A team of international researchers led by a Canadian biologist has found that infection with parasites makes it harder for seafish living in coral reefs to think.

The study, conducted at the Lizard Island Research Station in Australia and led by Assistant Professor Sandra Binning of Université de Montréal’s Department of Biological Sciences, was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

It highlights the important role of both parasites and cleaning organisms in the decision-making abilities of reef fish.

Binning and her team found that sick seafish can get well again by seeking out other animals like the blue-streaked “cleaner wrasse,” a common aquarium fish that eats harmful parasites off their “clients”, helping keep them healthy.

“We collected wild damselfish with or without access to cleaner wrasse and tested their ability to solve a feeding test in the lab.” Binning recalled. “We then compared their performance to fish that we infected with parasites experimentally.”

“We found that infection with parasites, especially in high numbers, really affects the ability of fish to learn.”

These results may not be surprising to anyone who’s been sick and tried to do activities requiring thinking and concentration. “When we’re sick, our body diverts resources away from our brain towards fighting off the infection,” Binning noted. “This makes it harder for us to think and learn.”

Humans may also benefit from staying parasite-free. “Studies have found that schoolchildren with stomach worms perform worse on standardized tests that their parasite-free peers,” said Binning. “Treating these kids with anti-parasite medication improves their performance.”

Although fish can’t take medication when they’re feeling under the weather, they can enlist the help of cleaners to help rid them of their parasites. This access to cleaning services can dramatically improve a fish’s performance in a learning test.

According to Dr. Binning, “cleaner wrasse act like the vets of the sea. Clients visit cleaners to get their parasites removed, and this helps boost their ability to think and solve the test.”

Interactions with cleaner wrasse are also known to reduce client stress levels and increase local recruitment of coral reef fishes.

However, this vital role in maintaining healthy reef communities may be under threat: cleaner wrasse are among the top marine fishes caught for the aquarium industry, due to their colourful patterns and charismatic behaviour.

“It’s important that we understand the impacts of reduced access to cleaners on client fishes,” said Binning. “Cleaners may not be the largest or most abundant fish on the reef, but they affect the well-being of thousands of their clients. This needs to be taken into consideration when setting collection limits and managing marine parks.”

There are many factors that account for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory, but Americans would be doing a disservice to their understanding of the country’s political system by ignoring Trump’s 14-year starring role as a reality television personality, according to Shira Gabriel, an associate professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Psychology.

Gabriel is lead author of a forthcoming study to be published in Social Psychological and Personality Science which is the first to scientifically examine how viewers’ parasocial bonds with Trump, formed through his television shows, “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice,” contributed to his being elected to the nation’s highest office.

“I strongly believe that Donald Trump would not be president if it weren’t for his being on The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice,” said Gabriel. “It’s not the only factor, but this was a close election and knowing what I know about the strength of parasocial relationships and based on what we found through this research, I believe that he wouldn’t be in office if it weren’t for these television shows.”

Because of the strong human need to form relationships, people form parasocial bonds with characters that they see on TV.

People can form parasocial bonds in many ways, but television is a particularly potent multisensory medium that is capable of immersing viewers into the experience. In a way, Gabriel said television mimics reality in that relationships develop slowly over time in regular intervals. Since the human brain did not evolve to distinguish between real friends who we seek week after week in real life and characters who we see week after week on TV, these bonds can feel very real.

“Viewers feel like we know these people when in a parasocial relationship. They feel interested in their lives and feel happy when good things happen to them,” she said. “Logically, that doesn’t make sense, but we still feel connected to them when we spend time with them – and it’s a relatively healthy and common thing to do.”

Gabriel is an expert in parasocial relationships and has been doing research in this area for the past decade. She said these relationships are real to people psychologically and have actual psychological outcomes.

Her research suggests that many television viewers formed those bonds with Trump due to his appearance on 14 seasons of “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Those bonds led voters to like Trump; to believe the promises he made, and to discount the negative stories about him which surfaced during the campaign. The bonds also influenced voting behavior: the more people watched Trump on his television programs the more likely they were to form bonds, which then predicted voting for him, according to the study’s findings.

Trump’s win was a surprise to many people based on research conducted in the final weeks of 2016.

Gabriel and her collaborators Melanie Green, an associate professor in UB’s Department of Communication who specializes in media effects, and Elaine Paravati, a PhD student in Social Psychology became interested in examining Trump’s unexpected victory through the lens of parasocial relationships.

Using an online survey, they recruited 521 voters and measured their current attitudes about Trump, as well as their voting behavior and their experience watching Trump’s two television shows.

“The mass of shows is amazing,” said Gabriel. “Fourteen seasons of hour-long episodes that presented Trump as a calm, infallible decision-maker, who listened to others but came to his own conclusions, greatly emphasized his success.”

Politicians can’t buy the kind of exposure with campaign ads that reality television provides, according to Gabriel. She said viewers know campaign ads are designed as persuasion tools. So they approach ads with an inherent skepticism.

“But these shows weren’t presented as campaign ads,” she said. “They were presented as reality shows that gave us a glimpse into a real process for our entertainment. The defensiveness we exhibit when we’re being pitched wasn’t there for ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘The Celebrity Apprentice.'” Viewers who developed a parasocial relationship with Trump liked him, according to Gabriel. That predicted believing many of his promises, as if trusting the word of a friend. At the same time, the study’s results suggested viewers were less likely to believe negative stories about Trump.

“This makes sense,” said Gabriel. “It’s how we would behave with real relationships. For example, if you had a friend, in real life, for 14 years and saw evidence, again and again, that he was a great leader and decision maker, exhibiting wise and sound behavior, you would be likely to discount negative things said about that friend because you would feel as if you knew him better.”

In addition, this research helps explain the surprising Trump voters, those who crossed party lines to vote for him. The effects were strongest with voters who weren’t lifelong Republicans. For those people, parasocial bonds were an especially strong predictor of voting for Trump. In other words, the study suggests that some voters who would not have voted for Trump for political reasons, felt that they knew him and liked him due to “The Apprentice” and voted for him because of that.

Every year over 30,000 Americans are killed by gunfire. Every month, in public schoolyards, dance clubs, concert venues, work places and public gatherings, innocent people are slaughtered by assassins wielding legally purchased high powered semi-automatic weapons. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a 3 million-member organization, supports and sponsors free and easy access to military-level weaponry. The vast majority of US legislators, Presidents and judges support the possession of the very weapons responsible for massacres.

The question is why does the US political system bemoan the frequent occurrence of mass shootings, and yet turn around and endorse the political process that makes these killings possible? The size, scope and duration of massacres requires that we examine the large-scale, long-term systemic features of the US political economy.

The Politics of Wars: Massacres Abroad as ‘All American’ Heroism

The US government has engaged in multiple bloody wars where it has
massacred millions of civilians – including whole families in their homes – representing no conceivable threat to the American people. The wars feature the success of destruction and death as a means to advance US political programs. War criminals are honored. Domestic political con conflicts and social problems are resolved by destroying invented adversaries and entire nations.

In a political economy where overseas massacres are perpetrated by democratically elected leaders, who is to question the behavior of ‘a neighborhood sociopath’ who is merely following the practices of his president? This should surprise no one: Wholesale massacres abroad, fostered by our leaders, are reflected in the domestic retail massacre unleashed by the local ‘nutcase’.

The Mass Media: Weapons Talk, Killings Resolve and the Media Profit

Everyday, at every hour, on every media outlet, guns and slaughter dominate the minds, thoughts and fantasies (or nightmares) of viewers, especially the millions who absorb ‘the message’. Films, TV programs and computer games are saturated with conflicts resolved by guns, killing victims – whether police or civilians. Problems are solved through violence.

The message of the mass media is that victories come from mass killings.
Wars and killings are portrayed in a wide variety of settings: Homes, public buildings, public schools, workplaces, streets and plazas.
If wars and massacres are essential in this political system, the mass media ensures that it permeates and normalizes in the minds of the masses.

Economy

Weapons, used in massacres, represent a very lucrative business: The manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, gun clubs, and police and military institutions all thrive in this free marketplace of murder. The arms industry thrives on wars and media messages – and mass consumption. Political leaders rely on the gun economy to finance their election campaigns. Politicians approve of wars, gun industries and associations.

They perpetuate the conditions for massacres. Big business is protected from massacres at home, school and play. Why would the CEO’s and political elites worry about public school massacres when their own children are safe in expensive private schools? After all, votes and pro ts are at stake. Only ‘losers’ send their children to dangerous public schools. The ‘winners’ have safe alternative…

Alternatives

To confront the epidemic numbers of mass shootings, changes in the political economy are essential.

1. Replace the policies of imperial wars with the promotion of diplomacy, negotiations and peaceful resolution of conflicts.

2. Replace the mass media gun culture with cultural values of solidarity and safe, publicly engaged communities.

3. Replace the mania to possess military-level weapons among civilians with a vision of one’s life built around a healthy environment shared among socially engaged neighbors.

4. Outlaw or regulate gun clubs and militias – abolish the sale of military-level weapons used in these massacres. Guns used for marksmanship and hunting are separate from the weapons of war used to slaughter dozens of small children huddled in their classroom.

Fake and Positive Approaches to Massacres

President Trump proposed to arm school teachers as a ‘solution’ to school massacres. This is a bizarre alternative that will only exacerbate the spread of weapons, encourage more shooting and massacres, undermine the role of teachers as educators and create new ‘role models’ for would-be assassins. Trump’s proposal also underscores his administration’s profound contempt for the role of public education and public educators in building a healthy society. His tendency to blame the victims…’if only the teachers were armed…’ shows the grotesque Social Darwinism inherent in his ideology as he seeks to utterly destroy the public sector. The children of the elite and politicians do not have to attend their French or calculus classes taught by armed teachers.

According to the logic of Trump and the political and business elite, armed shootouts in the public school class rooms merely underscore the need to dissolve the Departments of Education at all levels, as well as all public services in this nation.

Teachers should be able to focus their work on educating students to become productive, competent citizens who prize community and cooperation over weapons and war. They should graduate students who can critically evaluate the role of the mass media in promoting violence. They should provide their students with the civic skills to mobilize against political leaders who have accepted bribes (‘donations’) from death cults, like the NRA.

Community organizers can boycott businesses that provide political and material support to the war mongers, militias and other gun-toting extremists to stop the violence.

National legislation should be passed, limiting rearms to very specific areas and events, like shooting clubs or hunting.

Individual gun owners should be licensed based on strict psychological criteria and renewal of license should be frequent. The US military must inform local civilian authorities of any criminal violent behavior of its discharged soldiers; they cannot just release a ‘ticking time bomb’ into the civilian population they are sworn to protect. Mental illness is a public health issue and public funds for hospitals and facilities to identify and treat individuals should be increased. The mentally ill should not be warehoused in and out of the jails or dumped on the streets.

