By Zaur Shiriyev

Azerbaijan’s government is growing increasingly concerned about what it sees as growing Iranian manipulation of the country’s Shia Muslim believers.

Azerbaijan’s security services recently presented senior government officials with a report describing how Iran has “increased its capabilities in Azerbaijan’s regions,” one analyst close to the government told EurasiaNet.org. “Many more people are now under Iran’s influence, and this has sounded alarm bells inside the government,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In 2013, Azerbaijan relaxed restrictions, in effect an informal ban, on religious figures linked to Iran on preaching in public. This tactical embrace of Shiism was aimed at stemming the flow of Azerbaijanis joining ISIS and fighting in Syria and Iraq, a trend that Baku believed was inspired by a rise in hardline Sunni tendencies.

But now it appears the policy is having unintended consequences, resulting in what authorities believe is increased control by Iran over Shia practice in Azerbaijan. According to official data, 22 of the 150 Shia madrassas in the country are “under the control of Iran,” wrote Kenan Rovshanoglu in a recent report for the Azerbaijani news agency Turan.

Many secular Azerbaijanis have been alarmed by the increasing visibility of Shia practices in the country. During the Ashura celebrations in September in Baku, some children participated in the ritual, which involves self-flagellation. “When I saw children, who do not have a real understanding of religion, wearing hijab and attending Ashura ceremonies, I thought they are going to become kamikazes to be sent in the future to Syria,” said MP Zahid Oruc.

In response, in early October, the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs of Azerbaijan proposed legislation that would prohibit children from taking part in Ashura commemorations and similar religious rituals. The legislation has not yet been voted on.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared to publicly criticize the proposed law during a November meeting with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in Tehran. “We should appreciate this great opportunity and the glorious mourning ceremonies of the Shiites in Azerbaijan, because they will strengthen the identity of Azerbaijan’s nation and country,” Khamenei said.

Azerbaijan, however, has been wary of publicly calling out Tehran. The two countries have had uneasy relations since Azerbaijan gained independence in 1991, as Baku fears Iran’s religious influence and Tehran is concerned about Azerbaijan’s potential influence over the large ethnic Azeri population in northern Iran. Each also has close ties to the other’s biggest enemy: Azerbaijan with Israel, and Iran with Armenia.

Since President Hassan Rouhani’s coming to power in 2013, Iran has been forced to recalibrate its relations with Azerbaijan. Official bilateral contact has increased dramatically since then, with the two sides signing more than 20 cooperation agreements in the economic sphere.

In one project that would have been unimaginable before 2013, Azerbaijan has provided a loan to build a 100-mile stretch of a railroad in Iran, from the Azerbaijani border to the city of Rasht, part of the North-South Transport Corridor. Baku hopes that the initiative can derail plans to develop rail links between Iran and Armenia.

The government has not publicly claimed that Iran influenced the Ashura commemorations, but one official, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations Gunduz Ismayilov, pointedly said that “there are some forces in Azerbaijan who seek to bring political elements into Ashura commemorations in the country.”

In early December, the government-connected website Haqqin.Az published an article accusing Iran of trying to recruit Shia pilgrims visiting the holy city of Karbala in Iraq. The article claimed that 30,000 Azerbaijanis visited Karbala for Ashura this year, an increase of 33 percent over the previous year.

The article also alleged that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and its associated Shiite militia, “Hasdi Shabi,” have recruited Azerbaijanis to gather intelligence and conduct anti-government propaganda against Baku. Some of the propaganda, the article claimed, was focused on Nardaran, a center of Shia conservativism in Azerbaijan.

In 2015, security services carried out a series of raids in Nardaran, arresting religious activists they accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Azerbaijan’s authorities also believed that Nardaran’s religious leaders were under Iranian influence, and that after the operation, that influence has been curbed. The Iranian propaganda, the Haqqin article said, criticized the Nardaran events as an “infringement of rights and persecution of Shias.”

Some in Baku question the government’s focus on Iran’s influence over it Shia. “It would be too easy to claim that all the people who went to Iraq for holy visits end up under Iran’s influence,” one mid-level government official told EurasiaNet.org on condition of anonymity. The official added, though, that “falling under the influences of foreign intelligence is much easier there than anywhere else.”

The official suggested that more Azerbaijanis visiting Iraq and Syria are recruited by ISIS: The number of Azerbaijanis joining ISIS has been on the rise in the last two years, and last year 151 people were stripped of their Azerbaijani citizenship for fighting in the ranks of terrorist organizations. “This is the main threat,” the official said.

Another article, by a government think tank, the Center for Strategic Studies (SAM), also appeared to speak to Baku’s concerns about Iran, this time about its relations with Armenia.

The unsigned article raised eyebrows among Baku’s foreign policy community, both for its tone – reading more like an official statement than a piece of analysis – and its language. It was published in Azerbaijani, instead of Russian and English, suggesting the topic wasn’t SAM’s usual international audience, but a message to the Iranian government via its embassy in Baku.

The piece criticized increasing contacts between Tehran and the de facto authorities of Nagorno Karabakh, whom Baku regards as a separatist regime on Azerbaijani territory. It described recent appearances of Karabakh officials in the Iranian media and the publication of two books on Karabakh. And it highlighted a November 15 conference in Iran devoted to Karabakh. “The Iranian International Studies Association, one of the founders of which is the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifi, has created a kind of platform for the conduct of anti-Azerbaijani propaganda by Armenian scientists,” the author wrote.

While Azerbaijani criticism of Iran-Armenia relations is not new, it appears to have reached a new level, one analyst with close links to the Azerbaijani government told EurasiaNet.org, speaking on condition of anonymity. Baku is unsure why Tehran is emphasizing ties with the de facto Karabakh authorities, and fears that it will serve to legitimize them in Iran and create sympathy for them, which Baku regards as a threat to its interests, the analyst said.

*Zaur Shiriyev is an Academy Associate at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

By Ramin Nadimi*

Q: Recent advances by the resistance front – including Damascus, Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement – in Syria have increased the possibility of putting an end to the civil war in Syria with the government of President Bashar Assad emerging as the final victor. Can further empowerment of this front lead to serious security concerns for the Zionist regime? What reactions Tel Aviv is possible to show to this new situation?

Mohammad Reza Rauf Sheibani: New achievements in the battlefield across the region, particularly in Syria and Iraq and especially the failure of terrorism in achieving its goals following liberation of city of Al-Bukamal, have practically caused the structure of Daesh’s military forces and self-proclaimed government to collapse. This development has been considered as a turning point in what has so far happened in Syria. At the same time, we witnessed a tripartite meeting among heads of state from Iran, Russia and Turkey in the Russian port city of Sochi, which in my opinion, this meeting was also a turning point from the viewpoint of political developments. Of course, cooperation among Iran, Russia and Turkey in managing military developments on the ground in Syria has been an effective and useful cooperation and has had good results, including serious fight against terrorism and restoration of calm to Syria and region. These developments are requisites for any kind of discourse and effort aimed at finding a political solution to the conflict in Syria. On the whole, a glance at the present trend of developments shows that the Zionist regime will naturally have concerns in this regard. This is especially true under conditions when Syria is moving toward calm and stability and the highest achievements in this regards belong to the party that is known to have been fighting terrorism and has been responsible for restoring calm and tranquility to the region.

Most experts believe that the Zionist regime is willing to see controlled crises in its periphery. Subsequently, these developments, which are in the offing, are not in line with the Zionist regime’s approach to its neighboring countries. In other words, the current trend in Syria is toward restoration of calm and stability, but the Zionist regime is not willing to see this and does not agree with restoration of that sort of stability and calm that it has no role in its establishment, because Tel Aviv considers such stability as a threat to itself. It is possible that after annihilation of the old form of Daesh, we would see an effort by the Zionist regime and the United States to change application of Daesh or take new measures to ensure continuation of instability and unrest in Syria in order to achieve two goals. The first goal is to prevent progress of the common project pursued by the resistance front and Russia in the region with the second goal being to buy time for themselves in order to orchestrate developments that would be in line with their own goals.

The Zionist regime and the United States currently lack a solid strategy toward the crisis in Syria. This is because their primary plans for stoking crisis and gaining desirable results from those crises have hit a stonewall and, therefore, these plans have failed to give them enough time to immediately come up with a substitute strategy. As a result, they are merely trying to buy more time. Of course, due to the type of interaction that Russia has with other actors and international partners, Russians are doing their best to consider a role for Americans and Israelis in management of regional developments and have been trying to change them form a party to the conflict to a partner. In their effort, Russians have been somehow successful with regard to Americans and have been able to initiate a common discourse with them.

However, Russians are still far from those desirable conditions, which would help they turn the United States from an adversary into a partner to efforts made to establish stability and security in the region. The Zionist regime, however, due to its nature, does not agree with the current course of developments and it seems that no effort aimed at making this regime move toward establishment of stability in the region would bear fruit. One reason for the very existence of the Zionist regime is the rule of weak and inefficient regimes in the region, which lack necessary defensive and military power.

On the other hand, such regimes have been already involved in crises whose final goal is to distract attention from the main issue in the region, which is the issue of Palestine and the Zionist regime’s acts of aggression and occupationism. Another problematic approach taken by the Zionist regime is its effort to create small ethnic groups and countries under ethnic and racial labels. This approach is pursued by this regime in parallel to its main approach, which is to create unrest and instability in the region.

Q: We have seen many comments emerged during past months and weeks about what they call “Iran’s land corridor” from Iraq and Syria to southern Lebanon and also about increased military presence of Iran and Hezbollah along the borders of the occupied Golan. In your opinion, what kind of reactions such comments may cause on the part of the Zionist regime?

A: The issue of a land corridor, or the connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other members of the resistance front through land, lacks a strong logic and I consider it as only an excuse. In fact, what is currently going on in this region is a chain of geopolitical changes and this issue is a major cause of concern for the Zionist regime. At the present time, it is easy to procure weapons in the world and a good example to the point was how such groups as Daesh or resistance groups that fight terrorists and Takfiris managed to procure weapons.

When you look at Houthi fighters in Yemen, you see that they are under total blockade by Saudi Arabia, so that, it is not possible to send food and medicine for people in that country, but Houthis are still resisting the most savage attacks by the Saudi-led coalition against this impoverished nation with the least amount of provisions. The important issue here is the formation of new resistance groups with their own independent identity. Physical presence in such fronts is not of high importance or even necessary for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran does not seek to be physically present in any of these countries, and basically speaking, such presence has no place in the military and defensive doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran does not follow an approach similar to that of the colonialist powers, which tried to boost their influence in other countries through military presence in those countries.

The influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is more of a spiritual nature. If governments based on the will of nations came to office in these countries, it would pave the way for the Islamic Republic of Iran to meet its common interests with these countries and this is an issue, which would threaten the interests of the Zionist regime.

The interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran are met through failure of projects that aimed to bring down the government and change the regime in Syria and also through continued rule of the country on the basis of the will of the Syrian people. This is a goal pursued by Iran, which has been always looking for a political solution since a long time ago and form the beginning of the crisis in Syria. Therefore, presence or absence of Iranian soldiers in Syria will not lead to a major change in this regard. This is why the Zionist regime resorts to unfounded excuses such as Iran’s physical presence or a land link between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resistance front in order to show its concern about the main issue, which is the ongoing geopolitical changes in the region that have started in Yemen and will finally include Bahrain, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Syria and finally Palestine.

I believe that after the fall of Daesh, we will witness continuation of hostile policies of the Zionist regime. The signs of such policies that antagonize Iran have been seen since the election of the US President Donald Trump as exemplified by his effort to put an end to the nuclear deal with Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Thereafter, these policies continued through promotion of Iranophobia and also through a project that sought to “securitize” the region and was initiated by the Trump’s administration and the Zionist regime as well as the allies and proxies of the United States in the region.

Q: It seems that a joint plan has been put into gear against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition as well as the Zionist regime of Israel. Assuming this to be true, what is your opinion about the future outlook of security situation in Lebanon and the entire region?

A: In my opinion, designing such plans by the triangular alliance of the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Zionist regime is the sign of their passivity in the face of victories gained by the resistance front, including Hezbollah, in regional developments, especially the eradication of Daesh terrorist group.

Therefore, this triangle is actually reacting to these achievements and is trying to mount pressure on Hezbollah, the resistance front and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their final goal is to cover up their own weaknesses and also to get the resistance front preoccupied with less important issues. There was a time when Saudis tried to denounce the “resistance” trait of this front and strip it of this title. However, at the present time, a large part of people in Lebanon emphasis the necessity of resistance.

At the present time and unlike the past, the equation of resistance – people – army has been accepted by the Lebanese government as a necessity and this state of affairs should continue in the future as well. Various governments in Lebanon have seen how Hezbollah has been able to do away with active threats that were in the offing or had been posed to Lebanon’s borders.

At the same time, they have witnessed how the Lebanese army has been successful in its cooperation with the resistance front to repel many threats that were posed to identity and existence of various Lebanese groups. These evidence shows that the clock is ticking in favor of the resistance and this is why Saudi Arabia summoned Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is an influential personality in Lebanon’s developments, to Riyadh in order to prevent him from being part of these achievements. Through cooperation with Hezbollah and other groups that are in line with the resistance front, Saad Hariri paved the way for determination of Lebanon’s prime minister and president and this measure brought calm to Lebanon.

In turn, tranquility in Lebanon allowed Hezbollah and the resistance front to focus on issues outside Lebanon and deal with more serious risks that threatened Lebanon outside its borders. As a result, Hezbollah considered Hariri and his government as a party to these achievements, but this was not desirable for Saudi Arabia. Therefore, by summoning Hariri to Saudi Arabia, the government in Riyadh tried to remind him that his move was not in line with Saudi Arabia’s goal.

Basically, creating a stable environment in Lebanon has never been a goal for Saudis and this is why they forced Saad Hariri to tender his resignation. In my opinion, if with regard to the future outlook of Lebanon, we assume that Saudi Arabia, the Zionist regime and the United States are antagonizing and countering the resistance front, we must expect a new period of tension in Lebanon. It is possible that Saad Hariri will accept to form a new cabinet. In this case, Saudi Arabia is sure to take more obstructionist measures and their unsuitable demands may practically prevent formation of a new government in Lebanon, which will subsequently lead to an institutional void in that country.

Alternatively, Saad Hariri may basically not accept to form a new government. In this case, the process started by Riyadh will continue through leveling new accusations against Hezbollah and demanding this movement to disarm, which in turn, will intensify turbulence in the political atmosphere both outside and inside Lebanon. It is not clear whether all political actors in Lebanon are ready for this turbulence, or whether it is possible to unilaterally impose those scenarios, which cause tension, on other actors that seek stability and calm in Lebanon.

On the whole, as an expert who is present in Lebanon and is familiar with this country, I feel that the current conditions in Lebanon are totally different from the past and domestic conditions in this country do now allow for such unilateral scenarios to be implemented. Unlike past years, Lebanon is now endowed with resistance and steadfastness and smart management of crises, and the Zionist regime can no more implement is various scenarios in this country in a unilateral manner. At the present time, the balance of power, political conditions, and the balance of political forces in Lebanon have given birth to very complicated conditions, which practically prevent implementation of unilateral scenarios in this country.

