Bengali”, claiming they are immigrants from Bangladesh who entered the country illegally.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But historical accuracy, at least for the Buddhist majority, is beside the point. By stripping the Rohingya of any name affiliation that makes them a unique collective, it becomes possible, then, to deny them their rights, to dehumanize them and, eventually, ethnically cleanse them, as has been the case for years.

Since August, more than 400,000 members of the Rohingya community have been driven out of their homeland in Myanmar by a joint and systematic operation involving the military, the police and various Buddhist nationalist groups. They call them “clearance operations.” Thousands of Rohingya have been killed in this grave act of genocide, some in the most abhorrent and inhumane ways imaginable.

The UN Human Rights Council Commissioner Zeid Bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein has recently referred to these purges as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. There can be no other interpretation of this horrendous campaign of government-led violence. But, as thousands were pushed into the jungles or the open sea, the silence was deafening.

Only recently, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who visited Myanmar last month, also decided to label the massive human rights violations against the Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing.” Although his statement labelled the government-centered genocide as “abuses by some among the Burmese military,” it was still a clear departure from past failures to even address the issue altogether.

Still, it was a major disappointment that the Pope abstained from mentioning the Rohingya by name while in Myanmar. He only stated their name when he crossed the border to Dhaka. In Bangladesh, using the word seemed like a safe political strategy.

Him refraining from saying “Rohingya” while in Myanmar was done as a “concession to the country’s Catholics”, according to the Washington Post. The logic goes: By challenging the popular narrative that cast the Rohingya as foreigners, the Pope would have ignited the ire of the Buddhists against the country’s Christian minority, itself persecuted, in at least two states.

If the Rohingya are to be named, it means that the core of the issue would have a better chance of being directly addressed. The moment they retain their collective identity is the moment that the Rohingya become a political entity, subject to the rights and freedoms of any minority, anywhere.

The Pope, as bold as he has been regarding other issues, has the moral authority to challenge the permeating — yet disconcerting — narrative in Myanmar that has dehumanized the Rohingya for generations.

Alas, in the end, the Pope joined the regional and international powers that insist on understanding the Rohingya crisis outside the realm of political solutions, pertaining to political rights and identity. Indeed, he is not alone. ASEAN leaders meeting in Manila, Philippines, in mid-November also made no mention of the Rohingya by name. Worse, in their 26-page final document, they mentioned the crisis in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State — the epicenter of the Rohingya genocide — in passing: “We… extend appreciation for the prompt response in the delivery of relief items for Northern Vietnam flash floods and landslides… as well as the affected communities in Northern Rakhine State.”

Standing proudly in the final photo with the rest of the leaders was Aung San Suu Kyi, who was promoted by western media for many years as a “democracy icon.”

A political opportunist at best, Aung San Suu Kyi also does not call the Rohingya by their name. Worse, her government has played a major role in dehumanizing the Rohingya and, at times, blamed them for their own suffering.

In September, in a last-ditch effort at salvaging her tattered reputation, she gave a 30-minute televised speech in which she explained her position using a most confused logic. The best she came up with was: “We are a young and fragile country facing many problems… We cannot just concentrate on the few.” The “few,” of course, being the Rohingya.

When the Pope arrived in Bangladesh, a man by the name of Mohammed Ayub was awaiting him as part of a small delegation of Rohingya refugees. Mohammed’s three-year-old son was killed by the Myanmar military. The father’s message to the Pope was not seeking humanitarian relief for despairing refugees, or even justice for his own child, but something else entirely. “He should say the word as we are, Rohingya,” Mohammed told the Catholic Crux Now. “We have been Rohingya for generations, my father and my grandfather.”

In Dhaka, the Pope attempted to reclaim that missed opportunity. “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya,” he said.

The decision of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church to allow the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate some greater flexibility and to begin talks with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate have two serious consequences, Igor Kryuchkov says.

On the one hand, the two deepen the split of world Orthodoxy, already riven by feuds among its various branches, the religious affairs commentator says; but on the other “they open the possibility for strengthening the influence of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine,” a goal the Kremlin very much seeks (gazeta.ru/politics/2017/12/03_a_11028542.shtml?updated).

The first decision, to allow the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to administer its affairs from Kyiv did not change anything, ROC MP sources say. Instead, this decision was taken so that the church in Ukraine would not fall afoul of Kyiv’s hostility to any organization “’with an administrative center in the aggressor country.’”

And thus while it attracted a fair about of attention and overreading – for a discussion of that, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/12/moscow-patriachate-hasnt-freed.html – it is the second action by the ROC MP hierarchs that is far more important not only in Ukraine where it puts Orthodox there in a difficult position but in the Orthodox world more generally.

