Deer infected with chronic wasting disease are doomed to a slow and certain death, eventually wasting away as they lose the ability to eat and drink. There is no cure and no vaccine, and the number of infected deer continues to rise every year. But University of Illinois scientists recently published a new study that could help explain the movement of the disease across the landscape.

“Our biggest goal is to support the management of this non-curable disease in an animal that is an economically important resource for the state of Illinois,” said Michelle Green, research assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at U of I and co-author of the study.

Chronic wasting disease is caused by a prion, a sort of mutant protein with an unusual folding pattern that tricks the body’s own proteins into mutating, too. After enough proteins get in on the act, holes begin to form in the brain, causing physiological and behavioral changes. The disease is part of a group known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, which includes mad cow and a few other rare diseases.

A key element to managing the disease is reducing exposure to the prion. The disease is primarily passed from deer to deer through direct physical contact, but it can also be passed from mother to fetus or picked up indirectly when a deer comes in contact with the disease agent in the environment. The new study focuses on the indirect pathway.

“When infected deer urinate, defecate, or salivate, they can shed prions. When a susceptible deer comes along and licks, ingests, or inhales infected soil it could pick up a prion. But soil is complex. It’s not clear what soil characteristics are associated with the persistence of chronic wasting disease in deer,” said Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, veterinary epidemiologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey-Prairie Research Institute and study co-author.

In the study, the team looked at the relationship between soil characteristics and presence of deer with the disease in five northern Illinois counties where infected deer are prevalent. They focused on seven physical and chemical properties of soil that could affect the ability for a prion to stick around in the environment.

“The goal was to identify which soil characteristics have a greater effect on the persistent presence of chronic wasting disease in the five counties,” said Sheena Dorak, lead author of the study and research associate with the Illinois Natural History Survey.

The first step was to break the five-county area into 1-mile square sections that either had a strong history of the disease or not. The researchers laid this grid over a detailed soils map and created a statistical model to predict the likelihood that the disease would stick around based on the soils.

According to the analysis, the amount of clay in a given soil was a major determining factor to predict where the disease was more likely to persist. And the data clearly indicated a break point that could be useful in future management schemes: Soils with more than 18 percent clay were associated with a steep drop in cases of the disease.

“I think what’s groundbreaking about this work is finding this threshold. It’s like a switch,” Green said.

“Clay can tend to immobilize molecules, and we think at these higher concentrations, clay is holding onto the prions so they’re not bioavailable,” Dorak said.

Soil pH was also influential, with more cases of the disease at a pH greater than 6.6. Again, changes in soil pH may relate to how “sticky” the soil environment is for prions. Above pH 6.6, prions don’t stick as well to the soil and are free to be picked up by curious deer.

The researchers emphasize that their study is observational and based on data from large Natural Resources Conservation Service databases. As such, they cannot confirm exactly what’s going on with prions in the soil based on their work. But they say their results are important because they provide a clear starting point for experimental follow-up.

“With these results, we can now look at the entire state and say, for example, there are a lot of infected deer in one area and not too far away, there are soils that have the right mix of conditions to hold prions persistently should an infected deer contaminate the area,” Green said. “We would recommend a management scheme to keep the infected deer out of such high-risk areas.”

Some US East Coast residents received a tsunami warning on Tuesday after a test message sent out by the National Weather Service was wrongly interpreted as real by the AccuWeather app.

The National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed that a routine test warning was issued at around 8:30am ET, but stressed repeatedly that this was a test. NWS acknowledged that some people received an actual warning.

The error seems to have been the fault of AccuWeather, as the company’s app apparently flagged the routine monthly warning as genuine, sending it out to users with notifications enabled.

People all along the eastern seaboard of the United States reportedly received the warning, which various regional NWS offices were quick to discount as false.

The AccuWeather gaffe comes just weeks after residents of Hawaii were sent into a panic after a false alert was sent out informing them that a ballistic missile was heading straight for their island. It took officials more than half an hour to retract the false warning and reassure the terrified residents that there was no danger.

Coincidentally the false alarm comes the same day a House Homeland Security Committee is holding a hearing on emergency warning systems following the Hawaii incident.

By Frank Kane*

If Saudi Aramco had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday at its officially estimated market value of $2 trillion, it would have lost nearly $100 billion in value between the opening and closing bells.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index — in which Aramco would surely be included if it ever gets on the Big Board — fell by 4.6 percent on the day. Put another way, the entire value of the initial public offering of 5 percent of the shares, if they were listed exclusively on NYSE, would have been virtually wiped out in a single day.

That is a sobering thought for the investment bankers, consultants and lawyers who are “beauty parading” in the Kingdom.

Each has their own solution to the central conundrum facing the Kingdom’s oil champion: Which exchange to list on when it fulfils its commitment to an IPO in 2018?

It is also mind-focusing for the company itself, which has witnessed an intense internal debate on the same issue: New York, London, Hong Kong or Riyadh?

Of course, when New York sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold.

If Aramco had gone for a Hong Kong listing, perhaps in conjunction with a private sale to Chinese investors, it would have suffered roughly the same loss, as the Wall Street contagion spread quickly to Asia.

If, on the other hand, Aramco had gone for a listing on London’s LSE in conjunction with a Tadawul flotation, the damage would have been limited. The FTSE index was down 1.5 percent on Monday, while the Saudi exchange actually closed marginally higher that day.

It would be illogical to draw too many conclusions from one day of trading, and markets are in an exceptionally volatile phase. The Vix Index — Wall Street’s “fear” gauge — had the biggest one-day spike in its history.

On Tuesday, Asian and European markets fell significantly too, taking their lead from New York. There is no disguising that this was an American-inspired share rout, aggravated by automatic trading in instruments linked to volatility indices.

You might argue that the falls of late last week and yesterday do not constitute a “crash”, merely a long-awaited “correction” that will shake out some over-bearish speculators and provide a buying opportunity for the big investors who have lots of cash on their hands.

It is true that the cause of the recent market falls, perversely, seems to have been rather good news: That the US economy is growing faster than expected, adding jobs and wages more quickly than anticipated.

But that has raised the risk of inflation, which in turn will lead to pressure on the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, as America’s central bank has already said it is imminently contemplating.

Whatever the reasons for recent corrections, Aramco is fully entitled to question whether it really wants to be on a market that is subject to such inherent volatility.

The logic of a listing on NYSE — apart from the political considerations of a US-Saudi partnership for the biggest IPO in history — is that it would bring liquidity and scale for Aramco. Simply, it would like to be measured alongside the likes of ExxonMobil, which is also on NYSE.

But, as the beauty paraders will no doubt have noticed, Exxon got hammered even harder than the Dow Jones yesterday, and ended up the worst performer on the index.
NYSE brings with it the kudos of the biggest stock exchange in the world, but it also carries a risk. The two last market crashes — the dotcom bust of the early 2000s and the global financial crisis of 2008 — were noticeably labeled “made in America.”

There is much speculation that a third — the looming “Trump bust” — will be added before long. Some analysts say that the recent corrections are just a dress rehearsal for the big one, marked in for the autumn.

We shall see, but if Aramco in the next few week publishes an “intention to float” document with NYSE as the preferred venue, it could be pricing the IPO just as the US markets are at their most fragile. That will not help get it anywhere near the $2 trillion target, already under pressure because of the risk discount of US litigation threats.

All these reservations might be swept aside by the broader strategic need to stay on good terms with Trump’s America. But the market events of the past few days have done nothing to enhance the case for New York.

• Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai. He can be reached on Twitter @frankkanedubai

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged that Turkey’s military assault on Afrin region in northwest Syria should come to an end, stressing that the presence of an armed force in another country needs the consent of that country’s government and people.

“The Afrin (military) operation should end soon because individuals both from the Turkish military and the other side are being killed and it would bear no fruits,” Rouhani said at a press conference in Tehran on Tuesday.

“This is our recommendation and our view, just as we condemned the American (military) presence in Syria and (believe) they pursue wrong intentions in the region and seek Syria’s disintegration.”

He added that the entry of an army into another country’s territory requires the approval of that country’s government and people.

The president, nonetheless, highlighted the importance of cooperation among Iran, Russia and Turkey and said it is necessary that the three countries hold a summit in the not distant future.

Turkey has been waging “Operation Olive Branch” against Syria’s Afrin region since January 20 in a bid to eliminate the US-backed People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara views as a terror organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Ankara has warned that the Afrin offensive could also expand to the nearby Syrian city of Manbij.

Turkey has also been assisting militants from the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) to fight against the Kurdish fighters.

The Syrian government has condemned the “brutal Turkish aggression” against Afrin.

Elsewhere in his remarks at the press conference, the Iranian president reiterated the country’s determination to keep enhancing its defense power.

While Iran is committed to not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, it will continue to acquire whatever conventional weapons it needs, Rouhani said.

Iran’s missiles will never be used for aggression, he added. “Our missiles are for defense and have never been built for (carrying) WMDs. Therefore, we are not going to negotiate in this regard (missiles).”

Iranian officials have frequently dismissed the idea of negotiations over issues related to the country’s defense capabilities.

In comments in October 2017, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed that the country will press ahead with the plans to boost its defense capabilities.

“As we have announced several times in the past and announce it once again, the country’s defense capabilities and power are not subject to negotiations and bargaining,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at the time.

“We will have no bargaining and dealing with the enemy over the country’s means of defense and over whatever provides or supports the national power,” Imam Khamenei underscored.

A new report has revealed additional texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page, indicating that FBI staffers used non-official email servers. It also questions whether James Comey lied under oath.

The texts were released in a 25-page report titled ‘The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it,’ which was released by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday. The report included numerous messages between Strzok and Page, but noted that they “do not provide a full and complete picture” and that “further investigation and inquiry is necessary.”

Below are some of the extracts from the report.

FBI staffers could have been using non-official email accounts to conduct business:

“Text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page suggest that FBI officials used non-official email accounts and messaging programs to communicate about FBI business. For example, on April 10, 2016—after Strzok expressed his frustration about being ‘left out of the loop’—he wrote to Page: ‘Gmailed you two drafts of what I’m thinking of sending Bill, would appreciate your thoughts. Second (more recent) is updated so you can skip the first.’ In another exchange, on October 25, 2016, about a letter to Congress regarding the Clinton investigation, Page wrote, ‘Remind me I need to ask you something. Tomorrow is fine.’ Strzok responded: ‘[S]ure. You can also imsg [iMessage] me.’ Strzok and Page also discussed Page potentially receiving an FBI-issued iPhone for which the FBI information technology office proposed to stop following ‘security/monitoring’ requirements. These texts raise questions about the FBI’s retention of records associated with its investigation.”

Questions on whether James Comey lied under oath:

“On July 1, 2016, following Attorney General Lynch’s announcement that she would follow the FBI’s recommendation in the Clinton investigation, Page wrote, ‘it’s a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought’ against Secretary Clinton. Director Comey held the exoneration announcement press conference on July 5, 2016. Appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016, Director Comey testified that he ‘did not coordinate [his statement] with anyone. The White House, the Department of Justice, nobody outside the FBI family had any idea what I was about to say.’ These statements seem to be at odds. The statements by both Comey and Lynch were carefully crafted for public consumption. Page’s text message, in contrast, was never intended to see the light of day, was therefore more candid, and may have greater credibility. Because Director Comey’s July 7 statement was given under oath, this discrepancy requires further investigation.”

More anti-Trump rhetoric:

“On August 9, 2016, Page wrote to Strzok about Trump, ‘He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!’ On August 15, 2016, Strzok replied to Page, ‘I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…’ Because of what these texts imply, they demand further investigation.”

