By Jim Garamone

Standing in front of an Iranian rocket fired at an international airport in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Iran must stop all its destabilizing behavior.

“We are not just focused on [Iran’s] nuclear program,” the ambassador said during a press conference at a Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling hangar where the illegal Iranian equipment is on display.

The display is hard evidence that Iran is seeking to destabilize the Middle East. Haley stressed that Iran is engaging in many other illegal behaviors that are causing suffering from the Arabian Peninsula, to Central Asia, to the Levant.

The United States is going beyond Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which the theocracy agreed to halt only after overwhelming international pressure. “We are not just focused on the nuclear program,” Haley said. “We’re also taking a hard look at Iran’s ballistic missile program, its arms exports, its support for terrorists, proxy fighters and dictators.”

And Iran’s behavior is growing worse, she said. “The nuclear deal has done nothing to moderate the regime’s conduct in other areas,” the ambassador said.

The instance of missile and weapons systems being sent from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to militias and terror groups is increasing. “It’s hard to find a terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it,” she said.

Iran is “fanning the flames” of conflict, Haley said.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 deals specifically with Iranian arms transfers and its ballistic missile program. Iran has repeatedly violated the resolution.

The report shows Iran arming Houthi rebels in Yemen with missiles and advanced weaponry, and that is what brought Haley to a hangar near the Defense Intelligence Agency here. The displays in the hangar are irrefutable, concrete proof of Iran’s violations. Missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, antitank weapons and a Shark-33 boat used to attack a Saudi frigate are among the displays. Examination of the weapons trace them back to Iran and industries owned and operated by the Iranian government or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

“This evidence demonstrates a pattern of behavior in which Iran sows conflict and extremism in direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” she said.

The United States has invited all members of the U.N. Security Council and all members of Congress to view the display. “This evidence is part of what led the U.S. Intelligence Community to conclude — unequivocally — that these weapons were supplied by the Iranian regime. The evidence is undeniable — they might as well have had ‘Made in Iran’ stickers all over them.”

Haley called on all nations of the world to join the United States in resisting Iran as the nation has become “a global threat.”

By Dr. Manuel Almeida*

The death of Ali Abdullah Saleh has opened a new chapter in Yemen’s conflict, depriving the Zaidi militants of their once powerful ally. More than the tragic humanitarian situation — including a massive cholera outbreak on top of acute shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel — it was last week’s execution of the former president by the Houthis that brought renewed international focus to Yemen’s dramatic crisis.

“It’s in the interests of everybody to stop this war,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres remarked to CNN just a few a days ago. “What we need is a political solution.”
The UN secretary general is right to stress the urgency and to point out that the ultimate solution to the conflict can only be a political one. The UN and, more broadly, the international community have a potentially important role to play in the efforts to reach it.

However, previous peace initiatives have elevated the Houthis to an unwarranted status, while failing to place the necessary pressure on the militant group to retreat and abandon its radical and unrealizable agenda.

On this front, there has been a gap between UN Security Council resolutions on the conflict, chief among them Resolution 2216, and the various rounds of negotiations in Geneva, Muscat and Kuwait City since 2015.

Resolution 2216 sets unequivocal demands on the Houthis, including abandoning all areas seized since the beginning of the conflict and relinquishing all arms seized from military and security institutions. It also demands the Zaidi militants “refrain from any provocation or threats to neighboring states, including through the acquisition of surface-to-surface missiles” and “end the recruitment and use of children” in their militia’s ranks.

Yet the various rounds of negotiations have given undue prominence to the Houthis and their grievances and demands. Although militarily they are a key part of the conflict, ever more so with Saleh out of the picture, the Houthis bear the main responsibility for Yemen’s collapse. They are the only faction among various, such as Al-Islah or Al-Hirak, to have ditched outright the outcomes of the political transition process and the National Dialogue Conference, in which they participated.

Politically, the Houthis are more isolated than ever. By killing Saleh, their alliance with the segments of the General People’s Congress still loyal to the former president lies in tatters. The Houthi leadership’s flimsy claim that they represent a significant proportion of Yemenis and mainstream Zaidi interests has lost any semblance of credibility.
Their strong ideological and operations links to Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, often downplayed by analysts as Gulf paranoia or exaggeration, are now overwhelmingly evident. It is the explosive mixture of radicalism and populism, quite characteristic of Khomeinist ideology, that has driven the Houthi leadership down the path of trying to revive the Imamate in north Yemen.

Even the UN now acknowledges Iran’s hand in transferring ballistic missile technology to the Houthis. Last week, reports of the death of an Iranian missile expert in Sanaa were confirmed.

Neither Yemenis themselves nor their Arab neighbors are open to the once unthinkable scenario of half the country being controlled by the Houthis as an armed group. There is no place for another Hezbollah in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Understanding this is key to understanding the conflict and how to resolve it. There is also the urgent issue of governance and the provision of basic services, which the Houthis have revealed themselves to be utterly incapable of delivering.

By now, it should be evident there is only one way forward: The Houthi leadership must dissolve its militias, disarm, and return to its origins as a political party without an armed wing a la Hezbollah.

A crucial obstacle in the previous rounds of negotiations was disagreement between the Yemeni government and the Houthis on the implementation of the peace plan, namely whether the Houthi withdrawal and handover of seized weapons should precede a new political process or happen in parallel with it. But even this hurdle was overcome, with the Yemeni government agreeing to proceed in parallel.

The example of Lebanon, where Hezbollah has become a state above the state, should provide a cautionary tale about the consequences of the institutionalization of a militant group as a political party without relinquishing its military capabilities and abandoning its radical agenda. Preventing this scenario in Yemen requires pressure from the international community and would be a key step to reaching the urgent solution millions of Yemenis desperately need.

• Dr. Manuel Almeida is a political analyst and consultant focusing on the Middle East. He is the former editor of the English online edition of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper and holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Twitter: @_ManuelAlmeida

The Russian air group in Syria is to be reduced to a single squadron of battle-ready warplanes, at least for a brief period of time until new aircraft with fresh crews arrive, Al-Masdar News reports.

According to sources (many of them pro-opposition sources who, interestingly enough, claim to have heard the information from ‘Russian officials’), some 23 aircraft of the Russian air grouping in Syria are to be returned to their permanent bases in Russia.

The reduction of twenty-three warplanes from a recently identified compliment of 35 present at the Khmeimim Air Base means that only a dozen aircraft will remain – basically, a single squadron of jets.

In all probability, the Russian air force in Syria is likely going through a phase of extended rotation – something that is much needed after a two year period of high-intensity operations in which only partial rotations took place.

It is also worth keeping in mind that the 49-year contract signed between the Syrian and Russian governments for Russian Aerospace Forces ownership of the Khmeimim base remains valid.

To this end, it is likely the case that Russia will pull back some warplanes for the sake of creating the space need for construction workers to fully overhaul Khmeimim‘s infrastructures and build a fully-fledged airbase with hardened bunkers and self-support services.

Finally, there remains an unidentified number of Russian warplanes and attack helicopters (particularly the latter) stationed at various Syrian military airports throughout the country – whether these aircraft are rotated or kept on active duty remains unclear.

Four Iraqi citizens have won hundreds of thousands of pounds in High Court damages against the Ministry of Defense over ill-treatment and unlawful detention during the Iraq War.

Mr. Justice Leggatt ruled the four men were entitled to compensation under the Human Rights Act, with one being awarded more than £30,000 ($40,290).

More than 600 Iraqis had alleged they suffered at the hands of British armed forces who were part of the Coalition forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, but their claims were thrown out by the courts in 2016.

But lawyers warned after today’s ruling that the four test cases could now mean the MoD faces paying out millions of pounds in compensation to more than 600 unresolved claims.

In the case of Kamil Najim Alseran, who was captured at his home at the end of March 2003 during the advance on Basra by British forces, the judge awarded £10,000 ($13,430) for ill-treatment following his capture, and £2,700 ($3,626) for 27 days of unlawful detention.

Abd Al-Waheed, who was arrested in a house raid carried out by British soldiers in Basra city in February 2007, was awarded a total of £33,300 ($44,722).

He was awarded £15,000 (20,145) in “respect of the beating” he suffered after his arrest, £15,000 ($20,145) for what the judge described as “the further inhuman and degrading treatment which he suffered encompassing harsh interrogation, being deprived of sleep and being deprived of sight and hearing.”

He was further compensated £3,300 ($4,431) for unlawful detention for 33 days.

The judge awarded damages to two other claimants, who can only be referred to as MRE and KSU for legal reasons.

When the war began, the men were serving on a merchant ship moored in the Khawr az Zubayr waterway north of Umm Qasr.

In March 2003, their ship was boarded by coalition forces and the four crew members, including MRE and KSU, were captured.

MRE was awarded a total of £28,140 ($37,792), made up of £10,000 ($13,430) for “hooding” with sandbags during a road journey, £1,000 ($1,343) for an eye injury sustained as a result of the hooding, and £15,000 ($20,155) for a blow struck to his head, along with £1,440 ($1,440) for the cost of medical treatment, and £600 ($887) for six days of unlawful imprisonment.

Leggatt awarded damages to KSU totaling £10,600 ($14,235) for the hooding and the same period of unlawful detention.

Leggatt announced his conclusions after overseeing two High Court trials during which Iraqi citizens gave evidence in an English courtroom for the first time.

“Four cases have been tried as lead cases.

“There is no assumption that these four cases are representative of others, but the conclusions reached on the legal issues and some of the factual issues raised are likely to affect many of the remaining cases in the litigation.”

A MoD spokesperson said: “Our military personnel served with great courage in Iraq, often working under extremely difficult circumstances.

“We note the Court’s ruling that these four detainees were not treated as they should have been, and are studying the judgment.”

The spokesman said the MoD has not yet decided whether to appeal any of the court’s conclusions.

It added no service personnel or veterans have been interviewed or charged in relation to the incidents.

Sapna Malik, a partner in the international claims team at Leigh Day, who represented Alseran and Al-Waheed, said: “These trials took place against an onslaught of political, military and media slurs of Iraqis bringing spurious claims, and strident criticism of us, as lawyers, representing them.