Q: How possible, do you think, is the breakout of a new war between the Zionist regime and Hezbollah and what could be the consequences of such a conflict? What parties would join the coalition that would take shape to support this war?

A: At the present time, conditions are such that the Zionist regime is in serious trouble and the resistance front has brought under its control a vast geographical expanse.

There was a time when geographically speaking, the resistance front was limited to a few kilometers along the southern borders of Lebanon, but due to strategic mistakes made by the Zionist regime and the United States with regard to the crisis in Syria, now its domain spans the entire area of this country. In addition, Hezbollah and the resistance front have gained a valuable experience during the civil war in Syria, where they fought complex battles, which were a combination of classic and guerilla warfare.

Apart from its costs for the resistance front, this war has helped the resistance front and Hezbollah to play a role totally different from their role during the 33-day war in Lebanon. At the present time, Hezbollah’s activities are no more restricted to Lebanon, and due to requests made on Hezbollah to expand its activities, this group has turned into an actor, whose domain goes far beyond Lebanon’s borders.

Some analysts even believe that at the present time, Hezbollah has turned into an effective and responsible factor in the political arrangements in the Middle East. At the present time, Hezbollah, as a responsible actor against terrorism that threatens the entire world, is fighting against terrorism on behalf of the whole world and is defending the entire world, including Europe and the Arab world.

Of course, the Zionist regime seeks annihilation of Hezbollah and the resistance front, but the reality that has been imposed on this regime is that Tel Aviv is not able to do away with this phenomenon. When answering the question as to whether the Zionist regime is able to start another adventurism against Hezbollah, I must say that it is very difficult for the Zionist regime to make any decision to take such a step. At the present time, voices can be heard within the Zionist regime that are against such adventurism.

Now, in view of the heavy defeat that the Zionist regime’s army suffered at the hands of Hezbollah in its war in 2006, the question is how Tel Aviv can start a new war that would not end in a similar defeat? If officials of the Zionist regime want to make a wise decision, they will never enter such a war against Hezbollah again. On the other hand, Hezbollah has to a large extent achieved its goal, which is to develop deterrence power, and the Zionist regime is no more able to freely embark on any form of attack and act of aggression in any point of Lebanon.

To answer another part of your question, I must say that without a doubt, Saudi Arabia and some Arab countries of the Persian Gulf will welcome a military attack by the Zionist regime against Hezbollah and will offer their political and financial support for it as well. Therefore, in case of such a war, we will certainly witness a long line of Arab countries that will support the Zionist regime’s military operations against Hezbollah in a way stronger than what they did in 2006. This is why an official in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a while ago that it is no surprise that officials in Saudi Arabia say in Arabic exactly the same thing that Israeli officials say in Hebrew.

Q: What is your opinion about Russia’s position and what would be Moscow’s stance in case of possible escalation of tensions?

A: I believe that the position that Russians will take in the face of any tension in the region will serve as a deterrent factor. The Russians’ plan is to advance successfully in the region and this success has been owed to their strategic cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This cooperation meets strategic needs of the two countries and has been highly successful so far.

As a result of this cooperation, Russians have once again returned to international arena and the Middle East as a global power. Russians have managed to successfully implement those projects that they undertook to carry out, including fighting against terrorism, in cooperation with Hezbollah. For this reason, Russia is sure to prevent any tensions that would fall outside its plan and challenge it. It is certain that a military conflict between the Zionist regime and Hezbollah would be against that plan and Russians are sure to prevent it. However, if such a disadvantageous war takes place, Russians will certainly deal with it with a high sense of responsibility and will prevent disruption of the balance that has come about in the region and is beneficial to Moscow as well.

Q: Do you believe that if such a war breaks out, Iran will get directly involved in it?

A: There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran will defend Hezbollah movement. The main reason behind the birth of the resistance front was to fight against occupationist policies of the Zionist regime.

Therefore, if the Zionist regime makes such a miscalculation, it would be the best opportunity for the resistance front to achieve its goals. Therefore, if a new war is imposed on Hezbollah, the resistance front will resume its fight from where it had left off at the end of the 33-day war. Israelis exactly know what this means. For this reason, one of the responsibilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to support the oppressed nations of the world and those groups that seek to have their rights realized. This issue has been proclaimed equivocally and by the highest official in the Islamic Republic establishment, that is, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Without a doubt, the start of a new war is not desirable for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is now in good conditions in the region and the resistance front has the upper hand in the fight against terrorism. As a result, Iran does not welcome more tensions in the region just in the same way that further conflict is not desirable for the implementation of Russia’s plans and is not in line with its regional goals.

Q: What options are available to the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to thwart plans implemented by the triangle of the United States, the Zionist regime and Saudi Arabia? What is your opinion about Europe’s position in this regard?

A: Establishment of stability and calm is a priority for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran wants any plans, which are implemented in the region, to serve regional stability and security. There is no doubt that stability and tranquility in the region are requisites if Iran is to meet its interests. Therefore, any form of instability harms us first of all, and it is Iran, which must pay its cost.

There is no doubt that our security is tied to stability and security in the region and vice versa. Therefore, Iran’s main approach is to prevent any new tensions in the region and help settle old tensions through political solutions, so that, the region will experience stability and calm. There is also no doubt that crisis in the region does not meet the interests of European countries either and they have emphasized this point in negotiations with Iran.

The position taken and the new approach adopted by European countries after Trump announced his strategy towards the JCPOA, and their firm support for the nuclear deal with Iran has been unique. Perhaps, such a wide gap has never been seen during past years between approaches adopted by Americans and Europeans with regard to any issue. This means that Europeans are aware that stability in the region will benefit them as well.

In this way, we have found a common ground and bilateral strategic viewpoint with Europeans, which perhaps can be described as the early stage of achieving a common strategic viewpoint with European countries. If this common strategic ground is managed correctly, it may lead to constructive and good results. Europe can be a good partner for us for the establishment of stability and security in the region. The role played by Russia has also proved that we can count on this country’s approach for establishing stability in the region and the Islamic Republic of Iran can serve as a connecting link between Russia and the European Union.

On the other hand, regional cooperation, including among Iran, Turkey and Egypt, can play a positive role in restoring stability and facilitating management of regional crises. I believe that at the present time, the region is going through a fluid and transitional stage and, in other words, is undergoing a strategic molting.

*Ramin Nadimi
Expert in Defense and Military Affairs

Almost one year in, it’s time for another update for Trump voters on his election promises:

1. He told you he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. You bought it. But his new tax law does the opposite. By 2027, according several nonpartisan analyses, the richest 1 percent will have got 83 percent of the tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, “You all just got a lot richer.”

2. He promised to close “special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers,” especially the notorious “carried interest” loophole for private-equity, hedge fund, and real estate partners. You bought it. But the new tax law keeps the “carried interest” loophole.

3. He told you he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “beautiful.” You bought it. But he didn’t repeal and he didn’t replace. (Just as well: His plan would have knocked at least 23 million off health insurance, including many of you.) Instead, he’s doing what he can to cut it back and replace it with nothing. The new tax law will result in 13 million people losing health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

4. He told you he’d invest $1 trillion in our nation’ crumbling infrastructure. You bought it. But after his giant tax cut for corporations and millionaires, there’s no money left for infrastructure.

5. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. But he’s brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses, and he’s filled departments and agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they recently worked for.

6. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. But he has created the most dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, and has already fired and replaced so many assistants (one of them hired and fired in a little more than a week) that people there barely know who’s in charge of what.

7. He told you he’d “bring down drug prices” by making deals with drug companies. You bought it. But now the White House says that promise is “inoperative.”

8. He promised “a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.” You bought it. But foreign lobbyists are still raising money for American elections.

9. He told you “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” You bought it. But he and House Speaker Paul Ryan are already planning such cuts in order to deal with the ballooning deficit created, in part, by the new tax law for corporations and the rich.

10. He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” You bought it. But the giant tax cut for corporations and the rich doesn’t leave any money for this.

11. He said that on Day One he’d label China a “currency manipulator.” You bought it. But then he met with China’s president Xi Jinping and declared “China is not a currency manipulator.” Ever since then, Trump has been cozying up to Xi.

12. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. But then he bombed Syria.

13. He said he’d build a “wall” across the southern border. You believed him. But there’s no money for that, either. Chief of staff John Kelly says it is “unlikely that we will build a wall, a physical barrier, from sea to shining sea.”

14. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct “will be sued after the election is over.” You bought it. He hasn’t sued them, presumably because he doesn’t want the truth to come out.

15. He said he would not be a president who took vacations. “I would not be a president that takes time off,” he promised, and he called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief.” You bought it. But since becoming President he has spent nearly 25 percent of his days at one of his golf properties for some portion of the day, according to Golf News Network, at a cost to taxpayers of over $77 million. That’s already more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama cost in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

16. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be “consequences” for companies that shipped jobs abroad. You believed him. But despite their promises, Carrier, Ford, GM, and the rest have continued to ship jobs to Mexico and China. Carrier (a division of United Technologies) has moved ahead with plans to send 1,000 jobs at its Indiana plant to Mexico. Notwithstanding, the federal government has rewarded United Technologies with 15 new contracts since Trump’s inauguration. Last year, Microsoft opened a new factory in Wilsonville, Oregon, that was supposed to herald a new era in domestic tech manufacturing. But in July, the company announced it was closing the plant. More than 100 workers and contractors will lose their jobs when production shifts to China. GE is sending jobs to Canada. IBM is sending them to Costa Rica, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil. There have been no “consequences” for sending all these jobs overseas.

17. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and “bring back thousands” of lost mining jobs. You bought it. But coal jobs continue to disappear. Since Trump’s victory, at least 6 plants that relied on coal have closed or announced they will close. Another 40 are projected to close during the president’s four-year term. Utilities continue to switch to natural gas instead of coal.

18. He promised to protect steel workers. But according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, which tracks shipments, steel imports were 19.4 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2017 than in the same period last year. That import surge has hurt American steel workers, who were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel. For example, ArcelorMittal just announced it will soon lay off 150 of its 207 steel workers at its plant in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

19. He said he’d make America safer. You believed him. But according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 377 mass shootings so far this year, including 58 people killed and hundreds injured at a concert in Las Vegas, and 26 churchgoers killed and 20 injured at a church in Texas. Trump refuses to consider any gun controls.

20. He said he’d release his taxes. “I’m under a routine audit and it’ll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released,“ he promised during the campaign. He hasn’t released his taxes.

Here are some of my favorite, frugal, effective non-profit citizen action organizations that you may wish to favor with your tax-deductible generosity.

1. Veterans For Peace (VFP): Composed of veterans from World War II to the present, VFP takes strong stands, including peaceful demonstrations and marches, for peace and against a militarized, aggressive foreign policy and wars of choice. Donate here:  (1404 North Broadway, St. Louis MO 63102 or https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/donate/).

2. Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER): A group of U.S. Forest Service professionals started this remarkable group, which has since spread to civil servants in other federal agencies such as the EPA and the Department of the Interior. PEER’s staff is knowledgeable, organized and relentless in protecting federal employees’ right to bring their conscience to work and speak out against unlawful or reckless devastation of our environmental resources and health.  (962 Wayne Ave #610, Silver Spring, MD 20910; https://www.peer.org/give/)

3. Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest (ASPI): This lean, dedicated and productive group works tirelessly to find solutions in one of the poorest regions of America through the application of practical science. They teach how to preserve forests, protect drinking water sources, how to cook without electricity or gas, how to grow their own food and build a home without visiting a big box store. (50 Lair St, Mt Vernon, KY 40456; https://donorbox.org/aspi)

4. The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OPEPA) opposes the nuclear arms race, seeks enforceable treaties abolishing nuclear weapons (the latter is agreeable to numerous retired cabinet secretaries in both Republican and Democratic administrations) and monitors government arms contracts, radiation hazards and facilities such as the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Their newsletter is a must-read.(P.O. Box 5743, Oak Ridge, TN 37831; http://orepa.org/)

5. The Pension Rights Center, the only national civic organization dedicated to reforming pension policies, unfair regulations and protecting and promoting retirement security. They help individual retirees and propose major retirement programs for all Americans. (1730 M Street, NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20036; www.pensionrights.org)

6. The North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) works to start and expand consumer and housing cooperatives, especially for young people in colleges and universities. NASCO provides “on-the-ground training for over 79 cooperative organizations…. Living in a co-op means learning that cooperation is not only an alternative solution but also a way to empower our local leaders and communities.” NASCO will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Their fortune is bright and promising. (1100 West Cermak Road, #514, Chicago, IL 60608; www.nasco.coop)

7. Organization for Competitive Markets Don’t let the name Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) mislead you. OCM is a ferocious, detail-oriented champion of small family farms in our country against giant agribusinesses squeezing farmers from both the supplying and buying their crops. OCM’s newsletter is unyielding in showing how preserving family farms is also good for consumers and the struggle against monopolization from industry giants like Monsanto. (P.O. Box 6486 Lincoln, NE 68506; www.competitivemarkets.com)

8. The Center for Auto Safety: Without this watchdog group holding accountable the auto industry and its federal regulators, tens of millions of cars would not have been recalled over the past four decades. It has been the guardian angel of American motorists and consumers in other respects as well. (1825 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20009; https://www.autosafety.org/make-donation/)

9. The Indian Law Resource Center, based in Montana generates justice and safety for Indigenous Peoples. Under its brilliant executive director, Robert T. Coulter, the Center seems to be everywhere, protecting American Indian and Alaska Native families, fending off the Trump Administration’s move to undermine long-standing trust relationships, keeping indigenous lands in community ownership and supporting sustainable development in Central and South America. (602 Ewing Street, Helena, MT 59601; www.indianlaw.org)

10. Whirlwind Wheelchair helps people in less developed countries construct sturdy, inexpensive wheelchairs from local materials, building self-reliance and addressing the critical needs of safe mobility. Founder Ralf Hotchkiss has invented many improvements in wheelchairs for free public application. (2703 7th Street, #134, Berkeley, CA 94710; https://whirlwindwheelchair.org/donate/)

11. The Salvation Army: And, of course, the old reliable Salvation Army – quick to the scene of natural disasters anywhere in the world with hands-on assistance, unbureaucratic and frugal. On a daily basis it helps the poor, the destitute and the hungry. Over 140 years old, with 15,409 congregations in 127 countries, 1,150,666 million members and many thrift stores, the Salvation Army is consistently rated near the top of the most popular charities/non-profits in America. As incorruptible as humans can possibly be. (615 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, VA 22313; www.salvationarmyusa.org)

I’ve given donations to all these organizations over the years. Consider their selfless work, in the age of Wall Street profit-glutted greed, and support their activities for the New Year.

Uganda is among the countries is sub-Saharan Africa where cholera remains a recurring problem, despite advances in science and technology for prevention, detection and treatment of the infectious disease. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have identified cholera hotspots around Uganda to help target interventions.