Gun dealers and gun shows should be regulated and forced to follow procedures or face penalties.

Hunters should use weapons appropriate to the game they are shooting. Semi-automatic rearms are not appropriate for hunting deer, rabbits or turkey. Semi-automatic weapons are used for hunting and killing human beings, including unarmed children in their classrooms.

Conclusion

Cultural, political and economic changes can take place over time but require mass sustained struggles. In the meantime, short term reforms that regulate and reduce the frequency and fatality of local massacres should be implemented.

The scenario where police cordon o the site of a mass shooting , preventing medics and ‘first responders’ from entering quickly to stabilize the wounded, while protecting themselves – a process that may take over an hour and lead to avoidable deaths by treatable blood loss, has to be exposed and rectified.

‘Golden minutes’, the time when injured victims can be stabilized by routine emergency measures and transferred to higher level facilities for life saving surgery and replacement of lost blood, are being wasted while ‘SWAT Teams’ gear up and ‘secure the perimeter’ through a choreographed series of maneuvers to ensure ‘force protection’ (a euphemism for protecting the police). The horrendous rate of mortality in these shooting, 100% of the young victims at Sandy Hook

Elementary School, is a scandal – especially in view of the silence that followed. Clearly the local and state coroners and police are covering up information regarding the role that preventing the rapid entry of emergency medics played in such high mortality. Independent investigation of this deliberate police delay in providing life- saving care should be a priority.

Virtually all school massacres have been committed by individuals known to the police or community for erratic behavior and domestic abuse. The local police or family knowledge that these demented, homicidal individuals had access to military level rearms and did not act on repeated complaints requires independent investigation at the state and federal level. Laws and statutes regarding preventative hospitalization or detention of such unstable abusers must be enforced.

There should be a national commission to investigate the state of mental health treatment resources in the US. It is long overdue. Rather than demanding that school teachers arm themselves, quality mental health facilities at the state and local level must be established. It is not enough to merely warehouse the mentally ill in the local jails for misdemeanor offenses and then discharge them back into the streets without support.

Public schools and teachers must be supported. The decades-long policy of undermining basic public services, like public education, in favor of ‘school choice’ – a euphemism for privatizing education – and making education a privilege for the wealthy rather than a right of free citizens – must be reversed. Rather than one lone teacher in a classroom (preferably armed – according to President Trump and the NRA) with forty students, each classroom should have three competent teachers working together to ensure that the students are advancing in the various subjects necessary for their future as free and productive citizens. It is a scandal that the US Department of Education and its Secretary of Education have been absent and silent following the frequent school massacres.

However, it is not surprising, considering the priorities of the upper officials of the Department of Education who come from the elite, and, in the case of current Secretary Betsy DeVos, from the billionaire class. They have never entered a public educational facility. Their children are either ‘home-schooled’ with private tutors or attend elite private academies. Their policies in undermining public education reflect their ideological hostility to the entire notion of public welfare.

Trump’s blaming the school teachers for being unarmed in their class rooms shows most clearly his own contempt for public education and the working and middle class families who entrust their children to the public education systems across the country.

These events occur in the public space, a space once trusted and free to all free citizens – public schools have been the foundation of providing for a free and productive citizenry. It is no accident that mass school shootings take place exclusively in public schools. The worthy children of the elite are safe in their fortress-like homes and highly selective private schools. Their highly qualified teachers are free to teach, unencumbered by concealed weapons or any disruption by any ‘active shooter’ drill. These children have guaranteed futures.

The situation for the children of the working and middle classes is far more uncertain. Access to quality education is no longer a right and a duty for free and productive citizens and their families. At most, youth may have ‘access to educational loans’ at usurious interest rates that fetter them to decades of debt peonage, while the students from the wealthy classes are free to pursue their careers and develop their talents.

As the deterioration of future prospects for the US youth continues, with the massive shifts of national wealth to the elite, these massacres, as well as suicides, deaths from overdose and domestic and overseas wars will only grow. There is a sociopolitical context in which this occurs: deliberate decisions made at the top spawn horrors and mayhem at the base.

There is a class basis for the nightmares gripping working and middle-class parents, teachers and students across the country. Security, quality education and quality health care are increasingly the private, exclusive domain of the elite . The elite-driven policies, starting with the reign of President Ronald Reagan, have engineered the breakup of public mental health facilities and the mass release of unstable vulnerable, as well as violent, citizens into unprepared communities. Those who suffer from the consequences of these policies mean nothing to the

elite political classes – except for photo-op funerals. Elite-driven policies, implemented under the bi-partisan administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jr., Barack Obama and Donald Trump, are furthering the agenda of shredding the public sector and privatizing the wealth and institutions of the nation.

The massive lowering of taxes, under the tax bill passed by Donald Trump represents an over one trillion dollar wind-fall for the investor class (finance elite) at the expense of the public institutions and safety nets serving the working and middle classes. The increasing incidence and the location and identities of the victims of mass shootings are not random: They are class-defined and reflect the loss of citizen power. The winners in this class war from the top will shed crocodile tears at media events while privately ridiculing the victims’ families for relying on public institutions.

The decisions, made at the top, which have given birth to this epidemic of mass public school shooting, as well as the parallel epidemics of suicide and overdose among the working and middle classes, have immensely benefited the elite. The billionaires and the donors to both political parties have no incentive to reverse course and implement reforms or policies designed to bring back citizen rights and the public space. Only the friends, families and neighbors of the working and middle-class victims, those who are secretly viewed as ‘losers choosing to send their children to public institutions’, can unite to change this and bring back social and economic justice to honor the innocent dead and offer a just and dignified future to their children. It is not a matter of arming teachers, or of wrapping small pupils in ‘bullet proof blankets’, while the elite blame us for our suffering from the safety of their mansions.

Understanding the class basis for this crisis will help form the foundation for real solutions.

Infants who resemble their father at birth are more likely to spend time together with their father and, in turn, be healthier when they reach their first birthday, according to new research co-conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

“Fathers are important in raising a child, and it manifests itself in the health of the child,” said Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at Binghamton University Solomon Polachek.

Polachek, along with Marlon Tracey from Southern Illinois University, based their analysis on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) study, which focused on 715 families in which babies live with only their mother. Data from the first two waves of the study indicated that infants who looked like their father at birth were healthier one year later, suggesting that father-child resemblance induces a father to spend more time engaged in positive parenting, as these fathers spent an average of 2.5 more days per month with their babies than fathers who didn’t resemble their offspring.

“Those fathers that perceive the baby’s resemblance to them are more certain the baby is theirs, and thus spend more time with the baby,” said Dr. Polachek.

The result has implications regarding the role of a father’s time in enhancing child health, especially in fragile families, said the researchers.

“We find a child’s health indicators improve when the child looks like the father…The main explanation is that frequent father visits allow for greater parental time for care-giving and supervision, and for information gathering about child health and economic needs. It’s been said that ‘it takes a village’ but my coauthor, Marlon Tracey, and I find that having an involved father certainly helps,” added Polachek.

The researchers said that this study supports policies for encouraging nonresident fathers to engage in frequent positive parenting to improve early childhood health.

“Greater efforts could be made to encourage these fathers to frequently engage their children through parenting classes, health education, and job training to enhance earnings,” said Polachek.

The paper, “If looks could heal: Child health and paternal investment,” was published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Currents in the ocean and fjords spread viruses that are killing large numbers of farmed salmon. Where should fish farms be built? And should they all be in use at the same time? Norwegian researchers are using computer modelling to figure out how best to site farms to protect fish and the coastline.

Pancreas disease is a viral infection in farmed salmon that causes major economic losses because it reduces how much the fish grow and increases mortality. When farmed salmon are weakened, they also become more susceptible to other diseases.

Pancreas disease (PD) can resolve on its own, but often mortality is high.In addition to threatening fish welfare, every year the disease leads to major losses for Norwegian salmon breeders. A single outbreak can quickly cost a small aquaculture operation NOK 10 million.Ocean currents are one of the most important pathways for the disease, carrying the virus from one fish farm to the next.

Planning for where best to locate aquaculture facilities, and knowledge of which facilities to use when combatting the disease, can prevent the spread of the disease, new research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Ålesund shows.

Disease follows ocean currents

Researchers in the project “Strategies for limiting the spread of PD” monitored ocean currents in the Romsdalsfjord and Nord-Trøndelag in 2014. Data from the observations were transferred to a digital model, where researchers created virtual virus particles.The technology has made it possible to monitor how the disease can spread from one aquaculture facility to another.

“The virus can survive for a long time in Norwegian coastal waters. But since it does have a limited lifespan, we’ve also removed the virtual virus in the data model after a while to simulate natural conditions,” says Lars Gansel, an associate professor at NTNU in Ålesund.

The researchers have also tested the real virus in the lab. This allowed them to figure out how much of the virus is needed to infect a salmon.

Compared different models

The models show which fish farms are most susceptible to becoming infected and which are the most likely to transmit the disease to neighbouring facilities. Researchers can also use the models to predict how the virus moves when the current changes and how the currents are affected by temperature and the seasons.

The researchers released the virus – virtually – into four water pathway models and compared them to better understand the spread of pancreas disease.Article continues below illustration.

“This method allows us to calculate how much of the virus is transmitted to other fish farms. If the result is the same every time, then we know that the calculations are correct. By monitoring the ocean this way over a year’s time, we can detect probable fluctuations in ocean currents and do a better job predicting how viruses are spreading,” said Gansel.

More information needed on production areas

Norwegian authorities have divided the Norwegian coast into production zones for farmed salmon. Large designated coastal areas without fish farms act as “firebreaks” to prevent the spread of infection.

“In general, we need more information on where production areas should be located along the entire coast of Norway, what makes for good firebreaks and how we can use them better,” says Gansel.

Some of the research indicates that actual firebreaks, such as Buholmsråsa in Sør-Trøndelag, do work.

“Previously, firebreaks followed county boundaries, but luckily they’ve recently been changed to follow natural boundaries,” Gansel says.

An example of a natural boundary would be where the coastline directs the northbound coastal current out to the ocean, which lengthens the distance a virus has to travel from one fish farm to the next. And large islands or areas with slow water movement can prevent the virus from reaching a fish farm during the virus’s lifespan.

Farms coordinate fish slaughter

The research project will also look at the economic consequences of regulating the use of fish farms during disease outbreaks.

“If the ocean currents flow in a direction that results in one fish farm spreading the virus to others, one possibility may be to kill the fish. Farmers could also stop using multiple fish farms at the same time to create small firebreaks in a production area. This is where research can offer solutions for what measures are beneficial and what can be profitable in the long term,” says Gansel.

Aquaculture farms are required to kill all the fish in net cages in the case of a viral outbreak if they happen to be in an area where PD is being combatted.