READ MORE: Newly revealed FBI texts raise questions about Obama’s involvement in Clinton email probe

“Throughout the primary and general elections, Strzok and Page repeatedly demonstrated hostility to then-candidate Trump and Republicans in general. Page called Trump a ‘loathsome human,’ before writing ‘I can not [sic] believe Donald Trump is likely to be an actual, serious candidate for president.’ Strzok called Trump ‘an idiot’ and opined Clinton ‘should win 100,000,000 – 0.’ Strzok and Page also used expletives to describe Trump. Page also expressed disdain for Americans participating in the 2016 March for Life, writing that she ‘truly hate[s] these people.’ Strzok called Virginians who apparently voted against FBI Deputy Director McCabe’s wife for a local Senate seat ‘ignorant hillbillys [sic].’ These statements raise questions about whether personal political bias may have affected the FBI’s investigation.”

Who are Peter Strzok and Lisa Page?

Peter Strzok is an FBI agent who was assigned to both the Clinton email probe and the Russia investigation. He was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team over the summer, after Mueller learned of the texts. He was reassigned to the FBI’s human resources division at that time.

Lisa Page, a lawyer and Strzok’s mistress, was briefly on Mueller’s Russia investigation team. She left before the text messages were revealed, going back to work in the office of the FBI’s general counsel. Page has been described as a trial lawyer with vast experience in money laundering and organized crime cases.

Over the course of their two-year extramarital affair, Strzok and Page exchanged some 50,000 text messages. The last one was written by Page to Strzok on June 23, 2017. “Please don’t ever text me again,” she wrote. It remains unclear whether that message was written because she had become aware that their text exchanges had been discovered.

Additional text messages outlined in the report include one which raises the question of former president Barack Obama’s role in the Clinton email probe, and questions the timeline of when the FBI found out about relevant Clinton emails.

Exports from Armenia grew by 43.3% in January 2018 against the same period last year, prime minister Karen Karapetyan said on Wednesday, February 7, citing preliminary data.

During a Q&A session with lawmakers at the National Assembly, the PM said investments grew by 55.8% in the reporting period.

According to Karapetyan, the increase in both exports and imports is due to trade turnover outside the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

(RFE/RL) — The U.S. Justice Department says it has charged 36 people for their alleged involvement in running a global cybercrime service responsible for more than $530 million of losses to consumers, businesses, and financial institutions.

In a statement released on February 7, the Justice Department said federal and international law enforcement authorities arrested 13 defendants from the United States and six other countries — Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Kosovo, and Serbia.

They included Svyatoslav Bondarenko, a 34-year-old Ukrainian accused of having created the Internet-based cybercriminal enterprise known as the Infraud Organization in October 2010.

Operating under the slogan “In Fraud We Trust,” members of the Infraud Organization used an online forum to purchase, sell, and disseminate stolen identities, compromised debit and credit cards, and financial and banking information, the statement said.

“Today’s indictment and arrests mark one of the largest cyberfraud enterprise prosecutions ever undertaken by the Department of Justice,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan.

“Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale,” he also said, adding that its members intended to cause losses estimated at more than $2.2 billion.

Over the course of Infraud’s seven-year history, Infraud’s nearly 11,000 members are believed to have targeted more than 4.3 million credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts around the world.

The suspects face charges that include identity theft, bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

By Perry West

While the transition of the American embassy to Jerusalem has exacerbated regional tension in recent months, the number of Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land has increased.

Last month 770 registered pilgrimage groups, some 26,000 people, visited Jerusalem, while 529 groups visited in the same time period last year, and 390 visited in January 2016. The statistics were recently released by Israel’s Christian Information Center,

A priest who recently took a group of young adults to the Holy Land told CNA that the pilgrimage was peaceful, and seemed to be unaffected by political tensions.

“The experience for everyone was very peaceful. You don’t necessarily experience any conflict in the environment,” said Father Daniel Cardo, pastor of Holy Name Church in Englewood, CO.

Sobhy Makhoul, deacon of the Maronite Patriarchate of Jerusalem, told Asia News that the rise in pilgrims began at the end of 2017. “Between November and mid-December there were many pilgrims, so many that for the first time we had to house some of them in the city like Hebron, almost 30 km south of Bethlehem,” he said.

There has also been a notable increase in pilgrims from China, Russia, and Eastern Europe, among them are many pilgrims from Eastern Orthodox churches, Makhoul told Asia News.

Makhoul also said that a peaceful reaction in Palestine to the US Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has reassured pilgrims that Israel is a safe place to travel.

He said that most people in the region want peace, and that most recognize the economic importance of pilgrimage trips.

Fr. Cardo told CNA that there is also a general respect in the region for the sacredness of pilgrimages to Holy Land, which he called the “father land” to many religions.

“People from the Holy Land, whether they are Christians or not, and actually a vast majority as we know aren’t Christians, recognize … the sacredness of the practice of pilgrimage,” he said.

“It is moving to me to see how many people, whether they are fully into the spiritual experience or not, are attracted to” sacred sites in the Holy Land, he said.

“The experience of going to Holy Sepulchre in particular … It’s just entering into a mystery, pointing to the place that reflects the mystery of God’s victory, but such a stark contrast, with the craziness of our humanity – the many languages [and] the noise of the place.”

Father Cardo encouraged more groups of Catholics to travel to the Holy Land. He said the experience allows pilgrims to envision the reality of Scripture’s settings, and that pilgrimages help Christians in the Holy Land, who only make up a small fraction of the population.

“To visit Christian places and support local Christian businesses is a very important thing we have to do in order to maintain the life of the Church in those holy places,” he said.

Two Catholic environmental activists have been jailed in Vietnam after helping hundreds of fishermen to sue a Taiwanese steel plant for polluting coastal waters.

Hoang Duc Binh, 35, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for “resisting officials on duty” and “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe the interests of the state, the legitimate interest and rights of organizations and citizens.”

Fellow activist Nguyen Nam Phong, 38, was also charged with opposing officials on duty and was sentenced to two years in jail.

Both defendants were tried on Feb. 6 by the People’s Court in Dien Chau district of Nghe An province.

Binh’s 10 relatives were detained and allegedly beaten by police in plain clothes when they asked to attend the trial. Only Binh’s mother and Phong’s wife were allowed to enter the court.

“The court violated basic regulations and showed no evidence linking the defendants to the crimes. The court sentenced them based on accusations made by the procuracy,” said Ha Huy Son, one of three lawyers supporting the defendants.

Son, one of a few lawyers who dare to defend rights activists in Vietnam, said the defendants asked the judge to provide videos and proof but their request was denied. The judge used police as witnesses at the trial, he added.

“No courts in the world, except for those in Vietnam, sentence people without proof at trial,” Son said. “I affirm that the court was unfair and sentenced the citizens wrongly. Binh and Phong are innocent.”

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it was “deeply troubled” by the convictions and sentences passed on Binh and Phong.

“The trend of increased arrests, convictions and harsh sentences of peaceful activists since early 2016 is very concerning,” it said.

State-run Nghe An newspaper accused Binh, vice-president of Phong Trao Lao Dong Viet, an independent organization founded in 2008 to promote workers’ rights, of posting videos slandering authorities, distorting the truth and helping to organize groups advocating compensation for fishermen who lost their livelihoods after the Formosa Plastics Group steel plant’s toxic spill in 2016. The accident affected 200 kilometers of coastline and devastated sea life.

In February 2017, Binh and Phong joined hundreds of people travelling from Song Ngoc parish to file a lawsuit against the Formosa plant at the People’s Court in Ky Anh town in neighboring Ha Tinh province.

The newspaper said the group caused a traffic jam on a main road. Binh told Phong, who was driving their car, not to open the car’s door at the police’s request.

Father John Baptist Nguyen Dinh Thuc, who led the procession, said it was right that Phong refused to open the car door to protect people in the car, including two nuns, because local authorities and security forces had blocked the road and brutally attacked hundreds of people. Some security officers broke the car’s windscreen wipers and hit the car.

Father Thuc, an environmentalist, said he twice appealed to the court to serve as a witness at the trial but he never got an answer. He also asked the court to free the two innocent victims unconditionally.

Activists said the 14-year jail term for Binh, one of the harshest sentences to have been imposed on an activist in Vietnam, aims to threaten people not to stage protests against Formosa, which is supported by the government.

There are about 550,000 Catholics from Vinh Diocese, which covers the provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh.

By Ajit Kumar Singh*

On January 27, 2018, two Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres were killed by Security Forces (SFs) during an anti-Maoist operation in the forests between Tarmetla and Morpalli villages under Chintalnad Police Station limits in Sukma District. SFs later recovered the body of the two slain Maoists, including one woman, along with two weapons.

A woman Maoist was killed during an anti-Maoist operation in the Kedwal-Tumalpad forest area of Sukma District on January 10, 2018. The body of the slain Maoist, along with some weapons and explosives, was recovered from the encounter site.

Two Maoists, including a woman, were killed during an anti-Maoist operation in the Muduvandi-Kawadgaon Forest area of Bijapur District on January 5, 2018. SFs recovered the bodies of the two slain Maoists clad in uniform, along with one .303 rifle, one 12 bore gun, and one pistol.

SFs have so far killed seven Maoists during five separate anti-Maoist operations in 2018, (data till February 4, 2018).

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), through 2017, SFs had eliminated at least 78 Maoists, adding to the 133 Maoists killed in 2016 in Chhattisgarh. Similarly, SFs had arrested 331 Maoists in 2017 in addition to the 399 arrested in 2016. At least 327 Maoists surrendered through 2017, against 961 in 2016.

D.M. Awasthi, Special Director General of Police (DGP), Anti Naxal-[Left Wing Extremist] Operations (ANO), stated that at least 1,478 Maoists were “neutralised” [76 killed, 1,017 arrested, 365 surrendered] in 2017, including 178 “big cadres” [51 killed+79 arrested+48 surrendered]. He stated, further,

What we define as neutralise is that they were killed, arrested or surrendered. Big cadres are those with a bounty of more than Rs 1 lakh [INR 100,000]. If you look at rewards against some of the Maoists neutralised in 2017, it adds up to about Rs 4.8 crore. This is a record. This year, we have concentrated not on numbers, but quality operations, and this has shown results. We have entered areas such as Tondamarka, and Palodi, which were completely no-go areas in the past.

According to reports, the joint team of the Special Task Force (STF), the District Reserve Group (DRG), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and its elite unit-CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), initiated an operation code-named ‘Operation Prahar-I’ for 56 hours continuously from the night of June 22, 2017, to flush out Maoists in the interiors of Chintagufa in Sukma District. Vivekanand Sinha, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Bastar, disclosed, on June 26, 2017, “For the first time we conducted an operation in the Maoists’ core area in Sukma… There is a possibility that a minimum of 15 to 20 Maoists were killed in the operation. This is a big morale booster for our forces.” However, no bodies were recovered. Special DGP Awasthi stated that approximately 1,500 SF personnel participated in the operation.

On November 5, 2017, SFs launched ‘Operation Prahar-II’. Special DGP Awasthi disclosed that the operation was launched “across Bastar Division actively in interiors of Narayanpur, Sukma, Bijapur and Dantewada. As part of the operation, it was the first time that joint forces of Special Task force, Chhattisgarh Armed Force, District Reserve Guards and CoBRA were out in forests of Dhurbeda and Irpanar. Joint forces of 2000 personnel were out as part of Operation Prahaar II.”

According to the SATP database, at least 66 ‘commander’ rank rebels were neutralised in 2017: 21 killed, 29 arrested, and 16 surrendered.

Chhattisgarh Government data, meanwhile, disclosed that at least 68 weapons were recovered in 2017 in addition to 310 in 2016. The weapons recovered in 2017 included a Light Machine Gun (LMG), AK 47 rifles, INSAS [Indian Small Arms System (INSAS)] rifles, SLR [Self-Loading Rifle], 9 mm carbines, .303 rifles, 12 bore weapons, and .315 bore rifles. An LMG was recovered in the State for the first time.