“Yet we have just witnessed the rule of law in action. Our clients are grateful that the judge approached their claims without any preconception or presumption that allegations of misconduct by British soldiers are inherently unlikely to be true.

“Our clients’ evidence has been tested at length in court and the Ministry of Defense has been found wanting.

“It is vital that those wronged by the U.K. Government, whether in this country or overseas, are able to seek justice and redress. Their ability to do so in our courts is not a witch-hunt but a testament to the strength of our democracy.’

Shubhaa Srinivasan, also a partner at Leigh Day, who represented MRE and KSU, said: “The decision sends a clear message that no-one, including the British Government, should be above the law.”

Original article

By Catherine Stupp

(EurActiv) — EU heads of state ended the first day of a summit with no sign of tensions thawing amid recent disagreements on migration.

Most leaders left the European Council headquarters in Brussels without speaking to the press early Friday morning (15 December), after a heated, more than two-hour-long debate over migration.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk did not hold a joint news conference, as they usually do at summits.

The leaders will meet again on Friday for discussions on Brexit and the economic and monetary union.

Tensions have been flaring between the Commission and Council after Tusk called the Commission’s proposal for mandatory quotas to distribute refugees between EU countries “ineffective” in a leader to heads of state. Tusk, who is a former Polish prime minister, asked the leaders to agree on a solution by June 2018.

That didn’t go over well with the Commission: earlier this week, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramapoulos slammed Tusk’s letter as “anti-European”.

In a brief statement to journalists as he left the summit on Friday morning, Juncker said the leaders “controversially discussed” Tusk’s proposal.

One EU source said that the phrase “anti-European” did not come up during the “sober and frank” debate on migration.

The source said the summit was a “window of opportunity” to discuss the EU’s response to migration from the Middle East and African countries because the number of people arriving in Europe has dropped since the crisis peaked in 2015.

But even the lower number of refugees did not help heads of state to overcome their disagreements.

Leaders are divided over the mandatory quotas. Southern countries including Italy want every member state to be required to take in refugees, but some eastern countries oppose quotas.

The Commission first introduced quotas in 2015 to help Italy and Greece manage an uptick in asylum seekers. Just last week, the EU executive referred the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary to the European Court of Justice for ignoring the quota to relocate refugees from Italy and Greece.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was dismissive of Tusk’s proposal to reconsider the quota system.

“I made it very clear that I’m not pleased with the simple statement that the rules we’ve put in place up until now don’t work. We still have a lot of work to do here,” Merkel told reporters as she left the Council building. She also did not hold a press conference.

“Solidarity cannot only have external dimensions, it also has to exist internally,” Merkel added. Germany took in more than one million refugees in 2015.

Some heads of state expressed support for the Commission’s work to slash the number of migrants arriving through the Mediterranean.

Outgoing Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern praised Italy, the Commission and Merkel for crafting a project to cut migration from Libya and for a 2016 agreement to reduce migration through Turkey.

Kern said the lowered migration figures removed some pressure from the debate over quotas, but he admitted that “there is still no comprehensive approach, to put it nicely”.

Earlier on Thursday, prime ministers from the Visegrad countries of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia pledged €35 billion to support the Italian-led programme to cut off migration from Libya to Europe.

In a statement, the Visegrad group said the financial commitment reflects the countries’ willingness to address migration by stopping its root causes. The group has opposed quotas mandating how many refugees each EU member state should take in.

One EU source said the commitment from the four countries was important but will likely not be decisive in the debate over quotas.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said when he arrived at the summit, “We will continue to insist that a commitment on the relocation of refugees is needed,” according to a translation published by Reuters.

By Kamran Chaudhry

Christians in Pakistan are aggrieved that an official blind eye has been turned to requests for Christmas exemptions to annual load-shedding power cuts.

“There will be no electricity, especially in Christian-majority settlements on Christmas, I can bet on it,” Father Inayat Bernard told ucanews.

The rector of the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Lahore was referring to power cuts that resumed across the country this month.

There are four-hour daily cuts to the supply of electricity as temperatures fall to minus 12°C in some areas.

“They don’t care about us,” Father Bernard said.

“We are not considered equal citizens or even humans.”

The government had a poor track record when it came to facilitating the religious celebrations of minorities, he added.

The lack of electricity was also affecting Christian marriages, which are popular during the Christmas season.

Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore and Protestant leaders were continuing to press for special consideration in regard to load-shedding.

Khalil Tahir Sandhu, the Christian Minister for Human Rights and Minorities Affairs in Punjab Province, also requested “uninterrupted supply” during the Christmas period.

The representation was made by Sandhu in a Dec. 5 letter to the federal minister responsible for water and power supplies.

Father Inayat Bernard lauded the minister for his efforts, but said he did not trust the government.

In 2012, the then State Minister for National Harmony, Akram Masih Gill, had given an assurance that power would not be interrupted.

“It was a lie,” Father Bernard complained.

For the past five years, generators had been needed to conduct Christmas and New Year masses, incurring additional cost.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Dec. 9 reportedly said that the government had successfully accomplished the mission of ridding Pakistan of load-shedding, besides launching projects to meet all the country’s power needs going forward to 2030.

Addressing the groundbreaking ceremony of the 1263-megawatt Punjab Power Plant in Jhang district, Abbasi said that there were no longer any instances of load-shedding in the country except in areas where cases of power theft had been reported.

The first phase of the LNG-fuelled project is expected to be completed in 14 months and generate 810MW of electricity while the output would reach 1263 MW after completion of the second phase in 26 months, AFP reported.

Riding the country of load-shedding was an election promise of Abassi’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

When the government came into power in 2013, power cuts were at their worst with load-shedding up to 20 hours a day during summer, which sparked riots and attacks on the offices of power distribution companies by angry protestors.

(RFE/RL) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program in a phone call in which Trump also thanked Putin for praising his management of the U.S. economy on Thursday.

The two heads of state discussed “the situation in several crisis zones, with a focus on solving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula,” the Kremlin said in a statement late on December 14 that noted Trump had initiated the phone call.

The White House said the two “discussed working together to resolve the very dangerous situation in North Korea.”

But the White House emphasized Trump’s thanks to Putin for defending and praising him at his hours-long yearly press conference in Moscow earlier in the day.

“President Trump thanked President Putin for acknowledging America’s strong economic performance,” it said.

Putin had cited the sharp rise in U.S. markets since Trump took office in January as evidence of Trump’s “fairly serious achievements” during his first year in office.

“Look at how the markets are reacting, they are growing. This shows confidence in the American economy. With all due respect to [Trump’s] opponents, these are objective facts.”

Putin also criticized the U.S. investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and accused Trump’s opponents of “incapacitating the president and showing a lack of respect to voters who cast their ballots for him.”

Trump during his campaign often heaped praise on Putin, holding his Russian counterpart up as an example of a “strong leader.” With all the mutually expressed warmth, some commentators have described their relationship as a budding “bromance.”

On North Korea, the phone call was the latest of signs coming out of both Washington and Moscow this week that high-level officials are making efforts to broach negotiations with Pyongyang over its accelerating program to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Russia sent a military delegation to North Korea this week, while U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he is willing to “have the first meeting without preconditions” the United States has pushed in the past because, he said, they are now “unrealistic.”

Apparently in response to Tillerson’s comments, Putin at his press conference hailed what he called a new “awareness of reality” in Washington on North Korea.

But he also accused the United States of “aggravating the situation” with North Korea and noted that the United States had used nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II. He said any nuclear strike on Pyongyang would have “catastrophic” consequences.

Putin also mocked members of the U.S. Congress who he said have equated Russia with what they call “rogue regimes” in North Korea and Iran, yet at the same time have called on Russia to help resolve the North Korean crisis.

By Die Morina

Kosovo’s prosecution withdrew its request to a Pristina court to allow the extradition of Ugur Toksoy, a teacher wanted by Turkey for alleged links to the so-called Gulen movement, suspending the procedure.

Kosovo prosecutor Ali Rexha on Thursday withdrew his request for the court to allow the extradition of Turkish citizen Ugur Toksoy, who was arrested on October 27 on a warrant arrest issued by Turkey.

Turkey accuses Toksoy of having links to the so-called Gulen movement, which it claims masterminded an attempted coup in the country in July last year.

During the hearing set to decide on Toksoy’s extradition, prosecutor Rexha told court that he was withdrawing the request due to lack of evidence.

The withdrawal of the request means the extradition procedure is suspended.

Toksoy’s lawyer Adem Vokshi said Turkey did not provide enough evidence to justify its request for extradition. This means that if there is new evidence, the prosecution can refile the request.

The decision to arrest Toksoy made Kosovo the first country in the Balkans to detain a Turkish teacher for alleged links to Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen, who Ankara alleges is the head of a terrorist movement.

Turkey claims that Toksoy is one of the leaders of the Gulen movement, which it calls the ‘Fethullah Terrorist Organisation’, or ‘FETO’, which it accuses of being behind last July’s failed coup.

Ankara says Toksoy was in Kosovo gathering funds for the movement, which he would then send to Turkey. But these claims have been denied by Toksoy.

The court in Pristina on October 29 heard that in Kosovo, Toksoy worked as a coordinator for the NGO Atmosfera, which runs the Hasan Nahi school in Prizren.

Gulen, a former ally of Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan, now lives in exile in the US and insists he had nothing to do with the attempted coup.

That has not stopped Ankara from arresting more than 60,000 of his alleged followers in Turkey, closing schools and colleges linked to him and demanding that foreign governments do the same.

Turkish officials have pressured Kosovo and other states in the Balkan region to suppress Gulen-linked NGOs and colleges and hand over alleged Gulen movement members.

In Turkey, several hundred thousand people from the army, police, academia, media, NGOs and the private sector have also lost their jobs in the post-coup crackdown.

The international community must watch the elections on 21 December 2017. The people of Catalonia need to watch those elections as well. There are sufficient grounds for concern. Madrid has effectively annexed Catalonia and abolished its regional government. Therefore Madrid is responsible for the conduct of the Catalan elections.