“In areas with both big and small fish farms, breeders may disagree on when the fish should be slaughtered and which facilities need to slaughter their fish. The breeders prefer to keep the fish until they’re bigger to mitigate their financial loss. Improving our understanding of how currents spread the virus makes it easier to see where the salmon should be slaughtered first to keep the virus from spreading to the other fish,” said Gansel.

The researchers will also assess the economic impact of disease prevention measures and rank the overall costs after figuring out loss and gain in the short and long term.

New zone planning includes research results

The Norwegian authorities have proposed new zone boundaries along the whole coastline of Norway. The first version of the proposal from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries has been made available for public comment. A monthly virus screening of farmed salmon is also being proposed.

The research project’s management group has received feedback that the PD research results are being taken into account in the planning.

“Our results have transfer value to all the areas with fish farms in Norway. So we hope that the research will be used in determining future zones to prevent the spread of disease in farmed salmon,” said Gansel.

Scientists at the University of York have shown that using ‘dog-speak’ to communicate with dogs is important in relationship-building between pet and owner, similar to the way that ‘baby-talk’ is to bonding between a baby and an adult.

Speech interaction experiments between adult dogs and humans showed that this particular type of speech improves dog attention and may help humans to socially bond with their pets.

Previous studies on communicating with dogs had suggested that talking in a high-pitch voice with exaggerated emotion, just as adults do with babies, improved engagement with puppies but made little difference with adult dogs.

Researchers at the University of York tested this theory with new experiments designed to understand more about why humans talk to dogs like this and if it is useful to the dogs in some way or whether humans do this simply because they like to treat dogs in the same way as babies.

Dr Katie Slocombe from the University of York’s Department of Psychology said: “A special speech register, known as infant-directed speech, is thought to aid language acquisition and improve the way a human baby bonds with an adult. This form of speech is known to share some similarities with the way in which humans talk to their pet dogs, known as dog-directed speech.

“This high-pitched rhythmic speech is common in human interactions with dogs in western cultures, but there isn’t a great deal known about whether it benefits a dog in the same way that it does a baby.

“We wanted to look at this question and see whether social bonding between animals and humans was influenced by the type and content of the communication.”

Unlike previous experiments, the research team positioned real humans in the same room as the dog, rather than broadcasting speech over a loud speaker without a human present. This made the set-up much more naturalistic for the dogs and helped the team test whether dogs not only paid more attention to ‘dog speak’, but were motivated to spend more time with the person who had spoken to them in that way.

Researchers did a series of speech tests with adult dogs, where they were given the chance to listen to one person using dog-directed speech containing phrases such as ‘you’re a good dog’, and ‘shall we go for a walk?’, and then another person using adult-directed speech with no dog-related content, such as ‘I went to the cinema last night.’.

Attention during the speech was measured, and following the speech, the dogs were allowed to choose which speaker they wanted to physically interact with.

The speakers then mixed dog-directed speech with non-dog-related words and adult-directed speech with dog-related words, to allow the researchers to understand whether it was the high-pitched emotional tone of the speech that dogs were attracted to or the words themselves.

Alex Benjamin, PhD student from the University’s Department of Psychology, said: “We found that adult dogs were more likely to want to interact and spend time with the speaker that used dog-directed speech with dog-related content, than they did those that used adult-directed speech with no dog-related content.

“When we mixed-up the two types of speech and content, the dogs showed no preference for one speaker over the other. This suggests that adult dogs need to hear dog-relevant words spoken in a high-pitched emotional voice in order to find it relevant.

“We hope this research will be useful for pet owners interacting with their dogs, and also for veterinary professionals and rescue workers.”

The research paper, ‘’Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech, is published in the journal Animal Cognition.

By Ron Synovitz*

The sudden illness in Britain of a Russian man convicted of spying for London has drawn comparisons with another poisoning in the United Kingdom — the assassination in 2006 of Russian former-spy-turned-Kremlin-critic Aleksandr Litvinenko, who was found by a British public enquiry to have been poisoned by Russian state agents.

Sergei Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian Army colonel, and his 33-year old daughter Yulia Skripal, were critically ill at a Salisbury hospital on March 6 — two days after they collapsed unconscious on a bench in Salisbury from what British authorities described as “suspected exposure to an unknown substance.”

While radiation and toxicology experts worked on March 6 to determine the substance they were exposed to, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Mark Roley told the BBC that authorities “have to be alive to the fact of state threats as illustrated by the Litvinenko case.”

Skripal was convicted in 2006 by a Russian court for “high treason in the form of espionage” on charges that he had given the names of Russian agents in Europe to Britain’s MI6 intelligence agents during the 1990s.

Skripal’s hospitalization is the latest of numerous cases in which Kremlin opponents and critics have fallen ill from poisoning over the years, sometimes fatally, in circumstances that have raised suspicions of KGB-style assassinations.

Here is a closer look at various poisons thought to have been involved in prominent cases.

Fentanyl and Carfentanyl

Initial reports in British media said authorities suspected Skripal and his daughter were exposed to fentanyl, a synthetic opiate painkiller that is at least 50 times more powerful than morphine.

A related synthetic opioid, carfentanyl, is 100 times as potent as fentanyl and as much as 10,000 times as potent as morphine.

In addition to medical uses, and abuse as street drugs that often has deadly consequences, the chemicals have been weaponized as potentially lethal incapacitating agents.

Weaponized forms include guns that shoot felt pads soaked in the substances, paint-ball type projectiles, and an aerosol spray.

The chemicals can be ingested through skin contact or inhaled if they become airborne.

The U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that “first responder” emergency workers in cases of fentanyl and carfentanyl exposure can ingest the chemicals by touching the victim’s skin.

Two police officers who initially responded to Skripal’s case were treated and one remained hospitalized on March 6.

Moscow’s 2002 Theater Hostage Crisis

A report by British government scientists who tested clothing and urine samples from three survivors of the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis found that Russian special forces used carfentanyl to subdue Chechen separatists who were holding 800 people captive at the Dubrovka Theater.

The raid succeeded, but more than 120 hostages died from the effects of the chemical.

The same report noted that a Russian general who directed a military chemical institute had said that fentanyls were capable of delivering “a knock-out blow” to subjects within minutes.

Gelsemium — ‘Heartbreak Grass’

The most toxic source of Gelsemium poison is Gelsemium elegans, or “heartbreak grass,” a rare variety of a plant that only grows in Asia.

Lacing food with heartbreak grass is a known method of assassination by Russian and Chinese contract killers.

Aleksandr Perepilichny

A Russian oligarch and Kremlin critic who sought refuge in Britain in 2009, Aleksandr Perepilichny had been helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme by providing evidence against allegedly corrupt officials in Moscow. He also provided evidence against Russian officials linked to the 2009 death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail.

Shortly before he collapsed and died in November 2012 at the age of 44 while jogging outside his home in Surrey, Perepilichny told his colleagues that he had received death threats.

Although he was the fourth person linked to the Magnitsky case to die in strange circumstances, police in Surrey initially ruled that his death was not suspicious.

But on May 18, British authorities reopened an investigation into his 2012 death after new tests discovered traces in his stomach that could only come from the highly toxic Gelsemium plant.

The Surrey coroner’s court was told the toxicology report raised “serious concerns” that Perepilichny may have been assassinated for helping expose a powerful Russian fraud syndicate.

The court also heard there was “historical animosity” between Perepilichny and Dmitry Kovtun, one of two Russians found in January 2016 by a British inquiry to have poisoned Litvinenko in London in 2006.

Polonium-210

Polonium is a rare and highly radioactive element that occurs in uranium ores. Polonium-210 is about 250,000 times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, which is itself an extremely poisonous liquid that can kill quickly in a concentrated dose.

A former officer of Russia’s FSB security service, Litvinenko fled to London with his family in 2000 and was granted political asylum.

Litvinenko was poisoned in a London sushi bar in November 2006 and an autopsy revealed traces of polonium-210 in his body. British experts said he probably was the first person ever to die of the acute radiation effects of polonium-210.

A British inquiry in January 2016 concluded there was “strong circumstantial evidence of Russian state responsibility” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his spy chief at the time, Nikolai Patrushev, “probably approved” Litvinenko’s poisoning.

The inquiry, led by a retired British judge, Sir Robert Owen, also concluded that a former KGB agent and ex-Kremlin bodyguard, Andrei Lugovoi, carried out the assassination along with Dmitry Kovtun by placing polonium-210 in a teapot that was served to Litvinenko at a London restaurant.

Before he died, Litvinenko wrote a letter accusing Putin of ordering his death. He had earlier accused the FSB of staging apartment-building bombings and other false-flag attacks in Russia in a bid to bring Putin into power — claims Russian authorities have denied.

Litvinenko had also accused Putin of ordering the killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic who was fatally shot less than two months before his own death.

Thallium

Thallium is a chemical element that is found in potassium-based ores, but also is a byproduct from refining heavy metal sulfide ores. Small, nontoxic amounts of the radioisotope thallium-201 are used in nuclear medicine scans.

Thallium salts are highly toxic and have been used in rat poisons and insecticides. Thallium poisoning results in hair loss. Because of its use as a murder weapon, it is sometimes referred to as the “poisoner’s poison.”

Nikolai Khokhlov

Nikolai Khokhlov was a Soviet KGB agent who defected to the United States in 1953 and testified about KGB operations. Khokhlov was treated for thallium poisoning in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1957 after a failed assassination attempt by the KGB — possibly the first radiological attack by KGB agents.

Former KGB officers have claimed that Khokhlov was poisoned by radioactive polonium, exactly as Litvinenko was in 2004, rather than thallium.

Litvinenko’s poisoning by polonium-210 initially was misdiagnosed as thallium poisoning.

Yury Shchekochikhin

​A Russian investigative journalist and lawmaker, Yury Shchekochikhin campaigned against corruption and the influence of organized crime in Russia.

Shchekochikhin died in July 2003 — just days before he planned to meet FBI investigators in the United States — after suffering from a mysterious illness and displaying symptoms of a severe allergic reaction.

Russian authorities declared that he died from Lyell’s syndrome, but his medical treatment and autopsy records remain under the control of the FSB.

Some researchers say the symptoms of Shchekochikhin’s illness were similar to the radioactive poisoning symptoms of Khokhlov and Litvinenko.

Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) — ‘Dioxin’

TCDD — commonly, though inaccurately, referred to as dioxin — is a colorless, odorless solid compound at room temperature. It is the main contaminant in Agent Orange, the defoliation substance that was used by the U.S. military in the Vietnam War. TCDD has been classified as a carcinogen for humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Viktor Yushchenko

A Ukrainian politician, Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with hazardous amounts of TCDD in late 2004 while running for president against Russian-favored candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

Tests at the time showed he had the second-highest concentration of TCDD ever measured in a human.

As a result, his face was disfigured for many years by chloracne, but he has been slowly recovering.

Yushchenko, who favored European integration and Ukrainian membership in NATO, said that his poisoning “was not a private act” and accused Russian officials of hindering an investigation into who was responsible for poisoning him.