The relationship between the ROC MP and the UOC KP is fraught because the latter demands recognition of itself as an autocephalous church, and the ROC MP, committed to the principle of its self-proclaimed “canonical territory” across the entire former Soviet space is not prepared to take that step.

But the announcement by the hierarchs of the ROC MP that the Moscow church is now prepared to enter into talks with the UOC KP represents a breakthrough because the UOC KP is interested in only one thing: recognition of its self-standing status in the world of Orthodox Christianity.

Russian news agencies say, Kryuchkov continues, that the ROC MP intends to establish a special commission headed by Metropolitan Ilarion, the head of the Moscow patriarchate’s department of external relations, raises the stakes in Ukraine, given that the UOC KP has indicated that it will never rejoin the ROC MP as Moscow has demanded.

As a source close to the UOC KP points out, there is no “generally recognized procedure for recognizing a new autocephaly” within Orthodoxy. On the one hand, some think that it can be offered only by the Mother Church, in this case, the ROC MP, which at least up to now has been unwilling to do that.

And on the other, some believe that it can be extended by the Constantinople patriarchate. Those who believe that placed great hopes in the Crete meeting last summer that was supposed to attract all Orthodox patriarchates but which in fact didn’t: The Bulgarian, Georgian and Antioch ones refused from the outset, and the ROC MP subsequently joined them.

The ROC MP blamed Constantinople for the failure of this meeting, “the first in 300 years,” Kryuchkov says. The real problem is that Constantinople views itself as the monarch among Orthodox while other Orthodox churches, including the Russian one view themselves as equal in standing.

The decisions this past week in Moscow, however, raise some important issues. By giving the UOC MP administrative independence at least nominally, the ROC MP has “strengthened the trend toward the differential of the positions of Constantinople and Moscow.” That risks leading to new conflicts among the Orthodox churches and thus Orthodox powers.

But the ROC MP has also “raised the political stakes in Ukraine. Having strengthened the autonomy of Ukrainian autonomy, the ROC MP has put before the Kyiv authorities a hard choice: either to continue the struggle with influence in two Orthodox bishoprics, both of which are now subordinate to Kyiv or change its approach, which will lead only to a deepening of a religious split.”

And at the same time, because the ROC MP would like to emphasize its equality with Constantinople, Moscow may be quite pleased to at least discuss some kind of approach to autocephaly for the Orthodox in Ukraine, thus showing that it can do that “without an agreement with Constantinople.”

By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh*

Last week, Iran’s state-owned media extensively reported on its military involvement in Latin American countries, including Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile and Venezuela.

Tehran is laying the groundwork to escalate its naval presence on the continent. These developments ought to be viewed with alarm for several reasons, including the fact that Iran is currently ranked fourth in the world after North Korea, China and the US in terms of naval strength.

The commander of Iran’s navy, Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, said it “will berth in friendly states in Latin America and the Gulf of Mexico in the near future… We are not faced with any restriction for deploying in the seas, and anywhere we feel that we have interests to develop ties, we will certainly deploy there and we enjoy this power too.”

Iran’s plan to expand its influence and military presence in Latin America dates back to the mid-1980s after the regime was established. Evidence presented at court hearings linked Tehran to the bombings in Buenos Aires of the Israeli Embassy in 1992, and a Jewish community center in 1994.

Iran’s concerted efforts to expand its influence in Latin America is part of its larger agenda to heighten its military presence in international waters in order to achieve its imperialistic and hegemonic ambitions. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently emphasized the need for the navy to be a major player in the region and beyond.

Soon after his instructions, the navy began more provocative maneuvers in the Gulf, and intensified harassment of US, British and regional ships. Tehran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which could lead to an international crisis because roughly a third of the global oil trade by sea goes through this strategic location.

Iran’s navy plays a critical role in projecting and boasting about Tehran’s power by actions such as displaying the national flag near the coasts of other nations. It also facilities the smuggling of arms to militias and proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen.

Tehran allies itself with any government or non-state actor that it believes can help it advance anti-Americanism. The ruling mullahs pose a threat to US national security.

Latin American countries could be opportune places for Iranian covert intelligence operations, specifically against the US. Tehran is also shoring up its extremist base domestically, and attracting more militia recruits, by saying it not only wields power in the Middle East but also further afield.

A core article of Iran’s constitution states that the military is responsible for spreading the mullahs’ fundamentalist, revolutionary and religious principles. Normally, Tehran infiltrates other nations gradually, communicating with various communities, funding them and trying to influence them.

Over years or decades, some of these groups become robust proxies or militias that aim to advance Tehran’s agenda. Iran even has a Spanish-language TV station, Hispan TV, to spread its propaganda.