Cholera, caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae O1 or O139, is estimated to infect up to 4 million people a year worldwide, and lead to tens of thousands of deaths. In sub-Saharan Africa, the fatality rate is more than 2 percent. Epidemics have occurred in Uganda regularly since 1971 and a number of preventive and control measures are currently in place.

In the new work, Mohammad Ali, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and colleagues studied district level cholera outbreak data collected by Uganda’s Ministry of Health and spanning 2011 through 2016. In addition, existing datasets on population, rainfall, water, sanitation, and hygiene were used. The group identified cholera hotspots as districts whose center fell within a significantly high risk cluster of cases or where a cluster was completely superimposed onto a district.

The group identified 22 districts at high risk of cholera–out of 112 districts total which reported cholera outbreaks during the study period. 13 of the districts were near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and 9 were near a border of Kenya. The risk of having cholera in these hotspots ranged from 2 to 22 times higher than elsewhere in the country. A short distance to the DRC or Kenya border, proximity to internationally shared lakes and river Nile, and higher annual rainfall in a district were all associated with the risk of having cholera in the district.

“The findings of our study could be used as a guide to strengthen the cholera control program in Uganda,” the researchers say. “Since a majority of the hotspot districts are near the DRC or Kenya border, it suggests that close collaboration with these countries would be an effective strategy for controlling cholera in that part of the world.”

Forty percent of the world’s 2.5 billion people live in coastal cities and towns. A team including Smithsonian marine biologists just released 25 years of data about the health of Caribbean coasts from the Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity Program (CARICOMP). The study provides new insights into the influence of both local and global stressors in the basin, and some hope that the observed changes can be reversed by local environmental management.

The largest, longest program to monitor the health of the Caribbean coastal ecosystems, CARICOMP revealed that water quality decreased at 42 percent of the monitoring stations across the basin. However, significant increases in water temperature, expected in the case of global warming, were not detected across sites.

“We’re seeing important changes in local conditions, like decreases in visibility associated with declining water quality and the increasing presence of people, but we’re not picking up global-scale changes, like climate warming,” said Iliana Chollett, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Marine Conservation Program in Fort Pierce, Fla..

“Our data set did not reveal significant increases in water temperature,” Chollett said. “Satellites only measure temperature at the surface. Underwater temperatures are much more variable, and it may take decades of data to reveal a significant change, so we’re not sure if this means that we just don’t have enough data to detect it yet.”

More than 25 years ago, in 1992, researchers at institutions across the Caribbean began to set up stations to gather environmental data on mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs at coastal sites.

They began to take weekly measurements of water temperature, salinity and visibility at stations placed to avoid direct interference from cities, towns and other direct human impacts.

The team gathered CARICOMP data from 29 sites in Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, Colombia, Costa Rica, Florida, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saba, and Venezuela and organized it into a single data set. This includes data taken for periods from three years, at stations added to the network more recently, to 22 years.

Despite attempts to locate monitoring sites in places not affected by human activities, the stations are picking up signals of human influence throughout the Caribbean basin.

“One positive implication of this report is people are capable of dealing with local change by regulating pollution and runoff,” said Rachel Collin, director of the Bocas del Toro Research Station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, one of the participating marine-monitoring stations. “If people get their act together very soon, there is still hope of reversing some of these changes.”

Malaysians will vote in parliamentary elections in the next few months. Whatever the outcome, the stage is being set to determine its future – booming, multicultural nation or basket case.

Just over four and half years ago on May 5, 2013 the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN) led by Prime Minister Najib Razak won 133 seats in the 222-seat parliament. The informal opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, led by now jailed leader Anwar Ibrahim, won an unprecedented 89 seats and a morale-boosting 50.87 percent of the popular vote.

Ever since, Malaysia’s vibrant multicultural identity has become increasingly brittle. So what can be expected from a country that is in danger of becoming increasingly segregated along racial and religious lines?

Leaders in the prime minister’s United Malay National Organisation – the dominant party in the BN coalition – have played into fears that the Malays, who form part of a group known as bumiputeras, which means “sons of the soil” and which refers both to Malays and to a number of indigenous groups, will lose their special privileges if the coalition falls.

Still, since the 2008 general election there’s been a new feeling in the country that political change is a matter of time. For decades, Malaysian elections were foregone conclusions, with the vast majority of people voting for the same party their whole life, creating only small electoral shifts.

The shock effect of the economic downturn in the run-up to that election combined with institutionalized racism and systemic social injustice and rampant corruption highlighted by the new media shifted the political balance.

An opposition coalition of parties now led by 92-year-old former strongman prime minister Mahathir Mohammad is hoping to capitalize on this.

Mahathir fell out with Najib over the disappearance of billions of dollars from the 1MDB state fund which is the subject of money-laundering investigations in at least six countries including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States. American investigators allege that U.S. $681 million of the state firm’s money was paid to the prime minister, a charge Najib denies.

With support for the party and BN apparently slipping further among all ethnic communities due to a combination of a weakened economy, rising inflation, ethnic and religious tensions, crime and the 1MDB scandal, Najib and UMNO reacted by encouraging a stricter brand of Islam, policed by the state, to tighten control the population.

University Malaya law professor Shad Saleem Faruqi after writing an op-ed published in national newspaper The Star last monthon the subject has come under police investigation.

Curbing dissent

Still, few are surprised by the extent the government has gone to curb dissent. Under the pretext of safeguarding Malay hegemony, Najib has courted the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), an Islamist opposition party that is growing more extreme, by co-opting its Islamist agenda. PAS leader, Abdul Hadi Awang, who has declared that “Islam has to be the leader and ruler … Let’s not place religion and politics in separate corners”, is now seen regularly beside the prime minister.

Islam was less an issue at the last election. At the time, PAS, then part of the opposition coalition, spoke more of a welfare state than an Islamic one. However, as fears now grow of rising intolerance in the multi-ethnic country, Malaysia’s monarchy issued a rare statement expressing their concern.

The country’s sizeable Chinese, Indian communities and non-Muslim native communities, already chafing under rules guaranteeing Muslim Malays preferences in politics, business and education are alarmed.

Critics say Najib’s drive to instil “Islamic values” in the multicultural nation comes at a larger cost – further divisions in society, erosion of the country’s significant accomplishments and an undermining of the foreign investor the confidence it has built over the years.

Efforts to win votes for the party come at the expense of what’s good for the country, they note.

Najib is expected to dissolve parliament and call for elections in the February-March period and ride on the expected positive mood in the financial markets during the Lunar New Year. The first day of Chinese New Year falls on Feb. 16 and the festival ends 14 days later with Chap Goh Meh on March 2.

The timing is said to be based on the expected release in April-May of the opposition’s pro-democracy champion, Anwar Ibrahim, from prison where he is serving a five-year term for sodomy, which he says is a trumped up charge by Najib to sideline him from politics.

Anwar may be disqualified from the elections but the government is aware of his drawing power and eloquence. After all that has happened since the last election, Najib and his government are easy targets.

The time-line also allows BN coalition party leaders to use the Lunar New Year festivities to reach out to ethnic Chinese voters who by and large have deserted them for the opposition.

Muslims make up 60 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people, while Christians account for about 9 percent with a majority in the two Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak. Christians in the two states feel under siege from Islam-centric policies created at federal level outside their states.

There is impatience to gain equal rights and fairer chances for all in multicultural Malaysia. The coming election is an opportunity for Malaysians to peaceably loosen the grip the government has around their necks.

There may be no issue which shows how far apart President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump are than religious liberty. The following is a chronological account of important religious liberty issues that both presidents addressed in their first year in office.

Obama

• Three days after assuming office, Obama announced that he would overturn restrictions on funding abortions overseas.
• Less than a week later, he said he would restore U.S. funding to the U.N. Population Fund, which pays for abortion.
• In February 2009, Obama’s newly designed Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was announced. Its focus was not religious liberty. Instead, its goal was to decide on a case by case basis which funding requests were constitutionally acceptable, calling into question the hiring rights of religious non-profits.
• In March, Obama appointed Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. An abortion-rights zealot, she was a defender of  Dr. George Tiller, who performed more than 60,000 abortions. She also accepted money from him.
• Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, thus allowing the government to be in the business of killing nascent human life.
• Dawn Johnsen was nominated to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. She started her legal career in the 1980s by working with the ACLU to strip the Catholic Church of its tax exempt status.
• Harry Knox was appointed to the Advisory Council of the faith-based initiative. He had been denied ordination in the United Methodist Church for being a sexually active homosexual. He denounced Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on AIDS, calling the pontiff a liar. He also maligned the Knights of Columbus.
• When Obama spoke at Georgetown University, his advance team insisted on covering up all religious statues so that none would be seen on television.
• The Obama administration reopened a case against Belmont Abbey College, challenging the school’s decision not to cover abortion, artificial contraception, and sterilization in its health care coverage.
• Obama rolled out his health care bill, which included funding for abortion.
• In September 2009, Kevin Jennings was appointed Safe School Czar. He was known for promoting unsafe sex practices at several homosexual conferences, and for his Christian bashing. He also publicly condemned God.
• Chai Feldblum was nominated to join the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was known for arguing that sexual rights, which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, should trump religious rights, which are cited in the First Amendment.
• The religious elements of Christmas at the White House were downplayed. Ornaments of a mass killer were displayed on a White House Christmas tree.

Trump

• On February 1, 2009, Trump chose Judge Neil Gorsuch to take Antonin Scalia’s place on the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch is a strong proponent of religious liberty, holding that conscience rights are paramount.
• Trump endorsed educational equality, championing the cause of tax incentives to businesses that fund private schools. He directed his support for school choice at poor minority families.
• Trump issued an executive order on religious liberty which, while lacking specifics, sent a clear message to his cabinet on how to proceed with such matters.
• A bill to allow the states to strip funding from Planned Parenthood was signed into law by Trump.
• The “Trump Effect” was noted in several states that chose to pass bills restricting abortion.
• A decision to provide direct assistance to persecuted Christians in the Middle East was announced.
• A religious exemption to Obama’s HHS mandate was granted by Trump.
• The religious elements of Christmas at the White House were celebrated.

The stark contrast between the two administrations’ approach to religious liberty was illuminated in two Rasmussen surveys. In 2014, under Obama, 30 percent of the public said government was a protector of religious liberty; 48 percent saw it as a threat. In October 2017, under Trump, 39 percent named government as a protector of religious liberty; 38 percent saw it as a threat.

The conclusion is obvious: Obama was not a religious-friendly president, but Trump surely is.

(RFE/RL) — Russia plans to limit U.S. military reconnaissance flights over Russian territory under the Open Skies Treaty starting January 1 in response to limits on Russian flights over the United States recently announced by Washington, Russian news agencies reported.

The new restrictions Russia is introducing will limit the scope of U.S. flights by preventing U.S. air crews from using certain Russian air bases, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited Foreign Ministry official Georgiy Borisenko as saying.

Under the new restrictions, Russia will “cancel night stays at three airfields with respect to flights involving the United States,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on December 28.

The Open Skies Treaty was signed in 1992 and was one of a series of arms-control deals intended to foster trust and transparency as the relationship between the nuclear superpowers thawed at the end of the Cold War.

But in June, the United States accused Russia of violating the treaty by limiting U.S. flights over its Kaliningrad enclave in Eastern Europe and said that in response, it would limit some Russian flights over U.S. territory starting on January 1.

Kaliningrad is one of Russia’s most militarized regions, home to the Baltic Fleet and short-range missiles deployed in response to a U.S. missile-defense system in Europe that the Kremlin contends is fomenting a new arms race.

With both NATO and the Russian military building up defenses in the border region, Kaliningrad’s position as Russia’s westernmost territory, wedged between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, makes it a potential flash point.

Complaining of Russian limits on Open Skies flights over Kaliningrad, U.S. media have reported that the United States countered with restrictions due to take effect January 1 on Russian missions over Alaska — where interceptors that form part of the U.S. missile shield are positioned — and Hawaii — the base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The tit-for-tat limits on surveillance under the Open Skies Treaty comes as each side has accused the other of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

Interfax quoted Zakharova was quoted as saying that putting the new restrictions on surveillance flights over Russia in place required the cancellation of “some bilateral agreements with the U.S. side” and that the U.S. mission at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was notified.

“U.S. actions hurt the Open Skies Treaty. We are calling on our U.S. colleagues to stop and begin a depoliticized search for mutually acceptable solutions to issues relating to the treaty,” Zakharova was quoted as saying.

U.S. officials have said they would be willing to reverse the U.S. restrictions “should Russia come back into compliance with its Open Skies Treaty obligations.”

“Jill Stein had dinner with Putin, so… GET THE GUILLOTINE!  That’s how we roll in this country now. Didn’t she know it’s illegal to eat with Russians?” -— Richard Baris, Twitter

The Russia-gate investigation has zeroed-in on Green Party candidate Jill Stein proving that the probe is not an attempt to determine whether Russia meddled in the 2016 elections, but a crude weapon to bully the political rivals of Hillary Clinton her dissolute allies in the bureaucracy.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr said on Monday that the committee was “just starting to look at Ms. Stein’s campaign … as it continues its investigation of the Trump campaign.”  According to a report in the New York Times:

Democrats have seethed for more than a year at Ms. Stein, whose tens of thousands of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania either exceeded or nearly matched Donald J. Trump’s margins of victory in those states, which delivered him the White House. At least in certain quarters, they greeted news of the queries enthusiastically.

Jesse Ferguson, a former Clinton campaign spokesman, said Americans ought to know if a presidential nominee, no matter how minor, had become a Russian asset or was simply boosted in an effort to chip away Democratic votes from Mrs. Clinton.

“Russian operatives were not promoting Jill Stein because they thought she would win,” Mr. Ferguson said. “They were promoting her because they thought it would hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”

(“Senate investigators scrutinize another presidential candidate: Jill Stein”, New York Times)

A “Russian asset”? Jill Stein is a “Russian asset”?

How long are American liberals going to put up with this bullshit?  How long before they wash the mud from their eyes and acknowledge what should be as plain as the nose on their face; that their precious investigation of Donald Trump is nothing more than a witch hunt designed to intimidate or destroy political rivals?

The persecution of Jill Stein strips away the facade once and for all exposing Russia-gate as a complete fraud that is being used to exact revenge on the adversaries of Hillary Clinton and her reprobate friends. Even the New York Times admits as much.

Why is there still no evidence of  wrongdoing after more than a year of relentless, non-stop investigations?  Why are there just accusations, allegations and baseless claims?

Take a hard look at the Stein case and you’ll understand why. The meat-puppet senators who are conducting these wretched show trials don’t give a damn about the truth. They know the case against Stein is completely fabricated. They also know they can carry on with complete impunity because  the big money powerbrokers who pull their strings and order them about, are beyond the reach of the any legal accountability. That’s what’s really really going on, the fatcat honchos behind the scenes are just settling scores for Hillary’s lost election. It’s payback time for the Clinton Mafia. Here’s more baloney from the Times:

Senate investigators are interested in unraveling what was behind the apparent closeness between Ms. Stein, a Harvard-educated doctor and perennial Green Party candidate, and Russia.

Give me a break. Does anyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee honestly believe that Jill Stein is a Russian agent?