Official election results declaring Yanukovych as the winner of the vote led to the Orange Revolution protests. The Supreme Court ruled that there had been widespread fraud in Yanukovych’s favor and ordered a new vote, which Yushchenko won.

Sarin And Other Nerve Agents

Sarin is a colorless, odorless liquid nerve agent that causes death by asphyxia because victims are unable to control the muscles involved in breathing. It is most dangerous when it is inhaled. The liquid easily turns into a gas and vapor concentrations can also penetrate the skin. Sarin has been classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction. The stockpiling of sarin is outlawed under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ibn al-Khattab

The FSB has said that its operatives killed Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi-born militant who fought alongside Chechen militants in Russia’s North Caucasus during the 1990s and early 2000s. He died in 2002.

Khattab’s relatives and other Chechen sources say he was poisoned after handling a letter that had been laced with a “fast-acting nerve agent, possibly sarin or a derivative.”

Russian press reports say the letter was delivered by a Daghestani double agent who was paid by the FSB.

Microengineered Ricin Pellets

The Soviet Union possessed a weaponized version of ricin poison during the Cold War, when the KGB was suspected in assassination attempts against at least three well-known Warsaw Pact defectors.

Ricin is produced naturally within the seeds of the plant Ricinus communis, which are crushed to produce castor oil.

The pulp from eight crushed seeds is considered a dangerous dose for adults. But deaths from eating castor plant seeds are rare because of the seed’s indigestible shell and because the human body can digest the toxin.

Ricin is most toxic when it is inhaled, injected, or otherwise ingested into the bloodstream.

In the form of purified powder, a dose the size of a few grains of table salt is strong enough to kill an adult.

Georgi Markov

The most infamous case is the so-called umbrella assassination of Bulgarian dissident journalist Georgi Markov in London in September 1978. Markov, who worked for the BBC and Radio Free Europe, died four days after a microengineered pellet containing the poison ricin was injected into his leg. British investigators suspect the pellet was fired by an assassin who used a device hidden in the tip of an umbrella while Markov was catching a bus on London’s Waterloo Bridge.

Vladimir Kostov

A similar assassination attempt had been made 10 days earlier against another Bulgarian defector who worked for Radio Free Europe, Vladimir Kostov. Kostov was shot in the back with the same type of ricin-laced pellet while walking in a Paris metro station in August 1978, but he only ingested a small portion of the ricin in his blood and survived.

Boris Korczak

In August 1981, an exposed CIA double agent, Boris Korczak, was struck in his kidney by a similar ricin pellet fired from an air gun while he was shopping for food in Virginia. Korczak also survived the attack and was convinced the KGB was responsible.
Unidentified Poisons

Hafizullah Amin

Hafizullah Amin was an Afghan politician during the Cold War who served as president for three months in 1979 after ordering the assassination of his pro-Soviet predecessor, Nur Muhammad Taraki.

Soviet officials alleged that Amin was an agent of the CIA.

A KGB agent who infiltrated the presidential palace and became the chef attempted to poison Amin on December 13, 1979. But Amin suspected he was being poisoned and switched his food and drink with his son-in-law — who became ill and was sent to a hospital in Moscow.

Two weeks later, Amin was assassinated by Soviet forces who stormed Kabul’s Tajbeg Palace. The Soviet Union then installed Babrak Karmal as Afghan president.

Anna Politkovskaya

Russian investigative journalist, human rights activist, and Kremlin critic Politkovskaya fell violently ill in September 2004 after drinking tea on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the Beslan school-hostage crisis.

Politkovskaya believed she was poisoned by the FSB, and media reports said her attackers used an unknown toxin prepared at a former Soviet secret-police poison facility.

Politkovskaya survived, but she was shot dead two years later in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building.

*Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.

By Radosa Milutinovic

A prosecution military expert told the trial of former Serbian State Security Service chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that their units were involved in the persecution and killing of non-Serb civilians during the Bosnian war.

Military expert Reynaud Theunens told the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday that Serbian State Security Service (SDB) units were involved in the forcible takeovers of municipalities and towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war.

Theunens confirmed the allegation in Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic’s indictment that the SDB’s Red Berets unit, along with the Serbian Volunteer Guard led by Zeljko ‘Arkan’ Raznatovic, and various other groups of fighters that were under the control of the SDB, such as the Seseljevci ([Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav] Seselj’s Men), played an important role in seizing Bijeljina, Zvornik, Doboj, Bosanski Samac and Brcko in the spring of 1992.

On the basis of documents that he analysed, Theunens concluded that members of those units committed crimes against non-Serb civilians with the aim of permanently removing them from territories which Bosnian Serb leaders had claimed as their own.

As an example of crimes committed by Red Berets, Theunens mentioned the murder of at least 16 Bosniaks in the village of Crkvine at the beginning of May 1992.

Jovica Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and his deputy, Franko Simatovic, are accused of participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would then be incorporated into a unified Serb state.

They are charged with the persecution, murders and deportations of Croat and Bosniak civilians during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the prosecutors, the joint criminal enterprise was led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Theunens said that the forcible takeover of municipalities in which Serbs were not the majority represented the achievement of the most important of the war goals that Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic proclaimed in May 1992 – the separation of Serbs from Bosniaks and Croats.

The expert witness said that an entry in Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic’s wartime log about a meeting in February 1993 implies that he agreed with Simatovic about the participation of Red Berets in Bosnian Serb forces’ operations in the Podrinje (Drina river valley) area.

At that time, Red Berets forces in the Bratunac and Skelani areas refused to obey the Bosnian Serb Army command, claiming they were under the exclusive command of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, a Bosnian Serb Army report cited by Theunens in the courtroom indicated.

Quoting further Bosnian Serb Army documents, Theunens said that in 1994, Stanisic and Simatovic directly managed an operation against the Bosnian Army in Cazinska Krajina. The operation, known as Pauk (Spider), was conducted in collaboration between the Bosnian Serb Army, the Serbian SDB and the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina.

Theunens cited a Bosnian Serb Army document which quoted Stanisic’s words that “managing the combat operations” was the only thing that interested him in the field.

According to Mladic’s wartime log, the Pauk operation was agreed upon at a meeting held in Serbian President Milosevic’s office in Belgrade in December 1993.

In the log, Mladic cited Stanisic’s promise that “100 to 120 men” of his could leave for the battlefield the following day.

According to Theunens, this meant the Serbian SDB chief had “a superbly trained” unit “in a high state of combat readiness”.

Stanisic and Simatovic both pleaded not guilty in December 2015 after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.

The appeals chamber ruled that there were serious legal and factual errors when Stanisic and Simatovic were initially acquitted of war crimes in 2013, and ordered the case to be retried and all the evidence and witnesses reheard in full by new judges.

Theunens will continue testifying on Wednesday.

The Modi-led government is placing a strong accent on the use of soft power in India’s foreign policy. One of the more novel manifestations of these initiatives has been engagement in Buddhist diplomacy. The Buddhist faith, due to its emphasis on peaceful co-existence and its wide pan-Asian presence, lends itself well to soft-power diplomacy. This brief will examine India’s attempts at leveraging its historical and present-day associations with the faith, alongside similar attempts by the Chinese state.

By Shantanu Kishwar*

Introduction

Since the time ‘soft power’ was conceptualised by Joseph Nye in the 1990s, the idea has gained more traction in foreign-policy discussions across the world. In recognition of the changing nature of international relations and a turn (at least in rhetoric) towards peaceful global interaction, Nye posited that conventional hard-power tactics predicated on military might would no longer be the sole factor in determining the degree to which a nation commanded power in the international system.^[i]

Post-independence, India has always been cognizant of the need to not make military power the basis of the country’s foreign policy. From the time of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Panchsheel principles, India has been guided by the ideals of peaceful co-existence. Though India’s position in the international system has evolved significantly since—and today the rhetoric of India’s great-power aspirations is increasingly heard—ideas that advocate for non-coercive power projection are still important to foreign-policy formulations.

This brief studies one particular facet of Indian soft power projection: the leveraging of India’s historical associations with the Buddhist faith in diplomacy and foreign policy. First, the brief locates this form of soft power projection within theoretical models of soft power. It then seeks to understand why Buddhism in particular lends itself to this form of soft power projection, and explains why India is in a favourable position to exploit this. Initiatives undertaken by India within the realm of Buddhist diplomacy shall then be examined in the context of competition with China’s own efforts at Buddhist diplomacy. The brief concludes with a qualitative review of these efforts and offers recommendations for future action.

This brief rests upon the assumption that soft power is a useful tool that can be employed in the fulfilment of foreign-policy objectives. The reason this must be stated is because there is a debate as to the potency of soft power; while this is a fruitful conversation that deserves to be engaged with, it is not the aim of this brief.

Background to India’s Soft Power

In his book, Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood, Daya Kishan Thussu noted that the ‘Indic civilisation’, as he and others have termed it, has given birth to a number of major religions in the world and over time has assimilated into its social fabric numerous others. Sciences, spirituality, art and faith that developed over millennia in the subcontinent found their way across other regions, earning India a considerable amount of ‘soft power’ long before the term itself was coined.^[ii] Owing to this, present-day India is well poised to draw upon religious and faith-based associations with countries across the globe.

The present BJP government adopted the Panchamrit principles to guide its foreign policy, in actively promoting India’s image as a rising global power. The fifth of these five principles is sanskriti evam sabhyata (cultural and civilisational links), which expresses the government’s desire to leverage India’s rich historical cultural links with other countries as a part of its non-coercive soft power strategy.^[iii]

This form of soft power projection is an aberration with respect to Nye’s conception of soft power, which was predicated on the possession of something that could be exported to other countries. When one looks at the experience of the US, for example, it is understandable that Nye would come to this conclusion, for the US’ soft power was based on its export of not only commercial products such as MTV, Coca Cola and McDonalds, but also ‘values’ including democracy. Certain aspects of Indian soft power, such as Bollywood and Yoga, follow a similar model. The particular aspect of soft power discussed in this brief, however, relies not on the export of a cultural product, but on promoting certain shared religious and cultural associations, thereby creating a mutually erected platform upon which further relations are based. Although such efforts are popularly studied under the ambit of soft power, it would do well to question whether it would be better to simply call them “attempts at cultural diplomacy”.

Examples of religious associations being used to augment foreign policy are not restricted to Buddhism. For instance, around the time of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel in July 2017, observers made constant references to India’s history with Judaism and its reputation for being a safe haven for Jews at a time of their prosecution in their native lands.^[iv] Meanwhile, with respect to Islam, India has sought membership to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on the grounds that it has the second largest Muslim population in the world.^[v] This brief elects to devote attention to Buddhism as it possesses the greatest potential for soft power usage, for reasons that will be discussed in the following section.

Why Buddhism?