Iran exploits Latin American countries in order to dispatch fighters (specifically from Hezbollah), create terror cells and train militias on the continent. Its increasing involvement in Latin America also provides economic gains for Tehran. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met with senior politicians of six Latin American countries to discuss trade and boosting relations to a “whole new level.”

This would help Tehran evade international pressure and sanctions. Some Latin American governments, such as in Ecuador and Venezuela, are delighted to allow Tehran to increase its influence on the continent. Iran even has observer status in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, an intergovernmental organization that promotes the social, political and economic integration of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Iran’s increasing military presence in Latin America poses a security threat not only to the US, but to the world.

• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Speaking to senior Pakistani officials in Islamabad today, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis recognized Pakistan’s sacrifices in the war on terrorism, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said in a statement.

This is Mattis’ inaugural trip to Pakistan in this position, she said.

Meets With Senior Pakistani Officials

Mattis met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Defense Minister Khuram Dastgir, White said. The secretary also met with Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Bajwa and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar.

The secretary emphasized the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the United States and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region, she said.

White said Mattis also reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country.

Do we need a third major political party? I often joke that I’d be happy if we actually had a second party, as when it comes to the big issues – war, monetary policy, civil liberties – the Republicans and Democrats are more alike than different. Perhaps that’s why a recent NBC News poll has found that nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed do not believe either the Republicans or Democrats are doing a good job and that a third major political party is needed.

I think this is an encouraging sign. I suspect the NBC News poll result reflects the fact that young people are not as easily hoodwinked by the mainstream media and by the two-party duopoly charade in Washington. This generation has grown up with the Internet and the abundance of alternative media that challenges what really is a one-party system in the United States. They have been exposed to many new ideas, including good ones like libertarianism and non-interventionism.

Currently, mainstream politics in the US is all about power – how to get it and how to keep it – and not at all about philosophy or ideology. It is about selling out principles at every turn in order to chalk up another point in the “win” column. On issues like war and spending, it’s incredible how easily the two major parties are able to “compromise.”

A serious effort to create a new political party could be very exciting, but only if that new party is based on real ideas rather than simply the desire for power. Creating a viable third party will not be easy. While there is plenty written in the media about foreign collusion in US elections, the real collusion is between the Republican and Democratic Parties to prevent new parties from joining them on the national stage and the ballot.

Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washington’s one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

I would still like to have some hope for the Libertarian Party, but to really fill its role as a challenger to our two party system (that is actually a one party system) it would need a major overhaul. It would need to actually embrace the core libertarian principles of non-aggression and non-intervention in the affairs of others.

At the end of my 2008 presidential campaign, I brought together the candidates of the “minor” political parties and proposed that we agree on some basic principles regardless of whether we are libertarians, conservatives, progressives, or greens. Among those was the idea that we should never go to war unless we were directly attacked or threatened, that the Federal Reserve should not be allowed to benefit the rich by creating money out of thin air, and that we should not endorse deficit spending.

If a new party could come together and agree on these basic principles while agreeing to disagree on other, less important priorities, we could begin a formidable movement toward peace and prosperity.

Let us hope that this NBC News survey provides the inspiration to a real pro-peace, pro-prosperity movement in the United States. I have much confidence in the youth of our country!

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

A recent study provides new evidence that the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa may have plate tectonics similar to those on Earth. The presence of plate tectonic activity could have important implications for the possibility of life in the ocean thought to exist beneath the moon’s surface.

The new study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, uses computer modeling to show that subduction — when a tectonic plate slides underneath another and sinks deep into a planet’s interior — is physically possible in Europa’s ice shell. The findings bolster earlier studies of Europa’s surface geology that found regions where the moon’s ice shell looks to be expanding in a way that’s similar to the mid-ocean spreading ridges on Earth. The possibility of subduction adds another piece to the tectonic puzzle.

“We have this evidence of extension and spreading, so the question becomes where does that material go?” said Brandon Johnson, an assistant professor at Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and a lead author of the study. “On Earth, the answer is subduction zones. What we show is that under reasonable assumptions for conditions on Europa, subduction could be happening there as well, which is really exciting.”

Part of the excitement, Johnson says, is that surface crust is enriched with oxidants and other chemical food for life. Subduction provides a means for that food to come into contact with the subsurface ocean scientists think probably exists under Europa’s ice.

“If indeed there’s life in that ocean, subduction offers a way to supply the nutrients it would need,” Johnson said.

Subduction on ice

On Earth, subduction is driven largely by differences in temperature between a descending slab and the surrounding mantle. Crustal material is much cooler than mantle material, and therefore denser. That increased density provides the negative buoyancy needed to sink a slab deep into the mantle.