Of course not. They’re just harassing her to send a message to the rest of us: “You’d better watch your step or we’ll trump-up charges against you and make your life a living hell. Isn’t that the message?

You’re damn right it is!

And you call this “America”?

Here’s a clip from an article by Danielle Ryan at “blacklisted” RT which you probably shouldn’t read because it undoubtedly transform you into a Russian agent or a Kremlin apologist:

This is a witch hunt. It is neo-McCarthyism, plain and simple. The people who are outright calling Stein a Russian agent are making a complete mockery of themselves and of the American political process…

Dragging Stein into this mess … shows Clinton Democrats up for what they really are. It proves that the ‘Resist’ crowd’s crusade is not just about Trump and “collusion” — it’s also about discrediting all dissenting American voices and establishing their own definition of what political opposition is supposed to look like — and for the Clinton cult, it’s not supposed to look like Jill Stein….

Anyone who disagrees with the Democrats is a Putin puppet — and if you’ve ever been to Moscow, forget it — don’t even bother trying to defend yourself. Off with your head.”  (“McCarthy-style targeting of Jill Stein proves Democrats have truly lost the plot”, RT)

Bravo, Ryan! You nailed it, girl. It’s too bad America’s liberals don’t see things so clearly.

The World Socialist Web Site also issued a statement condemning the attacks on Stein. As always, the WSWS is on the forefront of the issue while the other phony liberal sites and pundits continue to support these thoroughly-corrupted and reactionary investigations. Here’s an except from their statement:

“The Socialist Equality Party condemns the targeting of Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate in the 2016 election, by the neo-McCarthyite witch-hunters on the Senate Intelligence Committee…. The attack on Stein, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is an unconstitutional attempt to delegitimize and suppress political opposition to the monopoly of the capitalist two-party system…….

In addition to the dinner hosted by RT, Stein, according to ranking committee Democrat Mark Warner, had “very complimentary things to say about Julian Assange.”… For having spoken out publicly in support of a political prisoner and dissident, Stein is threatened with being hauled before a congressional committee as if she were involved in treasonous activity.

This is the Orwellian reality of America in 2017, ruled by two right-wing, oligarchic parties that can and will tolerate no political opposition…..” (“Democratic Party witch-hunters target Green Party candidate Jill Stein”, World Socialist Web Site)

Imagine that; Stein actually spoke up for Assange, the highly-principled whistleblower who sacrificed his own freedom to expose the truth about Washington’s homicidal activities around the world? That’s got to be worth 30 years of hard labor at least!

What a farce!  Here’s more from the Times:

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s top Democrat, would not comment directly on the committee’s interest in Ms. Stein, but pointed out that several of the interactions appeared to be consequential.

“I will point out though that Ms. Stein was at the infamous dinner that included General Flynn and Vladimir Putin, and we do know that she has very complimentary things to say about Julian Assange, who certainly was being used by the Russians to take some of the hacked information and release it into our political system,” he said.

The disclosure that the committee is looking closely at Ms. Stein’s campaign is the latest indication that the Senate committee is still expanding its investigation as it nears the one-year mark(New York Times)

Do you hear that, liberals? Do you hear what Warner is saying? Do you like the idea that the investigation is expanding and that the hectoring, harassing and intimidating is going to continue for the foreseeable future and that it’s going to include anyone who admires men like Assange or Snowden or Manning or anyone who opposes the corrupt and murderous oligarchy that rules this stinking country?

Do you like that idea?

If you’re a liberal and you hate Donald Trump, then you probably see the Russia-gate investigation as your best chance to achieve the Golden Grail of “impeachment”.  But are you willing to compromise your principles, join forces with the sinister and unscrupulous Clinton cabal, and throw allies like Jill Stein under the bus to achieve your goal?

How high a price are you willing to pay to get rid of Trump?

That’s the question that every liberal in America should be asking themselves.

And they’d better answer it fast before it’s too late.

By Brian Frank*

The Northern Pass Transmission targets the state of New Hampshire.The media reports polls say 50% of New Hampshire opposes it.From Quebec, Canada to Concord, NH, you see only signs of opposition to Northern Pass. Bumper stickers against it in French are seen on the Canadian side. On the US side hundreds, perhaps thousands of hand-painted postersin English ‘Northern Pass Kiss my Ass’ and commercially printed ones in French‘Enterrez-le’ (Bury It) line the route south to Concord.A public referendum would kill the proposal. There’s been no talk of referendums.

Northern Pass is a collaboration between Boston-based Eversource Energyand Hydro-Quebec, the Quebec State Utilities. Their plan isto construct power lines from Quebec to Concord, NH cutting through 192 miles of NH forest.

In the NH media the arguments against it revolve around the environmental impacts and potential declines in real estate values and tourism. There are more fundamentalreasons not to allow Northern Pass but those have not been raised. Northern Pass is billed as ‘green energy’ because its 90% hydroelectric power. But ‘green’ implies more than simply hydroelectric. Green means sustainable. Regarding this criteria scrutiny of Northern Pass has been noticeably absent in the media. The Northern Pass model is archaic.

Robert Hebner, Director of the University of Texas/ Austin Center for Electomechanics says that transmitting thousands of megawatts long distances is a thing of the past.Smaller grids are the future and threat to big utility companies. The grid-expanding Eversource-HydroQuebec deal is a shrewdmaneuver to prevent losses in the face of a grid-break up.

Small grids are more logical. They are more sustainable, a better defense against climate change. A hotter climate means more storms and higher energy storms.In big grids millions lose power with a flood, a lightning strike, a power line downed by wind, snow or a tree. Heat wavesproduce extreme demand by millions resulting in brownouts and blackouts. Human operator erroron a big grid means millions lose power.

Hydro-Quebec is famous for power failures. For example, a1989 space storm that interrupted service at Hydro-Quebec caused outages in Quebec and in turn New York City affecting 6 million people for 9 hours. The there was the 1998 ice storm. It destroyed transmission towers and caused massive prolonged power outages in Quebec. In 1999 a wind storm downed Hydro-Quebec transmission lines. It cutting  power to 600,000 people for over a week.In 2006 winds blow down Hydro-Quebec power lines. It left 450,000 without power.

The risks of big grids are well documented but absent from the debate on Northern Pass. Big grids fail big. Our experience with big gridsover the last 50 yearsis acomedy of errors. In 2003 fallen tree’s cut power to 8.5 million people in 17 states for two weeks people in Hurricane Sandy on the US’s east coast. In 2012, hundreds of millions lost power due to a surge in demand during a heat wave.In 2012  a wind storm  cut power to 4.2 million customers in 11 states in the midwest for 10 days. In 2011 downed trees and wires caused a ten-day black out for three million customers in Mid-Atlantic states and New England.  In 2011 hot weather and high demand after the end of the cause 12 hour outage , affecting 2.7 million people in Arizona and California which was importing power from Arizona. In 2003 two cables failed in London, and 250,000 customers lost power. In 2003 tree trimming caused a transmission line to short circuit. 50 million people-  10 million in Canada and 40 million in the US, were without power for four days. In 1998 lightning struck a Minnesota transmission line causing a separation of the northern Midwest  from the Eastern grid. 52,000 people in upper Midwest, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan lost power for 19 hours. In 1996 an Idaho transmission line overheated and sagged into a tree, which tripped relays to Wyoming coal plants. Two million people in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico lost power for minutes to hours. In 1996 inadequate tree trimming shorted-circuited Washington state transmission lines which  tripped hydro  turbines  at an Oregon Dam.  7.5 million customers lost power in seven western U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and Baja California, Mexico for up to six hours.In 1982  high winds knocked one transmission tower over causing a domino effect,  as tower fell on tower.  Five million people on the west coast lost power.In 1977 lightning struck several power lines shutting Indian Point No. 3 nuclear plant, causing power surges, overloads and disconnecting New York City from the North East grid.  Nine million people in New York City lost power. Looting lasted for 26 hours. In 1965 a wrong setting on a transmission system device near Niagara Falls led to other human errors which  lead to 30 million people losing power for 13 hours in the Central Northeast US and Ontario.

Terrorism is a bigger risk for bigger grids. Power failures can result from hacking. A Vermont electric utility was hacked by Russians. It was unaffected only because it was not connected to the bigger grid. In 2015 Kiev, Ukraine lost power as result of suspected Russian hacking.

It is irrelevant that Northern Pass makes no sense. There is a precedent here for senseless things happening. History is about to repeat itself.  US and Canadian corporations will muscle Northern Pass though the same way  the overwhelmingly unpopular Canadian Natural gas pipeline was muscled through. In VT they just dug it. They heck with permits.The corporate attitude was ‘let them stop us’. Maybe the term ‘leader of the free world’ refers to corporate freedom.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By J C Suresh

More than one in every eight Americans, numbering 40 million, equal to 12.7 % of the population, are living in poverty, and almost half of those – 18.5 million – in abysmal poverty, according to a new report.

Though the United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries, “neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation,” stresses Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in his statement on a two-week visit to the USA.

Alston, an international law scholar and human rights practitioner, is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-Chair of the law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

His report published on December 15 by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights finds that the youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD of which the U.S. is a founding member.

There is considerable debate over the extent of poverty in the U.S., but for the purposes of the report, Alston has relied mainly upon the official government statistics, drawn up primarily by the U.S. Census Bureau. In order to define and quantify poverty in America, the Census Bureau uses ‘poverty thresholds’ or Official Poverty Measures (OPM). The figures mentioned in the report are from September 2017.

In the OECD member countries, the U.S. ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality. The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty characterizes the U.S. as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league.” U.S. child poverty rates are the highest amongst the six richest countries – Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Norway.

The report highlights that a shockingly high number of children in the U.S. live in poverty. In 2016, 18% of children – some 13.3 million – were living in poverty, with children comprising 32.6% of all people in poverty. Child poverty rates are highest in the southern states, with Mississippi, New Mexico at 30% and Louisiana at 29%.

Contrary to the stereotypical assumptions, 31% of poor children are White, 24% are Black, 36% are Hispanic, and 1% are indigenous. When looking at toddlers and infants, 42% of all Black children are poor, 32% of Hispanics, and 37% of Native American infants and toddlers are poor. The figure for Whites is 14%.

Alston draws attention to the fact that poor children are also significantly affected by America’s affordable and adequate housing crisis. Around 21% of persons experiencing homelessness are children. “While most are reportedly experiencing sheltered homelessness, the lack of financial stability, high eviction rates, and high mobility rates negatively impact education, and physical and mental health.”

Examining the ‘racial’ aspect of poverty, the UN expert says: “The poor are overwhelmingly assumed to be people of color, whether African Americans or Hispanic ‘immigrants’.” But the reality is that there are 8 million more poor Whites than there are Blacks.

Some politicians and political appointees with whom Alston spoke were “completely sold on the narrative of such scammers sitting on comfortable sofas, watching colour TVs, while surfing on their smart phones, all paid for by welfare.”

But the poor people he met from among the 40 million living in poverty were “overwhelmingly” either persons who had been born into poverty, or those who had been thrust there by circumstances largely beyond their control such as physical or mental disabilities, divorce, family breakdown, illness, old age, unlivable wages, or discrimination in the job market.

The face of poverty in America is not only Black, or Hispanic, but also White, Asian, and many other colors, notes the UN expert. Nor is it confined to a particular age group. “Automation and robotization are already throwing many middle-aged workers out of jobs in which they once believed themselves to be secure.”

In the economy of the twenty-first century, only a tiny percentage of the population is immune from the possibility that they could fall into poverty as a result of bad breaks beyond their own control. “The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion as the US since the US now has the lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries,” declares Alston.

He adds: Many statistics could be cited to demonstrate the extent to which women shoulder a particularly high burden as a result of living in poverty. They are, for example, more exposed to violence, more vulnerable to sexual harassment, discriminated against in the labour market.

Quoting Luke Shaefer from the University of Michigan, School of Social Work, and Kathryn Edin from the Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, the UN expert says: The number of children in single-mother households living in extreme poverty for an entire year has ballooned from fewer than 100,000 in 1995 to 895,000 in 2011 and 704,000 in 2012.

“But perhaps the least recognized harm is that austerity policies that shrink the services provided by the state inevitably mean that the resulting burden is imposed instead upon the primary caregivers within families, who are overwhelmingly women. Male-dominated legislatures rarely pay any heed to this consequence of the welfare cutbacks they impose.”

The UN expert points to perturbing practice which affects the poor almost exclusively, that of setting large bail bonds for a defendant who seeks to go free pending trial.

“Some 11 million people are admitted to local jails annually, and on any given day there are more than 730,000 people being held, of whom almost two-thirds are awaiting trial, and thus presumed to be innocent.

“Yet judges have increasingly set large amounts of bail, which mean that wealthy defendants can secure their freedom, whole poor defendants are likely to stay in jail, with all of the consequences in terms of loss of their jobs, disruption of their childcare, inability to pay rent, and a dive into deeper destitution,” writes Alston.

But the saving grace is that a major movement to eliminate bail bonds is gathering steam, and needs to be embraced by anyone concerned about the utterly disproportionate impact of the justice system upon the poor.

The UN expert also mentions the widespread practice of suspending drivers’ licenses for a wide range of non-driving related offences, such as a failure to pay fines.

“This is a perfect way to ensure that the poor, living in communities which have steadfastly refused to invest in serious public transport systems, are unable to earn a living which might have helped to pay the outstanding debt,” notes Alston. Two paths are open to them: penury, or driving illegally, thus risking even more serious and counter-productive criminalization.

Demonization of the poor can take many forms, adds the UN expert. “It has been internalized by many poor people who proudly resist applying for benefits to which they are entitled and struggle valiantly to survive against the odds.”

Racial disparities, already great, are being entrenched and exacerbated in many contexts, he adds. In Alabama, he saw various houses in rural areas that were surrounded by cesspools of sewage that flowed out of broken or non-existent septic systems. The State Health Department had no idea of how many households exist in these conditions, despite the grave health consequences. Nor did they have any plan to find out, or devise a plan to do something about it.

“But since the great majority of White folks live in the cities, which are well served by government built and maintained sewerage systems, and most of the rural folks in areas like Lowndes County, are Black, the problem doesn’t appear on the political or governmental radar screen,” notes the report.

By Mariyam Ahmad

Fifteen men with alleged links to insurgents in the Thai Deep South were arrested Thursday, including two suspected of plotting attacks targeting New Year’s festivities in Phang-Nga province, a southern tourist hotspot located well outside the troubled region, police said.

The two suspects who were picked up in Phang-Nga were from Raman, a district in Yala, one of the provinces in the Deep South, and bomb-making material was found at their home, authorities said. The arrests of the 15 suspects came after Thailand’s army chief ordered a crackdown on suspected militants to safeguard year-end celebrations.

“We suspect they have links to Deep South insurgents who came here to do attacks during New Year,” police Lt. Col. Weerasak Srithong told BenarNews. “They initially denied the allegation but officials don’t trust them either.”

In Krabi, a province near Phang-Nga, the provincial police chief said his department had received intelligence that Deep South insurgents were preparing to attack tourist sites during the New Year.