By Matthew Parish*

Catalonia has regional elections on 21 December 2017: in barely a week’s time. The circumstances of those elections are that after a contested referendum on Catalan independence on 1 October 2017, Madrid imposed an early regional ballot upon Catalonia. This was an attempt to resolve a political crisis. To achieve that goal through deployment of the democratic will, it is essential that those elections be free and fair.

One of the principal axioms in any democratic election is that the people who manage the procedures of voting and counting ballots are independent. They must undertake their duties with impartiality. If there are any doubts about this, public confidence in democracy may be undermined. The usual way this issue is resolved is to have public servants of undisputed neutrality who organise the election process. To ensure that the people who manage the voting process are independent, there must be rule of law. Elections should take place in the context of a legal system in which decisions of the people who arrange those elections are subject to impartial legal review whenever colourable irregularities are alleged.

Spain has low rule of law. Some of the significant evidence for this is as follows. Spain’s biggest ever corruption scandals are called Gürtel and Bárcenas. They involve allegations involving criminal expropriation of large sums of money in favour of the Partido Popular, Spain’s governing party in Madrid; and its Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. The investigating Judge, Baltasar Garzón, was suspended not just once but twice on absurd pretexts. Now he is off the case and it has stalled.

One of the accusations against Garzón was that he had investigated Franco-era war crimes against Partido Popular politicians with too much vigour. European institutions have expressed concerns about the independence of the Spanish judiciary and its overly intimate associations with the Partido Popular. The Partido Popular is a successor of a political party associated with one or more Ministers of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain between 1939 and 1975.

A national paramilitary police unit, the Guardia Civil, was engaged by the Spanish central government (controlled by the Partido Popular) to stop the 1 October 2017 Catalan independence referendum. This took place even though, although legally controversial, the conduct of that election did not amount to any crime.

If it was unlawful to hold the referendum (and that remains an issue of legal controversy), then this was purely a civil wrong and not a criminal matter. Spain’s Criminal Code does not criminalise the holding of referenda or ballots. Therefore no branch of the Police was properly involved in trying to stop it.

The Guardia Civil were deployed to Catalonia without legal authority. They confiscated ballot boxes. They attacked people trying to vote, reportedly including firing baton rounds at unarmed voters. They used violence to close polling stations. Whatever the legality of the referendum, the Guardia Civil had no plausible legal authority to do these things.

Subsequently the Spanish courts imprisoned Catalan politicians and activists involved in the independence movement. They did this without those people being accused of any crime. Some Catalan politicians were released only upon payment of bail amounts wholly disproportionate to their incomes or assets. No obvious grounds for detention of peaceful politicians were made out. These politicians were not fugitives; they attended Court voluntarily. Four remain in prison, even though some of their names will appear on ballot papers in the forthcoming elections on 21 December 2017.

Some Catalan politicians fled to Brussels, fearing imminent unjustified detention. The Spanish government issued European Arrest Warrants against them, but then withdrew them. They did this when they realised that extradition procedures before the Belgian courts were bound to fail. The Madrid judiciary had opened investigations against peaceful politicians for medieval crimes, such as sedition and rebellion. No modern democracy respects crimes like this in the absence of established violent intent which was missing.

By obscure constitutional dictate, Madrid dismissed the entire Catalan regional government and its parliament, and imposed rule by decree. The abolished institutions had been democratically elected. Nothing like this has been seen in a modern democracy since the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis. That led to the resignation in disgrace of the Australian Governor-General, after he had dismissed the democratically elected Australian Prime Minister.

The government in Madrid has banned public bodies in Catalonia from displaying the colour yellow. That is because yellow is alleged to be associated with nationalism. Madrid has made orders to remove cultural objects from a Catalan museum. Madrid has announced that there will be no election observers for the 21 December 2017 elections, because the law forbids them. But there is no Spanish legal rule that says this. The law is flexible on the point. The 2015 Spanish elections to the Cortes Generales were overseen by OSCE. Spain routinely sends election observers to other parts of the world.

Why did Madrid withdraw the European Arrest Warrants against Carles Puigdemont, the deposed President of Catalonia’s regional government, and his colleagues exiled to Brussels? Normally international extradition proceedings can be long and complex, because it is a defence to extradition that the crime of which one is accused is political. That condition would be satisfied for Puigdemont and his colleagues.

The European Arrest Warrant system, applicable throughout the European Union, is intended to expedite extradition proceedings. It abolishes the rule on political exceptions to extradition. It also abolishes the so-called “double criminality” rule. Under this rule, extradition requires that the activities of a person must be a crime under both the law of the state requesting extradition and the law of the state receiving the request. The European Arrest Warrant system removes this rule between EU member states for several broad categories of crimes.

The Spanish government had a risk in pursuing extradition proceedings. The Belgian courts might have ruled that not only were the activities of Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues not crimes under Belgian law; they are not crimes under Spanish law either. That is because the crimes of sedition and rebellion are vaguely defined under Spanish law. European law requires that the definitions of criminal offences be interpreted in light of the European Convention on Human Rights. To interpret historical Spanish legislation in a way that criminalises the holding of a peaceful referendum, might be regarded as infringing the European Convention. Therefore a Belgian court might rule that Spanish law and European human rights law render the criminal prosecution of peaceful Catalan politicians bogus. Spain would have been left looking ridiculous. Spain withdrew the European Arrest Warrants.

One instance of lack of Spain’s rule of law is Madrid’s decree that the 21 December 2017 Catalan regional elections will not involve the participation of election observers. The credibility of elections depends upon an independent election commission, accountable to a neutral legal procedure. That will not be available for the 21 December elections.

The company that will collects and disseminates the results is called Indra Systems. One of the major shareholders of Indra Systems, the Spanish sovereign wealth fund, has as its Chief Executive Officer a politician associated with the Partido Popular. This Chief Executive Officer was imposed by the Partido Popular. Partido Popular is a client of Indra Systems. Partido Popular is standing in the 21 December elections. Indra Systems will be counting the votes of its own client. That client is associated with a politician appointed by Partido Popular to the Board of the biggest shareholder of Indra Systems. This is a conflict of interests.

The people of Catalonia cannot trust an electoral system in which a private company that has such close commercial and political relations with one of the political parties standing in the election is organising and counting the votes. The fear is that this private company may not be neutral. It is a commercial company, and it has a commercial motive to be biased. It is motivated to help its client win, because then its client may send it more work and therefore more money.

Things get worse. Indra Systems is accused of participating in a corruption scheme involving the Partido Popular. The Economic Crimes Unit of the National Police has accused Indra Systems associates of paying bribes / kickbacks to the Partido Popular and/or its senior politicians; diverting funds from state contracts for other purposes; and maintaining inappropriately close relationships with the Partido Popular and its senior politicians. These accusations have not yet been proven. But they have been reported widely, and the accusations are made by a credible source. That source is the Spanish police division in charge of major corruption cases. Whether or not these allegations are true, the voters in Catalonia may justifiably fear whether Indra Systems can be trusted until the matter has been resolved. Indra Systems should step aside until the allegations are resolved. The fact that Indra Systems is involved in the Catalan elections in the interim is concerning.

It is important to repeat that Indra Systems is a private company. This means that Indra Systems cannot be the subject of the same sorts of legal proceedings as if it were a public entity. Organs of the public administration can have their decisions reviewed by administrative courts, whereas private companies generally cannot. The use of a private company to organise elections deprives citizens of important legal rights they would have if a public body were doing the same thing.

This point is worth illustrating with a practical example. Counting paper ballots inevitably involves some risk of inaccuracies. That is because the process of counting is repetitive, and mistakes may be made. A typical margin of error might be 0.5%. Therefore it is normal in democracies that if a candidate loses a vote by 0.5%, he or she may ask for a recount. If the organisation counting the ballots refuses to grant a recount, their decision may be subject to judicial review in an administrative court. But if the organisation counting the ballots is a private institution, that sort of remedy may not be available.

These concerns of bias are compounded by multiple structural problems in the electoral system that have mostly received scant attention. Once an election is called, the local administrations send out registration cards to voters at their registered addresses, confirming that they are eligible to vote and informing them of the polling station where they should vote. These voter records of names and addresses are kept by the National Institute of Statistics, INE, in Madrid.

A substantial number of people change address between elections. The procedure for updating one’s address is cumbersome, and there is no compelling reason to do it (other than receiving one’s electoral registration card). Therefore a significant proportion of the electorate is not registered to vote at the correct address.

In principle these voters can still vote. They can do this by presenting their identifications at the polling station referred to on the registration card sent to their wrong address and which they are therefore presumed, in most cases, not to have received. However this is a lot of effort. Without their registration card, the putative voter must research for themselves where their local polling station will be. Studies show that the more difficult it is to vote, the less likely it is that a person will vote. They may not want to travel across town, and they may be disinclined to research where they are registered to vote. If a voter does find the polling station where they are registered, then they can vote just by showing identification and without proving their address.

The very high turnouts typical in Catalan elections are therefore surprising, given that so many people may not have received their electoral registration cards. Nevertheless Catalans are enthusiastic voters, at least in officially sanctioned elections. The 2015 regional elections to the Catalan parliament were called prematurely and with short notice. This is the same as the 21 December 2017 elections. The 2015 elections had a registered turnout of some 74.9%. This is remarkable given the extent of incorrect voter address records. This time, turnout is predicted to be even higher.

One curious feature of the Catalan elections is the number of postal votes. In 2015 this was some 3.5% of ballots cast. That is high. It is all the more remarkable given the procedure adopted for postal votes. A postal voter must present his or her ballot paper at a post office or foreign embassy by a stipulated date, together with a copy of their voter registration card (which they will presumably not have received if their address is not correctly registered). For the 21 December 2017 elections, the deadline for registering as a postal voter expired on Tuesday 12 December 2017.