Though previous geological studies had hinted that something like subduction could be happening on Europa, it wasn’t clear exactly how that process would work on an icy world. There’s evidence, Johnson says, that Europa’s ice shell has two layers: a thin outer lid of very cold ice that sits atop a layer of slightly warmer, convecting ice. If a plate from the outer ice lid was pushed down into the warmer ice below, its temperature would quickly warm to that of the surrounding ice. At the point, the slab would have the same density of the surrounding ice and would therefore stop descending.

But the model developed by Johnson and his colleagues showed a way that subduction could happen on Europa, regardless of temperature differences. The model showed that if there were varying amounts of salt in the surface ice shell, it could provide the necessary density differences for a slab to subduct.

“Adding salt to an ice slab would be like adding little weights to it because salt is denser than ice,” Johnson said. “So rather than temperature, we show that differences in the salt content of the ice could enable subduction to happen on Europa.”

And there’s good reason to suspect that variations in salt content do exist on Europa. There’s geological evidence for occasional water upwelling from Europa’s subsurface ocean — a process similar to the upwelling of magma from Earth’s mantle. That upwelling would leave high salt content in the crust under which it rises. There’s also a possibility of cryovolcanism, where salty ocean contents actually spray out onto the surface.

In addition to bolstering the case for a habitable ocean on Europa, Johnson says, the research also suggests a new place in the solar system to study a process that’s played a crucial role in the evolution of our own planet.

“It’s fascinating to think that we might have plate tectonics somewhere other than Earth,” he said. “Thinking from the standpoint of comparative planetology, if we can now study plate tectonics in this very different place, it might be able to help us understand how plate tectonics got started on the Earth.”

Johnson’s co-authors on the paper — Rachel Sheppard, Alyssa Pascuzzo, Elizabeth Fisher and Sean Wiggins — are all graduate students at Brown University. They took a class Johnson offered called Ocean Worlds, which focused on bodies like Europa that are thought to have oceans beneath icy shells.

“This paper emerged as a class project we did together,” Johnson said, “and it’s exciting that we came up with some interesting results.”

Yemenis face serious mental health risks, but the issue is being neglected, says a new study released today by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic. The groups announced the start of a groundbreaking new joint project to research and improve mental health in Yemen.

“Given both the extreme and chronic stressors Yemenis are continuing to face, there is serious cause for concern of a nationwide mental health crisis,” said Dr. Lindsay Stark, associate professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and director of the CPC (Child Protection in Crisis) Learning Network. “The scale of need may appear daunting, but our proposed study has the potential to inform evidence-based responses that are intended to contribute to larger peace and reconstruction processes in Yemen.”

In the briefing paper, The Impact of War on Mental Health in Yemen: A Neglected Crisis, the groups reveal how serious the risk to mental health is in Yemen. Yet, mental health services in Yemen are few, and there is little research on the effects of the war on the mental health of the population. The briefing paper also analyzes the long-term costs of failing to respond. Unaddressed poor mental health has well-known adverse consequences, including on physical health, family cohesion, education, participation in the workforce, and peace and reconciliation efforts.

“During the past three years of armed conflict, Yemenis have been continuously exposed to serious harm and trauma, including air strikes, threats and attacks from armed groups, forced disappearances, torture, a cholera epidemic, and food and job insecurity,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, a prominent Yemeni scholar and chairman of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies. “The impact of the war and humanitarian crisis on the mental health and well-being of Yemenis must no longer be ignored.”

“Despite the likely massive immediate and long-term mental health implications of the current conflict in Yemen, the issue has largely been neglected by both domestic authorities and the international community,” said Professor Sarah Knuckey, the director of the Human Rights Clinic. “This new project seeks to advance the right to mental health in Yemen through interdisciplinary research and human rights advocacy.”

The ongoing war in Yemen has spurred the world’s largest food security emergency and the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded. Millions have been sent into abject poverty, the nation’s economy has been destroyed, and basic public services have evaporated. Over a million public servants have gone without a salary for more than a year. At least 50,000 civilians have been killed or wounded during the conflict, with the belligerent parties committing a litany of war crimes and violations of humanitarian law against the civilian population.

In interviews conducted for the study released today, Yemeni officials and medical experts raised concerns about rising suicide rates, and increases in reports of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The groups intend to carry out a series of studies to better understand the kinds of trauma exposure in Yemen, the effects on the population, as well as local needs and coping strategies, and the links with peace and transitional processes.

“The goal is to improve conditions for those psychologically affected by the conflict, and to help strengthen the norm on the right to mental health domestically, regionally, and internationally,” said Daron Tan, LLM ’18, a student in the Human Rights Clinic. “By bringing together local and international experts across a range of fields, we can better understand the mental health challenges and respond more effectively.”