On January 2, 2018, the ANO unit of Chhattisgarh Police stated that SFs had managed to enter ‘new areas (controlled by the Maoists)’ to “address the security vacuum” and many new forward posts had been established “for strategic advance”, and further,

Construction of 11 roads [under the protection of the security forces] was completed in the year. So was the construction of 75 fortified police stations in LWE affected areas. The construction of the STF hub in Kanker is complete and the construction of STF hubs in Sukma, Bijapur, and Jagdalpur is in progress. Fourteen helipads with night landing facilities have been constructed in Bastar range.

Meanwhile, fatalities in the civilian category, one of the primary indicators of security in conflict zones, recorded a decline from 38 in 2016 to 32 in 2017, suggesting an improving environment for the civilian population of the State. Significantly, civilian fatalities had registered a rising trend, on year on year basis, since 2015.

Buoyed by the SFs’ operational successes, State Home Secretary V.V.R. Subramanium asserted, on January 2, 2018, that Naxalism will be eradicated from soil of Chhattisgarh by the year 2022. Special DGP Awasthi in an interview published on November 17, 2017, had stated, “Our security forces are slowly penetrating into the core areas of the Naxals and establishing camps, in order to reduce the distance travelled by our men… If this kind of persistent operation continues in next two or three years we will be able to contain Naxalism].”

Indeed, the improving performances of SFs on the ground over the past few years provide grounds for hope. It is, however, imperative that the State and Central Governments to remain equally decisive in their approach, as the Maoists still possess the wherewithal to inflict significant harm. According to the SATP database, the Maoists killed 59 SF personnel during 2017, the highest number of fatalities recorded in this category since 2011, when 67 SF personnel had died in LWE-related violence. There were 39 SF fatalities in 2016. Though the SFs acknowledged that a rise in personnel deaths was “disturbing and unfortunate”, an unnamed security officer added,

The number of personnel deaths is definitely higher, and this is because of two massive Maoist ambushes in Bhejji and Burkapal in March and April, which claimed 37 lives. In active exchanges of fire, the numbers are not that high. As we push deeper into Maoist territory, it is to be expected that there will be heavier exchanges of fire.

Significantly, the Bhejji and Burkapal incidents were marked by gross negligence and an abject failure to follow even the most rudimentary precautions by the personnel deployed for the protection of road construction teams. On March 11, 2017, at least 12 personnel of the 219th Battalion of the CRPF were killed and another four injured when CPI-Maoist cadres ambushed a road opening party in the forests near Kottacheru village under Bhejji Police Station in the Sukma District. Again on April 24, 2017, at least 25 personnel of 74th Battalion of CRPF were killed and six others were injured in an attack by an estimated 300-400 CPI-Maoist cadres near Burkapal village within Chintagufa Police Station limits in Sukma District

Indeed, writing in the aftermath of Burkapal incident, K.P.S. Gill had reiterated,

…there is an urgent need for the CRPF to study and understand what is going wrong, and to address the visible failures of orientation, training and leadership that lie at the source not just of these two, but of the long succession of incidents in which the Maoists have been able to successfully target our forces… Structural and operational deficiencies of the force, including irrational and protracted deployments, inadequate training, almost no retraining, poor leadership, strategic and tactical stasis, fatigue and indiscipline, and an overwhelming posture of passive defence, have also played a crucial part.

As on several occasions in the past, he argued further,

There is a surfeit of experience in theatres across India that has demonstrated clearly that the essential template of successful CI [Counter Insurgency] response is police-led. As long as the State Police holds back and seeks to fight through proxies – whether these are undisciplined tribal irregulars or CPMFs [Central Para Military Forces] unfamiliar with local population and environment – enduring success will remain elusive, though occasional operational victories may reinforce a false belief that gains are being made. Such convictions, however, are quickly undermined when the other side orchestrates a major incident.

Indeed, the CRPF has initiated some corrective measures. An order on May 4, 2017, directed the “immediate” transfer of the command headquarters of its Central Zone from Kolkata (West Bengal) to Raipur. The headquarters of the Central Zone, an operational field formation, which was raised on August 7, 2009, and was tasked to oversee CRPF troop deployment across the entire ‘Red Belt’ from West Bengal through Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, was moved to Kolkata (from Raipur) in July 2010 in the aftermath of the Chintalnad incident of April 6, 2010, in which 75 CRPF personnel (and one State Police trooper) were killed.

Moreover, Special DGP Awasthi in an interview published on June 26, 2017, admitted:

Knowledge of local language, climate, terrain and culture is very important… For success in counter-insurgency, you must use your own force. In Chhattisgarh, we must use Chhattisgarhi forces. Since I joined last year, I have changed the strategy and all hit teams include both the DRG and the STF. Sometimes we have combined with CoBRA and that has always been very successful when there are backup forces to cut off reinforcements. The DRG is a local force of mostly tribals. It includes surrendered Maoists and direct recruits who are specially trained and used for these anti-Naxal operations. We are trying to increase the focus on DRG.

State Home Secretary Subramanium disclosed, on January 2, 2018, “Between 70 to 75 thousand troops from the State and the Centre are fighting Naxals in the State. Four new battalions will be deployed by March [2018].”

Meanwhile, according to the latest Government data at least 115 districts across 28 states in India were categorized as “backward districts”. Ten of these districts fall inside Chhattisgarh, including all seven districts of Bastar Division, where the Maoists still retain a significant presence. To consolidate SF successes, an urgent focus is required on several aspects of development in these areas.

According to a Chhattisgarh Government release dated January 31, 2018, NITI Aayog has given ‘in principle’ approval to various proposals related to roads, telecommunication, education, Ujjwala Yojana (a Central Government scheme which aims to safeguard the health of women and children by providing clean cooking fuel) and expansion of banks for overall development of the Bastar region. Giving details, Chhattisgarh Chief Secretary Ajay Singh disclosed that ‘in principle’ approval had been given for construction of an additional 600 kilometers of roads in Bastar under the Rashtriya (National) Road Project-2. Approval was also granted for the sanction of INR 650 million for expansion of telecom services and increasing connectivity in remote areas. The amount will be utilized for expansion of District to Development Block connectivity in Bastar and to expedite execution of 402 telecom towers in the first phase and 1,028 telecom towers in the second phase. In a bid to strengthen the education system, in principle approval was given for the declaration of 10 LWE affected Blocks (not identified in the release) as Educationally Backward Blocks. Approval was also given for the provision of housing under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Prime Minister’s Housing Scheme)’ to 1,555 surrendered Naxalities and those whose names do not figure in the Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011.

The time-bound implementation of these development measures along with sustained and successful operations by SFs on the ground can restore an enduring peace to the State. Successes of both these measures need strong political will – which has been sadly lacking, or fitfully forthcoming in the past, as SF successes have repeatedly been frittered away. It remains to be seen whether the present cycle of SF successes will encourage greater and more enduring political sagacity.

*Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow; Institute for Conflict Management

By S. Binodkumar Singh*

Nepal, which recorded 13,301 insurgency related fatalities between 2000 and 2012, and saw 4,896 fatalities in a single year at peak in 2002, sustained the environment of peace that had been established in 2013. Not a single insurgency-related fatality is on record between 2013 and 2017. However, though the insurgency has subsided, Nepal continues to witness significant political turmoil and occasional violence.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 18 persons, including 17 civilians and one SF trooper, were killed and another 175, including 156 civilians and 19 SF personnel, were injured, in violent clashes across the country through 2017. In 2016, six persons, including five civilians and one SF trooper, were killed and another 16, including 13 civilians and three SF personnel, were injured in violent clashes.

Significantly, however, after an interregnum of 20 years, local level elections were held in Nepal in three phases in 2017. The first round was conducted on May 14, 2017, in 34 Districts of Province Nos. 3, 4 and 6, to elect representatives in 283 local level institutions, including four metropolitan cities, one sub-metropolitan city, 92 municipalities and 186 rural municipalities. 71 per cent of registered voters took part in these elections. The second phase of local elections was held on June 28, 2017, for 334 local units including one metropolitan city, seven sub-metropolitan cities, 111 municipalities and 215 rural municipalities in 35 Districts of Province 1, 5 and 7. 73.69 per cent of voters cast their votes in the elections. On September 18, 2017, the third and final phase of local elections was held for 136 local units including one metropolitan city, three sub-metropolii, 73 municipalities and 59 rural municipalities in the eight Districts of Province 2 in Nepal. Of the 2,664,950 registered voters, 73 per cent cast their votes. The last local elections in Nepal had been held in 1997.

Another remarkable development in 2017 was that, after a gap of 18 years, the House of Representative (HoR) and Provincial Assembly (PA) elections were held in two phases. The first phase for 37 HoR and 74 PA seats was held across 32 Hill Districts in six Provinces on November 26, 2017. 65 per cent of 3.19 million voters cast their votes. Voting for the remaining 128 HoR and 256 PA seats was held on December 7, 2017, in the second phase covering 45 Districts, including Kathmandu Valley and the southern plains of Nepal known as the Terai. 70 per cent of 12.21 million voters cast their votes in the second phase. This is for the first time that elections for HoR and PA are being conducted under the new Constitution adopted on September 20, 2015. The last parliamentary poll was held in 1999.

The counting of votes under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system to elect 165 HoR seats and 330 PA seats concluded on December 13, 2017, with the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) emerging as the single largest party. The CPN-UML won 80 HoR seats and 167 PA seats. Its ally, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-Maoist Center), bagged 36 HoR seats and 74 PA seats. The two parties, which had formed the Left Alliance, have left the governing Nepali Congress (NC) far behind. NC managed to claim only 23 HoR constituencies and 41 PA constituencies. The Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N) won 11 HoR and 16 PA seats, while the Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal (FSF-N) won 10 HoR and 24 PA seats. The Naya Shakti Party-Nepal (NSP-N), Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP), Rastriya Janamorcha, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and an independent candidate emerged victorious in one HoR constituency each. In PA elections, independent candidates registered wins in three constituencies, NSP-N and Rastriya Janamorcha in two each, and NWPP in one.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission (EC) announced the number of seats secured by the political parties under the Proportional Representation (PR) system on December 22, 2017. Among 220 seats allocated under the PR category, CPN-UML secured 75 seats, NC 72, CPN-Maoist Center 35. FSF-N 13, RPP 12, RJP-N and Bibeksheel Sajha Party three each, Rastriya Janamorcha two, while NSP-N, NWPP, Federal Democratic National Forum, Nepal Federal Socialist Party, and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Democratic) had to be satisfied with a single seat each. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Ayodhee Prasad Yadav speaking at a function organized in Kathmandu on December 31, 2017, clarified that the parliamentary seats under the PR system would be allocated only after the election of the National Assembly (NA), the upper house of Parliament.

However, NC and the CPN-UML are at odds as to whether the new Prime Minister should be elected prior to the formation of the NA. CPN-UML claims that the new Prime Minister can be appointed by the President even prior to the election of the NA. But NC, which has met with a humiliating defeat in the just concluded polls, insists that Parliament can’t take full shape without the election of the NA. NC leaders are also urging the EC to ensure at least 33 percent women’s representation in Parliament as a whole, including HoR and NA, arguing that if a sufficient number of women lawmakers are not elected to NA, the EC needs to ask political parties to make up the shortfall from the Lower House.

Significantly, on October 24, 2017, the Sher Bahadur Deuba-led Government issued the National Assembly Election Ordinance, which contains provisions for the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. The Ordinance had been pending at the Office of the President due to a dispute between parties over the electoral system. With a view to ending the political deadlock, President Bidya Devi Bhandari on December 29, 2017, authenticated the Ordinance. Accordingly, the Government on January 5, 2018, decided to hold the NA election on February 7, 2018.