Therefore the earliest that Electoral Census Office could have mailed the voting forms to postal voters was 13 December 2017. The earliest a postal voter could reasonably have received that voting form was Thursday 14 December 2017: assuming 24-hour postal delivery. The deadline for filing one’s postal vote is Sunday 17 December 2017. On the most optimistic (and unlikely) scenario, the time for making one’s postal vote is three calendar days: of which two days are the weekend.

A 2017 repetition in the high number of 2015 postal votes would be unusual. It would give rise to grounds for concern. A high turnout, given the large proportion of voters whose addresses are incorrectly registered, also gives cause for concern. Those concerns are magnified by the fact that the company responsible for arranging the elections has intimate and allegedly corrupt commercial relations with one of the parties standing in the election.

Those concerns are further compounded by the absence of election observers upon decree of Madrid. They are compounded still further by the fact that because the entity organising the election is not a public body, its decisions are not subject to judicial review as they would be were it an administrative organisation. Those concerns are amplified still further by the low quality of Spain’s rule of law.

What is a Catalan voter, faced with these concerns, to do? The answer is that they must vote. The best way of defusing the risk of electoral fraud is to vote. If real people actually vote, then electoral fraud becomes harder. If people do not vote, then other people may vote on their behalves. People who do not vote may have their votes stolen from them. This is electoral fraud. The best way of reducing the risk of electoral fraud is to vote, so that fraudsters cannot steal your vote.

The international community must watch the elections on 21 December 2017. The people of Catalonia need to watch those elections as well. There are sufficient grounds for concern. Madrid has effectively annexed Catalonia and abolished its regional government. Therefore Madrid is responsible for the conduct of the Catalan elections.

There are reasons to be concerned that those elections may not be entirely free and fair. To the extent that they are not, the participation of Indra Systems indicates that any irregularities may lean in favour of Partido Popular and its proxy parties. Everyone must be vigilant. Everyone must vote, no matter how arduous or inconvenient. Rule of law and democracy go hand in hand. If one is jeopardised, then the other will surely suffer the same fate.

*Matthew Parish is an international lawyer based in Geneva, Switzerland and a former UN peacekeeper. He is a scholar of ethnic conflict and civil war, and he has published two books and over two hundred articles. He is an Honorary Professor of Civil Law and Litigation at the University of Leicester and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Bilan magazine named him as one of the three hundred most influential people in Switzerland. www.matthewparish.com

“The personal is political” is a slogan that has been around for a long time, used especially though not exclusively by radical feminists.

In practice it has served as an exhortation that people make ideology the sole dimension of their personal identity, that they set aside all other bases on which to evaluate their relations with other people and order their conduct even in their most intimate dealings with others. (Here is a recent example so perfect it seems like a caricature.)

To carry on one’s life in accordance with such an exhortation is a recipe for endless misery. The misery comes from the entailed sacrifice of the countless opportunities for connecting fruitfully with others through, for example, family relations, friendships, comradeship, and partnerships based on non-ideological commonalities such as neighborhood, shared artistic appreciation, and participation in team efforts in sports and other activities.

The permanence of the misery comes from the nature of politics, which is an endless struggle that, as many mad ideologists in power have demonstrated all too well, can be terminated only by death. Politics is, among other things, a war that cannot be won unless all one’s ideological opponents are slaughtered and their ideas somehow suppressed so deeply that they too have been destroyed.

This latter, however, is a result that even the most ruthless ideologue in the political saddle is unlikely to achieve. As the saying goes, you can’t kill an idea. Even if you kill everyone who now embraces an idea, the idea itself lies dormant, waiting for someone to rediscover and embrace it in the future.

“The personal is political,” if taken in the sense that everything about a person must be forced into the Procrustean Bed of an ideology, guarantees a life of bleak, endless, and futile struggle, which is all the more tragic because it was never necessary or wise in the first place.

This article was published at The Beacon

Speaking on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu said there is a “serious determination” among the international community to recognize Palestine. The diplomat added that, once the world acknowledges the claim, he is confident there will be an influx of embassies and other diplomatic services into what would then be the new state’s capital.

“We need to succeed in this,” Cavusoglu said, according the Associated Press. “Once we succeed, embassies will open in the independent Palestinian state’s capital, East Jerusalem.”

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an international group comprising 57 states, met in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss their reaction to the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision, taken last week by President Donald Trump, drew a strong rebuke from the leaders of Islamic countries who, in their final declaration, also recognized East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

“We declare East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine and invite all countries to recognize the State of Palestine and East Jerusalem as its occupied capital,” read the OIC statement following the summit in Istanbul, as cited by Reuters.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, dismissed the declaration, saying that “the truth will win in the end and many countries will certainly recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and also move their embassies.”

Contrary to international law, Israel considers the entire city of Jerusalem to be its capital. Over the years, there have been various efforts to recognize East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, but Israel has never permitted Palestinian government offices to be opened in the area.

A wave of populism has been gaining ground in the West since 2012. This column uses regional data for 26 European countries to explore how the impact of the Great Recession on labour markets has affected populist voting, political attitudes, and trust. The results indicate a strong link between unemployment and voting for non-mainstream (especially populist) parties. Unemployment is also correlated with increasing distrust of national and European parliaments.

By Yann Algan, Sergei Guriev, Elias Papaioannou and Evgenia Passari*

A spectre is haunting Europe and the West – the spectre of populism. The UK’s vote to exit the EU and the US elections in 2016 have served as a wakeup call to Anglo-Saxon elites. In continental Europe, the first significant successes of anti-establishment politicians came even before the French presidential elections and the German elections of 2017 (where Front National and AfD obtained considerable vote shares). Populist parties in Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Spain, and the UK have been gaining substantial ground since 2012.

The recent wave of populism is different from the previous wave that was mostly concentrated in Latin America (Dornbusch and Edwards 1991, Acemoglu et al. 2013). As argued by Rodrik (2017), the current wave is not driven so much by a left-wing demand for redistribution; instead, it is related to the rejection of globalisation (trade integration, financial globalisation, and immigration). This issue is prominent in the agenda of both radical-left and extreme-right parties. It seems that the left–right divide is being replaced by the confrontation between parochial and cosmopolitan values (De Vries 2017). At least to some extent, this has been driven by the vulnerability of the lower-middle classes to job polarisation caused by trade and technological progress, which in turn has brought up outsourcing and increased competition from low-wage countries, and automation (Autor et al. 2017, Colantone and Staning 2016, Becker et al. 2017). On top of these medium-term developments, economic insecurity in Europe has increased in the aftermath of the Global Crisis as unemployment has grown substantially. And despite the European recovery and declining labour force participation, unemployment is falling quite slowly, especially in the South.

In our recent paper, we study the labour market impact of the Great Recession on populist voting and political attitudes and trust in Europe (Algan et al. 2017). We conduct the analysis at the regional level, exploiting time variation in unemployment, voting, and attitudes/beliefs in more than 220 regions in 26 European countries in 2000-2017.

Unemployment and voting for non-mainstream parties

We start analysing the relationship between voting for non-mainstream parties and the change in unemployment before and after the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We assign non-mainstream parties into four (not mutually exclusive) categories:

• Far right (e.g. Golden Dawn in Greece)
• Extreme left (e.g. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain)
• Populist (e.g. UKIP in the UK, the Five Star Movement in Italy)
• Euro-sceptic (e.g. UKIP in the UK, Jobbik in Hungary).

We find a strong link between increases in unemployment and voting for non-mainstream (especially populist) parties. Figures 1a-1b illustrate these patterns. The estimated magnitude is considerable – a one percentage point increase in unemployment is associated with a one percentage point increase in the populist vote. The effects are strongest in the South, but the relationship is also present in the East and the Centre; it is not significant in the North. Interestingly, in the South we observe a tight association between unemployment and voting for radical-left parties, while in the North unemployment correlates with voting for far-right and populist parties – a pattern that is also present in Eastern Europe, where people are turning their backs on communist and far-left parties and moving to xenophobic and anti-European parties.

Figure 1a Change in voting for anti-establishment parties and change in total unemployment, before and after the Crisis

Figure 1b Change in voting for populist parties and change in total unemployment, before and after the Crisis

Our methodology accounts for time-invariant regional factors (related to geography or culture) and general time trends (pan-European or across four groups of countries); however, the estimates may pick up some unobserved or hard-to-account-for regional time-varying variables. In order to advance on the identification of the causal effect of unemployment on populist vote, we extract the component of (or ‘instrument’) the change in unemployment over the crisis explained by the pre-crisis share of construction. Construction and real estate played a major role during both the build-up and the burst of the crisis around the world. And the construction share correlates positively with rising unemployment post 2008-2009. We find a strong effect of an increase in unemployment on the rise of populism. We check alternative explanations of the construction-unemployment-voting nexus and find that it does not seem to reflect other time-varying regional variables, such as immigration, corruption, or education.

We then use the vote by UK citizens in the June 2016 referendum to leave the EU as an ‘out-of-sample’ test of the Europe-wide results (for a thorough analysis of the correlates of the Brexit vote, see Becker et al. 2017). The results, summarised in Figures 2a-2b, show that increases in unemployment during the crisis period (2007–2015) – rather than the level of unemployment in 2015 – are strong predictors of voting for Brexit. We find similar results when we instrument changes in unemployment with the pre-crisis share of construction across the UK’s 379 electoral districts.

Figure 2a Vote to exit the EU and total unemployment, 2014

Figure 2b Vote to exit the EU and change in unemployment before and after the Crisis

Unemployment and political attitudes

Second, we try to identify the channel through which economic insecurity affects voting outcomes by looking at individual-level data on Europeans’ beliefs and attitudes from the European Social Survey covering the period 2000-2014. Similarly to the concurrent papers of Guiso et al. (2017) and Dustman et al. (2017), we find that an increase in regional unemployment results in a significant decline in confidence in national and European political institutions and, to a lesser extent, in trust in courts. Figures 3a-b illustrate these post- and pre-crisis patterns.