“I ordered my policemen to search for suspicious men from Deep South and do surveillance on tourist sites, crowded areas and government establishment after I received reports that insurgents planned attacks on Dec. 31 evening,” Maj. Gen. Boontawee Toraksa told BenarNews.

Phang-Nga and neighboring Phuket island are among popular touristic sites in Thailand’s upper southern region that were targeted in coordinated bombings, which killed four people and injured more than 30 others in August 2016.

Soon after those attacks, a leader of a combat unit with Barisan Revolusi Nasional, the largest and most powerful of insurgent groups in the Deep South, told BenarNews that BRN operatives had carried out those bombings farther north. Officials privately agreed that Deep South rebels were responsible.

According to Weerasak, the two men suspects were detained at a checkpoint in Phang-Nga. When police later searched their residence, they found material that could be used to build homemade bombs, including a gas tank, nails and miscellaneous items. He said the two were not charged but transferred to a military facility in Pattani, a province in the Deep South.

On Thursday, in Yala and neighboring Narathiwat province, police also arrested 12 men on suspicion of being involved in recent militant attacks in Narathiwat. The suspects have not been charged but were being interrogated, officials said.

A day earlier, Gen. Chalermchai Sithisart, the army commander-in-chief, ordered a crackdown against militants following a series of recent attacks in the Deep South, including an incident on Dec. 17 when insurgents hijacked a double-decker bus and set it on fire after allowing its passengers to disembark.

“I ordered the commander of the 4th Army Region, Lt. Gen. Piyawat Nakwanich, to keep the peace and protect both Buddhist and Muslim Thais, during the New Year festivities,” Chalermchai, the army chief, told reporters, referring to the region including the Deep South.

“We focus on limiting insurgents’ movement and firearms,” he said.

A 34-year-old man has been arrested and charged over the bus attack in Yala, police said Thursday. Three other suspects remain at large, officials said.

Earlier this week, suspected insurgents opened fire at an army truck, killing one soldier and injuring three other soldiers and a civilian in Narathiwat’s Srisakhon district, police said. Two other soldiers were injured when their truck hit a roadside bomb as they rushed to secure the area on Tuesday.

In Yala province, a senior police officer told BenarNews that authorities were bracing for attacks from young members of insurgent groups.

“As far as I see it, the perpetrators planned coordinated attacks,” police Col. Chamroen Suwnachatree, director of the Ayer Weng police station in Yala, said Thursday.

“They practice doing violence before carrying out bigger violence. They also intimidate villagers and show off their capability that they can do anything at will.”

Since 2004, almost 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the insurgency in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim southern border region.

This week, Deep South Watch, a local think-tank reported that, in 2017, the number of insurgent-related attacks in the region had fallen to a 14-year low.

Malay-speaking insurgents in the Deep South are fighting for secession. Until the region was annexed in 1909, Buddhist-majority Thailand’s three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat were part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate.

Fifteen men with alleged links to insurgents in the Thai Deep South were arrested Thursday, including two suspected of plotting attacks targeting New Year’s festivities in Phang-Nga province, a southern tourist hotspot located well outside the troubled region, police said.

The two suspects who were picked up in Phang-Nga were from Raman, a district in Yala, one of the provinces in the Deep South, and bomb-making material was found at their home, authorities said. The arrests of the 15 suspects came after Thailand’s army chief ordered a crackdown on suspected militants to safeguard year-end celebrations.

“We suspect they have links to Deep South insurgents who came here to do attacks during New Year,” police Lt. Col. Weerasak Srithong told BenarNews. “They initially denied the allegation but officials don’t trust them either.”

In Krabi, a province near Phang-Nga, the provincial police chief said his department had received intelligence that Deep South insurgents were preparing to attack tourist sites during the New Year.

“I ordered my policemen to search for suspicious men from Deep South and do surveillance on tourist sites, crowded areas and government establishment after I received reports that insurgents planned attacks on Dec. 31 evening,” Maj. Gen. Boontawee Toraksa told BenarNews.

Phang-Nga and neighboring Phuket island are among popular touristic sites in Thailand’s upper southern region that were targeted in coordinated bombings, which killed four people and injured more than 30 others in August 2016.

Soon after those attacks, a leader of a combat unit with Barisan Revolusi Nasional, the largest and most powerful of insurgent groups in the Deep South, told BenarNews that BRN operatives had carried out those bombings farther north. Officials privately agreed that Deep South rebels were responsible.

According to Weerasak, the two men suspects were detained at a checkpoint in Phang-Nga. When police later searched their residence, they found material that could be used to build homemade bombs, including a gas tank, nails and miscellaneous items. He said the two were not charged but transferred to a military facility in Pattani, a province in the Deep South.

On Thursday, in Yala and neighboring Narathiwat province, police also arrested 12 men on suspicion of being involved in recent militant attacks in Narathiwat. The suspects have not been charged but were being interrogated, officials said.

A day earlier, Gen. Chalermchai Sithisart, the army commander-in-chief, ordered a crackdown against militants following a series of recent attacks in the Deep South, including an incident on Dec. 17 when insurgents hijacked a double-decker bus and set it on fire after allowing its passengers to disembark.

“I ordered the commander of the 4th Army Region, Lt. Gen. Piyawat Nakwanich, to keep the peace and protect both Buddhist and Muslim Thais, during the New Year festivities,” Chalermchai, the army chief, told reporters, referring to the region including the Deep South.

“We focus on limiting insurgents’ movement and firearms,” he said.

A 34-year-old man has been arrested and charged over the bus attack in Yala, police said Thursday. Three other suspect remain at large, officials said.

Earlier this week, suspected insurgents opened fire at an army truck, killing one soldier and injuring three other soldiers and a civilian in Narathiwat’s Srisakhon district, police said. Two other soldiers were injured when their truck hit a roadside bomb as they rushed to secure the area on Tuesday.

In Yala province, a senior police officer in Yala province told BenarNews that authorities were bracing for attacks from young members of insurgent groups.

“As far as I see it, the perpetrators planned coordinated attacks,” police Col. Chamroen Suwnachatree, director of the Ayer Weng police station in Yala, said Thursday. “They practice doing violence before carrying out bigger violence. They also intimidate villagers and show off their capability that they can do anything at will.”

Since 2004, almost 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the insurgency in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim southern border region.

This week, Deep South Watch, a local think-tank reported that, in 2017, the number of insurgent-related attacks in the region had fallen to a 14-year low.

Malay-speaking insurgents in the Deep South are fighting for secession. Until the region was annexed in 1909, Buddhist-majority Thailand’s three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat were part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate.

By Jim Garamone

The coalition’s efforts against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have been successful, but there is still much to do to eradicate the group, British army Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney told Pentagon reporters.

Gedney is based in Baghdad and is the deputy commander for strategy and support at Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.

Gedney spoke via video conference and described progress made against ISIS this year, and what 2018 looks like.

In Syria, ISIS remains a threat, he said. Syrian Democratic Forces have isolated the remaining pockets of ISIS militants along the east bank of the Euphrates River and are methodically clearing areas to the east, in the Syrian desert along the border with Iraq, he said.

“The SDF, with coalition strike support, repelled ISIS attacks in the vicinity of Abu Hammam, with more than a dozen enemy killed,” Gedney said. “In total, coalition forces have conducted 23 strikes against ISIS targets in eastern Syria during the past week, destroying ISIS vehicles, weapons, explosives and a command-and-control center.”

ISIS has morphed back to its roots as a terror operation, Gedney said. They retain the ability to strike targets. They are operating more against the regime of Bashir al-Assad. “The Syrian regime has failed to demonstrate its ability to prevent the resurgence of ISIS on their own soil,” he said.

Providing Security, Stability in Liberated Areas

The defeat-ISIS coalition is working long range to ensure the group dies, the general said. That requires a commitment to security and stability in liberated areas. “In Raqqa, for example, the SDF and the Raqqa internal security forces are conducting an important and dangerous mission: They’re bravely searching for and removing the many improvised explosive devices and booby traps left behind by ISIS terrorists, so local residents can return to their homes and get back to their lives,” he said.

And this is happening, Gedney said, noting people are returning to their neighborhoods as they are cleared. “Such efforts to establish safety and security help pave the way for civilian-led efforts to address local needs,” he said.

Residents are rebuilding homes, clearing roads and reopening shops, Gedney said. They are working to rehabilitate schools and get children back into classrooms.

“Over 830 metric tons of humanitarian aid have been delivered to more than 40 locations around the city of Raqqa, and local councils are facilitating the delivery of aid to civilians,” the general said.

In Iraq, forces are tracking down remnants of the group in Anbar province and in Baghdad, he said.

ISIS: Adaptive, Patient Enemy

ISIS is an adaptive, patient enemy, the general said. “We know they may attempt to work in smaller cells, and they … certainly will continue attempting their acts of terror whenever and wherever possible,” Gedney said. “However, the ISF’s ongoing clearance operations should dispel any ideas that ISIS can simply vanish into the population they once terrorized and be forgotten about.”

The coalition will continue to support Iraqi efforts against the group, Gedney said. “To that end, the coalition will continue to partner with the ISF, advising, training and equipping them in their efforts to fully eliminate ISIS as a threat to Iraq,” he said. “We will tailor our support based on Iraqi requirements, with a particular emphasis on the capabilities needed to hold and secure the liberated areas.”

Like Syrians liberated from ISIS control, the Iraqi people also are voting with the feet, Gedney said. They are returning to homes, villages and cities that ISIS once controlled. “For the first time, we have seen the number of returnees climb above the number of those still displaced: Just over 2.8 million people have returned and just under 2.8 million remain displaced,” the general said.

Yet, in Syria, the coalition is disturbed by ISIS forces operating in areas controlled by the Assad regime with impunity, Gedney said. The Russian military is also operating in the area, and that complicates counter-ISIS operations in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. “The coalition will continue to deconflict with the Russian forces,” he said.

ISIS operations in that region shows the Assad regime “is clearly either unwilling or unable” to defeat ISIS within their borders, he said.

“We’ll continue to deconflict with the Russians, but we’ve got no intention to operate in areas that are currently held by the regime,” Gedney said.

Conspiracies in the extraterrestrial department have always constituted the residue of superstition in a secular age.  Chase away a Christ figure, or ward off God, and the mind still wanders, hoping to be bewitched.  If something cannot be explained, ignorance furnishes an often poor substitute.

The concept of extraterrestrial phenomena straddles scientific probabilities, faith and the sense that governments might not be telling their citizens the whole truth.  Rarely, for instance, does speculation on extraterrestrial research feature in the mainstream press, though the New York Times decided to dabble in the business of UFOs this month.

The paper noted, quite rightly, that the US Defense Department, known to most others as the Pentagon, had put aside $22 million of its $600 billion annual budget on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).  Identifying exactly where it was in the bureaucratic apparatus remained a contrived challenge, and it had its opponents.

The program, run by Luis Elizondo on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, was deeply concealed within the structure itself.  Supposedly concluding in 2012, supporters are certain that funding continues to, if not flow then certainly trickle to it.

The study of UFO phenomena in US bureaucracy is a study of bureaucratic quirkiness itself.  Shadowy and opaque, the connections stretch across from Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, himself a fan of all things space, to billionaire friend, Robert Bigelow, who happily received government sponsorship for his aerospace venture.

The official record on US interest in the extraterrestrial research has been sketchy and speculative.  The US government, officially at least, claimed to have stopped gathering information on the subject of UFOs in 1969 with the cancellation of Project Blue Book by the US Air Force.  As the National Archives describes on a sombre note, “The project closed in 1969 and we have no information on sightings after that date.”

Project Blue Book itself concluded after examining UFO reports since 1948 that no such entity reported, investigated or evaluated by the USAF posed a threat; that such sightings did not suggest “technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge” and that, perhaps most damningly of all, no sightings filed as “unidentified” could be deemed extraterrestrial vehicles.

Such reports, far from dissuading, have quite the opposite effect.  In May, Bigelow told Lara Logan of 60 Minutes about his absolute conviction about alien life forms, and “an existing presence, an ET presence. And I spent millions and millions and millions – I spent probably more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.” (Bigelow, typically, confuses expenditure and dedication with verifiable sightings.)

In of itself, Bigelow’s interest is admirable. But curiosity finds idiosyncratic ways of making a mark.  It is not merely the scientific level that matters but one of induced faith, a Damascene conversion that turns a figure into a devotee.

Interest in investigating the existence of other life forms, Bigelow contends, arose after his grandparents encountered an UFO outside Las Vegas. (Those aliens really have a thing for that part of the world.)  “It really sped up and came right into their faces and filled up the entire windshield of the car.”  That particular object conformed to caricature, darting “off at a right angle and shot off into the distance.”

For Reid, a vital figure behind creating the AATIP, nothing but pride comes to mind.  “I am not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going.  I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Reid, however, doesn’t stop there. He speaks about the findings of the Pentagon unit with a dazed piousness, telling Las Vegas news channel KLAS Channel 8, about the inherent dangers. This is the technology imperative, one constantly manifested during the Cold War: the fear that somewhere, something or someone, is so advanced as to strike terror in the human species.  Behind every ET phenomenon and unidentified object is a primordial fear that another earthly being is doing better and just might be a threat. Forget the ETs: the darkness lies within.

As Reid himself explained, “If China, Russia, Japan, other countries are doing this and we’re not, then something is wrong because if the technology, as described and the way people see this movement took place in anything we have available to us, it would kill everybody.”

The technology imperative, one which acts as a discouragement for certain scientists in contacting potential alien forms, also finds voice in Stephen Hawking’s concerns that aliens could be “vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.”

There will always be alien boffins.  Some, like Douglas Vakoch, president of the Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), envisage a planet or planets in the universe with liquid water, hosting life.  Such grounds do not sound merely sensible but probable.  Then there are the Reids and the Bigelows, a mixture of political and personal enchantment, part crazed part curious.  But to date, the sceptics on the current record of sightings seem to be holding the reins. The truth might be out there, but it remains happily inscrutable.

‘Wheat diplomacy’ could just be the start of focus on export from India to Afghanistan.

By Avijit Goel

On creating walls between neighbours, Robert Frost had brilliantly summarized in his poetic masterpiece ‘Mending Wall’ saying:

For neighbours sharing long borders and cultures (with one of the countries being landlocked), seamless and growing trade between them is a foregone conclusion. Or is it? Not when artificial walls are erected time and again, leading to acrimony and distaste. And when the metaphorical gaps are found, albeit with other neighbours, the wall ironically penalises its original mason in a fast shrinking and nimble world.

Over the last 15 years, Pakistan has closed its border on multiple instances with Afghanistan, adding to the sheer unreliability of the trade permissibility on the Af-Pak border. For bilateral trade that peaked close to USD 3 billion in 2011, the estimates for the current year are less than 1 billion between the two countries. The border trade blockades, put up by Pakistan, have ostensibly been a penalising chip to reign in political and security behaviour in Afghanistan. Whether this bargaining chip has yielded any positive outcome in Afghanistan can be debated, but it surely has pushed Afghanistan in seeking other trade partners, successfully. A decline of bilateral trade by 70% over a decade between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been comfortably filled in the other neighbours in Central and South Asia.