In an 800-page document sent to BIRN several months before his public suicide, Bosnian Croat wartime general Slobodan Praljak tried to rewrite history and dispute court-established facts to absolve himself of crimes.

By Sven Milekic

“Who am I and what am I?”

Former Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak introduces himself ironically in his 800-page ‘handbook’ entitled ‘How to Become a Joint Criminal’, which his company sent to BIRN in March this year as he appealed against conviction.

In the introduction, Praljak describes himself as “an average ‘nationalist’ from Croatia, a ‘Croatian nationalist’” – and a likely candidate to be convicted of being part of a joint criminal enterprise.

And indeed he was convicted, just before he committed suicide last Wednesday in the courtroom at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY.

Praljak was sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity, committed against Bosniak civilians and prisoners of war during the 1990s conflict.

The ICTY established that these crimes included the forced deportations of Bosniaks from the Croat-led Croatian Community (later Republic) of Herzeg-Bosnia, an unrecognised wartime Croat statelet in Bosnia and Herzegovina – as well as detentions, murders, torture, the infliction of terror on civilians and the use of detainees as slave labour and as human shields.

The subtitle of Praljak’s book, which was published on his website and sent to BIRN in both Croatian and English-language versions, adds ironically: “With instruction on how to think (mens rea) and how to act (actus reus) in order to be declared a member of a joint criminal enterprise at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.”

The ICTY on Wednesday found him responsible for committing his crimes as part of a joint criminal enterprise headed by Croatia’s 1990s President Franjo Tudjman.

After hearing that he was convicted, Praljak swallowed poison, and died later that day.

The book itself is an extended stream of consciousness, presenting Praljak’s own perception of historical truth, trying to whitewash crimes that were committed and shift the focus away from facts established by the UN court – away from himself and the actions for which he was found responsible.

Praljak starts his book decades before the 1990s conflicts, offering his interpretation of World War II history, claiming that some members of the anti-fascist bloc – the USSR and communist Yugoslavia – were not actually anti-fascist. According to his definition, communism is just a subset of fascism.

In his condemnation of Yugoslavia and its leader-for-life Josip Broz Tito, Praljak offers scientifically-unproven figures on the amount of deaths that the Communist regime caused by killing fascist collaborators and civilians.

He also presents a list of Croats who were confirmed or alleged victims of the Yugoslav State Security Service, better known by its notorious acronym UDBA.

But what he does not mention is that his father, Mirko Praljak, was a distinguished member of the Department for People’s Protection, OZNA – which fought against renegade fascist forces in Partisan-controlled areas – and an UDBA official in the Bosnian town of Mostar.

Praljak goes on to write about the 1990s, giving his own take on the events that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. He focuses on the role of Yugoslavia, or more precisely Serbia and its leader Slobodan Milosevic, when he talks about who was responsible.

He also takes a stab at the international community as he criticises the UN Security Council’s Resolution 713 from September 1991, in which it expressed “deep concern” at the fighting in Yugoslavia and demanded a full embargo on arms.

Praljak argues this was aimed at stopping Croatia getting weapons in the middle of its war against rebel Croatian Serbs, who were being helped by the Yugoslav People’s Army.

In a passage intended to sarcastically explain the national characteristics that lay behind the politics of the UN resolution, he writes in the English translation of the book:

“Well – Russians and Serbs show their affection publicly, French like Serbs ([French President] Jacques Mitterrand expresses this publicly), well, ok, English don’t like anyone, let alone Croats, Yugoslavia is liked by everyone, but Americans, Americans, Americans… John Ford and John Wayne must be turning in their graves from all this battle righteousness.”

Presenting his interpretation of the war, Praljak offers scores of maps, showing different troops and forces, attacks and counterattacks.

He includes a redrawn map of the United States which has 26 per cent of its territory occupied by invaders from Mexico, Cuba and the Atlantic – corresponding to the same amount of Croatian territory that was occupied by Serbs in 1991.

Praljak insists that Croatia played a positive role in the Yugoslav wars, saying that it was one of the first to recognise Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He also offers graphs and tables of data showing Croatia’s humanitarian aid to Bosnia, and the number of refugees or wounded people that Croatia accepted from Bosnia.

However, his book does not mention the fact that the Bosnian Croat military force – the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, whose main headquarters he commanded – blocked humanitarian aid from coming to Bosniaks, particularly in eastern Mostar.

Praljak also fails to specify how Croatia financed the HVO during its conflict with the Bosniak-led Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at a time when large-scale crimes were committed. He further fails to specify that he was on Croatia’s payroll at the same time, as the ICTY established.