Figure 3a Difference in trust in national parliament and difference in total unemployment, before and after the Crisis

Figure 3b Difference in trust in the European Parliament and difference in total unemployment, before and after the Crisis

The analysis uncovers some additional regularities. The association between unemployment and general trust is weak and not statistically significant in most specifications. Also, unemployment does not correlate with distrust in the police or the UN, suggesting that Europeans blame the rise in unemployment on the European and national political establishments. So it is not surprising that in regions with the largest increases in unemployment, voters support populists in national elections (Algan et al. 2017) and report a higher vote for populists in European elections (Dustman et al. 2017). This also explains the increased supply of populist rhetoric and policies offered by new and even old parties (Guiso et al. 2017). We also find that unemployment does not correlate with respondents’ political self-identification on the traditional left–right axis. Also, despite the fact that many new parties have emerged, respondents in crisis-hit areas are more likely to report that no party is close to their views.

We also examine the impact of unemployment on beliefs about whether European integration should go further or whether it has already gone too far. On average, changes in unemployment are not related with the view that the EU has gone too far nor with attitudes that the EU unification should proceed. However, this average non-result masks heterogeneity. In the South, increases in unemployment are correlated with aspirations for deeper integration. In contrast, in the North and in the Centre, in more crisis-hit regions respondents believe that the European project has gone too far.

The results hold for both men and women, for younger and older cohorts. The relationship between unemployment and distrust in national and European institutions is stronger for non-college graduates. This result is in line with the findings of Autor et al. (2016, 2017), Che et al. (2016) and Colantone and Stanig (2016), who relate populist voting and political polarisation to depressed wages among unskilled workers fuelled by rising competition from low/middle-income countries.

Policy implications

Our results imply that increased unemployment results in loss of trust in political institutions and in increased support for anti-establishment populists. To reduce unemployment, European policymakers were forced to pursue unpopular structural reforms, sometimes amidst massive austerity policies. However, reforms require people’s trust – voters need to be confident that the future gains from painful reforms will be shared broadly rather than captured by selfish economic and political elites. If there is no trust in the political system, reforms cannot be easily implemented – and unemployment will remain high. At the same time, the rising distrust towards courts is alarming, as legal institutions are pillars of Western democracies and capitalist societies. The current momentum of recovery in the European economy offers a chance to break the vicious unemployment-distrust-populism circle. This opportunity should not be missed.

*About the authors:
Yann Algan is Professor of Economics at Paris School of Economics and University Paris East

Sergei Guriev, Chief Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; Professor of Economics (on leave), Sciences Po Paris; CEPR Research Fellow

Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics, London Business School; CEPR Research Affiliate

Evgenia Passari, Assistant Professor in Financial Economics, Université Paris-Dauphine

References:
Acemoglu, D, G Egorov and K Sonin. (2013), “A political theory of populism”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(2): 771.

Algan, Y, S Guriev, E Papaioannou, and E Passari (2017), “The European trust crisis and the rise of populism”, CEPR, Discussion Paper 12444, forthcoming in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

Autor, D H, D Dorn, G H Hanson and K Majlesi (2016), “Importing political polarization? The electoral consequences of rising trade exposure”, MIT Department of Economics, Working paper.

Autor, D H, D Dorn, G H Hanson and K Majlesi (2017), “A note on the effect of rising trade exposure on the 2016 presidential elections”, MIT Department of Economics, Working paper.

Becker, S O, T Fetzer and D Novy (2017), “Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-level analysis“, Economic Policy 32(1).

Che, Y, Y Lu, J R Pierce, P K Schott and Z Tao (2016), “Does trade liberalization with China influence US elections?”. NBER Workgin Paper No w22178.

Colantone, I and P Stanig (2016), “Global competition and Brexit”, BAFFI CAREFIN Centre Research Paper, No 2016-44; forthcoming in American Political Science Review.

Colantone, I and P Stanig (2017), “The trade origins of economic nationalism: Import competition and voting behavior in Western Europe”, American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming.

De Vries, C E (2017), “The cosmopolitian-parochial divide: What the 2017 Dutch election result tells us about political change in the Netherlands and beyond”, Journal of European Public Policy, forthcoming.

Dornbusch, R and S Edwards (1991). The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Dustmann, C, B Eichengreen, S Otten, A Sapir, G Tabellini and G Zoega (2017), Europe’s trust deficit: Causes and remedies, Monitoring International Integration 1, CEPR Press.

Guiso, L, H Herrera and M Morelli (2017), “Populism: Demand and supply of populism“, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), Working Paper n°1703.

Rodrik, D (2017), “Populism and the economics of globalization”, NBER, Working Paper No w23559.

A release of documents reveals former FBI Director James Comey’s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited several times before he went public with his findings in the case. Comey stated it was “reasonably likely” Clinton was hacked.

FBI documents obtained by Fox News on Thursday show that one of several edits to Comey’s original draft statement written in advance of his interview with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Comey initially wrote that Clinton and her colleagues’ handling of classified information was “grossly negligent.” This was later changed to say “extremely careless,” in relation to how Clinton handled the information while she used a private email server during her tenure as the top US diplomat.

According to the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), the documents also reveal that Comey emailed a draft statement to a top FBI official, clearing Clinton of any wrongdoing two months prior to his official conclusion in the case.

In an early draft of his statement, Comey said that it was “reasonably likely” that “hostile actors” gained access to Clinton’s private email server. That was later altered in the final statement to say it was “possible” the hostile actors gained access, Fox News reported.

The documents also show that Comey’s final statement removed a reference to the “sheer volume” of classified information discussed on Clinton’s private email server, according to Fox News.

Senator Johnson referred to these same documents when he sent a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday, inquiring about the edits to Comey’s initial draft statement.

In Johnson’s letter to Wray, he said: “While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey’s statement in at least three respects.”

Johnson also mentioned to Wray the legal ramifications related to the edits of Comey’s draft statement in the Clinton probe.

The language Comey used when he determined gross negligence “could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton’s handling of classified material,” Johnson said, according to Fox News. “The edited statement deleted the reference to gross negligence – a legal threshold for mishandling classified material – and instead replaced it with an exculpatory sentence.”

Further edits showed that references to specific potential violations of statutes on “gross negligence” regarding classified information and “misdemeanor handling,” had also been removed before Comey’s final statement concluding the investigation.

Johnson noted “repeated edits to reduce Secretary Clinton’s culpability in mishandling classified information.”

Johnson also raised concerns to Wray about text messages from 2016, showing discontent for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, exchanged between former FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who had worked on both Comey’s Clinton probe, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged ties between Trump and Russia, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Page had also worked on both Mueller and Comey’s probes.

Strzok was the individual who changed the language in Comey’s draft statement from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless,” Fox News reported.

Strzok exchanged the messages with Page while he was working on the Mueller probe, but it should be noted that at the time of the text exchange, Page was not working on Mueller’s probe with Strzok.

“This effort, seen in light of the personal animus toward then-candidate Trump by senior FBI agents leading the Clinton investigation and their apparent desire to create an ‘insurance policy’ against Mr. Trump’s election, raise profound questions about the FBI’s role and possible interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Johnson wrote, according to Fox News.

The Republican senator also mentioned the time frame in which the edits were made to Comey’s statement.

“In summary, the edits to Director Comey’s public statement, made months prior to the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI’s public evaluation of the implications of her actions,” according to Fox News.

Johnson also mentioned to Wray his claim that Comey emailed a draft statement to a top FBI official, clearing Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in May of 2016, two months ahead of the completion of two dozen interviews the FBI had to finish in relation to the probe, including with Clinton herself.

The documents show that the at the top of Comey’s May 2016 email, he wrote: “I’ve been trying to imagine what it would look like if I decided to do an FBI only press event to close out our work and hand the matter to the DOJ,” according to Fox News.

The former FBI director continued the email: “To help shape our discussions of whether that, or something different, makes sense, I have spent some time crafting what I would say, which follows. In my imagination, I don’t see me taking any questions. Here is what it might look like.”

The Johnson-led Senate Homeland Security Committee is overseeing the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel’s probe into whether Comey violated the Hatch Act with his July 2016 statement. The purpose of the Hatch Act is to limit the political activities of federal employees.

Researchers from the Digital Geography at the University of Helsinki have been studying whether social media data could be used to understand visitor’s activities in national parks and most recent results are presented in Scientific reports: Instagram, Flickr, or Twitter: Assessing the usability of social media data for visitor monitoring in protected areas.

National parks are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation and provide recreational benefits to humans. Park management and planning require up-to-date information about visitor amounts and their activities.

Collaboration with national park authorities in Finland and South Africa

“As conservation authorities often lack resources to carry out traditional visitor surveys, social media offer a novel and cheaper means of collecting such information”, said Dr. Enrico Di Minin, a conservation scientist investigating nature-based tourism benefits.

At the University of Helsinki, the researchers from the Digital Geography Lab have been studying whether social media data could be used to understand visitor’s activities in national parks. By collaborating with national park authorities in Finland and South Africa, the scientists have been able to investigate whether social media data could provide reliable information to support decision making in national parks. Traditional data sources obtained from these collaborators have made it possible to compare whether social media data could be used in place of visitor surveys and counters.

Instagram clearly works the best

In the recent article the scientists assessed the usability of different social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter and Flickr) in estimating the visitation rates across 56 national parks in Finland and South Africa.

“We found that the visitor rates and the popularity of the park extracted from social media data followed closely the official visitor statistics. However, Instagram clearly worked the best”, said Dr. Henrikki Tenkanen, the lead author of the article.

Earlier work from the group also showed that social media data can be used to understand what visitors prefer to see in the parks and what kind of activities they conduct. “It is interesting to see that what people state in the interviews they value about nature, is also what they actually post about when visiting the park”, says post-doctoral researcher Anna Hausmann, who has been studying the preferences and sense of place of people in African national parks.

Emerging activities: Winter biking and kite surfing

Social media feeds can also be used for observing emerging trends within protected areas. “In Finnish Lapland, we were able to capture the emergence of new activities like winter biking and kite surfing by looking at the content of social media posts that were not captured by traditional visitor surveys”, said PhD candidate Vuokko Heikinheimo.