On January 24, 2018, 83 candidates filed their nominations for the NA elections. On January 29, 2018, the EC announced that 24 candidates were elected to the NA unopposed from seven Provincial Assemblies, as no other contender filed nominations for those seats or some of the contenders withdrew their nominations. Eight candidates in Province-2, six candidates each in Province-1 and Province-7, three candidates in Province-5 and one candidate in Province-4 were elected unopposed. The election will be held for all eight seats in Province-3 and Province-6. Of the 59-member NA, three members will be nominated by the President on the recommendation of Government. The remaining 32 NA seats will be contested.

However, CPN-Maoist Center Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal in a meeting with Prime Minister Deuba, who heads the NC-led Government, at his official residence in Kathmandu on December 16, 2017, urged the Prime Minister to make political and constitutional appointments only on the basis of an agreement among the three major political parties. Stating that the elections had given a new mandate, the CPN-Maoist Center Chairman urged the Prime Minister not to make the political appointments, including that of the State Governors. Dahal also asked Prime Minister Deuba to initiate discussions among the major parties for a way out on the issue of NA elections. Similarly, accusing the NC of disrespecting and refusing to accept the people’s mandate, CPN-UML Chairman K.P. Sharma Oli observed on December 16, 2017, “The NC has indicated that it is reluctant to accept the popular mandate by raising the issue of legal hurdles. It is not appropriate to wrongly use and define a respected institution.” He also remarked that NC tabled an unconstitutional ordinance on the NA election so as to suit its own interests, following its electoral defeat in the local level elections.

Meanwhile, ignoring the objections of the Left Alliance, the Deuba-led Government recommended Governors of the seven provinces and named seven temporary provincial workstations on January 17, 2018. In another significant move toward implementing the federal set up as envisioned by the new Constitution, the newly-elected members of the PA in all seven provinces took the oath of office and secrecy on January 21, 2018. Outstandingly, the first ever meeting of the PA was held at the headquarters of Province 3 in Hetauda on February 1, 2018. All the 110 members elected from Sindhuli, Ramechhap, Dolakha, Sindhupalchok, Kavre, Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Lalitpur, Chitwan and Makwanpur Districts attended the first session in Hetauda.

Accusing the Deuba-led Government of misinterpreting the Constitution and blocking formation of the new Government, CPN-UML, in a press release on January 8, 2018, observed “It is unbelievable that in a democratic system poll results are not announced and a new Government is not formed. The way the Government is misinterpreting the Constitution and blocking the formation of a new government is against the spirit of the Constitution.” Further, speaking at a press conference at CPN-UML’s headquarters in Kathmandu on January 25, 2018, CPN-UML Chairman Oli, declared, “The new Government would review all the decisions taken by the caretaker Government and revoke the ones that could be against the Constitution, law and national interest.”

Another dilemma for the Deuba-led Government was the issue of transitional justice. Representatives of the Conflict Victims Common Platform (CVCP), an association of 13 organizations working for conflict victims, gave ultimatum on January 10, 2018, to the Commission for Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) and Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) officials to complete investigations into the war-era cases on time, or quit. They said that they were not satisfied with the performance of the two transitional justice bodies, which have not yet completed the final investigation into a single case. TRC and CIEDP were formed on February 7, 2015, in the spirit of the Interim Constitution of 2007 and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of November 12, 2006, to probe instances of serious violations of human rights and find the status of those who were disappeared in the course of the armed conflict between the State and the then Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) between February 13, 1996, and November 21, 2006. The commissions were formed with a two-year term. They were awarded the first one-year extension in February 2017. Their extended tenure is set to expire on February 7, 2018.

Nine days before the end of their tenure, the TRC and the CIEDP, seeking political commitment from the major parties to the investigation process before requesting the Government for another extension of their term on January 30, 2017, blamed non-cooperation from the Government and the political parties for their poor performance in looking into the war-era cases of human rights’ violations. CIEDP has begun detailed investigation into just 207 cases among the 3,093 filed before it, while TRC, which received 60,298 cases, has completed a preliminary probe into just 827 cases. Consequently, on January 5, 2018, the Government decided to extend the tenure of CIEDP and TRC by another year.

In 2017, Nepal took to democracy in a big way after centuries of absolute monarchy followed by decades of chaos. The successful completion of local level elections paved the way for provincial and Parliamentary elections, indicating that the country’s political transition is likely to be completed in the foreseeable future, and the sway of the Constitution would be fully established. Though the final result is yet to be announced for the two phases of the polls, the winner is clear – a coalition of two communist parties, the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre, who are set to control the Government.

* S. Binodkumar Singh
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, in collaboration the University of Manchester and the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), have uncovered new evidence to suggest that the Sicilian mafia arose to notoriety in the 1800s in response to the public demand for citrus fruits.

Arguably one of the most infamous institutions in the Western world, the Sicilian mafia, first appeared in Sicily in the 1870s and soon infiltrated the economic and political spheres of Italy and the United States.

Dr Arcangelo Dimico, Lecturer in Economics from Queen’s Management School, and the research team hypothesized that the Sicilian mafia rose to power due to the high public demand for oranges and lemons following physician James Lind’s discovery in the late eighteenth century that citrus fruits could prevent and cure scurvy, due to their high levels of vitamin c.

Dr Dimico said: “Although outcomes of the mafia’s actions such as murders, bombings, and embezzlement of public money have been observed during the last 140 years, the reasons behind its emergence are still obscure.

The researchers used two unique data sets from Sicilian towns and districts gathered from a parliamentary inquiry conducted between 1881-1886 (Damiani 1886) and from 1900 (Cutrera 1900). They found that mafia presence in the 1880s is strongly associated with the prevalence of citrus cultivation.

Dr Dimico added: “Given Sicily’s dominant position in the international market for citrus fruits, the increase in demand resulted in a very large inflow of revenues to citrus-producing towns during the 1800s. Citrus trees can be cultivated only in areas that meet specific requirements, such as mild and constant temperature throughout the year and abundance of water, guaranteeing substantial profits to relatively few local producers.

“The combination of high profits, a weak rule of law, a low level of interpersonal trust, and a high level of local poverty made lemon producers a suitable target for predation, as there was little means to effectively enforce private property rights. Lemon producers, therefore, resorted to hiring mafia affiliates for private protection and to act as intermediaries between the retailers and exporters in the harbours.”

Until now the Sicilian mafia’s origins have always thought to have been a consequence of the weak institutional setting related to the failure of the feudal system present in Sicily and from the political instability in Italian history. However this research is the first piece of evidence to suggest that their rise to power was actually due to the boom in the economy.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

A surprise and path breaking judgement, an evasive and defiant President who is a tyrant and an enthusiastic and jubilant but angry population- these describe the current situation in Maldives.

On 30th January, President Yameen, in all solemnity, declared that the Police in Maldives is still independent and that it has been tasked only with law enforcement without room for political ideologies. He added that the Police are mandated to execute court orders without question. Should they “forget” their responsibilities, he said then the incumbent President is mandated by the Constitution to remind.

So stated Mr. Yameen who had to swallow his words within two days and order the dismissal of the Police Commissioner and later his deputy for declaring publicly that they would implement the Supreme Court orders.

Before we discuss the surprising judgement of the Supreme Court, and the crisis caused by Yameen in declaring an emergency, I would urge a reference to my paper titled “Maldives: A Tyrant next door- How does one deal with it?”in paper number 6251 dated 4th May 2017. (Given as an annexure in this paper). In concluding that paper I had said that India had made many mistakes in the past on Maldives and cited one such instance of ready of acceptance of the fall of President Nasheed who was actually thrown out in a coup.

The Supreme Court Judgement:

In the late hours of 1st February, the Supreme Court ordered the release of three convicted opposition leaders who were facing long sentences- former President Mohamed Nasheed, Jumhooree Party leader Qasim Ibrahim and Adhaalath Party leader Sheikh Imran Abdulla.

In addition to these three, the Supreme Court ordered the release of former Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim, Member of Parliament and son of former President Gayoom Faris Maumoon, former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb, former Prosecutor General Muhthaz Muhusin, Chief Magistrate Ahmed Nihan and local magnate Hamid Ismail.

The Supreme Court also overturned the Election Commission declaration that 12 MPs of the ruling party- the PPM disqualified after they joined the opposition. Three of the MPs are facing criminal charges of forcibly entering the parliament premises last July.

Re-instatement of the MPs would effectively result in President Yameen’s party PPM losing the majority in the Parliament and had the potential to unseat the President with a two thirds majority. This perhaps was the reason for Yameen to order the closure of the Parliament indefinitely for security reasons and subsequent declaration of emergency.

The Supreme Court decision actually said as follows: “After considering the cases submitted to the Supreme Court about violations of the Constitution of the Republic of Maldives and human rights treaties that the Maldives is a party to, to conduct politically motivated investigations followed by trials where the prosecutors and Judges were unduly influenced, the Supreme Court has found that these cases have to be retried according to legal standards.”

All that the Court order said was that these cases will have to be retired and till that time those convicted are to be set free.

In the same judgement the apex court ordered all State authorities to comply with the order and warned that the prosecutor General has been directed to separately investigate and indict any entities that obstruct and hinder the order’s execution.

Supreme Court Order Defied

The orders were loud and clear. Instead of implementing the order, the Prosecutor General convened a late night Press Conference along with Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence declared that the Supreme Court orders will have to be “verified” whether the verdict is legitimate before implementation! This itself was violative of the Court orders and liable to prosecution for contempt of court.

In the same meeting, the Prosecutor General announced that the President has dismissed the Police Chief Ahmed Areef on the ground that he was not available. In actual fact his crime was that even before the press conference, he had announced that he would obey the Court orders. His deputy Ahmed Saudhy who was elevated to that post was also subsequently sacked after two days and no explanation was given.

President Yameen responded two days later that the government will approach the Supreme Court on the seriousness of releasing the convicted criminals.

The Attorney General too, instead of complying with the orders met the Chief Justice and conveyed the “concerns” of the government over the verdict the same day!

Delay in implementing the orders resulted in justifiable angry protests and clashes between the security forces and the demonstrators. The Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds in the capital. Force was used freely and arbitrary arrests were made.

Emergency Declared

President Yameen continued to be defiant and appeared to be in no mood to comply with the Supreme Court orders.

Instead of complying with the orders, he has declared an emergency for a period of fifteen days. This has given him sweeping powers and many of the articles of the Constitution have been suspended. The reasons for declaring an emergency were for obstructing the functioning of the government due to the Supreme Court’s ruling that ordered the release of political prisoners and reinstatement of members of Parliament! A strange reason indeed though the real reason was that there was a possibility of Yameen being impeached in the Parliament.

Following the declaration of emergency, the security forces stormed the court premises and have arrested the Chief Justice Abdullah Saeed, Judge Ali Hameed and Judicial Service Administrator Hassan Saeed.

Former President Abdul Gayoom and his son-in-law Mohamed Nadeem were arrested from their home. Earlier Gayoom’s son Faris Maumoon had also been arrested. Gayoom before being arrested released a video asking Maldivians to remain steadfast and assuring the public that he has not done anything unlawful to warrant an arrest.

Former President Nasheed has urged India to “act swiftly” to resolve the crisis. He said that the declaration of emergency, banning fundamental freedoms, and suspension of the Supreme Court is tantamount to a declaration of martial law in Maldives.

It is said that India is closely following the events. Soon after the Court orders, India was one of the first to urge the Maldivian government to respect the judgement. The US, UK, Australia and later the United Nations had also taken the same position. Instead President has responded with the declaration of an emergency and even arresting the very judges who passed the orders!

India has enough leverage in Maldives and short of sending troops, everything else should be done to bring normalcy in Maldives as instability in Maldives will have an adverse impact on the security of the region as a whole!