In an attempt to defend both himself and Croatia, he omits to describe the role of the most senior Croatian officials in actions that led to crimes, and his participation in meetings at which these actions were discussed, as the ICTY also established.

“The Chamber notes that during these meetings, Slobodan Praljak was not only informed of the policy championed by Croatia vis-à-vis Herzeg-Bosnia but also championed it himself and contributed to the discussions,” said the ICTY’s first-instance verdict in his trial in 2013.

In the book, Praljak writes extensively about the role of the wartime Bosnian presidency’s Bosniak representative, Alija Izetbegovic. He refers to Izetbegovic as a “cheater”, presenting him as one of the leaders most responsible for the conflict, accusing him of betraying agreements and constantly plotting – even with the Serbs.

A significant portion of his book deals with Bosniak crimes against Croats – some which are already documented, although others are not.

He focuses a lot on the Mujahideen, foreign Islamic fighters who came to fight on the Bosniak side; some of whom were responsible for a series of atrocities, according to a Bosnian state prosecution indictment.

Praljak finishes his book with a presentation about “Human behaviour in civil unrest and war”, citing the examples of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the 1977 New York electricity blackout, the 2004 killing of the Dutch author Theo van Gogh, the 2005 riots in Paris and the 1968 My Lai Massacre, when the US Army killed over 300 Vietnamese civilians.

These examples, he suggests, show that the police and the armed forces are unprepared and unready to react appropriately to unrest and natural disasters, even in peaceable countries.

The Ma Lai massacre demonstrates how “even a professional army can easily go out of control and conduct a massacre without orders of superiors”, Praljak concludes – as if he was in court, and giving his own final statement to the judges.

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has approved the creation of an Intelligence Fusion Centre in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State to fight the Boko Haram militant group, TV 360 Nigeria reports.

An Intelligence Fusion Centre is designed to promote information sharing at the federal level for a quicker response to emergencies.

A statement from Buhari’s office said the centre is to support the Nigerian military as it intensifies efforts to end suicide bombings in the northeast.

The decision comes as Boko Haram continues to intensify attacks in the region.

About 13 people were killed, with 54 others injured in the latest attack on a market in Biu in Borno state on Saturday.

Major changes are roiling the states, societies and ruling classes of the biggest industrial economies, oil regimes and military complexes.

China is re-allocating its economic wealth toward building the most extensive modern infrastructure system in history, linking four continents.

Saudi Arabia is transferring a trillion dollars of pillage from princes to princes, from old business parasites to up-to-date versions, from austere desert mirages to fantasies of new mega-cities.

The United States is emptying the swamp of the Capital’s corruption and immediately replenishing it with the scandal of the day.

One Cabinet Secretary is fired; another Secretary is hired; one enemy is embraced; an ally denounced; the stock market flourishes and trade agreements are abandoned. One tax is sliced and pleases the powerful; another is spliced and chokes the consumers.

Turmoil, some would say; chaos, others would claim. And the stouthearted argue, that’s the way the world turns round.

But for all the world’s current ‘shaking’, there is substance and direction: There are models for the shaking-up and paradigms for the shaking down.

‘Shaking up’ occurs where visions of wealth and prosperity accompany science and discovery.

‘Shaking down’ is where the science of palace coups and the art of bloody intrigues fleece the poor while enriching and amusing the powerful.

The Art and Artist of the Shake Down

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), pursues a new policy of scientific, systematic, large-scale and long-term shakedown (SD). Science is evident in these procedures, in their rigorous identification of targets and their efficient methodology of securing subjects and achieving success.

MBS and his associates launched their policy of SD in several well-planned stages.
First, they cloaked the entire SD operation as part of the vast transformation of the Kingdom, accompanied by a string of Western buzzwords: modernization of a traditional society; cleansing the suites of corruption; diversifying the oil dependent economy; privatizing ARAMCO; and replacing camels and tents with a state-of-the-art mega city in the desert.

MBS thus moved to seize state power as the final act in an operation starting with a wave of shakedowns.

The Princes-in-waiting experienced the initial shakedown.

In orderly fashion, MBS wielded his royal sword on behalf of righteousness (according to his adoring fans in the Western press, like Thomas Friedman): Scores of corrupt princes and hundreds of the business and military elite were arrested (or abducted for ransom . . . and safe keeping).

The ‘shakedown’ was underway, but the captives were held in circumstances worthy of their status. The abduction, imprisonment and plea-bargaining for ransom and release took place in the 5-star Riyadh Ritz-Hilton.