Buddhism’s potential utility in foreign policy is derived to a large extent from the manner in which the faith was revived in the aftermath of the Second World War. The revival of the faith had a decidedly internationalist outlook to it, and focused on transgressing extant sectarian and geographical boundaries. This was facilitated by the foundation of a number of organisations and the convening of numerous councils and conferences in the decades after the war that emphasised on transnational cooperation amongst various sects of Buddhism. This began with a conference organised in newly independent Sri Lanka, where the World Fellowship of Buddhists was founded.^[vi] In 1952, under the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru, India hosted the International Buddhist Conference in Sanchi that was attended by over 3,000 Buddhist nuns, monks, and historians. At that time, this was one of the largest gatherings of Buddhist preachers and followers in the world.^[vii] In 1954, the Sixth Buddhist Council was convened in Burma.^[viii] In the decades since, the tradition of holding conferences and convening councils has continued, strengthening the global network of Buddhism.

In East Asia, Japan and South Korea began embracing their Buddhist heritage as they recovered in the decades following the end of the Second World War, as did a number of former members of the Soviet Union after the Cold War.^[ix] Today, 97 percent of the world’s Buddhist population lives in the Asian continent, and a number of countries such as Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka conceive of Buddhism as intrinsic to their national values and identity.^[x]

It is within this context that one can understand the efforts of the Indian government at incorporating Buddhist heritage in order to form a basis for further diplomatic, economic, cultural, and strategic associations within its foreign policy. The established transnational network for Buddhism, and the important role played by the faith in the lives of millions across the world, is what allows it to possess potential for Indian foreign policy. The pan-Asian presence of the religion and its importance for national identities in the region, coupled with its image as a peaceful religion makes it ideal for soft power diplomacy, with its focus on non-coercive power.

Why India?

Despite the fact that it is host to a relatively small population of Buddhists in terms of proportion, India is in a position to claim legitimacy in its promotion of Buddhist diplomacy for a number of reasons. First, the Buddhist faith originated in India, therefore granting it singular historical legitimacy. Second, India has numerous sites of importance to the Buddhist faith, such as Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Nalanda. Third, India has nurtured an image of being a protector of the persecuted because of the presence of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in the city of Dharamshala following their failed insurrection against China.^[xi] In addition to ties with Tibetan Buddhism, historical links to Theravada Buddhism means that India is in a good position to further relations with other Buddhist countries and create conversation between multiple streams of this faith.

Successfully leveraging these associations with other Buddhist countries could have an impact beyond the realm of cultural diplomacy, and aid in other areas of foreign policy as well. Interestingly, the relationship between Buddhism and state diplomacy is not a new one, and dates back to the days of Emperor Ashoka, who following his adoption of the religion began the practice of dharmavijaya or conquest through Dharma.^[xii] Deepening ties with Asian nations on the basis of Buddhism could potentially feed into larger policy objectives of the government, namely, the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, and the ‘Act East’ policy.

Avenues of Deployment of Buddhist Heritage

Symbolic Gestures

At the most basic level, Prime Minister Modi has made it a point to make Buddhism a regular feature of his diplomatic visits. In speeches made on official international visits such as to Sri Lanka and China, among others, Modi has made a conscious effort to emphasise shared Buddhist heritage. Additionally, on trips to foreign countries, the prime minister reserves one day for visits to Buddhist temples wherever possible. Modi has often spoken at a number of occasions domestically, where he has hailed the importance of the Buddhist faith for the development of both India and the world.^[xiii]

The Dalai Lama and Competition with China

As in most other areas of political significance, India has found competition from China in the realm of Buddhist diplomacy. Even though China may be the strongest country in Asia in terms of economy and military, the projection of its Buddhist heritage feeds into its desire of furthering its influence over cultural life in Asia. This can also be seen in how China is using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to further its politico-economic reach in the continent.

China’s attempts at popularisation and projection of Buddhism are somewhat at odds with the avowedly godless nature of the Communist Party and the Chinese state. It is also anathema to China’s persecution of Buddhists during the Cultural Revolution. However, in recognition of the aforementioned potential that the religion holds in the area of diplomacy, it has made it a crucial part of its soft power strategy for the continent. The Chinese state promotes the religion on the grounds of its historical association, and the fact that it also possesses the largest Buddhist population of any country in the world.

The most prominent manifestation of India and China’s rivalry in the sphere of Buddhist diplomacy relates to the issue of the Dalai Lama. The presence of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala in North India has bolstered India’s image in the global Buddhist community. However, given that the Chinese state regards the Dalai Lama and his followers to be of an “anti-China splittist nature” that threatens Chinese sovereignty, this has been a source of contention between the two countries.^[xiv] In 2011 for example, India hosted the Global Buddhist Congregation to mark the 2,600th anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The event was the first major Buddhist conference held by India in over 50 years, and therefore of crucial importance for India’s Buddhist diplomacy efforts. The Dalai Lama’s participation in the event was objected to strongly by the Chinese, who cancelled border talks with India that were scheduled for the same month.^[xv]

Two similar incidents occurred early in 2017 as well. In March, the Dalai Lama was invited to inaugurate a seminar on ‘Buddhism in the 21st Century’ in Rajgir, Bihar. This act was condemned by the Chinese state who urged India to “respect China’s core concerns and avoid China-India relations from being further disrupted and undermined”.^[xvi] In April, when the Dalai Lama visited Tawang, an important site for Buddhists as it was where the sixth Dalai Lama was born,^[xvii] his visit became a cause for concern for the Chinese, as many saw it affecting the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. The Chinese government, as per their 2007 State Administration for Religious Affairs regulations, has granted to itself the power of approving the next Dalai Lama (in a similar manner to what they had done to the Panchen Lama), thereby ignoring the choice of the present Dalai Lama and further strengthening their control over Tibetan Buddhism.^[xviii]

Religious Tourism

The popular practice of religious tourism has been identified as an avenue of expansion that holds great promise. Though India is currently home to seven of the eight most significant Buddhist sites in the world, it receives less than one percent of global Buddhist tourism. South East Asian nations such as Thailand and Indonesia were the prime recipients of such tourism.^[xix]

To remedy this and further project the importance of India in the Buddhist world, the Ministry of Tourism is promoting a number of tourist circuits that transgress national borders. A press release from the Ministry of Culture in March 2015 noted the identification of a Buddhist tourist circuit that would involve visits to various sites in Nepal, such as Lumbini and Kapilavastu.^[xx] On a larger and more ambitious scale, the joint statement released following the BIMSTEC Leaders’ Retreat in 2016 contained within it provisions for the organisation of a Buddhist circuit within the region.^[xxi]

Academic Initiatives

As mentioned earlier, the revival of Buddhism was buoyed by the international conferences organised and councils convened that facilitated interaction between members across sectarian and national boundaries. To capitalise on this trend, a number of conferences that draw global audiences are organised, such as the previously mentioned ‘Buddhism in the 21st Century’ conference that took place at Rajgir in 2017. In October 2016, the ‘5th International Buddhist Conclave’ was organised in Varanasi by the Ministry of Tourism, which was attended by over 240 delegates from 39 countries.^[xxii] The agenda for the conclave included business meetings between tour international and domestic tour operators, giving further impetus to the proposed tourist circuits.^[xxiii] In 2015, the ‘Hindu-Buddhist Initiative on Conflict Avoidance’ was organised by the Vivekananda International Foundation and the Tokyo Foundation in Bodh Gaya, and inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi himself.^[xxiv] This conference was of particular importance because of the emphasis laid on the relationship shared by Hinduism and Buddhism, which was projected as one of mutual benefit and growth instead of one of antagonism.

The most important project in the domain of academia to have been undertaken is that of the Nalanda University, begun by the previous UPA government and continued by the incumbent. The launch of the university was a pan-Asian initiative that was funded by numerous countries and envisioned, in the words of Ambassador P. Stobdan, as “the centre-piece of Asian civilization, to focus on the process of Asian renaissance, for reconnecting Asian people and societies, and for reconstructing Asian values and ethos for the long-term benefit of Asia, and indeed the world.”^[xxv] The establishment of a successful, world-class research institution would go a long way in placing India at the helm of the world Buddhist order, and improving India’s stature in the Buddhist academic community. However, with domestic politics and inefficiency hobbling the project, this does not seem likely to be opened any time soon. Despite construction of the 455-acre campus having been slated to begin in 2012, as late as 2016, not even a foundation stone had been laid.^[xxvi] Further, the academic programmes that are being conducted out of a temporary campus have been plagued by political pressures on professors who were offering courses that were deemed ‘problematic’.^[xxvii] One of the most glaring shortcomings in the university establishment is the lack of involvement of the Dalai Lama, whose presence in such a project would have been assumed to be certain.

Evidently, though this is a much discussed project with a significant amount of international investment, the lack of full-time faculty and proper infrastructure has plagued any hope of successful revival of the ancient centre of learning. China, meanwhile, saw an opportunity for itself and launched its own Nalanda University, also known as the Nanhai Buddhist College, in its Hainan Province. Academic sessions here began in 2017, with 220 students set to enrol, and with partnerships with Buddhist centres in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and Cambodia.^[xxviii]

Conclusion

Theoretically speaking, the variety of India’s soft power diplomacy has expanded the scope of soft power rhetoric, by allowing for shared cultural development instead of the export of cultural products. However, in the realm of practical outputs the Indian government is found wanting when it comes to Buddhist diplomacy. Ambassador P. Stobdan said in an interview that “Buddhism was India’s ancient geopolitical tool that could still be employed to meet the challenges of the new millennium.”^[xxix] While there has been a definite acknowledgement of this fact in government rhetoric, the effort has not been put in to truly capitalise on this.

One aspect in which the Indian government has been decisive is in standing its ground against China’s demands in 2017 regarding the Dalai Lama. This, however, is perhaps the easiest of areas for decisive action to be taken for it is short-term in nature and requires little sustained effort on the part of the government. The most important move to be made with respect to the Dalai Lama would be to involve him closely with the development of the Nalanda University, though there is no indication that this will happen. What will be crucial in the coming years is India’s response to the Chinese appointment of the next Dalai Lama, given that a great deal of authority is derived from the presence of the current Dalai Lama.

The Modi government must move beyond mere tokenism – visiting temples and Buddhist shrines on official tours can take one only so far. What India has in its favour at the moment is an abundance of resources by way of pilgrimage sites, the presence of the Dalai Lama, and international goodwill, as well as the right intentions. In terms of initiatives on the international level, the government must also ensure that it does not direct its efforts solely at Tibetan Buddhism, and make directed attempts at promoting connections with other Buddhist schools of thought. Effective revitalisation of the Nalanda University project and encouragement of Buddhist studies in well-established universities across the country must take place, to ensure that a diverse variety of thought that goes beyond just Tibetan Buddhism is brought in and that it is not only the duty on the Nalanda project to produce Buddhist scholarship. The study of ancient languages like Pali in which a number of Buddhist texts have been written would also be necessary for the holistic development of Buddhist academia. Entire schools of Buddhist thought, such as Nagarjuna Buddhism, remain largely unexplored in academic study, further expanding the scope for research to be encouraged and funded.