Annexure:

Maldives: A Tyrant Next Door- How does one deal with it?

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

Maldives is too close to India both geographically and strategically and therefore developments in that country though small will have a great impact on India’s national security.

We now have a leader in Maldives who is said to be ruthless, vindictive and ungrateful. He has been systematically jailing all the leading members of opposition on some ground or other and mostly under terrorism laws. It looks that he is making his way clear for his re- election in 2018 without any opposition. In this evil pursuit he has generously used (misused) the judiciary as well as the security forces.

In order to understand what is happening in Maldives- one should only see the documentary of Al Jazeera on Maldives titled “Stealing the Paradise.” This documentary has exposed the high level corruption with the accounts of eye witnesses. It should be an eye opener to all those who innocently believe that Maldives with its hundred percent Sunni population, after three decades of autocratic rule is now a model of democracy!

President Yameen, came to power on the shoulders of two influential leaders in Maldives- the former President Gayoom and the richest and most popular businessman Gasim Ibrahim. In the Presidential elections held in 2014, former President Nasheed was almost near the fifty percent mark. It was a crucial midnight meeting of Gayoom on behalf of his half-brother Yameen with Gasim Ibrahim, the third largest vote getter that tilted the scales in favour of Yameen by a narrow margin.

Today Gasim Ibrahim is in jail on trumped up charges of having bribed the voters (all he did was to appeal to his erstwhile party members to return to the fold of his party – the Jumhooree party). As usual, the Police have seized his cell phone also. By one count the Police must be holding thousands and thousands of seized cell phones!

Former President Gayoom has been stripped of his membership of the party he created-the PPM in 2011 all with the help of the civil courts and the appellate courts. Gayoom’s body guards have been withdrawn and he has been disallowed to fly the national flag in his residence. More humiliations could follow with the cancellation of his pension and one will not be surprised if he is put in jail if he does no behave at least now!

One Vice President Jamal is in exile as he was being threatened with impeachment for not being totally loyal to President Yameen. Another young Adheeb for whose election to the post of Vice President, the constitution was amended, is now counting cockroaches in the jail. He is being shifted from one jail to another as if he is a dangerous criminal.

Adheeb is undergoing imprisonment under terrorism charges. But the real reason is said to be the differences he had with President Yameen on the US $ 80 million scandal that broke out in the State tourist firm, the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation!

Most of the opposition leaders are either in jail or in exile. The fiery and active leader of the Adhaalath Party Sheikh Imran is in jail on terrorism charges- for participating in the May Day rally against the government.

The former Defence Minister Mohamad Nazim was sentenced to 11 years under terrorism charges for keeping a rusted pistol at his house. It had since been proved that the pistol was deliberately placed in Nazim’s house before search on the instructions of former Vice President Adheeb. Nazim must have been automatically discharged. He is still in jail and needs medical treatment. On 28th January the UN Panel had ruled that the continued detention of Nazim as illegal and called for his release. Now Nazim who was under house arrest has suddenly been shifted back to jail! UN opinion does not matter!

Another former Defence Minister Hameed Faisal has now been charged under terrorism laws for arresting Yameen (the present President) in 2010 for his involvement in distributing a scurrilous pamphlet against the then President Nasheed.

The list is endless. The misuse of terrorism laws is so open and blatant and there is no stopping of Yameen. Misuse of the government machinery and the courts has become a regular feature. One example of the way Gasim Ibrahim has been treated should do.

Gasim’s Villa Group is one of the largest companies in Maldives dealing with shipping, tourism, media, commercial establishments, transport and educational fields. He is also one of the leading philanthropists. His mistake was in opposing President Yameen politically.

In August 2014 the Government of Yameen seized the Kandehdhoo airport and downgraded Villa Group’s (Gasim’s own) Maamigili airport, when Gasim warned that the SEZ legislation would facilitate massive corruption. But both were reversed when Gasim’s party voted in favour of SEZ laws.

In 2015, Gasim went on to form an alliance against the government with other parties and soon the tourism ministry seized five properties leased to villa group for development. The Central Bank of Maldives froze over US $ 90 million of Gasim’s funds for alleged non-payment of rent etc. When Gasim Ibrahim announced retirement from Politics, the courts obliged and overturned the fine and the properties were also returned.

Again in March 2017 when Gasim Ibrahim was to join the MUO (Maldives United opposition) along with former Presidents Nasheed and Gayoom against Yameen, his properties were seized once again by court orders and the bank assets of 90 million dollars frozen. Now Gasim is in Police custody for fourteen days on charges of bribery! How the authorities forgot about the terrorism laws is a mystery.

In the face of blatant misuse of laws of the country, the opposition represented by former Presidents Gayoom, and Nasheed, Gasim Ibrahim of Jumhooree and Sheikh Imran Abdulla of Adhaalath signed a historic declaration on 24th March that said

* to protect the owner ship of the land, sea and natural resources

* find a solution to the political discord afflicting the country

* safeguard civil and political rights abrogated from citizens

* ensure elections held in Maldives are free and fair in which candidates of political parties are allowed to contest.

The four agreed to work together

1. To secure freedom for all individuals who have been arrested, under investigation, on trial or convicted of politically motivated charges.

2. Prevent Corruption, embezzlement within the government.

3. Seek the restitution of transactions and properties unlawfully seized by the government.

The way the no confidence motion against the Speaker Maseeh was conducted recently is another example of high handedness of the government. The motion was forced to be conducted by a roll call that was unprecedented and resorted to only when the voting machines were out of order. The idea of an open roll call was only to find out who were all voting against government and due action as expected was taken against the erring individuals.

Some of the acts of revenge taken by the government soon after the farce of the no confidence motion were

* Gayoom was expelled from the Ruling Party PPM, the national flag removed from his residence and the PPM logo removed from his residence all done by Government agents.

* Fresh charges under terrorism laws were brought against ex-President Nasheed for arresting Yameen in 2010.

* Abdulah Riyaz the Deputy Leader of Jumhooree Party and a former Police Chief had his mobile phone confiscated and placed under investigation on charges of spreading rumours and attempting to influence the security forces.

* Gasim Ibrahim, the leader of Jumhooree party was arrested and his passport seized.

* Rajje TV, the station which supports the opposition was fined MVR I million on flimsy charges.

Another incident that should cause concern is the killing of Yameen Rashid, a prominent blogger and an internet Activist in the early hours of 23rd April at his residence. Rashid was a fierce critic of Salafist-Wahhabi re Islamization that was making the face of Islam in Maldives. Rasheed had 16 stab wounds on his body.

There is no doubt that the Wahhabi-Salafi brand of Islam is slowly creeping into Maldives and this is what Rasheed had opposed. The present government was almost on the point of giving away the Faaful Atoll consisting of 26 islands to the Saudis for development and investment of over 10 billion Dollars. Only, the huge public outcry and supposed eviction of over 4000 villagers brought the project to a temporary halt. The Yameen government had already prepared the ground by amending the constitution in 2015 to allow foreign ownership of its territory.

It looks that India is aware of the troubled situation in Maldives. The Indian Foreign Secretary made a hurried visit to Maldives on April 13 and 14 and met everyone one but carefully avoided the opposition members. It is not clear as to why this was done. The High Commissioner there was perhaps given the task to meet the opposition leaders three days later on the 17th. President Yameen’s attempt to get closer to Saudis needs to be watched as the Saudis are now having an Islamic NATO led by a Pakistani General. Yameen is also seen to be an overenthusiastic supporter of the One Belt One Road economic offensive of the Chinese.

The Saudis and the Chinese are only waiting in the wings. They would prefer tyrants over genuine democratic leaders who are all in exile. It remains to be seen how India would react. India has made many mistakes in the past. Ready acceptance of the fall of Nasheed who was actually thrown out in a coup earlier was one such mistake!

By Mladen Lakic

Coverage of the Srebrenica massacres and Bosnian Serb forces’ siege of Sarajevo in a series starring Morgan Freeman has sparked accusations of anti-Serb propaganda against the National Geographic Channel.

The screening of a National Geographic Channel programme in the Morgan Freeman series ‘The Story of Us’ has sparked accusations of anti-Serb bias and counter-accusations alleging that wartime crimes are being denied.

In the programme, which was broadcast on Sunday, Freeman is shown around the Srebrenica genocide memorial by well-known Bosnian TV journalist Senad Hadzifejzovic and his son.

The Hollywood star also visits Sarajevo, talks about the three-and-a-half-year siege of the city by Bosnian Serb forces, and discusses Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s culpability for the 1992-95 war.

The Bosnian Serb official news agency SRNA published angry reactions from well-known Serb analysts on Tuesday, accusing the National Geographic Channel of depicting Serbs as war criminals during the 1990s conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We have seen for 25 years many similar attempts to present the Serbs as war criminals in the former Yugoslavia and as the criminal party, so in this sense, this is not surprising,” Banja Luka-based writer Vladimir Kecmanovic told SRNA.

Belgrade-based analyst Dragomir Andjelkovic meanwhile described the Freeman programme as “propaganda” that should be systematically countered.

Others have complained that Freeman did not mention Serb war victims in the programme, giving a one-sided view of wrongdoing in the Bosnian war.

But Zlatiborka Popov Momcinovic, a Sarajevo-based peace activist, said that these reactions were an attempt to deny what actually happened.

“Every time when the responsibility of Serb leaders is mentioned, you will find these or similar reactions, which shows us that efforts to face the past must be stronger,” Popov Momcinovic told BIRN.

“Without understanding the past, we have nothing, and cases like this one show us how this topic is sensitive and important,” she added.

Some 8,000 Bosniaks were massacred after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica in July 1995 – the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

The Bosnian state court and the Hague Tribunal have sentenced 38 people to a total of 637 years in prison, plus three life sentences, for the killings.

The landmark verdict was the first-instance conviction of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president. Karadzic – currently the only political leader to have been found guilty of genocide – was sentenced to 40 years in prison by the UN war crimes court in The Hague in 2016.

The former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment in November last year after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

By Jorge Valero

(EurActiv) — Spain’s Economy Minister Luis de Guindos and Ireland’s Central Bank Governor Philip Lane will fight for the ECB vice-presidency to be discussed by the Eurogroup later this month.

Today (7 February) is the last day for eurozone member states to put forward their candidates for Mario Draghi’s ‘number two’ at the central bank’s helm.

Barring some last-minute surprises, the Spanish politician is widely seen as the frontrunner despite some doubts inside the ECB about his political profile.

A senior EU official who spoke to Euractiv took it for granted that De Guindos would be the name picked by the eurozone finance ministers at the next Eurogroup meeting on 19 February.

De Guindos told reporters on Wednesday that both Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy and himself had gathered support for his nomination.

“We believe there is a very clear chance” of getting the post, he added.

“Luis is a man of great quality, a finance minister I always work with very well”, Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici told reporters on Wednesday.

Asked about his candidacy, Moscovici said he was not surprised when he found out today that De Guindos would be one of the contenders.

But the Spanish minister still faces a few hurdles. Three sources told EURACTIV.com that some ECB members do not look favourably at the idea of De Guindos taking over from Vítor Constâncio when he leaves on 31 May.

Members of the ECB’s Governing Council prefer a more technical and less political profile for the job.

In contrast, Lane is seen as more suitable for the post, given his strong academic record and his experience in the institution. He has been part of the Governing Council’s decision-making process over the past two years as governor of Ireland’s central bank.

In addition, the Socialist Party in Spain (PSOE) did not support his nomination as it would opt for a woman with a technical profile.

Spain’s Socialist MEPs said that De Guindos “is not the best candidate” not only because he does not meet the European Parliament’s requirement in terms of women representation, but also because “as Eurogroup member, he defended the austerity policies that caused so much harm” to the EU.

Both countries claim certain rights to the vice-president’s chair.