Take wheat, for example. In 2006, Afghanistan imported more than 50% of its wheat and flour requirements from Pakistan, but that lead position has now been taken by Kazakhstan. Estimates show that more than 800 flour mills have been closed in Pakistan due to a decline in exports to Afghanistan, especially in the Khyber-Pakhtunwa region bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan currently has stocked 9.7 million tonnes of wheat, but isn’t able to export it for lack of a clear policy (the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Treaty, which is pending re-negotiation, under revised terms). Given storage infrastructure limitations, majority of this wheat is lying in open storage. In four months, the new wheat season starts, compounding the economic woes and another difficult year for the wheat farmer in Pakistan. The last year saw four border blockages by Pakistan, and steep decline of about 26 per cent in its exports to Afghanistan in the same period seem to have strong correlation. Any attempts to fuel inflation or trigger a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan have clearly backfired.

India, in a first, sent across its first shipment of wheat in October this year (through the strategically located Chabahar port in Iran), the first in a series of six shipments totalling 1.1 million tonnes of wheat, on a grant basis.

Sensing ‘wheat diplomacy’ as the apt symbolism for a nation which had been denied import, it could just be the start of focus on export from India to Afghanistan. Though India is Afghanistan’s top export destination (in 2016, USD 220 million of Afghanistan’s USD 483 million in total trade went to India, which accounted for 46 per cent of Afghan exports), India is a minor player in exports to Afghanistan, having accounted for just 2.0 per cent of Afghanistan’s total imports in 2016.

India has continued expanding its reconstruction footprint in Afghanistan; the building of the Salma dam in western Afghanistan and the Afghan Parliament House in addition to the building of roads and railways, has earned India substantial goodwill in the nation. India’s largest foreign aid is reserved for Afghanistan, apart from the training of its civil servants and security forces.

Though the aid and humanitarian assistance from India is forthcoming, the border blockades and other myopic measures by Pakistan along the Af-Pak give India a unique opportunity to capitalise on growing exports from current levels and embarking upon a new era of trade diplomacy with Afghanistan.

By Hannah Brockhaus

The magical realm of Narnia is the setting of C. S. Lewis’ beloved children’s book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There, four children discover a land of talking animals, mythological creatures, the White Witch, and “the Great Lion:” Aslan.

This Narnia is fictional, but more than 2,000 years ago, when Romans ruled the civilized world, Narnia was a real-life city on the Italian peninsula – and it still exists today.

The ancient hill-town of Narnia, now called Narni, lies in the central Italian region of Umbria, about 50 miles north of Rome. In the city, you can see remnants of the town’s extensive history, from its pre-Roman identity as Nequinum, to antique and medieval Narnia, to the present Narni.

Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, never visited Narni, but he likely knew about the ancient Narnia from reading Roman history, where it is named by such famous writers as Tacitus, Livy, and Pliny the Elder.

In 2009, the town received confirmation of Lewis’ knowledge of the place when the Christian author’s biographer and former personal secretary, Walter Hooper, gifted Narni’s local historian, Giuseppe Fortunati, a copy of a Latin atlas owned by Lewis, on which the Belfast-born author had underlined the town named “Narnia.”

Hooper also relayed that Lewis had told him the name on the atlas had inspired him in the writing of his Chronicles. And while the two places aren’t the same – it very rarely snows in Narni, for example – there are connections between the imaginary realm and the real-life city that can still be seen today.

One of these connections is the presence of a large stone table, which recalls the stone table in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, upon which the lion Aslan, a representation of Christ in the book, sacrifices himself to save Edmund, one of the four children in the story.

Found near the Via Flaminia, an ancient road which leads from Rome to the Adriatic Sea, and which also passes by Narni, stands an ancient stone table believed to date from pre-Roman times, and to have been a place of animal, and possibly even human, sacrifice.

The town was founded around 1,000 years before Christ by the Osco-Umbrian people as Nequinum. It was conquered by the Roman Republic in the 4th century BC, and its name was changed to Narnia, after the nearby Nar River.

“Nar,” Fortunati told EWTN, “means ‘water that flows,’” noting that this may also be a reason why Lewis chose the name for his imaginary land, since “water is the source of life.”

The Diocese of Narni was established in the 4th century; in the 20th, it was united with a nearby diocese, and is now part of the Diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia.

Around 1930, during repair work on a road, workers discovered a statue of a lion dating from the Roman era, when it was common for the emperor always to have a statue of a lion “guarding” his tent at camp, Fortunati said.

The figure of a lion had also been adopted by the Jewish religion. The Lion of Judah became a symbol of the Hebrew tribe of Judah, the first association found in the Book of Genesis, chapter 49, where Jacob blesses his son Judah, calling him “a lion’s cub.”

In Christianity, the Lion of Judah represents Christ, as in the Book of Revelation it says, “Weep not; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered…”

Fortunati pointed out how it is difficult not to make the connection between the lion statue and other lion symbols found in Narni, and Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Lewis himself confirmed the connection in a letter he wrote to a child reader in 1961. He said he was inspired to make the figure of Christ a lion in the stories for two reasons: because the lion is supposed to be the king of the beasts, and because Christ is called “the Lion of Judah” in the Bible.

Another link between the real and fictional towns can be found in the real-life Lucia of Narnia. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy Pevensie is the youngest child of four siblings, and she is the one who first sees the fantastical land and believes.

Bl. Lucy Brocadelli of Narni was a mystic who lived from the end of the 15th to the mid-16th century and who was born in the city. She was known as a very pious child, and from a young age is said to have seen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Child Jesus, and other saints, particularly St. Dominic.

Her first vision was at the age of 5, and at 12 years old she made a private vow of virginity, deciding to join the Dominicans. As a young teen she was married off by her uncle to a family friend, Pietro, the count of Milan, though they lived as brother and sister at her request.

She continued to experience visions throughout her life, and was particularly dedicated to the poor, including making them bread with the help of saints who visited her. By the age of 18 she had separated from her husband, then becoming a Dominican tertiary. Her husband eventually joined the Franciscans.

She became the prioress of a convent and is one of only a few female saints to have ever received the stigmata. Shunned and mistreated by other sisters for her strange experiences, she spent the last forty years of her life locked up in isolation by a successor prioress.

She died in 1544, and her body was discovered to be incorrupt a few years after that. She was beatified in 1710 by Clement XI. In 1935 her remains were returned to her home town of Narni and interred in the cathedral.

Today around 20,000 people live in Narni; if you visit you will find the town’s Romanesque cathedral, a late-medieval fortress called the Rocca, the old town square, and a plaque marking the “Center of Italy,” among other sites.

Also scattered around the city you’ll find images of lions and of Bl. Lucia of Narnia, reminders of its connection to the mythical land of C.S. Lewis’ imagination and his beloved stories.

By Victoria Arnold

Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia continue to feel the impact of their liquidation and the nationwide ban on their exercise of freedom of religion or belief. Regional Justice Ministry branches are preparing to sell off confiscated Jehovah’s Witness property. Military call-up offices have denied several army conscripts the option of alternative civilian service. Jehovah’s Witnesses also experience increased law enforcement harassment and incidents of vandalism and violence across the country.

Individual Jehovah’s Witnesses remain at risk of criminal prosecution if they engage in any expression of their faith which law enforcement officers may interpret as “continuing the activities of a banned extremist organisation”.

Jehovah’s Witness appeals to both Russia’s Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are pending (see below).

A 14 November Supreme Court resolution advises courts to deprive people of their parental rights in cases of their “involvement [of the children] in the activity of a public or religious association or other organisation which has been liquidated by a court order which has come into force, or whose activity has been banned”. Courts could use this against Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as against Muslims who meet to study the writings of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi (see below).

Meanwhile, Jehovah’s Witnesses are also trying to stop the prohibition as “extremist” of their Russian-language New World Bible. Vyborg City Court upheld prosecutors’ request to rule the text “extremist” on 17 August 2017. The next hearing in the appeal process is due at Leningrad Regional Court on 20 December. The suit is not connected to the Supreme Court’s liquidation ruling, as Leningrad-Finland Transport Prosecutor’s Office lodged its suit more than a year earlier.

Banned since 17 July

The Supreme Court’s ruling that the Jehovah’s Witness Administrative Centre be declared an “extremist” organisation and its activities prohibited throughout Russia came into force on 17 July, when an appeal panel upheld the original 20 April decision. Some Jehovah’s Witness activities had already been halted by a 15 March suspension order issued by the Justice Ministry when it lodged its liquidation suit.

Individual believers and communities had already begun to suffer the effects of the liquidation ruling, even before it came into force, with a steep rise in vandalism, the prosecution of community elders for leading worship, and incidents of discrimination against children at school and adults in the workplace.

The Jehovah’s Witness Administrative Centre and all 395 local communities have now been added to the Justice Ministry’s list of banned “extremist” organisations, alongside violent far-right and Islamist groups, Forum 18 notes. They are also included on the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) list of “terrorists and extremists” whose assets banks are obliged to freeze (though in the case of Jehovah’s Witness organisations, the state has already seized their assets).

Jehovah’s Witnesses are in a unique position in Russia as the only centralised religious organisation with a nationwide presence which has been ruled “extremist” and liquidated, thus losing its legal personality and forfeiting its property.

Other religious associations which have been banned as “extremist” have either lacked registration (and therefore property of their own), such as “Nurdzhular” (followers of Said Nursi), or have been local communities, such as the Muslim congregation of Borovsky in Tyumen Region.

Appeal to European Court of Human Rights

On 1 December 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ appeal against their liquidation admissible and decided that it should be considered as a priority case.

The appeal challenges the liquidation ruling under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion), in conjunction with Article 11 (the right to freedom of assembly and association) and Article 14 (the prohibition of discrimination). It also protests specifically against the confiscation of Jehovah’s Witness property, under Article 1 of the additional 1952 Protocol to the Convention (protection of property).

On 1 December, the Court asked the Russian government to respond by 23 March 2018 to the question of whether the liquidation violates Jehovah’s Witnesses’ rights under these Articles.

“Administrative Centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Kalin vs. Russia” (Application No. 10188/17) was originally lodged on 3 February 2017 in response to the General Prosecutor’s Office warning of “the inadmissibility of extremist activity”, issued on 2 March 2016. Jehovah’s Witnesses had already challenged this warning unsuccessfully in the Russian courts, lastly at Moscow City Court on 16 January 2017.

The appeal to the ECtHR now also encompasses the Supreme Court’s 20 April decision to declare the Administrative Centre an “extremist” organisation and ban all Jehovah’s Witness activities.

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers questions to Russia

On 7 December, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, which is responsible for overseeing the implementation of ECtHR judgments, decided to change the monitoring of two earlier rulings against Russia to an “enhanced procedure”.

The June 2010 ruling in Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow and Others vs. Russia (Application No. 302/02) obliged Russia to re-register the Moscow Jehovah’s Witness community, which was eventually completed in 2015. The June 2014 ruling in Krupko and Others (Application No. 26587/07) v. Russia obliged the Russian authorities to pay damages to Jehovah’s Witnesses who were detained when police raided a worship service taking place in a hired hall.

The Committee of Ministers “expressed their serious concern” about the impact of the nationwide Supreme Court ban on Jehovah’s Witness activities, the 7 December decisions note. It has asked the Russian government for information on how the Jehovah’s Witnesses who lodged these two cases may “continue to enjoy the individual right to freedom of religion”.

Appeal to Human Rights Ombudsperson

Jehovah’s Witnesses also sent an appeal to Human Rights Ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova on 9 October. They asked her to use her right to appeal against court decisions which have come into force. They also drew attention to the “massive, growing violation of human rights that followed the court’s ruling”, the jw-russia.org news website reported.

“Believers hope that, after reading the case materials, Tatyana Moskalkova will consider it necessary to apply to the presidium of the Supreme Court of Russia with a demand to overturn the unreasonable and unlawful court decision,” the website noted.

Jehovah’s Witnesses appear to have received no reply. Forum 18 wrote to the Ombudsperson’s office before the start of the Moscow working day of 18 December, asking what answer it had to the Jehovah’s Witness appeal, and how it was responding to the violation of their human rights. Forum 18 received no reply by the end of the working day in Moscow on 19 December.

Confiscation of property

– Administrative Centre case

On 7 December, after a four-hour hearing, Judge Natalya Bogdanova of St Petersburg’s Sestroretsk District Court ruled that a 17-year-old property contract was invalid, thus allowing the seizure by the state of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ principal site in Russia. The court’s decision may be appealed within 30 days.

“This decision casts a shadow over the inviolability of property rights in the Russian Federation, where no organisation, even an international one, can have peace of mind over its transactions, even if they are officially registered by authorised bodies,” the jw-russia.org news website commented on 7 December.

The complex in question consists of 14 buildings (constructed by the Jehovah’s Witnesses) on ten hectares of land in the village of Solnechnoye, and has a value of more than 881 million Roubles (126 million Norwegian Kroner, 13 million Euros or 15 million US Dollars), according to a court press release of 7 December. The Administrative Centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses acquired the land in 2000 and transferred its ownership to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, which in turn allowed the Administrative Centre free use of the site.

Because the site was owned by a foreign organisation, it did not automatically become the property of the state upon the liquidation of the Administrative Centre, a Russian legal entity. The Kurortny District Prosecutor’s Office argued, however, that the contract governing the transfer of the property to the Watch Tower Society’s ownership was invalid, as it was the Administrative Centre which continued to use and maintain the land and buildings.

Watch Tower Society lawyer Viktor Shipilov argued in court that federal tax records show that the Society has been paying taxes on the property since 2000 (had the Administrative Centre owned the site, it would not have had to do so, as registered Russian religious organisations are not liable for tax on land or property used for religious purposes). He also noted that Kurortny District Prosecutor’s Office checked the legitimacy of the acquisition of the property and its ownership by the Watch Tower Society in 2007 and found no violations.

The Administrative Centre complex also accommodated almost 400 people, both Russian and foreign nationals, some of whom had made their homes there for more than twenty years. “The move from their homes and the disruption in their voluntary religious service .. have been traumatic,” according to a 5 December Jehovah’s Witness statement on their international website, jw.org.

Forum 18 telephoned the Justice Ministry’s Department for the Affairs of Religious Organisations on 19 December to ask what would happen to the Administrative Centre’s property in St Petersburg and whether the people who lived there would receive any compensation. A spokeswoman insisted that all questions must be put to the Ministry’s press service.

The Department for the Affairs of Religious Organisations was responsible for submitting the liquidation suit to the Supreme Court in March 2017, and its staff member Svetlana Borisova represented the Justice Ministry during the hearings.

– Locally-owned property

Meanwhile, buildings and land owned by local Jehovah’s Witness organisations are now in the process of being sold off. Once creditors have been satisfied, any remaining assets will pass to the state and may then be sold. If a local community had insufficient monetary funds to pay off its debts, its property will be auctioned to raise more (if worth more than 100,000 Roubles).

According to legal documents seen by Forum 18, this process is initiated by regional branches of the Justice Ministry, overseen by regional arbitration courts, and carried out by an executor from the Interregional Self-Regulatory Organisation of Professional Arbitration Managers.