The promotion of Buddhist tourism reminiscent of the ‘Incredible India’ campaign is required to popularise India’s association with the faith internationally. In addition to advertisement, proper management of tourist sites is a must. Inspiration for this can be taken from the effective management of the Kumbh Mela, which due to its successful organisation became the subject of a Harvard Business Review case study in 2013.^[xxx]

Having displayed adequate intent to bolster India’s position in the Buddhist world, the present government faces the crucial challenge of effective execution. This would go a long way in countering the rise of China, strengthening its relations with Asian countries, and helping it further down the path of its regional and global power ambitions.

About the Author
*Shantanu Kishwar is a graduate of Literary and Cultural Studies and International Studies from FLAME University, Pune. He interned at ORF between August and November 2017.

Source:
This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.

Endnotes:
^[i] Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, no. 80 (Autumn 1990): 153-171, JSTOR.

^[ii] Daya Kishan Thussu. “The Historical Context of India’s Soft Power.” Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood, (New Delhi: SAGE/Vistaar, 2016),45–63.

^[iii] “Panchsheel Gives Way to Panchamrit.” The Telegraph,  April 4,  2015,

^[iv] Madhu Purnima Kishwar, “Modi Visit Signals Historic Shift in Indo-Israel Relations.” The Jerusalem Post  July 3, 2017,

^[v] “In a First, Indian to Attend Organisation of Islamic Nations’ Meet.” The Quint, September 28, 2016,

^[vi] Juyan Zhang, ‘Revival of Buddhism after the WWII’. Buddhist Diplomacy: History and Status Quo, (Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2012) 23, Research Gate.

^[vii] Suresh K. Sharma and Usha Sharma, “The Great Sanchi Congregation.” Cultural and Religious Heritage of India: Buddhism, (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2004) 287,. Google Books.

^[viii] Juyan Zhang, ‘Revival of Buddhism after the WWII’. Buddhist Diplomacy: History and Status Quo, (Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2012), 23, Research Gate.

^[ix] Juyan Zhang, ‘Revival of Buddhism after the WWII’. Buddhist Diplomacy: History and Status Quo, (Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2012), 23, Research Gate.

^[x] P. Stobdan, “As China Pushes for a ‘Buddhist’ Globalisation, India Isn’t Making the Most of Its Legacy.” The Wire, May 15, 2017.

^[xi] Rishika Chauhan, “Modi and Buddhism: Between Culture and Faith Based Diplomacy.” ORF Occasional Papers, (November 2015): 4-5.

^[xii] Juyan Zhang, ‘ Early dissemination of Buddhism from India to the world’. Buddhist Diplomacy: History and Status Quo, (Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2012), 9-10, Research Gate.

^[xiii] Rishika Chauhan, “Modi and Buddhism: Between Culture and Faith Based Diplomacy.” ORF Occasional Papers, (November 2015): 2–7.

^[xiv] “China Warns India over Invite to Dalai Lama to Buddhist Meet.” The Economic Times, March 20, 2017,

^[xv] Rishika Chauhan, “Modi and Buddhism: Between Culture and Faith Based Diplomacy.” ORF Occasional Papers, November 2015, pp. 10.

^[xvi] “China Warns India over Invite to Dalai Lama to Buddhist Meet.” The Economic Times, March 20, 2017,

^[xvii] G. Parthasarathy, “When the Dalai Lama Visited Tawang.” The Hindu Business Line, April 19, 2017,

^[xviii] Tshering Chonzom Bhutia, “The Politics of Reincarnation: India, China, and the Dalai Lama.” The Diplomat, The Diplomat, April 20, 2017,

^[xix] Divya A., “On the Anvil, Trans-National Buddhist Circuit from India to Nepal.” The Indian Express, May 31, 2016,

^[xx] “3 Buddhist Circuits Identified by the Ministry of Tourism.” Press Information Bureau, Government of India, March 4, 2015,

^[xxi] “BIMSTEC Leaders’ Retreat 2016 Outcome Document.” Press Information Bureau, Government of India, October 17, 2016,

^[xxii] “International Buddhist Conclave Open Session in Sarnath.” The Times of India, October 5, 2016,

^[xxiii] “M/o Tourism Organizes ‘5th International Buddhist Conclave’ in Varanasi-Sarnath from 2nd to 6th October 2016.” Press Information Bureau, Government of India, October 1, 2016.

^[xxiv] “PM Stresses Need to Shift from Ideology to Philosophy.” The Hindu, September 3, 2015,

^[xxv] P. Stobdan, “Asia’s Buddhist Connectivity and India’s Role.” Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, February 19, 2016

^[xxvi] Devirupa Mitra, “Nalanda University Campus Construction Likely to Be Delayed as MEA Claims ‘Anomalies’ in Tender.” The Wire, May 23, 2016,

^[xxvii] Shreya Roy Chowdhury, “‘It Is a Closed Place’: Why Students Are Quitting Nalanda University.” Scroll.in, October 28, 2017,

^[xxviii] Yatish Yadav, “Soft Power: China Gets Its Own Nalanda University, Shames India.” The New Indian Express, June 5 2017,

^[xxix] “In Conversation with Ambassador P. Stobdan”. Research Ladakh. July 16 2017,

^[xxx] Tarun Khanna,  “Studying India’s Maha Kumbh Mela Festival.” Harvard Business Review, Harvard University, January 25, 2013.

By Gagliano Giuseppe

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Combining the strategic observations on revolutionary war – those made by Colonel Trinquier during the war in Algeria, in particular–with US strategy regarding information warfare, the authors Harbulot and Lucas, leading experts at the French École de guerre économique, and Moinet, Director of the DESS (Intelligence économique et développement des Entreprises) – place their emphasis on the profoundly innovative and strategic role played by information warfare and on its implications for companies. Naturally enough, it emerges with clarity that the authors’ intention is to utilize cognitive warfare in defense of the interests of French companies against their US competitors.

It is undeniable – in the opinion of the authors – that the date of September 11, 2001, represented a change in strategic thinking of fundamental importance. Undoubtedly, the war in the Persian Gulf, the US military intervention in Somalia, and the conflicts in former Yugoslavia had already presaged – even if in terms not yet precisely defined – an evolution of military strategy in the direction of newer strategic scenarios. It is enough to consider – the authors observe – that at the time of the invasion of Kuwait, US public opinion was mobilized following a disinformation process planned at military level or more exactly, at psychological warfare level. In this regard, it is sufficient to recall how the televised landing of US troops on the beaches of Mogadishu, the televised lynching of a US Army soldier enabled the marginalization of the politico-military dimension of the civil war in progress. Yet the importance ascribed to the manipulation of information was determined by the conviction – which proved to be correct – that the absolute mastery of the production of knowledge both upstream (the educational system) and downstream (Internet, media audio-visual means) can ensure – the authors emphasize – the long-lasting legitimacy of the control of world affairs.

Yet in light of the American political-military choices and reflections on the revolutionary war in Algeria, French strategy felt the need to define in strict terms exactly what information warfare is. First of all, the expression used in the context of French strategy is the one of cognitive warfare defined as the capacity to use knowledge for the purpose of conflict. In this regard, it is by no mere chance that Rand Corporation information warfare specialists John Arquilla and David Rundfeldt assert the domination of information to be fundamental to American strategy. Secondly, the ample and systematic use of information warfare by the US creates the need – in geographical-strategic terms–for the European Union to do some serious thinking on cognitive warfare. On the other hand, the absence of legal regulation of manipulation of knowledge in the architecture of security inherited at the end of the Cold War can only lead to serious concern above all for economic security of European companies and must consequently bring about the formulation of a strategy of dissuasion and the use of subversive techniques that must be capable of creating barriers against attempts at destabilization.

Naturally enough, this presupposes: “au préalable la maîtrise de principes élémentaires issus de la tactique dans un rapport du faible au fort: contourner et prendre à revers, attaquer sur les points déficients, affaiblir et contre-argumenter (avec une notion d’anticipation) plutôt que de désinformer.”[1] By no coincidence, the work group’s conclusions at European level read as follows: “Intelligence économique et stratégie des entreprises du Commissariat général au Plan – dit rapport Martre – ont mis en valeur l’importance de l’intelligence économique comme facteur immatériel de la compétitivité des organisations.” Precisely this awareness of the crucial importance of a conflict-oriented information dimension has brought economic operators to adapt themselves to the new equilibrium that is being established between competition and cooperation, obliging them to realize that by now industrial strategies depend essentially on the abilities of companies to access strategic news in order to better anticipate the markets and strategies of their competitors in the future. Precisely for this reason – the authors emphasize – the strategic management of economic news has become one of the fundamental motors behind the overall performance of both nations and their companies. Despite the fact that significant results have been achieved, the “maîtrise des aspects offensifs de l’intelligence économique demeure encore imparfaite dans l’immense majorité des grandes organisations. Pourtant les procédés concurrentiels visant à l’affaiblissement ou l’élimination d’une entreprise ont un coût bien identifié”.

Precisely for this reason it has by now become necessary to accept that these strategic choices no longer possess the unexpected or exceptional nature they had before. In a context of global competition, companies can no longer rest content with understanding and even anticipating the strategies of their competitors but “doit se préserver des attaques envers son patrimoine informationnel, et plus généralement à l’encontre de ses intérêts vitaux. Les aspects offensifs et défensifs sont à ce point imbriqués qu’il est difficile de les séparer et même dangereux de les penser distinctement”. From this point of view, European economic enterprises must defend themselves not only from American competition but also from the various antagonists who place the Capitalist system itself in doubt: “Parce que les États-unis sont les seuls en mesure d’asseoir une réelle supériorité dans l’ensemble des domaines fondamentaux, il importe que l’Europe s’arroge les principes tactiques et stratégiques de fragilisation ou de contrainte à l’encontre du fort. L’avènement de la doctrine de sécurité économique américaine a généré une mutation profonde des antagonismes concurrentiels. Par ailleurs, au-delà des menaces représentées par la concurrence, les entreprises vont de manière croissante être également confrontées aux courants contestataires issus de la société civile, et dont les revendications idéologiques seront en mesure de porter gravement atteinte à leur image. Les firmes de certains secteurs industriels (énergie, alimentation et grande distribution) figurent déjà parmi les cibles de telles organisations. L’opposition des qualités de l’esprit aux défauts du profit, des constantes humanitaires aux variables économiques, et les mobilisations des intellectuels contre les intérêts marchands monopolistiques sont déjà autant de motifs de déstabilisation que seul un projet discursif de contre-argumentation peut rendre caduque.”