The MBS meritocratic modernizers (MM) held the highest degrees in finance and accounting and were adept at calculating appropriate ransoms from each and every captive. The MM demanded hundreds of millions from the billionaires while the generals settled for an early retirement, stripped of pensions and commands. Upon payment and release, the newly fleeced Saudi Princelings fled to the brothels of Beirut to receive un-brotherly comfort. They were freed on one condition: They would return some of the Kingdom’s pillage to fund a ‘New Class’ in a ‘New Arabia’ under the Crown Prince MBS.

However, Western investors, who quietly kept their snouts in the ‘traditional trough’ of Saudi wealth, were not sure where they stood with MBS and his meritocratic modernizers. They needed to know, for the sake of their stockholders: Were they victims or beneficiaries of the big shakedown? Were they condemned to suffer among the corrupt billionaires or granted entry into the new realm of the virtuous Prince?

MBS may have carried out the largest shakedown in recent times, in the name of justice, but there are still no signs of a diversified, modern and prosperous society arising on the Arabian Peninsula. In some places, there rose a more diverse variety of shakedown artists and plotters: Many, who applaud the Crown Prince, await their share the loot. In other parts of the peninsula, MBS continues to deliver famine, cholera and desperation and rain down bombs on the people of Yemen. If Israel could turn the remnant of Palestine into an open-air prison for periodic slaughter, MBS could find his own ‘Palestinians’ in Yemen for target practice.

China: The Shake Up

China is in the throes of one, two, many upheavals: Over one million high and low ranking officials and millionaires, who levied their own ‘private tax’ on the public treasury, will celebrate another Chinese New Year – in jail.

Meanwhile, over 25 billion dollars has been spent on innovative high tech projects, reshaping the economy, reducing pollution and expanding the welfare state.

Over one trillion dollars is being spent on huge global infrastructure projects linking China to four continents in an integrated network of trade – The One Road-One Belt Network.

China is the polar-opposite of Saudi Arabia: In place of state-sponsored ransom and blackmail (the ‘shakedown’) China is experiencing a monumental ‘shake-up’ – spending money in multiple directions. There are overseas projects to promote trade relations; upward projects linking business to high technology and greater profits; downward projects to train and expand the skilled labor force, reduce pollution, increase social welfare, save lives and increase productivity.

Unlike the US, China has nourished its manufacturing sector, and not starved it of investment. The average factory in the US is twice as old as those in China. To even dream of catching up with Chinese production, the US would have to invest over $115 billion a year in manufacturing for the next three decades.

Limited access to investment capital will condemn the tens of thousands of small and medium size manufacturing enterprises in the US to low productivity and reduced exports.

In contrast, the Chinese government directs investment capital widely to manufacturers of all sizes and shapes. Moreover, local Chinese manufacturers connect readily to the supply chain with big exporters. China provides explicit incentives to exporters to work with local suppliers to ensure that profits are re-invested in the home market.

In the US, the multinational suppliers are located out of the country and their earnings are hoarded overseas. Whenever profits return to the US, these are directed into buybacks of shares and dividends for the stockholders —not into new production.
Beijing manages debt, raising and limiting it to promote dynamic development with a level of efficiency unmatched in the US.

China keeps a close eye on excessive debt, speculation and investment, in contrast to the unrestrained chaos of the so-called ‘free market’ of the US and its parasitical allies, the Saudi coupon–clipping shakedown artists.

The US: The Political Economy of Scandalous Conspiracies and ‘Flight Capitalism’

The chaotic free-for-all in the US political economy is manipulated by scandalmongers, conspirators and flight capitalists. Instead of preparing an economic plan to ‘make America great again’, they have embraced the political blackmailers and intriguers of Saudi Arabia in a sui-generis global political alliance. Both countries feature purges, resignations and pugnacious politicos who have never been weaned from the destructive bosom of war.

As a point of history, the United States didn’t start out as a bloated, speculative state of crony capitalists and parasitical allies: The US was once a powerful industrial country, harnessing finance and overseas investments to securing raw materials for domestic industries and directing profits back into industry for higher productivity.

Fake, or semi-fake, political rivalries and electoral competition counted little as incumbents retained their positions most of the time, and bi-partisan agreements ensured stability through sharing the spoils of office.

Things have changed. Overseas neo-colonies started to offer more than just raw materials: They introduced low-tax manufacturing sites promising free access to cheap, healthy and educated workers. US manufacturers abandoned Old Glory, invested overseas, hoarded profits in tax havens and happily evaded paying taxes to fund a new economy for displaced US workers. Simultaneously, finance reversed its relation to industry: Industrial capital was now harnessed to finance, speculation, real estate, insurance sectors and electronic gadgets/play-by-yourself ‘i-phones’ promoting isolated ‘selfies’ and idle chatter.

Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood replaced Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago. Stockbrokers proliferated, while master tool-and-die makers disappeared and workers’ children overdosed on ‘Oxy’.

In the transition, politicians, who had no connection to domestic industry, found a powerful niche promoting overseas wars for allies, like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and disseminating domestic spats, intrigues and conspiracies to the voters. Vietnam and Watergate, Afghanistan and Volker, Iran-Contra and Reaganomics, Yugoslavia and Iraq, daily drone strikes and bombings and Bill Clinton’s White House sex scandals giving salacious birth to Special Prosecutors . . .

In this historic transformation, American political culture put on a new face: perpetual wars, Wall Street swindles and Washington scandals. It culminated in the farcical Hillary Clinton – Donald Trump presidential election campaign: the war goddess-cuckquean of chaos versus the crotch-grabbing real-estate conman.

The public heard Secretary of State Clinton’s maniacal laugh upon her viewing the ‘snuff-film’ torture and slaughter of the wounded Libya’s President Gadhafi: She crowed: ‘We came, we saw…and he died’ with a sword up his backside. This defined the Clinton doctrine in foreign affairs, while slaughter of the welfare state and the bloated prison industry would define her domestic agenda.

Trump’s presidential election campaign went about the country pleasuring the business and finance elite (promises of tax cuts, deregulations, re-contamination and jacking up the earth’s temperature with a handful of jobs), and successfully pushed aside the outrage over his crude rump grabbing boasts.

Wars, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood all gathered to set the parameters of the United States’ political economy: The chase was on!

The Clinton sleuths uncovered an army of Russian conspirators running Trump’s electoral campaign, writing his speeches, typing his ‘Tweets’, designing his tactics and successfully directing the votes of millions of duped ‘deplorables’ – the rural and rust-belt poor.

The entire media world auto-pleasured their friends and allies with the Trump Administration’s political strip tease, shedding appointees, dumping nominees and misdirecting policies with a string of revelations. According to dubious anecdotes, the Special Prosecutor uncovered Russian conspiracies to enlist Salvation Army bell ringers and Washington lobbyists. The ‘deplorables’ meanwhile tuned out in disgust.

Trump retaliated with midnight Tweets and appointed a clutch of retired Generals, who had been battle-seasoned in Obama’s seven losing wars and even found a loudmouth South Carolina belle to evoke visions of mushroom clouds in the United Nations. Naturally, there was the coterie of Zionist advisers from the ‘think tanks’ and from his own family working double time to set US-Middle East policy on the road to new wars.

Trump’s Generals and Zionists on the one hand and the Democrats, liberals, anti-fascists and leftists formed the ‘resistance’ and fought fiercely for freedom: Freedom to direct the state to censor alternative news or informed discussion debunking the canard about Russian meddling, exposing Ukraine’s land grabs, proving Iran’s compliance to the nuclear deal and Tel Aviv’s baseless warnings about Tehran. Bolstered by the President’s Chief Advisor Son- in-Law, Jared Kushner, the Saudi Crown Prince was praised for kidnapping the Lebanese Prime Minister and forcing his resignation.

Everyday there was a new scandal, conspiracy upon conspiracy and, of course, fake news blaring out from all sides of corporate media and NPR.

The threat of war spreads across the Middle East: How many families would the unholy trinity of Saudi Arabia-US-Israel slaughter, starve or incarcerate in Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan? Drowned out by domestic scandals and conspiracies – this carnage did not happen – in the news. While scores of thousands in Yemen suffered from cholera amidst a brutal Saudi blockade, The Washington Post – NY Times CBS-NBC-ABC published the same front-page photo of Trump’s clumsy handshake at the APEC Conference. At least, the trillion-dollar corporate-oligarch tax cut merited a jolly Tweet from the Donald.

The Big Shakedown is all about the swindles and the sex designed to keep Wall Street safe, the Pentagon at war and the public distracted.

Conclusion

Three countries are shaking the world in different directions:

In Saudi Arabia, MBS is engaged in a region-shattering shakedown, picking the pockets of Princes for a trillion dollars of unearned and pilfered oil rents to finance more cholera, starvation and mass murder in Yemen and beyond.

Through China, there is a Eurasian ‘shakeup’ as Beijing expands modern Silk-Roads everywhere and with everyone to connect markets, develop supply chains and increase prosperity at home and among its trade partners.

And the US just shakes . . . and trembles as its leaders rush to further enrich the ultra- rich, conspire to uncover conspiracies upon plot, scandalize the scandalmongers and tell us that freedom really means the freedom to expose and gnaw over the sordid acts of petty perverts while hiding much greater truths and reality. Official truth has become a stinking mound of offal.

One can only hope for a great ‘shaking off’.