Justice Ministry branches appear to be seeking to appoint the same executor, Sergei Aleksandrovich Kryazhev, to manage the disposal of Jehovah’s Witness property across the country. He is to be paid 30,000 Roubles per month from the liquidated community’s assets (disposal periods vary between cases).

Regional Justice Ministry branches appear to have begun lodging suits initiating the disposal of Jehovah’s Witness property in late September (only two months after the Supreme Court’s ruling came into force), but, according to the Civil Code, they have five years to do so after a legal entity is recorded as liquidated in federal tax records. The process of disposal of Jehovah’s Witness assets may therefore continue for some time.

The Republic of Karachai-Cherkessiya’s Justice Ministry branch lodged its suit to initiate the disposal of the Cherkessk Jehovah’s Witness community’s property on 21 September at the Arbitration Court of Karachai-Cherkessiya. It was upheld on 6 December. The congregation’s property consists of a non-residential building of 298.5 sq.m. and a plot of land of 857 sq.m. Judge Ali Botashev ruled that disposal should take place within six months and agreed to the appointment of Sergei Kryazhev as executor with remuneration of 30,000 Roubles per month from the assets of the liquidated community.

The Judge stipulated that the executor should publish notice of the disposal process in the journal “State Registration Herald” (Vestnik gosudarstvennoy registratsiy) no more than ten working days after the court ruling is issued, and should immediately inform any creditors of the disposal process. Notice of the disposal should also be published in the media within two months of the ruling, and creditors should be given two months (from publication in the press) in which to put forward their claims. The judge has scheduled another hearing on 18 May 2018 to examine the executor’s report on the results of the disposal process.

Similar proceedings are underway or have recently been completed in other regions, e.g. Krasnoyarsk (lodged 24 October; first hearing 20 November, next hearing due 9 January 2018), Saratov (re. Volzhsk community, lodged 13 November, first hearing due 16 January), Vladimir (lodged 24 October, first hearing due 23 January 2018), St. Petersburg/Leningrad Region (re. Administrative Centre, lodged 27 October, first hearing due 26 December; re. Kirishi community, lodged 30 October, first hearing due 26 December), Amur (re. Tynda community, lodged 8 December, first hearing due 15 January 2018), Irkutsk (re. Northern, Usolye-Sibirskoye community, lodged 22 September, halted 19 October at Justice Ministry’s request because of lack of resources; re. Vikhorevka community, lodged 22 September, upheld in full 1 November), Republic of Karachai-Cherkessiya (re. Kurdzhinovo community, lodged 21 September, preliminary hearing due 27 December), Sakha Republic/Yakutiya (re. Chulman community, lodged 9 November, upheld in part 11 December), Rostov (re. Salsk community, lodged 17 November, preliminary hearing due 25 December).

It is theoretically possible under the Civil Code for the founders or former directors of a liquidated organisation to be named as third parties to such arbitration suits, and in cases of organisations liquidated through choice or because of non-viability, remaining assets would be divided between them. In the case of Jehovah’s Witness congregations, however, the “extremism” ruling and ban means that they no longer have any right to proceeds from their property, and even appear to be unable to attend court hearings on its disposal.

Forum 18 found one instance, in Krasnoyarsk, of the twenty founding members of a community being named by the court as third parties to the suit. The judge removed them as third parties at the first hearing, however, at the request of the regional Justice Ministry, based on the fact that Jehovah’s Witness property was now forfeit to the state (two had also died).

Denial of alternative civilian service

At least six young Jehovah’s Witness men are potentially being denied their right to perform alternative civilian service. Of the six individuals in five different regions across Russia known to Forum 18, three have so far received official refusals and have been called up to the army, while military authorities have yet to make a final decision regarding the other three.

Individuals whose beliefs do not allow them to engage in military activity may apply to local military call-up offices for permission to perform “alternative civilian service”.

The military call-up office for the Central and Komintern Districts of Voronezh now obliges conscripts to fill out a form about their “attitude to religion” and “attitude to religious trends of an extremist nature”, the portal-credo.ru news website reported on 30 November. Conscripts must state whether they “belong to”, “are acquainted with”, or “defend the activities of” such movements.

Although the form gives “Wahhabism” as an example of such extremist religious beliefs, it is likely that Jehovah’s Witnesses would also be considered as such in the wake of the Supreme Court ban – as a result, young Jehovah’s Witness men would be obliged to disclose their religious affiliation.

The insistence that conscripts give their views on religion violates both their Constitutional rights and international human rights norms. Article 29, Part 3, of Russia’s Constitution declares: “No one can be forced to declare their opinions and beliefs or to deny them.”

General Comment 22 of the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Article 18.3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights notes that “no one can be compelled to reveal his [sic] thoughts or adherence to a religion or belief”.

The duty officer at Voronezh Region military call-up office put the phone down on 19 December as soon as Forum 18 asked about conscripts being given a form about their attitude to religion. The telephones at the military call-up office for the Central and Komintern Districts went unanswered each time Forum 18 called the same day.

Deprivation of parental rights

On 14 November, the Plenum of the Supreme Court issued a resolution on the application of legislation to disputes affecting the rights of children. This included advice to courts to deprive people of their parental rights if they “involved [the children] in the activity of a public or religious association or other organisation which has been liquidated by a court order which has come into force, or whose activity has been banned”.

The resolution mentions no specific organisation, but the measure could apply to Jehovah’s Witnesses and to Muslims who read the works of Said Nursi (frequently prosecuted for involvement with the banned “extremist” organisation Nurdzhular, the existence of which Muslims in Russia deny).

The resolution also does not explain what is meant by “involvement” (vovlecheniye), which could be subject to a wide range of interpretation by officials.

Forum 18 is not aware of any instances of this measure being used against Jehovah’s Witnesses or Muslims who read Nursi’s works, as of 19 December.

Arrests, detentions, raids

On 14 December, around 40 law enforcement officers, including from the fire brigade, entered the Hall of Congresses, a large worship building in northern St Petersburg, the jw-russia.org news website reported the same day. Officers then sealed the building. The congregation, abiding by the Supreme Court’s ruling, has not used the building since April.

Throughout November alone, police detained Jehovah’s Witnesses, required them to disclose their religion, often took them to police stations, obliged them to submit to photographing and fingerprinting, and confiscated their personal belongings, the Moscow-based SOVA Centre reported on 12 December. Such incidents have occurred in Dmitrov (Moscow Region), Severnaya Ferma (Vologda Region), Chapayevsk (Samara Region), and Diveyevo (Novgorod Region), and in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.

Police, sometimes accompanied by FSB security service officers, have also raided homes, Jehovah’s Witnesses reported. In the village of Uyskoye in Chelyabinsk Region, police took down the details of anyone who entered a flat in which Jehovah’s Witnesses lived. In Kuchva in Sverdlovsk Region, police searched a house without permission, insulted the owner and a visiting friend, and “expressed their scorn for their faith”. A Jehovah’s Witness couple from Belgorod claims that police illegally entered their flat and installed audio and video surveillance equipment. In Naberezhnyye Chelny (Republic of Tatarstan), police and FSB security service officers went to a holiday complex which had been rented by 100 Jehovah’s Witnesses, inspected their documents, and took their details. Police in Novosibirsk also visited a Jehovah’s Witness at work and allegedly planted religious literature in his office.

So far, no prosecutions are known to have arisen from these incidents.

Vandalism and violence

On 23 November in Moscow, a man allegedly pushed a 54-year-old Jehovah’s Witness down the stairs of his block of flats. Her tablet computer broke in the fall.

On 16 September, in Chunsky village in Irkutsk Region, “unknown persons” broke into the building formerly used for Jehovah’s Witness worship, the jw-russia.org news website reported on 20 September. The intruders smashed the building’s internal doors, set off fire extinguishers, destroyed sound equipment, and broke the burglar alarm. Jehovah’s Witnesses reported the incident to the police, and “have no doubt” that it was provoked by the Supreme Court decision.

Prosecutions

After the Justice Ministry issued its 15 March suspension order, several Jehovah’s Witness leaders were prosecuted under Administrative Code Article 20.28, Part 1 (“Organisation of or participation in the activities of a public or religious association, in relation to which a decision on the suspension of its activities is in force”). Most of these prosecutions led to fines. The prosecutions were launched despite the fact that the order did not apply to worship.

After the Supreme Court’s liquidation ruling came into force on 17 July, these prosecutions ceased, as Jehovah’s Witness activities are now banned, not merely suspended. Individuals are therefore now at risk of criminal prosecution under Criminal Code Article 282.2 (“Organisation of” or “participation in” “the activity of a social or religious association or other organisation in relation to which a court has adopted a decision legally in force on liquidation or ban on the activity in connection with the carrying out of extremist activity”).

Danish Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Ole Christensen remains in pre-trial custody on charges of “organising the activities of a banned extremist organisation” (Criminal Code Article 282.2, Part 1). He will appeal against his detention for the third time at Oryol Regional Court on 22 December. Christensen is accused of “continuing the activities” of the Oryol Jehovah’s Witness community, which was ordered liquidated in June 2016.

The next hearing in the trial of Jehovah’s Witness elder Arkady Akopovich Akopyan is due on 10 January 2018 at Prokhladny District Court in Kabardino-Balkariya. Akopyan’s case is also not directly connected to the Supreme Court’s liquidation ruling; he was charged under Article 282, Part 1 (“Actions directed at the incitement of hatred [nenavist] or enmity [vrazhda], as well as the humiliation of an individual or group of persons on the basis of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion, or social group”) for allegedly giving sermons in which he “degraded the dignity of adherents of other religions”

The offshore power plant or wave farm at Mutriku is the only commercial facility (it is not a prototype) in the world that operates by regularly feeding the grid with electrical power produced by waves. It has been operating since 2011 and the study by the UPV/EHU’s EOLO group analyzed its behavior during the 2014-2016 period.

“It is important to find out how the wave power farm is actually performing, to analyse how the technology used is behaving, and to observe what deficiencies or advantages it has in order to help to improve it,” said Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi, the lead author of the study. “Extracting energy from the waves is in its early stages and various types of devices and technologies are currently being developed. They include the OWC (Oscillating Water Column) technology used at Mutriku,” he added.

In OWC technology the turbines are not driven by the waves directly but by a mass of compressed air. It is a structure in which the upper part forms an air chamber and the lower part is submerged in the water. That way the turbine takes advantage of the movement produced by the wave both when it advances and recedes, and the generator to which it is coupled feeds the power into the grid.

“The turbines generate electricity which is regularly sold to the electricity grid. In the case of Mutriku this happens 75% of the time. The plant shuts down from time to time when the waves are very calm or even when they are too rough,” explained Ibarra.

Output indicator

The research focussed on the study and analysis of the operational data provided by the Basque Energy Agency, which manages the plant. After analyzing and ordering these data, “we saw that one output indicator is the Capacity Factor (CF), which allows different technologies for producing electricity to be compared,” explained the lead researcher of the article.

“In this case we calculated the CF of the Mutriku farm and its value is 0.11, while wind energy facilities have a CF in the region of 0.2-0.3, and solar plants 0.4. That indicates that the OWC technology at Mutriku needs to improve its CF to put it on a par with the values of the remaining renewable energy sources,” said Ibarra. “We believe that the way to achieve this is to improve the regulation and control of the speed at which the turbines rotate, in other words, to properly manage the speed at which the turbine rotates in relation to the advancing waves,” he concluded.

According to Gabriel Ibarra, “these conclusions drawn from the data on a real farm like that of Mutriku constitute a step forward whereby it is possible to focus and identify the next steps to be taken so that OWC technology can attain a level of maturity, thus facilitating the introduction and deployment of these farms”.

By Wolfgang G. Schwanitz*

In October 1917, as British forces knocked at Jerusalem’s gates, the Ottoman authorities declared a string of draconian steps aimed at destroying the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv).

Should the Turks be driven from Palestine, threatened Djemal Pasha, governor of the Levant and one of the triumvirs who ran the Ottoman Empire during World War I, no Jews would live to welcome the British forces.[1]

Less than a year later, on August 12, 1918, Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, Djemal’s co-triumvir, issued an official declaration in the name of the Ottoman government abolishing these restrictions and expressing sympathy “for the establishment of a religious and national Jewish center in Palestine by well-organized immigration and colonization.”[2]

Though issued far too late to have any concrete effect—nearly half a year after the British conquest of Palestine and some eighty days before the Ottoman surrender—the significance of the declaration cannot be overstated.

Here was the world’s foremost Muslim power mirroring the British government’s recognition (in the November 1917 Balfour Declaration) of the Jewish right to national revival in Palestine, something that many Muslim states refuse to acknowledge to date.

The Ottoman Declaration

In a meeting in Istanbul on August 12, 1918, Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha gave Leopold Perlmutter, a German Jewish businessman and a personal acquaintance, an official statement on behalf of the Ottoman government.

Formulated during a month-long negotiation with a 16-member Jewish delegation, headed by Perlmutter and comprising Zionists and non-Zionists from Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire,[3] the statement acknowledged the Jewish right to national and religious revival in Palestine. “I am happy to be able to tell you that my negotiations with delegates of several Jewish organizations some time ago have led to a real result,” Talaat wrote. The statement continued:

The Council of Ministers has just decided, following my statements to the Jewish delegation, to lift all restrictive measures on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Strict orders have been given to the relevant authorities to ensure a benevolent treatment of the Jewish nation in Palestine based on complete equality with the other elements of the population.

Regarding my invitation to several Jewish organizations, I declare once again, as I already did to the Jewish delegation, my sympathies for the establishment of a religious and national Jewish center in Palestine by well-organized immigration and settlement, for I am convinced of the importance and benefits of the settlement of Jews in Palestine for the Ottoman Empire. I am willing to put this work under the high protection of the Ottoman Empire, and to promote it by all means that are compatible with the sovereign rights of the Ottoman Empire and do not affect the rights of the non-Jewish population. It is my solid conviction that the special commission, which will be appointed to lay out a detailed project for this work, shall shortly complete its work. I will be happy to see the delegation here again thereafter to continue the conversations.[4]

In a letter to the German ambassador in Istanbul, Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff, Perlmutter claimed that the wording of the statement (which he attached for the ambassador’s perusal) was roughly identical to the original communiqué proposed by the Jewish delegation with only minor modifications.[5] He also revealed that Talaat asked that the statement be published in the Western press, and indeed, on September 6, the London newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, ran a short version of the declaration:

Addressing a conference, at Constantinople, of representatives of Jewish organizations in Central Europe, Talaat Pasha (Grand Vizier) said:

I am very glad that my negotiations with the delegates of the various Jewish organizations have already yielded a definitive result. We have resolved to do away with all restrictive measures, and definitely to abolish the restrictive regulations regarding the immigration and settlement of Jews in Palestine. I assure you of my sympathy for the creation of a Jewish religious centre in Palestine by means of well-organized immigration and colonization. It is my desire to place this work under the protection of the Turkish government. I cherish the firm hope that the labors of the Special Commission which has been sent out to work out a detailed plan will shortly be terminated.[6]

While this short version was substantially toned-down from Talaat’s original declaration, speaking about “the creation of a Jewish religious centre in Palestine” rather than “a Jewish religious and national center,” the newspaper doubted whether the grand vizier would make good his pledge to have the statement adopted as a parliamentary bill,[7] given the widespread opposition to this move.[8] As it was, this discussion proved purely academic, for the Ottoman Empire surrendered to the Allies on October 30, 1918, before the bill could be dealt with. The Turkish leaders fled to Berlin, where in March 1921, an Armenian nationalist murdered Talaat in revenge for his role in the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Why the Declaration?