In conclusion, the emergence of new information technologies – above and beyond their initial utopian prospects – has contributed to an exasperation of the competition while determining–the authors emphasize – a conflict that has not been seen since the end of the Cold War: “En effet, au temps de la guerre froide, la rivalité entre les deux blocs était prioritairement de nature idéologique, politique et militaire. La maîtrise de l’information relevait quasi exclusivement du champ géostratégique. Or, l’effondrement du bloc soviétique a transformé ce paradigme. Désormais, l’appréhension de l’information dépasse le seul cadre géostratégique classique et s’immisce en profondeur dans les sphères concurrentielles et sociétale”.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

Notes:
[1] Christian Harbulot-Nicolas Moinet-Didier Lucas, La guerre cognitive: A la recherche de la suprématie stratégique, VI Forum intelligence économique de l’Association Aéronautique et Astronautique Française Menton, 25 septembre 2002, p. 8

Security officials in Kazakhstan have reportedly said that they intend to spend more than $840 million over five years on state programs aimed at preventing terrorism and the spread of extremism.

Speaking on March 6, the deputy head of the National Security Committee, Nurgali Bilisbekov, said that there was “still a high level of extremist and terrorist propaganda that could enable the radicalization of Kazakhstani society.”

Although media reports have not spelled it out, the figure cited by Bilisbekov appears to relate specifically to educational and outreach initiatives, not to security measures.

Kazakhstan regularly sounds the alarm about the pressing risks of terrorism. One source of that threat is seen coming from radicalized Islamic militants originally from Kazakhstan returning from Syria and Iraq. The KNB has said that 125 Kazakh nationals returned from conflict zones last year — and that of that total, 57 have been prosecuted. (Media reports citing Bilisbekov on those figures on March 6 uniformly fail to specify a timeframe, but prior reporting of the same data indicates that the numbers apply to 2017).

Bilisbekov said that among the returnees, there are an unspecified number that “continue to hold radical views.”

“We are doing preventative work with them with a view to rehabilitation,” he said.

Bilisbekov said that a state anti-extremism program scheduled to run from 2018 to 2022 will draw on “modern approaches” adopted abroad and methods based on the collective experiences of state workers, experts and the general public. The overall budget of 270 billion tenge ($840 million) will be spread out over 80 programs.

“The level of effectiveness of this work will be measured according to a target indicator, which is taken to be the annual diminution in the dynamic of people prone to radical influences,” he said.

Evaluating who may or may not be “prone to radical influences” is an inescapably subjective exercise.

Anti-religious extremism legislation now in the works indicates that Astana’s official definition of what constitutes people either at risk or posing danger is currently very broad indeed. Speaking to reporters in January, Religious Affairs Minister Nurlan Yermekbayev casually threw out multiple examples of what could single somebody out for suspicion.

“Among the external attributes of destructive religious currents, we could include things that are characteristic for radical currents in Islam. For example, preaching intolerance, clothes that cover your face, certain types of beards and short trousers,” Yermekbayev said.

A glib but perhaps not wholly unfair reading of such remarks might lead one to conclude that Kazakhstan’s government intends to spend almost a billion dollars on ensuring, among other things, that people’s trousers are the right length.

Outreach is nothing new for Kazakhstan though.

The impulse to increase control over religion gained fresh energy in the wake of violent events in June 2016 in Aktobe. A group of more than 20 men in the western Kazakhstan city attacked two hunting-supplies stores, grabbing shotguns that they then used to mount a doomed assault on a military garrison. Seven people were killed and dozens injured in the unrest.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev dubbed the attackers Salafis and claimed that they had received their orders from abroad. He then instructed officials to tighten legislation and control over “non-traditional religious groups.”

In January, officials in the Aktobe region, where the Salafi current is said to have the deepest roots in Kazakhstan, announced that their “theological work” had successfully converted 400 people in 2017.

More research is needed to understand quite what that particular wave of “theological work” looked like, but some clue is offered by the fact that they were implemented in the wake of Nazarbayev’s assertion that the Aktobe violence was a consequence of Kazakhstan being too free and liberal.

“Taking advantage of the liberality of our policies and laws, somebody or other wanted to test government authorities for strength,” he said.

But Bilisbekov’s talk of “modern approaches” implies hardline solutions will be eschewed in favor of something else, although what precisely is not immediately clear.

In a recent interview to Expert Kazakhstan magazine, religious affairs expert Said Baiburin advances the case for adopting a tolerant stance toward a wide spectrum of religious views.

“We need to take the example of the United States, Canada and Australia. They have a liberal approach, and that is what we lack here. There they don’t ban a single book on Islamic theology. They understand that there is no point in bans when you can find it all on the internet anyway,” Baiburin said. “We need to lift the lid on a boiling pot to let out the steam. If we shut the lid tight, then it will spill over.

Regardless of the efforts any government makes, a certain number of individuals seems inevitably destined to fall under the sway of dangerous militant influences.

The KNB claims that it has prevented 440 aspiring combatants from traveling to Middle Eastern hotspots. The broad trend is toward marked diminution, perhaps a reflection of the shrinking appeal found in the prospect of getting killed in a distant conflict — 62 citizens of Kazakhstan were prevented from leaving to fight in 2017, down from 91 in 2016, 151 in 2015, and 136 in 2014.

Other figures show Kazakhstan’s government wants it both ways, however. While Astana is eager to be seen successfully combating terrorism, it also insists that the problem has intensified. The KNB says that it has prevented 30 terrorist attacks in the past four years — three in 2014, four in 2015, 12 in 2016 and finally 11 in 2017.

If hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on vague exercises in trying to meet arbitrary “target indicators” while the alarm about terrorism stubbornly refuses to dissipate, something will have gone seriously wrong.

By Mark Thornton*

Dr. Sally Satel argues in an Op-ed for Politico that the narrative that medical doctors and pharmaceutical drug producers and distributors have caused the Opioid crisis is false. She finds that “contrary to popular belief, it is rarely the people for whom they are prescribed. Most lives do not come undone, let alone end in overdose, after analgesia for a broken leg or a trip to the dentist.”

Her argument would appear to be supported by the abundance of evidence and research in her article. That appearance is deceiving. Her article is a textbook example of how the “facts” can be used to mislead.

Dr. Satel, who is a practicing addiction psychiatrist at a Washington methadone clinic, concludes that “we cannot rely on doctors or pill control policies alone to be able to fix the opioid crisis.” Her recommendations “deserve vastly more political will and federal funding than they have received.” According to Satel, “two of the most necessary steps, in my view, are making better use of anti-addiction medications and building a better addiction treatment infrastructure.” (Emphasis added) This would appear to reveal a naked and narrow self-interest of her methadone clinic, but that is unlikely to be her true motivation here.

For Dr. Satel the Opioid crisis is the fivefold increase in Opioid overdose deaths since 1999. However, she considers the idea that “the epidemic is driven by patients becoming addicted to doctor-prescribed opioids” to be a myth even though it has become “a media staple and a plank in nationwide litigation against drugmakers.”

She does admit that the number of Opioid prescription increased markedly from the mid-1990s to 2011 and that some people were addicted by those prescriptions. However, she counters that it is only a small minority and that “those who do become addicted and who die from painkiller overdoses tend to obtain these medications from sources other than their own physicians. Within the past several years, overdose deaths are overwhelmingly attributable not to prescription opioids, but to illicit Fentanyl and heroin.”

But those “facts” do not undermine the “narrative.” They support it. The number of Opioid prescriptions increased until curbs were instituted in 2011 and then the number of deaths from prescriptions leveled off and overdose deaths from street drugs skyrocketed.

It is clear that the population of addicts exploded with the vast expansion of opioid prescriptions and when addicts get cut off from prescription opiates they often turn to black market heroin and fentanyl, which greatly increases the potential for overdose. The graph below also indicates that the number of overdose deaths from prescription drugs is still more than 15,000 per year and the overall death rate accelerated through 2015.

Dr. Satel argues that the rate of addiction is extremely low and is often estimated to be less than 2%. This figure is based on an adult population of over 250 million of which 87 million used some form of Opioid prescription in 2016. The result is that approximately 1,600,000 people developed some form of “pain reliever use disorder.” That is a huge number.

What lies behind this very low “rate” of addiction could be largely the result of people being prescribed a very small number of pills (good doctors) or patients taking only a few, or none, of the pills (smart patients). Common sense would suggest that the more pills you take the more likely you are to become addicted.

Dr. Satel suggests that overdose deaths also often involve other medical problems and the use of other drugs, such as alcohol. She suggests that prescribed opiate drugs are also part of the problem because they are often “diverted” into the black market. This is all true and informative, but these are post-prescribing problems, that is, they are problems that develop after a doctor has prescribed opiates in the first place.

None of Dr. Satel’s arguments and evidence undermines the narrative that doctor-prescribed opiates caused the Opioid Crisis. In fact, properly understood, her evidence supports that narrative.

About the author:
*Mark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and the book review editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He has authored seven books and is a frequent guest on national radio shows.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Triggering trade wars may seem easy for world’s largest economy, but the US is not ready for retaliation.

By Scott Kennedy*

A trade war between the United States and China may help resolve their deep differences, but the fight won’t be easy. Trade wars are hard to start, end or win. Winning requires smarts, not bravado. If the Trump administration proceeds without adequate preparation, the United States and the global economy may be far worse off than if nothing had been done.

There is no doubt that China plays unfair, damaging itself and its trading partners with discriminatory policies and growing ambitions to dominate advanced technologies. Given the nation’s size, a distorted Chinese economy means a distorted global economy. The tumult China has caused by overproduction in steel, aluminum and solar industries could well be repeated in electric cars, semiconductors and a host of other sectors.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s rules on intellectual property, investment, the digital economy and state-owned enterprises, abandoned by Trump, could have been an excellent tool to constrain Chinese industrial policy, but that may not have been enough to discipline a Xi-led China, the world’s most enticing domestic market with growing capabilities, deep financial pockets and reduced concern about Western approbation. Perhaps the only way to move China may be to forcefully push – and punish – with unilateral measures.

This appears to be President Donald Trump’s conclusion. He wants a fight. Hence, his announcement that the United States will adopt tariffs of 25 percent and 10 percent on steel and aluminum, respectively. While China isn’t the only target, it is the central concern. The US “Section 301” investigation into Chinese intellectual property rights abuses could result in a wider range of actions, potentially including tariffs, limits on direct investment, expanded export controls and visa restrictions.

Trump has drawn fierce domestic criticism, with some opposing unilateral measures out of free-market principles. Others, mainly in industry, disagree not because their businesses are harmed by Chinese policies, but because they benefit from Chinese subsidies. Another camp raises concerns about how a trade war might be fought.

The United States is woefully unprepared in five ways.

First, the administration has not decided what it wants. Perhaps because it doesn’t want to set out a finite list that the Chinese will negotiate down and meet one-tenth of the way. The reticence highlights that US concerns are systemic and structural, not about any single sector or policy. Yet remaining silent creates two problems.