Spain recalls a gentlemen’s agreement under which one of the ECB’s six-member Executive Board goes to one of the four largest EU economies. In addition, Spain currently holds no important position among the EU’s top echelons.

For its part, Ireland says it is the only founding member of the euro area that has never been part of the Executive Board.

Both countries also point to their remarkable economic recovery after implementing rescue programmes (in the case of Spain targeted to its financial system) to win their partners’ backing.

Problems with MEPs

However, both candidates are likely to face similar difficulties in the European Parliament. The chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Roberto Gualtieri, already said last December that the MEPs expected significant female representation in the shortlist for the post.

The Parliament had expressed concern about the monopoly of EU top posts in male hands.

Legislators already delayed the nomination of Luxembourg’s central banker Yves Mersch in October 2012 because of this reason.

The MEPs have won a bigger say in the process and will interview the candidates in a closed-door meeting on 14 February. Only the members of the committee and their substitutes, as well as the political group advisors (but not assistants), will be allowed to attend.

The ECB and the Parliament have only a consultative role and cannot veto the decision. But MEPs could influence the Eurogroup decision on 19 February.

Once the Eurogroup members reach a consensus, the Ecofin Council will vote on their proposed candidate. A reinforced qualified majority of at least 14 from the 19 eurozone finance ministers would be needed to pass on the agreed choice to the European Council in March.

Before the nominee arrives to the EU leaders’ table, he would have to meet again with ECON committee, this time in a public hearing.

Sources from the financial sector told this website that, rather than the vice-presidency, Ireland has in sight for Lane one of the posts that will be available next year in the Executive Council, once Benoit Coeure and Peter Praet leave the institution.

The race for the ECB top posts comes as the bank is under the spotlight for its lack of transparency in handling the resolution of Spain’s Banco Popular and its involvement in the Greek crisis.

Popular was the last victim of Spain’s financial crisis, which forced the government to request a bailout in 2012. That year, Guindos was picked as the worst economy minister of the EU.

Three years later, he lost the race for the new Eurogroup president to Jeroen Dijsselbloem but his stature has since grown.

Today he is not only the most senior Eurogroup member but is also well-respected among his peers.

I’m a white American, but like a majority of us, that’s only small part of the story.

In a country where the federal government is currently in the hands of so-called “nativists” like Trump and his white mostly male Republican Party backers only celebrate white roots, I like many of us have various genetic strands that include a little of what might best be called “diversity.” There is a touch of Native American on my mother’s side — hardly enough to qualify for inclusion in the Algonquin Nation, but enough to remind me and my siblings that our ancestors include both conquerers and the conquered.

Then too, while there is a direct line on both my mother’s side and my father’s side tracing back to the same Warren family that arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, there are also immigrants who came from Scotland (the Stewart Clan) and Ireland on my mother’s side, and from Germany (Kerpol) and England (the Plymptons and Lincolns) on my father’s.

For me, one of the most interesting roots is my great great grandfather, a Lindorff who left Sweden for Germany, marrying a German woman. According to family lore, I’d always heard while growing up, this Scandinavian immigrant had been chased out or fled from Sweden because he was a thief or something, though I later learned it was more likely that he was hounded out as a “red” or socialist undesirable.

That seems to be correct because his daughter — my great grandmother — who with her German husband immigrated to the US in the early 1900s with her young children so they wouldn’t get caught up in Europe’s wars, according to my father proudly voted Socialist in US elections all her life — first for Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs for president and then, after he died, for Socialist leader Norman Thomas. (Her sister, though, was a Nazi sympathizer during the 1930s, hosting gatherings at her home in New York City, to the consternation and embarrassment of my great grandmother.)

As an aside, there’s an irony in the family’s having moved to escape Europe’s wars: Both my grandfather and his older brother ended up fighting in WWI — my great uncle as a bi-plane pilot, and my grandfather as an ambulance on the front lines in France, where he won a Silver Star for heroism under fire saving countless lives of wounded soldiers.

I mention all this because it’s important to think about all of this rich complexity — racial, social and political — when we talk about the historical and cultural roots of the United States.

In this Trumpian era of glorification of an imaginary purely white past — the one Trump’s speechwriters conjured up when he read from his teleprompted State of the Union address, claiming we Americans are uniquely fearless: “…If there is a mountain, we climb it. If there is a frontier, we cross it. If there is a challenge, we tame it…” — it’s important to recognize that when “we” crossed those frontiers it was go enter lands that were already occupied by the original Americans. We stole those lands from native peoples, killing most of them by weapons, disease, forced relocation and starvation. Meanwhile, for many of our ancestors, including many of mine, the challenge they faced was being accepted by the ones who came before.

My Mayflower ancestors, contrary to the official mythology taught in grade school, came to America not to escape from religious persecution (the Netherlands, from which many of the pilgrims and Puritans came to settle in the New World, was one of the freest countries in Europe when it came to religion). Rather, they came here to America to establish a theocratic society — one that rejected, on pain of whipping, stocks and even death, any heretical beliefs. So extreme was their religious intolerance that Roger Williams by 1636, just 16 years after the Mayflower’s arrival, felt the need to flee religious persecution and lead a group of those heretics to Narragansett Bay and to establish the colony of Rhode Island — on land purchased, not conquered by force, from the resident Narragansett Indians.

A century and more later and on into the 19th century, the descendants of those white European settlers from England or from England via Holland, and their fellow settlers up and down the coast of North America, including Virginia, made life miserable for the waves of those who followed, including another strand of my ancestors, coming from Ireland and Scotland, and later Germany.

My two kids can write someday about an additional strand of our family, since the ancestors of my Jewish wife all arrived in the US in the early 20th century from Russia (Odessa, now part of Ukraine), and from what is now northeastern Poland, both sets of ancestors fleeing brutal pograms launched by local slavic majorities. Once in the US they endured a new round of repression, rejection, discrimination and hatred from those who were already here, including I’m sure my people from Scotland, Ireland and Germany.

It’s not the pretty picture painted by Trump’s speechwriters, or in the florid history books foisted on our children in our public schools.

Yes Americans crossed frontiers — The Native Americans who crossed frontiers in our own land in order to escape being slaughtered by waves of grasping, greedy and bloodthirsty Europeans, and waves of Europeans who crossed our own nation’s borders, some legally, and many illegally, in order to escape wars, oppression and poverty in Europe )including Norway!), and later people from Asia, Africa and South America, coming here for the same reasons. It’s a story that continues today, as Trump struggles to win the money in Congress to erect a “giant beautiful wall” along the US border with Mexico, in hopes of keeping out immigrants from Latin Americans and elsewhere who are trying to flee the same scourges that led white Americans’ ancestors to flee here from Europe.

Not enduring the same thing — the discrimination, fear and hatred of the latest immigrants — will be the challenge that a new generation of US immigrants will of course have to struggle with.

I haven’t mentioned one other critically important group of Americans: those whose ancestors arrived her from Africa. That is simply because so far I have not found in family histories any evidence that I am descended from an African ancestor, though there is one possibility — a reference to an ancestor who was lynched in Mississippi. Of course back in the late 18th and early 19th century in America it wasn’t unusual for white people to be lynched for crimes like horse theft, so the mere fact that an ancestor was lynched in the deep South doesn’t mean the victim was black, but it bears further investigation.

We do know, however, that enslaved Africans, whose forced labor basically built the United States, were brought in chains to parts of what are now the United States even before the pilgrims landed in Cape Cod Bay. Spanish settlers brought slaves with them when they settled St. Augustine in Florida in 1581, and the Jamestown Colony founded in Virginia in 1619 included from its start 20 African slaves. They and those who were dragged here involuntarily in chains later, and their descendants, surely had the biggest “challenges to overcome,” though they were not the ones President Trump’s speechwriters were hailing for their courage in the speech he read to Congress.

This is to be sure a complicated country, populated by a rich tapestry of many peoples from many cultures. My own little family added to this richness when, as residents of Hong Kong back in the 1990s, we adopted a 17-month-old boy from a government orphanage there. Now 24, he’s as American as any 20-something American, an aspiring filmmaker with a family of his own encompassing Chinese, Estonian, Puerto Rican and Italian roots.

I remember once when he had just graduated from high school — a beautifully integrated arts high school in Philadelphia called the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts — my son told me that he and his best friend, a black kid he’d known since they were in kindergarten, had decided they wanted to do a road trip to California over the summer. Now I had hitchhiked across the country at that age several times back in the 1960s, and once, at 17, hitched all the way from Connecticut to Alaska and back with a high school friend. Later, my wife and I, just in our early 20s, also hitched out west and from New York to Florida. Mostly these adventures were without incident, but not always, and the problems we ran into, occasionally scary, generally had to do with our looking “hippyish” in places that such appearance in the 1960s was not appreciated by locals. I explained to my son and his friend that as an Asian and a Black kid driving alone through parts of the south, central and western US, they could actually find themselves running into serious, even dangerous, trouble, including with police. I deterred them from making that trip, much as it pained me to do so.

In my years of living in places like China, Hong Kong and Germany, and of traveling and spending time in countries like Finland, Austria, Italy, France, Laos, Taiwan, Japan and other places, it has often struck me how unusual the US is, with its polyglot population. All in all, we do pretty well at accepting each other, at least compared to many much more racially uniform countries, or to countries where different ethnicities, religions or linguistic groups live in their own discrete regions, with little mixing, as in Russia, Spain, China or Ukraine. Looked at from abroad, we are a relatively accepting and tolerant society. Especially these days we form friendships and intermarry across racial and religious lines pretty easily and among younger people increasingly often, which is encouraging. But even as this is going on, or because it is happening, there is an ugly reaction, particularly among those who are white, who see their dominant position in the US under threat. It is a big part of the appeal and success of President Trump, ironically the child of immigrants himself.

We all need to resist that reaction, and openly celebrate our different roots, including the different roots that many of us carry within our own selves and families. That richness and the acceptance of that diversity is what is best about the United State, and it is much more powerful than the ugliness, racism and intolerance of those who continue to resist its inevitable progress.

Walkie-talkies were invented 70 years ago. One could be forgiven for ever thinking that the advent, rise and now omnipresence of mobile phones would sound their death knell. But the truth is, in 2018, walkie-talkies are still being used. Now, a Finnish company proposes to enhance them with the mobile broadband technology we find on our smartphones.

AINA calls its technology a ‘PTT Voice Responder’. Rather than submitting to a regular walkie-talkie design we’ve been used to seeing for years, the company created a brand new device that all those who need their hands free in order to do their job can clip to anything – from a carabiner to a keychain or parachute cord.

Using the device is simple. Connect it to a smartphone via Bluetooth, and you’re good to go: with a few programmable buttons, essential functions such as push-to-talk, phone calls, channel switching and emergency alerts can be accessed. The rationale, in the case of police officers for instance, is simple: you cannot chase a criminal and operate a touch screen phone simultaneously.

Maximilian Leroux, CEO of AINA Wireless, discusses the PTT Voice Responder along with three other technologies developed under the IPCOM (Next generation IP-based smart Push-to-Talk communication device for public security) project, and their potential for driving the convergence of walkie-talkie radios and mobile broadband technology.

Why is it important to provide an alternative to walkie-talkie radios?

Our product is rather an enhancement of a walkie-talkie than an alternative. We aim to provide public safety officials and industrial users with a solution to maintain their habits of pushing a button to open a talk channel, so none of that changes.

What we do is adding all modern communication technologies to it, along with their enhanced capabilities like geo-location, man-down and emergency alarms, telemetry, and direct mode communication in case a network is failing. We take something that is old and make it new, without changing the core functionalities.

How do you explain that no such alternative has managed to convince stakeholders yet?

Professional communication is an old school industry with long lasting contracts between big players and governments. Here, the macro-economic perspective where a disruptive technology changes everything doesn’t apply on its own: It also requires a government decision.