The use of social media platforms is continuously increasing worldwide. This opens completely new possibilities to understand what and where people experience and value.

“Although social media data is seemingly chaotic and sometimes biased, it can provide increased understanding on the use of natural areas,” said associate professor Tuuli Toivonen, the leader of the research group.

Nearly one in three 12th graders report past year use of some kind of vaping device, raising concerns about the impact on their health. What they say is in the device, however, ranges from nicotine, to marijuana, to “just flavoring.”

The survey also suggests that use of hookahs and regular cigarettes is declining. These findings come from the 2017 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of eighth, 10th and 12th graders in schools nationwide, reported today by the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, along with scientists from the University of Michigan, who conduct the annual research. The survey asks teens about “any vaping” to measure their use of electronic vaporizers. It is important to note that some research suggests that many teens don’t actually know what is in the device they are using, and even if they read the label, not all labeling is consistent or accurate.

The survey shows that 27.8 percent of high school seniors reported “vaping” in the year prior to the survey, which was taken in the beginning of 2017. When asked what they thought was in the mist they inhaled the last time they used the vaping device, 51.8 percent of 12th graders said, “just flavoring,” 32.8 percent said “nicotine,” and 11.1 percent said “marijuana” or “hash oil.” The survey also asks about vaping with specific substances during the past month, with more than one in ten 12th graders saying they use nicotine, and about one in twenty reporting using marijuana in the device.

“We are especially concerned because the survey shows that some of the teens using these devices are first-time nicotine users,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIDA. “Recent research suggests that some of them could move on to regular cigarette smoking, so it is critical that we intervene with evidence-based efforts to prevent youth from using these products.”

The survey also indicates that while opioid overdose rates remain high among adults, teens are misusing opioid pain medications less frequently than a decade ago, and are at historic lows with some of the commonly used pain medications. For example, past year misuse of the opioid pain reliever Vicodin among high school seniors dropped to its lowest point since the survey began measuring it in 2002, and it is now at just 2 percent. This compares to last year’s 2.9 percent, and reflects a long-term decline from a peak of 10.5 percent in 2003.

In overall pain medication misuse, described as “narcotics other than heroin” in the survey, past year misuse has dropped significantly among 12th graders since its survey peak in 2004–to 4.2 percent from 9.5 percent. Interestingly, teens also think these drugs are not as easy to get as they used to be. Only 35.8 percent of 12th graders said they were easily available in the 2017 survey, compared to more than 54 percent in 2010.

“The decline in both the misuse and perceived availability of opioid medications may reflect recent public health initiatives to discourage opioid misuse to address this crisis,” added Volkow. “However, with each new class of teens entering the challenging years of middle and high school, we must remain vigilant in our prevention efforts targeting young people, the adults who nurture and influence them, and the health care providers who treat them.”

The 2017 survey also confirms the recent trend that daily marijuana use has become as, or more, popular than daily cigarette smoking among teens, representing a dramatic flip in use between these two drugs since the survey began in 1975. In the past decade, daily marijuana use among 12th graders has remained relatively consistent, but daily cigarette smoking has dropped.

When combining responses in all three grades, data suggest past year marijuana use is up slightly to 23.9 percent, from 22.6 percent last year, but similar to 2015 rates (23.7 percent). However, because overall marijuana rates remain stable, researchers continue to carefully monitor any potential trends as they emerge. The survey indicates that significantly fewer teens now disapprove of regular marijuana use, with 64.7 percent of 12th graders voicing disapproval, compared to 68.5 percent last year. The survey reports that high school seniors in states with medical marijuana laws are more likely to have vaped marijuana and consumed marijuana edibles than their counterparts without such laws. For example, survey data suggests that 16.7 percent of 12th graders in states with medical marijuana laws report consuming edibles, compared to 8.3 percent in states without such laws.

Inhalant use–the one category of drug use that is typically higher among younger students–is back up to 2015 levels among eighth graders, measured at 4.7 percent, compared to 3.8 percent in 2016. However, rates are still low, showing a significant decline from peak rates in 1995, when 12.8 percent of eighth graders reported using an inhalant to get high in the past year.

Overall, illicit drug use other than marijuana and inhalants, remains the lowest in the history of the survey in all three grades, with 13.3 percent of 12th graders reporting past year use, compared to 9.4 percent of 10th graders and 5.8 percent of eighth graders. These successes underscore the importance of continuing evidence-based prevention programs targeting children approaching their teenage years.

After years of steady decline, binge drinking appears to have leveled off this year, and public health researchers will be closely watching these behaviors in the coming years. However, rates are still down significantly from the survey’s peak years. Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks in a row sometime in the last two weeks.

“While binge drinking among eighth, 10th, and 12th grade students remains well below the levels seen a decade ago, the downward trend in binge drinking appears to have slowed somewhat in recent years,” said George F. Koob, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “This may signal a need for more emphasis on alcohol prevention strategies in this age group.”

Monitoring the Future has been conducted by researchers at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor since 1975, expanding the study periodically to include additional grades and topic areas. It is the only large-scale federal government survey that releases findings the same year the data is collected.

Other highlights from the 2017 survey:

Illegal and Illicit Drugs:

• Reported heroin and methamphetamine use remain very low among the nation’s teens at less than 0.5 percent in past year measures.
• Cocaine use remains low in teen students. For example, 12th graders report past year use at 2.7 percent, after a peak of 6.2 percent in 1999.
• Past year use of anabolic steroids, which peaked at 2.5 percent among the nation’s 12th graders in 2004, is now at 1.1 percent.
• Past year use of LSD among 12th graders is at 3.3 percent, reflecting a modest but significant increase in the past five years. Use still remains lower compared to its peak in 1996 of 8.8 percent.
• Past year use of K2/Spice, referred to as “synthetic marijuana” in the survey, was reported at 3.7 percent among 12th graders, down from 11.3 percent five years ago. There was a significant drop in past year use among eighth graders, from 2.7 percent in 2016 to 2 percent this year.

Other Prescription Drugs:

• Reflecting an historic low, high school seniors reported past year misuse of the prescription opioid Oxycontin at 2.7 percent, compared to 5.5 percent at its peak in 2005.
• Misuse of prescription stimulants, commonly prescribed for ADHD symptoms, is mostly stable compared to last year, with 5.5 percent of 12th graders reporting past year misuse of Adderall. In fact, this represents a significant drop for this age group from five years ago when misuse peaked at 7.6 percent.
• Past year misuse of the therapeutic stimulant Ritalin among 12th graders is at 1.3 percent, nearly a record low since 2001 when it was first measured at 5.1 percent. There was a significant decline this year among eighth graders’ past year misuse, reported at 0.4 percent in 2017, down from 0.8 percent last year, and significantly down from 2.9 in 2001. Other Tobacco Products:
• Hookah smoking has dropped for the second year in a row with 10.1 percent of seniors reporting past year use compared to 13 percent last year, down from 22.9 percent in 2014. The survey began measuring hookah smoking in 2010.
• As for little cigars, 13.3 percent of high school seniors say they smoked little cigars in the past year, from a peak of 23.1 percent in 2010, when it was first included in the survey.

Attitudes and Availability:

The survey also measures attitudes about drug use, including perceived availability and harmfulness, as well as disapproval of specific drugs. Generally, attitudes grow more favorable towards drug use as teens get older.

• In 2017, 79.8 percent of eighth graders said they disapprove of regularly vaping nicotine, but that number drops to 71.8 percent among 12th graders.
• Only 14.1 percent of 12th graders see “great risk” in smoking marijuana occasionally, down from 17.1 percent last year and a staggering drop from 40.6 percent in 1991, but similar to rates when the survey was started in 1975 (18.1 percent).
• There was a significant change in how eighth graders view K2/Spice (which the survey calls “synthetic marijuana”). In 2017, 23 percent said trying it once or twice would put users at great risk, compared to 27.5 percent in 2016.
• The survey indicated that 23.3 percent of 10th graders say it is easy to get tranquilizers, up from 20.5 percent last year.

Overall, 43,703 students from 360 public and private schools participated in this year’s MTF survey. Since 1975, the survey has measured how teens report their drug, alcohol, and cigarette use and related attitudes in 12th graders nationwide. Eighth and 10th graders were added to the survey in 1991. Survey participants generally report their drug use behaviors across three time periods: lifetime, past year, and past month. Questions are also asked about daily cigarette and marijuana use. NIDA has provided funding for the survey since its inception to a team of investigators at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, currently led by Dr. Richard Miech. MTF is funded under grant number DA001411.

A team of scientists from World Weather Attribution, including researchers from Rice University and other institutions in the United States and Europe, have found that human-caused climate change made the record rainfall that fell over Houston during Hurricane Harvey roughly three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.

The study is available online in Environmental Research Letters.

“The takeaway from this paper is that Harvey was more intense because of today’s climate, and storms like Harvey are more likely in today’s climate,” said study co-author Antonia Sebastian, a postdoctoral research associate with Rice’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. “It highlights the need to consider that our hazards are changing over time, and that we should be considering those changes in the design of our infrastructure.”

Sebastian’s co-authors included Dutch researchers from both the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in The Hague,

Netherlands, and English and U.S. researchers from the University of Oxford, Princeton University and Princeton-based Climate Central. The team is part of World Weather Attribution, an international effort to analyze and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events, such as extreme rainfall, heat waves and droughts. SSPEED is not affiliated with World Weather Attribution.

Sebastian has spent a decade studying urban flooding and flood risks in Houston, first as a doctoral student at Rice and later as a research associate at SSPEED. She was completing a one-year visiting appointment at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands when Harvey struck Houston, and she was asked to participate in the World Weather Attribution study by lead author Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, senior researcher at KNMI, and Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

Van Oldenborgh said, “This multimethod analysis, drawing upon both observed rainfall data and high-resolution climate models, confirms that heavy rainfall events are increasing substantially across the Gulf Coast region because of human interference with our climate system.”