Its non-implementation notwithstanding, Talaat’s original statement was extraordinary in two key respects: the religious and the national. On the former level, the pledge to treat Palestine’s Jewish community on the basis of “complete equality with the other elements of the population” ran counter to the sociopolitical order of things underpinning the House of Islam, whereby political power was vested with the Muslim majority whereas non-Muslim minorities were tolerated subjects (or dhimmis), who enjoyed protection and autonomy in the practice of their religious affairs yet were legally, institutionally, and socially inferior to their Muslim rulers.

Likewise, the sympathetic allusion to “the Jewish nation,” let alone to the creation of a “Jewish national center in Palestine,” was antithetical to the millenarian perception of Jews as a religious community rather than a national group. Moreover, having been squeezed out of their European colonies in the nineteenth century by the rising force of nationalism (resulting in the independent states of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania), the Ottomans were resolved to prevent the recurrence of this phenomenon in their Afro-Asiatic provinces. Hence their brutal repression of the Armenian national awakening in the 1890s—in which some 200,000 people perished and thousands more fled to Europe and America—was a taste of the genocidal horrors that awaited the Armenians during World War I.[9] These atrocities also foreshadowed the repression of the Yishuv throughout the war, which was demonstrated most starkly by mass expulsions of Jews from Palestine and the sustained attempt in the spring through autumn 1917 to uproot the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa community.

Given this backdrop, it is possible that Talaat knew full well that he would never have to implement the declaration, especially as Palestine had been under British occupation for eight months. Yet in view of Russia’s March 1918 departure from the war on highly favorable terms to the Triple Alliance (German-Austrian-Ottoman), and the spring 1918 German offensive along the front in western Europe, the outcome of the war remained undecided for some time.

Accordingly, Talaat’s declaration was politically relevant rather than purely hypothetical. Apart from ensuring the safety of Jewish communities in those parts of the empire still in Ottoman hands, it provided Istanbul with a potentially valuable card for the postwar peace talks.

More than that, Talaat’s readiness to break with Islamic and Ottoman taboos, if only declaratively, by putting the Jews on a par with their Muslim counterparts and viewing them as a nation deserving of self-determination, indicated his likely expectation of a substantial quid pro quo. It was no coincidence that, prior to the U.S. entry to the war in April 1917, Talaat had rebuffed all Zionist overtures. His position began to change after the U.S. entry as he envisaged the potential gains of rallying the real or imagined “international power of world Jewry”[10] (believed to be particularly omnipotent in the United States) behind the Ottoman cause. These ranged from preventing Washington, which did not declare war on Turkey upon joining the war, from doing so; to encouraging the new Bolshevik regime in Russia to leave the war; to obtaining a better deal in the postwar negotiations, perhaps even regaining control of Palestine in return for the proposed concessions to the Jews. In the words of then German ambassador to Istanbul Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff: “If we cannot get back Palestine by weapons, we will attain this goal diplomatically.”[11]

Yet it is doubtful whether Talaat would have been able to make this conceptual leap without the incessant prodding by Istanbul’s senior war ally—Berlin.

The German Connection

Kaiser Wilhelm II was well disposed to Zionism, which he considered “a question of huge importance.” He favored its main goal—the revival of the Holy Land by the “capital mighty and industrious Israel”—and tried to impart his enthusiasm to Sultan Abdulhamid II during his visit to Istanbul in 1898, to no avail.[12] After the outbreak of hostilities, the kaiser had to strike a balance between this general sympathy and the need to avoid antagonizing the Ottoman leadership, which treated its national minorities with outright repression.

He also needed to avoid rocking the German-Austrian-Ottoman Triple Alliance. Thus, for example, his order to the German consuls throughout the empire to protect the Yishuv, including the new Jewish immigrants arriving from enemy states (notably Russia), was presented as being in Istanbul’s best interest: It was likely to boost the Triple Alliance’s standing in Washington where Jews were believed to wield disproportionate influence while repression of Ottoman Jewry was certain to attract sharp criticism.[13]

Whenever this reasoning failed to impress the Ottoman authorities, as it often did, the Germans stepped into the ring. One such notable intervention took place in December 1914 when the Jaffa governor ordered the deportation of all Jews who had not become Ottoman subjects (many of whom were German citizens). At the initiative of the prominent German Zionist leader Richard Lichtheim, then residing in Istanbul, Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim approached Talaat with the request that the deportations be halted as did the U.S. ambassador to Istanbul, Henry I. Morgenthau. The Ottoman leadership complied: The expulsions were suspended, and foreign nationals were granted permission to stay in Palestine and encouraged to be Ottomanized.[14]

A no less crucial intervention took place in April 1917 when Djemal Pasha ordered the expulsion of the 9,000-strong Jewish community of Jaffa and Tel Aviv for “military reasons,” informing the foreign consuls of his intention to vacate the Jerusalem Jews on similar grounds. At the urging of his chief of staff, Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, Djemal abandoned the Jerusalem plan, yet refused to return the Jaffa deportees, who continued to languish in the Galilee.[15]

When Djemal unleashed his ire yet again on the Yishuv in October 1917, following the exposure of a pro-British Zionist spy ring, a much higher-level intervention was required to restrain him. This time it was the former German chief-of-the-general-staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, who arrived in Jerusalem to take command of the newly established Ottoman Yilderim Force, thus ending Djemal’s military command of the Levant and preventing him from carrying out his genocidal plans.[16]

Keenly aware of the precariousness of their national enterprise, the Zionist leaders intensified their efforts to obtain great-power declarations of support for their cause. In July 1917, they presented British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour with a proposal for the official statement. Nearly four months later, on October 31, having discussed the matter twice and having ascertained the views of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and ten “representative [British] Jewish leaders,” both Zionist and anti-Zionist, the cabinet approved the text of the official statement and authorized the foreign secretary to have it published. He did so two days later in what came to be known as the Balfour Declaration.

While Berlin resented leaving the Zionist cause to London, its bargaining position was fundamentally weaker than that of its great-power rival: It could not issue a unilateral declaration affecting the territorial integrity of its war ally without obtaining Ottoman acquiescence in this move. Thus, when on October 23, the German ambassador to Copenhagen received the text of the proposed German declaration from the director of the local Zionist bureau—probably the “communiqué” that was later submitted to Talaat—the idea went no further. Instead, the Germans sought to persuade their Ottoman allies to make their own concessions to the Zionists. In August 1917, for example, they attempted to win over Djemal to the idea with mixed results during his visit to Berlin: Though insisting that Jews could settle anywhere in the empire but not in Palestine, the pasha, nevertheless, indicated that the Ottoman leaders, including himself, might change their minds in the future.[17]

The German persuasion attempts gained momentum in September 1917 with the arrival of a new ambassador to Istanbul. Fresh from a ten-year ambassadorial assignment in Washington, Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff had a high opinion of U.S. Jewry and its role in American society and politics. He needed little prodding when instructed by Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann to obtain Ottoman concessions on the Palestine question. In October, as the British cabinet deliberated the text of the Balfour Declaration, von Bernstorff met Talaat and suggested that Istanbul offer the Jews a national home under its auspices after the war. In his diary, the ambassador recorded that the pasha was ready to comply with this wish provided Palestine remained in Ottoman hands.[18]

Once the Balfour Declaration was announced, Berlin and Istanbul sought to exploit it to drive a wedge between Britain and its Arab supporters by accusing London of selling out to the Jews at the Arabs’ and Muslims’ expense. Vienna, by contrast, issued a statement (on November 21, 1917) supporting the Zionist efforts in Palestine,[19] and before long, von Bernstorff resumed his efforts to convince the Ottomans to respond in kind to the British declaration.

On December 31, 1917, the ambassador scored a major success when Talaat announced in an interview with a German newspaper that Istanbul viewed the Jewish settlement of Palestine with benevolence, including free immigration according to the country’s absorptive capacity, economic development, and the advancement of Jewish culture and local autonomy in accordance with existing laws.[20]

Capitalizing on the interview, on January 5, 1918, the German undersecretary of state met Zionist leaders and told them of Berlin’s readiness to support the Zionist enterprise with a view to a prosperous autonomous Jewish community in Palestine in line with Talaat’s statement. This message was amplified on the same day in a letter from Foreign Secretary Kühlmann to the German Zionist leaders Otto Warburg and Artur Hantke, welcoming the alleged Ottoman support for a blooming Jewish settlement in Palestine.[21]

In the following months, von Bernstorff continued his efforts to translate Talaat’s statement of intent into a concrete agreement with the Zionist movement. On July 20, 1918, he reported to his superiors—with an undisguised sense of satisfaction—that the negotiations between the grand vizier and the 16-member delegation of German and Austrian Jewish leaders was heading toward conclusion. He noted the existence of a powerful anti-Zionist movement that brought Turks and Arabs together, yet assessed that the undeniable economic advantages of the Zionist project in Palestine would eventually tilt the scales as the Ottomans were, above all, interested in self-enrichment and had no qualms about filling their coffers with money earned from Jewish tax revenues. This observation proved prescient, as within two weeks, Talaat made his historic declaration.[22]

Conclusion

In a great, historical irony, ninety-nine years after the Ottoman Empire, the then-temporal and religious leader of the world’s Muslim community and Palestine’s longtime imperial master, voiced support for “the establishment of a religious and national Jewish center in Palestine,” the Palestinian leadership demanded an official apology from Britain for endorsing the same idea at about the same time.

It is true that the Ottoman declaration came too late to make a real impact on the course of regional events and quickly faded into oblivion, in contrast to the Balfour Declaration which was endorsed by the entire international community. It is also true that the Ottoman pronouncement was largely driven by ulterior motives, notably the desire to harness the real or imagined “international power of the Jews” and the economic fruits of the Zionist project in Palestine to the Ottoman imperial interests—as was the Balfour Declaration as well. Yet the fact that support for the Jewish national revival in Palestine was considered the natural quid pro quo for these prospective gains underscores both the pervasive recognition of the historic Jewish attachment to this land and the ability to transcend millenarian Muslim dogmas regarding non-Muslim communities.

If only for these reasons, and having been an alternative option at a time when the war’s outcome was yet to be decided and diplomacy was to be foreseen, the “Ottoman Balfour Declaration” needs to be re-examined and highlighted, especially at a time when Islamist intolerance and supremacism rear their heads.

About the author:
*Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is a Hochberg Family Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, author of Islam in Europe, Revolts in the Middle East; Middle East Mosaics 2013-15, and co-author of Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Source:
This article was published by The Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2018, Volume 25, Number 1.

Note:
[1] Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 166-70.

[2] Leopold Perlmutter to Johann von Bernstorff, B62–64, Talaat-Declaration, Constantinople, 12.08.1918, signed Perlmutter, Political Archive of the Foreign Office (hereafter, PArchAA), Berlin, R14144, Konstantinopel, 394.

[3] To Reichskanzler Grafen von Hertling, Jewish Palestine Efforts, 52-56, Pera, 20.07.1918, Bernstorff, PArchAA, R14144, B Konstantinopel, 394.

[4] Leopold Perlmutter to Johann von Bernstorff, B62–64 Constantinople, 12.08.1918, signed Perlmutter, PArchAA, R14144, Konstantinopel, 394.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Talaat Pasha and the Future of Palestine,” The Jewish Chronicle (London), Sept. 6, 1918.

[7] “The Turkish Government and Zionism, Talaat Pasha’s Promises: An Ominous Interview,” The Jewish Chronicle, Sept. 20, 1918.

[8] Muhammad Amin al-Husaini, Mudhakkirat al-Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husaini (Damascus: al-Ahali, 1999), pp. 338, 388.

[9] See, also, Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

[10] Karl Friedrich Schabinger von Schowingen, ed. Consul General in Jerusalem and Consul in Jaffa (1916-18); Karl Emil Schabinger Freiherr von Schowingen, Weltgeschichtliche Mosaiksplitter (Baden-Baden: Manuscript, 1967), pp. 182-3.

[11] An Reichskanzler Grafen von Hertling, Jüdische Palästina-Bestrebungen, Istanbul, July 20, 1918, PArchAA, B Konstantinopel, 394; Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff, Deutschland und Amerika (Berlin: Ullstein, 1920), p. 414. For pre-WWI Ottoman subscription to anti-Semitic tropes of “international Jewish power,” see Daniel Pipes, “A Benign Antisemitism,” Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (Greenwich, Conn.: Touchstone, 1999).

[12] Max Bodenheimer and Henriette H. Bodenheimer, Die Zionisten und das kaiserliche Deutschland (Bensberg: Schäuble, 1972), pp. 82-4.

[13] Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Islam in Europa, Revolten in Mittelost (Berlin: Weist, 2014), pp. 107-11; facsimile of Talaat’s declaration, p. 118.

[14] Karsh and Karsh, Empires of the Sand, pp. 166-7.

[15] Karl Emil Schabinger Freiherr von Schowingen, Weltgeschichtliche Mosaiksplitter (Baden-Baden: Manuscript, 1967), p. 183; Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Mit den Türken zum Sueskanal (Berlin: Schlegel, 1932), p. 264; Jacob Landau, “A Bibliographical Note on Jews and Dönme-s in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey,” in Philippe Geley and Gilles Grivaud, eds., Les Conversions á l’Islam (Athens: École Française D’Athéns, 2016), pp. 109-15.

[16] Holger Afflerbach, Falkenhayn (München: Oldenbourg, 1994), p. 485; Hansjörg Eiff, “Die jüdische Heimstätte in Palästina in der deutschen Außenpolitik, 1914-1918,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 3 (2012): 205-27.

[17] Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), pp. 439-41, 538-42.

[18] Johann-Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff, The Memoirs of Count Bernstorff (London: Heinemann, 1936), p. 171.

[19] Francis R. Nicosia, ed., Nazi Germany and the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 23-4.

[20] Gespräch mit Talaat Pascha, Konstantinopel, Dec. 12, 1917, gez. Dr. Julius Becker, PArchAA, B Konstantinopel, Bd. 394, pp. 1-7; Vossische Zeitung (Berlin), Dec. 31, 1917.

[21] Richard Lichtheim, Rückkehr (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970), p. 376; Jüdische Rundschau (Berlin), Jan. 11, 1918; Josef Cohn, England und Palästina (Berlin: Vowinckel, 1931), p. 69.

[22] An Reichskanzler Grafen von Hertling, Jüdische Palästina-Bestrebungen, Istanbul 07/20/18, PArchAA, B Konstantinopel 394; von Bernstorff, Deutschland und Amerika, p. 414; Lionel Gossman, The Passion of Max von Oppenheim (Cambridge: Open Book, 2013), pp. 99-105.