When the United States decided to build a broadband network – FirstNet – for first responders, and the United Kingdom turned off Tetra to make room for the Emergency Services Network (ESN) in 2020, it shifted the momentum. Now it’s not a technology or a pitch for more efficiency in communication: it’s going to be a law! We will see more of this to come, and by starting early, we can build our brand and run field trials before the market is crowded.

It is really safe for such organisations to resort to mobile broadband, especially for situations where no Internet is available?

Our standalone Push-to-Talk devices connect to any wireless network, therefore you will always be able to use roaming.

The last fallback for cases where there is no network at all. With our direct mode, you will be able to speak from device to device in a mesh network. As long as you are within range of a team member, you will stay connected. This is also important especially for first responders.

Can you tell us more about the different devices you developed?

We have developed the AINA PTT Voice Responder – a Bluetooth speaker-microphone, for PTT apps with a smartphone in mind. It’s a 2nd generation wireless speaker-microphone since it allows the user to keep their phone in a safe place, yet still remote control all functions their app includes. We also developed a Bluetooth Low Energy device featuring two PTT buttons, an emergency alarm and an accelerometer which can be programmed to trigger an alarm such as man-down.

In a next step we will be launching a product that allows audio over Bluetooth LE to achieve the same short latency people are used to from walkie-talkies, and already add the direct mode as a fallback. This new device will be important for people who are using phones and tablets for other things as well, not just push-to-talk. They will always need their smart device plus speaker-microphone.

Ultimately there will be a new generation of our LTE stand-alone PTT device which will replace the need for walkie-talkies altogether. We expect a high demand for it, because it combines simplicity and ease of use with state-of-the-art technology: Just load any PTT app directly onto the speaker-microphone and you are ready to go.

What has been stakeholders’ feedback so far?

Quality prevails. We are aiming for the high-end and our largest customers and partners are very satisfied with our products. This raises the bar for ourselves, but also customer expectations. AINA Wireless is not in business to compete with Far East manufacturers. The feedback has been 100 % positive and the market seems to look forward to our next move.

What are your commercialisation plans?

We plan to launch at least one new product every six months. With this cadence we can maintain the highest quality while handling government approvals, test plans and field trials to ensure reliable products at market entry.

Anyone can buy and receive our product, even a single unit, from anywhere in the world within about week. Of course, our main focus is placed on partnering with large distributors, mobile operators, two-way-radio manufacturers and the leading developers of PTT apps. This way we have access to large customers and ensure that the whole solution works exactly the way end-users are expecting it to.

What do you still need to achieve before the end of the project?

About a million things, but they start coming together. We have a great team and good partners. By the second half of 2018 we want to be able to present something to the public.

The longest part is always research: What are you trying to do and how? Once you figured out your concept it’s all execution. This is why we have a few engineers that don’t have a real job description, their work is to just come up with ideas. Then we have a whole other team who takes the concepts and puts them into the workflow of product development.

Cordis source: Interview from research*eu results magazine n. 69

Up against four decades of megacorporate erosion of wrongfully injured Americans’ access to our courts, trial lawyers are wondering what use is left of the Seventh Amendment, our constitutional right to trial by jury?

Indentured lawmakers pass laws blocking or obstructing harmed individuals who are simply seeking fair compensation for their medical expenses, wage loss and suffering as a result of actions committed by their wrongdoers. Corporations, with their fine print consumer contracts, are eluding justice for some serious crimes by employing compulsory arbitration clauses, which preemptively force victims into closed, private arbitration (in lieu of trial by jury) and block the wrongfully injured from getting their day in open court.

It’s unavoidable. Chances are you sign such clauses regularly without ever knowing it. Everywhere, lawsuits, jury trials and verdicts are diminishing in the midst of population growth and ever more invasive technologies, drugs, chemicals, and many other products—all with the very real potential to suffer from dangerous defects, and all bearing built-in immunities for the guilty parties, should these defects come to light. Indeed, the vast majority of fatalities and serious injuries from preventable causes in the health care industry, factories, mines, drillers and hurtful products never even see an attorney.

Still the corporate lobbies, led by the insurance industry, keep pressing to block the courtroom door and avoid accepting responsibility for their injurious deeds.

They built this system of justice, but collectively, they have not been up to defending and preserving it from the mounting counterattacks.

The trial lawyers cannot match their adversaries in political contributions. However, there is one simple thing they could do. Should they deign to return the calls of consumer, environmental and labor groups wishing to forge alliances at the grass roots, such a union of minds could turn the tide for the trial lawyers who have long been on the defensive. Bear in mind, the law of wrongful injury (tort law) defends all the people regardless of political persuasion, race, gender or economic background. An unbeatable coalition could be assembled.

For over fifty years, I’ve been fighting, as a volunteer, for more appropriate utilization of our civil justice system to further its goals of compensation for the wrongfully injured, public disclosure of hazards, consequences for crimes against innocent victims and the environment, and deterrence against culpable actors. This effort is part and parcel of consumer, environmental and worker safety movements. In fact, the dangers that prompted safety legislation and regulations were often first disclosed by personal injury lawsuits.

Yet, with luminous exceptions, most major plaintiff law firms are not responding to the mobilization of these constituencies. They tend to their selected clients as attorneys but do not flex their muscles and resources as proactive lawyers by addressing the overall crisis that is the slow-motion destruction of civil justice.

Their adversaries have established so-called “lawsuit abuse” groups in numerous states and activated their dealers, agents and professional societies to keep the siege on our Seventh Amendment rights proliferating with wildly inaccurate assertions and hyperbolic anecdotes.

Inexplicably, these successful law firms will not protect the dwindling forest for the few trees they are nurturing. You call them for collaborative projects and their secretaries keep saying they are “in deposition” or are “on conference calls” that seem to occur perpetually.

I suspect that they are just not interested enough, no matter their enormous wealth from contingent fees in such areas as the great tobacco, asbestos, drug, oil spill or motor vehicle class actions. They have not built collateral civic institutions to begin to match their opponents even though these civic groups would be speaking for tens of millions of families.

In an open letter to plaintiff attorneys circulated in 2012, I described how the great law of torts is under assault and demands a multidimensional mobilization of the public. It was overwhelmingly ignored.

On September 29, 2016, we organized the first ever national celebration of this pillar of private justice at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Some of the region’s leading trial lawyers promised to bring people out and help with the expenses. They struck out.

There was a time twenty-five to fifty years ago when trial lawyers recognized the necessity of community education. They offered seminars in property, consumer, personal injury, civil rights and contract law in a program called The People’s Law School. Others joined with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to share little known product and environmental hazards discovered in their litigation which they hoped would foster broader protections. They started, at my suggestion, a marvelous non-profit litigation group called Public Justice in 1982 that brings fundamental court cases unlikely to be brought by commercial attorneys.

Presently, personal injury lawyers, except for the few rich ones, are not making big money. They are discouraged. Their own state trial lawyer associations report dwindling membership, smaller budgets and less engagement. Whole areas of practice are nearly disappearing, as in California with its draconian statutory caps and other restrictions on litigating serious medical malpractice injuries, which limit compensation to $250,000—regardless of the severity of the injury—for a lifetime of pain and suffering. (See my letter to Governor Jerry Brown.)

But there is one smallish firm in California that shows their colleagues just what can be accomplished for the American people by combining logical vision with enabling resources for the common good.

I’ll describe what this firm has done for America in next week’s column, and ask the question, what are many larger personal injury firms waiting for?

This week, following the recent announcement of a new National Defense Strategy that focuses on conflicts with great powers and a new arms race, the Pentagon announced an escalation of nuclear weapons development. The United States’ military is spread across the world, including several dangerous conflict areas that could develop into an all-out war, possibly in conflict with China or Russia. This comes at a time when US empire is fading, something the Pentagon also recognizes and the US is falling behind China economically. This is not unexpected considering that one year ago President Trump sought an inaugural parade that put tanks and missiles on display.

New National Defense Strategy Means More War, More Spending

The new National Defense Strategy announced last week moves from the ‘war on terror’ toward conflict with great powers. Michael Whitney, writing about the conflict in Syria, puts it in context:

“Washington’s biggest problem is the absence of a coherent policy. While the recently released National Defense Strategy articulated a change in the way the imperial strategy would be implemented, (by jettisoning the ‘war on terror’ pretext to a ‘great power’ confrontation) the changes amount to nothing more than a tweaking of the public relations ‘messaging’. Washington’s global ambitions remain the same albeit with more emphasis on raw military power.”

The move from military conflict against non-state actors, i.e. ‘terrorists’, to great power conflict means more military hardware, massive spending on weapons and a new arms race. Andrew Bacevich writes in American Conservative that war profiteers are popping open the champagne.

Bacevich writes the ‘new’ strategy is placed in the false caim that the US is “emerging from a period of strategic atrophy.” The claim is laughable as the US has been in never ending war with massive military spending throughout the century:

“Under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump, U.S. forces have been constantly on the go. I’m prepared to argue that no nation in recorded history has ever deployed its troops to more places than has the United States since 2001. American bombs and missiles have rained down on a remarkable array of countries. We’ve killed an astonishing number of people.”

The new strategy means more spending on weapons to prepare for conflict with Russia and China. Not bothering with reality, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis claimed, “Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. And it is continually eroding.”  He described the Pentagon’s plans for ‘procurement and modernization’, i.e. the arms race that includes nuclear, space and traditional weapons, cyber defense and more surveillance.

The Pentagon announced its Nuclear Posture Review on February 2, 2018. The review calls for updating and expanding the nuclear arsenal in order to respond to perceived threats, in particular by “great powers,” e.g. Russia and China, as well North Korea and others. Peace Action described a review written by Dr. Strangeglove, adding “the expansion of our nuclear arsenal called for in the Nuclear Posture Review would cost the American taxpayers an estimated $1.7 trillion adjusted for inflation over the next three decades.”

Bachevich concludes “Who will celebrate the National Defense Strategy? Only weapons manufacturers, defense contractors, lobbyists, and other fat cat beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex.” To further the glee of weapons makers, Trump is urging the State Department to spend more time selling US weapons.

Escalating Conflicts Risk War Globally

In his first year as president, Donald Trump handed over decision-making power to “his generals” and as expected, this  resulted in more “warfare, bombing and deaths” in his first year than the Obama era. There has been “an almost 50 percent increase of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during Trump’s first year in office, leading to a rise in civilian deaths by more than 200 percent compared with the year before.” Trump has also broken the record for special forces, now deployed in 149 countries or 75 percent of the globe. So much for ‘America First.’

Many areas risk escalation to full-scale war, including conflict with Russia and China:

Syria: The seven-year war in Syria, which has killed 400,000 people, began during Obama’s presidency under the guise of destroying ISIS. The real goal was removal of President Assad. This January, Secretary of State Tillerson made the goal clear, saying that even after the defeat of ISIS the US would stay in Syria until Assad was removed from office. The US is moving to Plan B, the creation of a de facto autonomous Kurdish state for almost one-third of Syria defended by a proxy military of 30,000 troops, mainly Kurds. Marcello Ferrada de Noli describes that in response, Syria aided by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah “continues victorious and unabated in its pursuit to retake the full sovereignty of its nation’s territory.” Turkey is moving to ensure no Kurdish territory is created by the US.

North Korea: The latest dangerous idea coming from the Trump military is giving North Korea a “bloody nose.” This schoolyard bully talk risks a US first strike that could create war with China and Russia. China has said if the US attacked first it would defend North Korea. This aggressive talk comes when North and South Korea seek peace and are cooperating during the Olympics. The Trump era has continued massive military exercises, practicing attacks on North Korea that include nuclear attacks and assassination of their leadership.The US did take a step back and agree not to hold such war games during the Olympics.