Harvey made landfall Aug. 25 near Corpus Christi, Texas, as a Category 4 hurricane and stalled. As a tropical storm, it dropped more than 30 inches of rain on Southeast Texas and caused record catastrophic flooding in Houston and the surrounding region. In east Harris County, a record 51.89 inches of rain — the highest storm total in U.S. history — was recorded over the six-day period from Aug. 25 to 30. During the first three days of the storm, 41.07 inches fell over Baytown.

For a specific location like Houston, the study found that the maximum observed rainfall is still extremely rare in today’s climate – less than a one-in-9,000-year event. However, the chances of seeing this much rain over a three-day period anywhere over the entire Gulf Coast region are much higher, but still small — less than once every 100 years.

“These results make a clear case for why climate change information should be incorporated into any plans for future improvements to Houston’s flood infrastructure,” Sebastian said. “The past is no longer an accurate predictor of present or future flood-related risks.”

Due to global warming, global temperatures in today’s climate are about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than pre-industrial temperatures, the researchers said. They estimated that even if Earth met the global targets set by the Paris Agreement of limiting warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, an event like Harvey will see a further increase of about a factor of three in probability.

“But if we miss those targets, the increase in frequency and intensity could be much higher,” said study co-author Karin van der Wiel, a postdoctoral researcher at KNMI.

“Although the rainfall levels from Harvey are extremely rare, additional factors, such as rapid population growth, urban growth policies and aging water-management infrastructure, further exacerbated the ultimate impacts of this storm,” van Aalst said. “Damage from storms like Harvey, Ike in 2008 and the Tax Day Flood of 2016 illustrate the importance of managing exposure and vulnerability when reducing the level of flood impacts in Houston.”

Ancient faeces from prehistoric burials on the Greek island of Kea have provided the first archaeological evidence for the parasitic worms described 2,500 years ago in the writings of Hippocrates – the most influential works of classical medicine.

University of Cambridge researchers Evilena Anastasiou and Piers Mitchell used microscopy to study soil formed from decomposed faeces recovered from the surface of pelvic bones of skeletons buried in the Neolithic (4th millennium BC), Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) and Roman periods (146 BC – 330 AD).

The Cambridge team worked on this project with Anastasia Papathanasiou and Lynne Schepartz, who are experts in the archaeology and anthropology of ancient Greece, and were based in Athens.

They found that eggs from two species of parasitic worm (helminths) were present: whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), and roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides). Whipworm was present from the Neolithic, and roundworm from the Bronze Age.

Hippocrates was a medical practitioner from the Greek island of Cos, who lived in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. He became famous for developing the concept of humoural theory to explain why people became ill.

This theory – in which a healthy body has a balance of four ‘humours’: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm – remained the accepted explanation for disease followed by doctors in Europe until the 17th century, over 2,000 years later.

Hippocrates and his students described many diseases in their medical texts, and historians have been trying to work out which diseases they were. Until now, they had to rely on the original written descriptions of intestinal worms to estimate which parasites may have infected the ancient Greeks. The Hippocratic texts called these intestinal worms Helmins strongyle, Ascaris, and Helmins plateia.

The researchers say that this new archaeological evidence identifies beyond doubt some of the species of parasites that infected people in the region. The findings are published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

“The Helmins strongyle worm in the ancient Greek texts is likely to have referred to roundworm, as found at Kea. The Ascaris worm described in the ancient medical texts may well have referred to two parasites, pinworm and whipworm, with the latter being found at Kea,” said study leader Piers Mitchell, from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

“Until now we only had estimates from historians as to what kinds of parasites were described in the ancient Greek medical texts. Our research confirms some aspects of what the historians thought, but also adds new information that the historians did not expect, such as that whipworm was present”.

The mention of infections by these parasites in the Hippocratic Corpus includes symptoms of vomiting up worms, diarrhoea, fevers and shivers, heartburn, weakness, and swelling of the abdomen.

Descriptions of treatment for intestinal worms in the Corpus were mainly through medicines, such as the crushed root of the wild herb seseli mixed with water and honey taken as a drink.

“Finding the eggs of intestinal parasites as early as the Neolithic period in Greece is a key advance in our field,” said Evilena Anastasiou, one of the study’s authors. “This provides the earliest evidence for parasitic worms in ancient Greece.”

“This research shows how we can bring together archaeology and history to help us better understand the discoveries of key early medical practitioners and scientists,” added Mitchell.

Smart security – the application of smart technologies for security – offers better defences against evolving threats. Nonetheless, harnessing its full potential requires reimagining operational practices and contemplating the associated ethical issues.

By Faizal A Rahman*

Technological advances are driving the law enforcement and private security sectors to adopt smart technologies for better defences against evolving terrorist and criminal threats. Two key considerations could determine how well the full potential of big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) which underpin smart technologies are harnessed.

First, social research suggests that technology adoption is not only about continuing current operational practices with greater efficiency. More importantly it is also about reimagining these practices so as to stay resilient in the face of evolving demands. Second, technology adoption is not only an operational decision and technological leap; it is also a multifaceted process that includes contemplating the associated ethical issues.

From Protection to Prevention

The private security sector – which supports law enforcement – adopts smart technologies (such as CCTV-based patrolling systems and drones) to protect public places and large-scale events. Human limitations in patrolling are overcome through automation to better detect potential threats. This first step towards technology adoption makes current operational practices more efficient through cost and productivity improvements.

The next step should reimagine these operational practices by seeking new opportunities to better support law enforcement’s intelligence collection, to prevent potential threats from materialising. For example, law enforcement’s efforts work well to preempt threats from known terrorists. However, lone wolves constitute a growing threat as they often do not arouse the suspicion of the authorities until their attacks unfold. Moreover, their unsophisticated tactics (such as knife attacks and vehicle ramming) can be discreet yet impactful as surveillance technologies may lack the capability to stop threats upon detection.

To this end, smart technologies deployed by the private security sector should over time develop more capacity to promptly channel information of possible terrorist pre-attack activities to the law enforcement sector for timely intelligence analyses. The law enforcement sector would need wider real-time access to private security systems, either on a voluntary or mandatory basis, to reduce blind-spots in surveillance and enhance information-sharing between both sectors. Currently, the commercial market is developing products that offer to integrate police and private security systems.

However, this next step could raise important ethical issues concerning augmented surveillance; this essentially uses AI for threat prediction (terrorist and criminal) and suspect profiling. The risk of AI perpetuating human biases – what is called “automated discrimination” – could be of concern to certain segments of the community.

Ethical Issues in Automated Policing

Automated discrimination is nascent and needs to be understood better. Its importance as an issue would grow as augmented surveillance becomes more common. It could evoke fears of wrongful targeting of law-abiding persons thus affecting public trust and confidence in the law enforcement sector and by extension, the state.

It is more than just a policy challenge; it intersects with the technical issues of unintended biases in algorithms and big data that could skew analyses generated by AI systems. Algorithms are computer procedures that tell computers precisely what steps to take to solve certain problems.

First, the problem of algorithmic bias – AI algorithms being a reflection of the programmers’ biases – may possibly give rise to the risk of false alerts by AI surveillance systems thus resulting in wrongful profiling and arrest. For example, this concern was raised in media reports about the Guangzhou-based company Cloud-Walk. This firm had developed an AI system that could alert the police to take preemptive action against a person after computing his predilection for crime based on facial features, behaviour and movements. The ethical (and legal) issue of interdicting persons, based on predictions, for future crimes also comes to play.

Second, AI profiling systems utilise historical data to generate lists of suspects for the purposes of predicting or solving crimes. However, the data may only partially represent the current crime situation; but more importantly it may unknowingly contain human biases along the lines of race, neighbourhood, ex-criminals (although reformed) etc. For example, the reported use of an AI profiling system (Beware) by Chicago Police had raised ethical concerns over racial discrimination towards people of colour.

Essentially, research suggests that AI systems – even with complex algorithms – are only as good as the data sets that the systems trained and worked with. The systems could thus generate more analyses (prediction and profiling) as well as lead to outcomes that reinforce existing human biases that may have been straining police-community relations in certain cities.

Finding the Equilibrium & “Black Box” Effect

In sum, the burgeoning use of smart technologies by the law enforcement and private security sectors is premised on the objective of augmenting surveillance (and intelligence) powers to better prevent threats. While this objective necessitates reimagining current operational practices, it could also give rise to ethical issues of automated discrimination.

The ethical issues are expected to grow in significance. This is because with machine-learning (ML), the algorithms underpinning smart technologies would become more powerful and play a more integral role in decision-making. Moreover, the challenges in addressing these issues would also evolve as ML could possibly lead to the “black box” effect – how algorithms “think” may be incomprehensible to the humans affected.

For smart security to work well there has to be an acceptable balance between augmented surveillance and ethics. First, the risk of false alerts could possibly be reduced if the process of adopting smart technologies incorporates efforts to determine how the underlying algorithms work; this could also support fairness in AI-driven decision-making.

Second, how data is collated and used must be reimagined to reduce the risk of unintended biases being introduced to AI systems. Finally, how AI-generated analyses are used (such as crime prevention through enforcement or social development) must be reimagined to reduce the risk of possible negative implications on the community.

*Faizal A Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Julianne Geiger

Maybe you string enough lights on your roof to give Clark Griswald a run for his money. Maybe you can identify mistletoe and holly in the wild, chop down your own Christmas tree, and know exactly how many Hallmark Keepsake ornaments they’ve issued since 1973. You can rattle off all of Santa’s reindeer—backwards, starting with Rudolph and ending in Dasher, and know all the words to O’ Tannenbaum. Including all the verses. In German. You own White Christmas—which is indisputably the best Christmas movie ever—on Blu Ray, DVD, VHS, and Betamax (I’ve included a link if you have no idea what that is). And heck, you even make figgy pudding on Christmas Eve.

No doubt about it, you’re a true Christmas fan. But this Christmas, there is so much more that you know about, as Santa straps on today’s hottest new technological advancement: The blockchain.

St. Nicholas, is stepping up his game for Christmas 2017, and if you want to hang onto your crown as the biggest Christmas fan ever, you need to be in the loop.

It’s only to be expected, really, that Santa would need a serious upgrade. He has a lot of running around to do, lots of children to classify as naughty or nice, a lot of chimneys to climb down, and a lot of presents to deliver. And in 2017, he has come across a solution that is bound to make his life a little easier this year.

Before we go any further, we should make clear exactly what it was that sold Santa on blockchain technology. It first came to his attention when Mrs. Claus read about the astounding rise of bitcoin in her morning paper. Santa began reading around the topic (thinking that perhaps the elves could mine some to give to the children) and soon realized that bitcoin was just the beginning. It was the blockchain behind the currency that was the real secret to its success, with companies in the space such as Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. seeing their stock prices soaring (and who we went to for help on the technical aspects of how Blockchain works). This was a company that was not only invested in cryptocurrencies but was acting as an incubator for everything from new anti-corruption voting systems to highly transparent and efficient recording tools. Santa saw its potential immediately, adopting blockchain technology and, as a result, finishing his Christmas preparation earlier than ever before.

In case you want some talking points with which you can impress your friends at the office Christmas party (unlike Facebook, it’s okay to refer to it as the blockchain): blockchain is a way of decentralizing transactional data—data of any kind, including contract-based data and data about who has been naughty and who has been nice—so that no single entity regulates the transactions. Instead, everyone in the network regulates every transaction—like lots and lots of read-only files that are strung together—no one file can be altered, but new files can be added by anyone on the network.

That’s good news for Santa, who employs millions of elves to manage his data. In non-corporate speak, blockchain cuts out the middlemen—like banks and copious cookie-eating data elves—allows transactions to update instantaneously, and stops any tampering with earlier records.

The adoption of Santa’s blockchain technology will help Santa to deliver toys on time and help him to process oodles of data for his naughty or nice list, manage labor costs associated with maintaining that list, and ensure the integrity of the list.

Makin’ A List

Yeah, Santa dives down chimneys and delivers presents, but what about the other 364 days of the year? Santa is responsible for keeping track of who is naughty or nice—to the tune of 1.9 billion children throughout the year—an arduous task. This is approximately six times that of Amazon’s users.

Speaking of enigmas, Santa’s list (a.k.a. the Who’s Naughty Or Nice list, or WNON), is sort of an enigma. No one really knows how Santa updates that list, or if it even updates at all—a mystery that Santa has kept on the down low lest the list fall prey to manipulation by naughty children. But Santa has informed us that long ago, his list was kept on physical paper (for you millennials, paper is a very thin sheet of wood pulp used to write on). It was all too easy for previous records to be altered or even lost, and there were too many elves writing on different versions of the list all at once—making for an imprecise business. As technology progressed, the list was eventually moved to a database. But Santa’s problems persisted as records could still be altered and files corrupted.

Well, no more. Santa’s new blockchain technology allows live, real-time updates to the naughty and nice list—which is now, in essence, infinitely long and can keep up with the burgeoning population of children. In addition, Santa’s new WNON list can never be lost.

Elves On Shelves will now be retrofitted with handheld scanners that write to the blockchain in real time, bypassing the manual entry of the data elves. And each record will be its own unalterable record. The result? Santa can instantly access the network and get a real-time view of who’s naughty or nice, allowing him to keep tabs on the elves progress as well as plan toymaking accordingly. This means not only lag-free updates, but also saves millions of data-elf-hours. The savings can then be passed on to the children.

Elves who once managed databases will be retrained as toymakers to keep up with the increased demand as Santa steps up the number of gifts each child will receive as a result of the cost savings.

To recap, Santa’s blockchain WNON benefits are as follows:

• WNON requires fewer elves
• WNON can expand infinitely as the population of the world expands
• WNON cannot be lost
• Ensures integrity of data
• Real-time information and elf-oversight from Santa
• More toys for me

With upsides like this, there is no surprise that Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. and other companies in the space are so eager to become the leaders of this tech revolution. As a general rule, if Santa is going it, then it will almost certainly catch on.

Beyond WNON

Santa’s blockchain adoption goes behind what it’s doing on the front end of Christmas. All Christmas Eve/Christmas Day activities will also be part of the blockchain, including present loading, sleigh tracking (sorry NORAD), and deliveries. Every step of the way will be tracked, recorded, and monitored as a Rudolph-guided Santa flies through the night to deliver his floo-floobers and tah-tinkers to the Cindy Lou Whos of the world.

Unstealable

Santa’s new tech will also ensure the safety of Christmas, as the Grinch is still as worthy of an adversary as he was back in the ‘50s. Bent on stealing Christmas year after year, the Grinch is constantly looking for new ways to keep Christmas from coming, despite his heart growing two sizes. One area that has been vulnerable in years past is Santa’s email, as the Grinch seeks to delete items off wish lists and even entire emails. But now, Christmas lists are uploaded directly to the blockchain, in an unalterable file. What’s more, blockchain will be the end to misdelivered mail. Who can keep track of all these email addresses anyway?

The Who’s Who Of Blockchain

Santa is among the growing list of pioneering blockchain adopters that are topping today’s headlines, the likes of which include the Australian Securities Exchange(ASX), Sony, the Russian government, Petroteq, Nokia, Maersk, AMD, Barclays, and behemoth Walmart, to name just a few.

What’s more, almost 57 percentof the world’s big corporations (20,000 employees or more) are considering blockchain technology, with two-thirds of surveyed companies saying that they expect the technology to be integrated by end-2018 (a full year behind Santa).

In the words of Steven Nerayoff, Chairman of Global Blockchain Technologies Corp., “You can invest in blockchain, you can create blockchain technologies, or you can use blockchain technologies—but the option to ignore blockchain technologies no longer exists”. Santa appears to have taken these words to heart, and we suspect more companies will share Santa’s nose for perfection heading into the new year.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Finance/the-Economy/Santa-Is-Putting-Christmas-On-The-Blockchain-And-Saving-Billions.html

Should millionaires have the power to reduce taxes on the wealthy?

The average wealth of the US Senate hovers around eight-million dollars per senator. Of course, in this age where three people own more wealth than the bottom-half of the nation, eight-million could be considered chump change.

So, the elitist Club of Millionaires aka The US Senate just passed a tax cut bill for those wealthiest USAians and puts the onus for paying for the crimes of the US Empire on the backs of those who make 10-20k per year. To me, and, to be sure, to any socialist/humanist this is abominable, to say the least.

This Club of Millionaires remains in service to the billionaire class of War and Wall Street. Case in point: Jeff Bezos of Amazon infamy recently surpassed ONE HUNDRED BILLION dollars in hoarded wealth. Naturally, his wealth has been accumulated on the backs of his workers, where in India, Amazon pays $222 a year and here in the states, $12.40 an hour.

Not only does Bezos pay his workers a paltry amount in contrast to his vast wealth-hoard, reports of dangerous and stressful work conditions are rampant. Communities are bending over backwards to give this billionaire even more cash benefits to build another plant to pay local workers peanuts. Chicago has offered around 2.25 billion in benefits and one town has offered to change its name to “Amazon” and make Bezos mayor for life. If US workers had any revolutionary consciousness, they’d be offering Bezos the chance to escape the guillotine in exchange for expropriating his wealth which has been stolen from the community!

I am often accused of being “jealous” of the wealthy and my response is, “I don’t want to be like them, I want them to be like us.”

While owning the mouthpiece of Empire, the Washington Post, Bezos also does business with the deep state and the murderers and drug dealers in the CIA. One person should not be allowed to harm the masses by his/her avarice and hunger for power; Bezos and his ilk are not to be worshiped, or emulated, but despised and we should be organizing to oppose such immoral accumulation of wealth.

At the very least the Club of Millionaires should be disbanded and abolished.

Molesters

Recently, women have been outing the rich and powerful and their predilection for sexual harassment and sexual assault. Of course, the pain of the women has often been used for political gotcha gaming: “We’ll take your Judge Roy Moore (R-AL), and raise you an Al Franken (D-MN) and John Conyers (D-MI).”

I have a history with both of these Demoquacks. Before Al Franken even ran for the Senate, I debated him on his radio show on Air America. His viewpoint was that now that the US was in Iraq, “we” needed to stay there to “finish the mission.” Of course, like every other war supporter, he could never adequately define that “mission.” It was in going over to Iraq and Afghanistan to “entertain” the troops his position was killing, maiming, and otherwise screwing up where he has gotten into trouble for serial sexual harassment.

Then there’s my old “friend” John Conyers who has had me arrested and also removed from a hearing that he was chairing. John Conyers the one who wrote a book about impeaching George W. Bush while he was the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, then refused to institute impeachment proceeding when the Demoquacks regained a majority in the House in 2007.

In one of the many meetings I had with Conyers about impeachment (before the final meeting where he had me and 50 others arrested while we were sitting in at his office), he told us that “Pelosi” was a major obstacle to impeachment. It’s ironic now that she’s calling for his resignation, but has already made it very clear that if the Demoquacks once again regain majority, impeachment of Trump will be “off the table.”

In WashedUp, DeCeit, the corruption and repellent behavior of John Conyers is well-known, but as creepy as he is, he is, by far not the creepiest member of Congress. However, again, House seats should not be inhabited by the same person for decades, upon decades. This kind of political entitlement invites corruption and graft and it is time for Conyers (and several hundred more) to go.

Hopefully, the rotten House of Cards is imploding.

Monsters

As much as the recent partisan passage of the tax bill has been reviled, there was a recent defense budget that passed where, in a bi-partisan effort, the Senate gave Trump 60 billion more than he even asked for to expand and maintain the violent US Empire. Passing 88-8, the Senate was apparently worried that War Profiteers wouldn’t have a Merry Christmas unless their corporate welfare was expanded.

By my count, the US Empire is currently and actively destroying: Yemen, Niger, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya; and passively destroying every other country by its Imperial agenda.

Obama’s Shame

I will never ask you to call your (s)elected thugs in WashedUp, DeCeit, but we need a united front against capitalism and its evil spawn, imperialism.

I always hope that “this year” will be the year we awake and arise and stay risen until the Empire is no more. I will never give up that hope, and I will never give up the struggle.