Iran: The US has sought regime change since the 1979 Islamic Revolution removed the US’s Shah of Iran. The current debate over the future of the nuclear weapons agreement and economic sanctions are focal points of conflict. While observers find Iran has lived up to the agreement, the Trump administration continues to claim violations. In addition, the US, through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and other agencies, is spending millions annually to build opposition to the government and foment regime change, as seen in recent protests. In addition, the US (along with Israel and Saudi Arabia) is engaged in conflict with Iran in other areas, e.g. Syria and Yemen. There is regular propaganda demonizing Iran and threatening war with Iran, which is six times the size of Iraq and has a much stronger military. The US has been isolated in the UN over its belligerence toward Iran.

Afghanistan: The longest war in US history continues after 16 years. The US has been hiding what is happening in Afghanistan because the Taliban has an active presence in about 70 percent of the country and ISIS has gained more territory than ever before resulting in the Inspector General for Afghanistan criticizing DoD for refusing to release data. The long war included Trump dropping the largest non-nuclear bomb in history and resulted in allegations of US war crimes that the International Criminal Court seeks to investigate. The US has caused devastation throughout the country.

Ukraine: The US supported coup in the Ukraine continues to cause conflicts on the Russian border. The US spent billions on the coup, but documents outlining the Obama administration’s involvement have not been released. The coup was complete with Vice President Biden’s son and John Kerry’s long-term financial ally being put on the board of the Ukraine’s largest private energy company. A former State Department employee became Ukraine’s finance minister. The US continues to claim Russia is the aggressor because it protected its Navy base in Crimea from the US coup. Now, the Trump administration is providing arms to Kiev and stoking a civil war with Kiev and western Ukraine against eastern Ukraine.

These are not the only areas where the US is creating regime change or seeking domination. In another strange statement, Secretary of State Tillerson warned Venezuela may face a military coup while winking that the US does not support regime change (even though it has been seeking regime change to control Venezuelan oil since Hugo Chavez came to power). Tillerson’s comment came as Venezuela negotiated a settlement with the opposition. Regime change is the mode of operation for the US in Latin America.  The US  supported recent questionable elections in Honduras, to keep the coup government Obama supported in power. In Brazil, the US is assisting the prosecution of Lula, who seeks to run for president, in a crisis that threatens its fragile democracy protecting a coup government.

In Africa, the US has military in 53 of 54 countries and is in competition with China, which is using economic power rather than military power. The US is laying the groundwork for military domination of the continent with little congressional oversight — to dominate the land, resources and people of Africa.

Opposition to War and Militarism

The anti-war movement, which atrophied under President Obama, is coming back to life.

World Beyond War is working to abolish war as an instrument of foreign policy. Black Alliance for Peace is working to revitalize opposition to war by blacks, historically some of the strongest opponents of war. Peace groups are uniting around the No US Foreign Military Bases campaign that is seeking to close 800 US military bases in 80 countries.

Peace advocates are organizing actions. The campaign to divest from the war machine kicks off from February 5 to 11 highlighting the economic cost of war. A global day of action against the US occupation of Guantanamo Bay is being planned for February 23, the anniversary of the US seizing Guantanamo Bay from Cuba through a “perpetual lease” beginning in 1903. A national day of action against US wars at home and abroad is being planned for April. And Cindy Sheehan is organizing a Women’s March on the Pentagon.

There are many opportunities to oppose war in this new era of “Great Power” conflict. We urge you to get involved as you are able to show that the people say “No” to war.

Brainwashed Americans believe that Kim Jong-un is responsible for the confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington, but nothing could be further from the truth. The real problem is not Kim’s nuclear weapons but Washington’s 65 year-long military occupation that continues to reinforce a political solution that was arbitrarily imposed on a sovereign nation in order to split the country in two, install a puppet regime in the south, establish a permanent military presence to defend US commercial interests, and maintain control of a strategically-located territory that is a critical part of Washington’s plan to encircle Russia and China to remain the dominant global power throughout the century.  Simply put, Washington is 100 percent responsible for the current confrontation just as it has been responsible for every flare-up for the last 7 decades.

Even so, fighting back against the relentless outpouring of US-backed state propaganda is no easy task. So allow me to defend the position of the DPRK with just one, brief analogy that will help to put things into perspective:

Imagine if the Korean army decided to deploy tens of thousands of combat troops to fight on the side of the South during the Civil War. And let’s say, that these forces were so successful that they were able to kill 3 million Americans while reducing every business and factory, every home and hospital, every church and university, to smoldering rubble. As a result of Korean meddling, the North was unable to win the war, but was forced to settle for an armistice that permanently split the US into North and South allowing Korea to install its stooges in the capitol of Richmond while it established military bases in every southern state from Virginia to Louisiana.

Let’s say this arrangement worked for over 6 decades due mainly to the efforts of Korean propagandists who derided any attempt at reconciliation, dialogue or reunification. Let’s say, activists and politicians in the North pushed for a “Sunshine Policy” that would foster communication and better relations between the two sides, but their efforts were constantly sabotaged by self-serving imperial overlords who saw any move towards dialogue as a threat to their continued presence in the South, so they engaged in the same illicit practices the US engages in today, that is, sowing dissension, discord and division between the two sides, always provoking more trouble, more disharmony, more acrimony. Always and everywhere pushing forward the imperial agenda by turning the bulk of the world’s population into Shia and Sunni.

Isn’t that the Grand Plan; divide and conquer, pit one brother against the other, keep all of us at each others throats in order to justify the ongoing occupation, in order to justify the ongoing meddling, in order to justify the ongoing economic exploitation?

Of course, it is. The United States has never lifted its sanctions on North Korea, never treated their leaders with anything except contempt and brutality, and never made any sincere attempt to end the hostilities. Washington will not even sit down with a delegation from the DPRK to air their differences or discuss a path forward.

Why?

Is it because the DPRK is a Communist state? Is that it?

Heck, no. The US has open trade relations with China and Vietnam both of who share a similar Marxist ideology. Even more shocking, the US now employs an openly “Utopian” Marxist militia (the Kurdish YPG) in East Syria as its proxy-army in its fight to topple the government in Damascus. Think about that for a minute: Washington’s shock troops in Syria are basically “a bunch of commies”.  I don’t say that to criticize the Kurds (who share a similar ideology to my own) but to illustrate the contemptible lack of principle and utter hypocrisy of everything Washington says or does. Washington doesn’t care what one’s personal philosophy is. Washington cares about power. And anything that helps to enhance Washington’s grip on global power, is the supreme good.

The United States refuses to sign a treaty with the North ending the war, refuses to sit down with delegates from the North, and refuses to provide any security assurances that they won’t attack the North at anytime for any reason. This is Washington’s policy towards the North, and yet we continue to read almost daily in the New York Times and Washington Post and the other “trusted” elite media, that the North is “threatening the US”, that the North is impulsive and violent, and that the North must be punished for its defiance.

Baloney! The North is NOT responsible for the crisis on the peninsula. The US is responsible. 100 percent responsible! Check out this excerpt from an article by David William Pear

“Fearing that peace might break out with the two Koreas talking to each other, Washington instructed South Korean President Moon Jae-in to keep the message about anything but peace….It is not just Trump. A former top official for the Obama administration warned Moon that South Korea was not going to get anywhere with the North Koreans unless they have the “US behind them”…… The official went on to say, “If South Koreans are viewed as running off the leash, it will exacerbate tension within the alliance”.” (U.S. Humiliates South Korea, Threatens North Korea, The Unz Review)

So South Korea is “off the lash” like a pathetic little poodle? Is that what he’s saying?

This flippant quote deserves careful consideration mainly because it is not just a “one-off”, but rather summarizes the fundamental master-slave relationship between leaders in the South and their colonial Bossman in Washington.

It’s Washington that’s calling the shots in the south, Washington that controls the Korean military and Washington that sets the policy.  This is essentially how the system works. Conversely, countries that defend their own sovereignty  (like Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela) remain outside the US-run system, making them Washington’s de facto enemies to be demonized and threatened. But it’s not ideology that Washington cares about, it’s independence. That’s the big no-no. Check out this excerpt from an article at Liberation News:

“U.S. military occupation following World War II was more hostile and brutal than the Japanese colonial government. In fact from 1945 to 1948, the U.S. military continued to employ Japanese colonists, and Japanese law remained in effect. The prostitution of Korean women was official government policy for the purpose of now entertaining U.S. soldiers.

Meanwhile, in North Korea, the Soviet Civil Authority supported the peasant organizations and workers’ councils. In March 1946, land reform was instituted in which land owned by Japanese colonizers and their Korean collaborators was divided and handed over to poor formers. The rule of the land-owning class was broken, and landlords were allowed to keep only the same amount of land as their former tenants. Soviet forces left the peninsula in 1948…….

U.S. occupation troops remain in South Korea to this day. Washington continues to falsely claim that North Korea is to blame for the continued division of Korea. However, U.S. imperialism and the 32,000 U.S. troops that are stationed in South Korea to enforce the border between the North and South remain the predominant obstacle to reunification of the Korean Peninsula…. U.S. imperialism, from the beginning of Japanese colonization to today, has never had the interests of the Korean people in mind.” (“U.S. ‘liberators’ turned South Korea into a neo-colony”, Liberation News)

For years the US kept the same savage colonial system in place in order to partition the country and to prevent the Korean people from deciding their own future. That basic system is still in place today thanks largely to Washington’s oppressive military presence. Check out this excerpt from North Korean state news blasting the sovereignty-eviscerating Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that allows Washington to control the South Korean military:

“The National Peace Committee of Korea blasted the 64-year-old South Korea-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) as an “aggressive and traitorous war document” that has allowed U.S. forces to control the South Korean army and to continue joint military operations, according to the KCNA.

The committee called SOFA the “symbol of the U.S. military occupation of South Korea” and said that “the defense treaty has reduced South Korea into advanced base for a nuclear war” among other things, the KCNA said.

The South Korean people cannot evade the tragedy of a nuclear war as long as the U.S. military occupation of South Korea continues, given that the three-year Korean War ended in a ceasefire in 1953, not a peace treaty, it said.” (“N. Korean committee calls for end to U.S. domination in S.K.”, Yonhap News)

(Note: Do I have more confidence in North Korean state news than the “filthy fishwrap” Washington Post?  You’re damn right, I do!)

There are of course, peaceful remedies to the current stand-off, the most reasonable of which is the Moon-Putin Plan named after South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Here’s a brief summary of the plan:

“The Moon-Putin plan …is a plan to bring South and North Korea together through physical infrastructure and trade mechanisms, involving the neighboring countries of Russia and China.  Bridges of cooperation linking South Korea to Russia via North Korea: gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries. Siberian oil and gas pipelines would be extended to Korea, both North and South, as well as to Japan. Both Koreas would be linked up with the vast rail networks of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including high-speed rail, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to Gavan McCormack, “North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (‘freeze’) its existing programs and gain its longed for ‘normalization’ in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbor states, without surrender.” (“North Korea War Plan: Chrystia Freeland is more dangerous than Tony Blair”, Off-Guardian)

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  What better way to reduce the chance of another bloody war than economic integration, which is why the Trump administration not only opposes the idea, but it’s also why the entire western media have made sure that no one even hears about it.  Coverage of The Moon-Putin plan has been completely blacked out in our vaunted “free media”. As it happens, policy options that don’t jibe with Washington’s chronic warmongering never see the light of day.

Finally, the Trump administration opposes any plan that involves open dialogue, economic integration, reunification or a peaceful resolution to the crisis.  What Washington wants is to preserve the status quo, they want Korea that is divided, occupied, powerless and languishing in a “permanent state of colonial dependency.”

Trump is ready to go to war to preserve the existing state of affairs. God help us all.