One is that there is zero precedent for China making concessions without being given a clear idea of what is demanded. China will not “connect the dots” on its own. It needs precise instructions. To avoid minimal concessions by China, these “asks” should be halfway between meta issues like “become a free-market economy” and highly specific targets like “open electronic payment services.” In between are asks such as “eliminate ownership caps for foreign investors” and “reduce all industrial-good tariffs to the OECD average.” Put another way, the United States should make carefully considered proposals so that negotiations do not start with China’s most limited offer meant to reinforce business as usual.

The other problem is that the administration lacks its own internal consensus on what it wants. A fundamental choice the administration must make is whether it is more interested in reducing the bilateral trade deficit or liberalizing China’s economic system. This is a choice because it is entirely possible that a more open China will attract more foreign investment, resulting in more exports to the United States and a larger bilateral deficit.

Second, the administration may have a misguided view of its opponent. The administration appears to have sized up China this way: The economy looks stable now, but it has deep-seated problems that would become more apparent if a trade war erupts; Chinese leaders are highly risk averse, willing to pay a high price to avoid potential economic and political instability, and China’s President Xi Jinping is strong enough to force any market-opening concessions through his system. The bottom line: Some in the administration expect little Chinese retaliation in any significant way and China could raise the white flag soon after the shooting starts, if not before.

That’s a highly debatable proposition. Yes, China’s economy has substantial weaknesses and a meltdown isn’t an impossibility, but Beijing is in the midst of a major financial crackdown addressing the biggest risks. China has many shock absorbers, such as its high savings rate, and its economy has a bevy of bright prospects in many sectors. Xi probably could impose substantial costs on state-owned enterprises, banks and local governments and is more willing to take chances than any Chinese leader since Mao, but he does not want to do so under threat from the United States. It’s entirely possible that Xi is willing to push the envelope and engage in a back-and-forth tête-à-tête with Washington.

Third, the administration has not sufficiently taken care of details or prepared for various scenarios. A trade war creates new losers not only abroad, but at home. The United States must prepare to respond to these reactions. Two examples make the point. Raised tariffs on steel and aluminum will likely lead to higher prices not only for soup cans, as noted by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, but for cars and manufacturing equipment. The administration needs to prepare compensatory benefits for downstream sectors and consumers. And if as a result of the Section 301 case the United States limits Chinese investment and the constraints apply retroactively to businesses already in operation, foreign companies, their American customers and both sides’ lawyers could go into federal court, seeking a stay of the president’s order that blocks them from fulfilling existing contractual obligations.

Fourth, the administration has not prepared Americans for potential sacrifices of a prolonged fight. Business and labor could suffer, and the administration needs to persuade them that the pain, kept to a minimum, will be worthwhile in the end. The stock market could wobble a lot more, generating a larger backlash. Lining up domestic troops is smart politically and diplomatically, signaling that the United States has sufficient staying power.

Fifth, the administration goes into this battle with few allies. Despite the huge US market, the country cannot pursue this cause alone. With no help, China can find other sources for raw materials and technology, and redirect exports to other markets and expand domestic consumption. Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, India and others have felt the sting of Chinese discrimination and could offer support, pledging to adopt parallel measures and work with the United States at the World Trade Organization. But aside from a reassuring statement at the WTO ministerial in Buenos Aires, others have limited their criticisms of China. There’s a simple reason: The administration appears to be doing everything it can to alienate allies: withdrawing from TPP, foot-dragging at the WTO and questioning its utility, reopening KORUS, threatening to withdraw from NAFTA, pushing Japan to negotiate a bilateral agreement, and now announcing steel and aluminum tariffs that will bring far more pain on US friends than on China.

In short, it appears this administration’s trade-war motto is, “Aim, fire…and never ready.” In 1993, the United States conditioned most-favored nation trading status on improvement in China’s human rights situation. A year later, China called President Bill Clinton’s bluff. Folding, he extended the status. Since then the United States has not effectively advocated for human rights in China beyond individual cases. If the administration bungles this trade war and is forced to back down, China will have an open road and be much harder to rein in. The United States may find it better to avoid this path and hold fire for another day when the country is better prepared for what will surely be a monumental contest.

*Scott Kennedy is deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is author of The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, 2017) and editor of Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2017).

By Jonathan Power*

What do we in the West know about Islam? Perhaps more than we did before 9/11 but not much.

When Tony Blair was prime minister of the United Kingdom he was photographed walking along holding the Koran. President George W. Bush said repeatedly that Islam was a religion of peace.

Even though at that time one of the most influential American political writers, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, had written that it wasn’t fundamentalism that was the problem, it was Islam itself.

He argued in his best-selling book, “The Clash of Civilizations” that “The twentieth century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting superficial phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relationship between Islam and Christianity.” He foresaw nuclear war between the West and Islam.

This seems to me to be extravagantly over the top. Yet there are many Islamic scholars who make, like Huntington, a departure from what are the historical facts, but going in the opposite direction.

One is the Oxford professor of contemporary Islamic studies, Tariq Ramadan, in his book, “Islam: The Essentials”. Quite rightly, he stresses that in the first twelve years of Islam’s existence Mohammed’s followers did not retaliate when persecuted, tortured, and murdered.

Ramadan highlights the Koran’s “Hence, if you have to, respond to an attack leveled against you; but to bear yourselves with patience is indeed far better for those who know how to control themselves.”

But, as Ramadan argues, the Koran also said: “Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is wrongfully waged”. Legitimate self-defence was blessed. Ramadan appears to suggest that this is as far as it goes. No offensive violence.

But Ramadan omits to mention the Koran’s verse 9.29: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor abide by the religion of truth.” Offensive violence is sanctified.

It is this verse that sustains the fundamentalists in Al Qaeda and ISIS.

The truth is the Koran faces both ways. Mohammed himself was a general and spent much of the last ten years of his life fighting his opponents in Medina and pushing forward against Roman-occupied Arab lands. In this way he acted more like an Old Testament leader rather than the total pacific Jesus.

Shortly after Mohammed’s death in AD 632, his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, took over the leadership. His task was to carry out the orders and plans of Mohammed. His first job was to recapture the tribesmen who had defected. To do so he unleashed on Arabia a war of unprecedented ferocity. Four years after Mohammed’s death he had conquered Syria too. After 10 years the great Persian Empire was subdued.

This laid the basis for Islam’s rapid expansion to the frontier of China and the middle of France. Over the next two centuries it created a vast Afro-Asian-European empire. No other religion has expanded so fast, so far and so violently. None of these fights, apart from the struggle with the Quraysh, might be described as defensive wars. The non-violent verses of the Koran were contradicted by the teaching of verses 9.29 and also 22.39-40.

A new book, “Crusade and Jihad” by the esteemed William Polk, who taught Arabic literature and history at Harvard, is the latest writer to obfuscate this debate.

It is a brilliant survey of the Muslim world and its advance. But on the issue of violence it fails to come clean, just as Ramadan and many other writers fail to. The Western world’s most popular serious writer on religion, Karen Armstrong, is among them.

But what Polk does successfully is to give the reader a detailed measure of Islam’s history. The relationship between Christianity and Islam is searchingly recounted.

Christianity, thanks to the foundations laid by a converted Roman emperor, Constantine, became the most vicious and warlike of all the great religions. Its violence often put Islam in the shade and it didn’t exhibit the important virtue of tolerance practiced by Islam. When a part of the Christian world was conquered by Muslims, Christians were allowed to practice their religion and build their churches.

Polk is the first author I’ve read who explains in full why the Christian world became dominant from the fifteenth century onwards – the growing lack of water in the Middle East, a series of small technological changes in Europe, including the use of printing on a large scale and the invention of the eyeglass.

Most important, some have argued, is the sophisticated and technologically advanced way the Europeans made use of gunpowder and armaments. None of these, apart from the water issue, seemed to be given the same urgency in the Muslim world.

Now the Islamic fundamentalists want to overturn Christian/Western dominance. If they read this book they will realize they are probably on a hopeless quest. Nevertheless, to be honest, the Koran is – at least partly – on their side. [IDN-InDepthNews – 06 March 2018]

*Note: For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune – and a member of the Independent Commission on Disarmament, chaired by the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. He forwarded this and his previous Viewpoints for publication in IDN-INPS. Copyright: Jonathan Power.

By Ramesh Jaura

The United Nations and the European Union as well as independent arms control experts have welcomed the results of latest talks between South and North Korea, and called for seizing the opportunities opening up for peace in the region and for reducing international tensions.

The significance of emerging prospects is underlined by the fact that though the Korean War ended in 1953, in the absence of a peace treaty the two Koreas are technically still at war. As The New York Times notes, in the United States where coverage of the armed conflict was censored and its memory decades later is often overshadowed by World War II and the Vietnam War, the Korean War has been called “the Forgotten War”.

“But the three-year conflict in Korea, which pitted communist and capitalist forces against each other, set the stage for decades of tension among North Korea, South Korea and the United States,” adds The New York Times. “It also helped set the tone for Soviet-American rivalry during the Cold War, profoundly shaping the world we live in today, historians said.”

In a statement in New York on March 6, the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “encouraged” by the advances made in talks, “particularly the agreement to hold a summit meeting soon, to further reduce military tensions and to discuss denuclearization in future talks with all relevant parties.”

The summit, slated for April 2018, will be the third between the leaders of the two Koreas. The previous two summits were held in 2000 and 2007, respectively, under South Korean presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.

The Spokesman said the UN Secretary-General had stressed “the need to protect the momentum and seize the opportunities available to find a peaceful path forward.”

The statement added: “The latest developments are further steps forward in laying the foundation for the resumption of sincere dialogue, leading to sustainable peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. The Secretary-General reiterates the commitment of the United Nations to further assist in this process with the Governments concerned.”

In Brussels, Federica Mogherini, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union (EU), which has tough sanctions in force against North Korea, said the 28-nation bloc was ready to do what it could to support the peace moves on the Peninsula.

“We will be pleased to host the foreign minister of South Korea, foreign minister Kang with whom I was in contact today, to the foreign affairs council on March 19,” Mogherini said on March 6.

“With her we will have updates on the state of play but also work on the ways in which the European Union can support these first encouraging steps we’re seeing on the Korean peninsula.”

Responding to March 6 announcement from South Korea that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said his country is willing to begin negotiations with the United States on abandoning its nuclear weapons and that it would suspend all nuclear and missile tests while it is engaged in such talks, Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, hailed the “South-North Korea breakthrough”.

In Washington, Kimball described “as positive developments” the preparations for an inter-Korean summit, the establishment of a hotline between South Korean and North Korean leaders, North Korea’s apparent willingness to consider denuclearization if its security is guaranteed, and willingness to suspend testing if there are talks with the United States.

These are all developments that strengthen the prospects for peace and security in the region, Kimball added.

“The table is set for a meaningful, sustained dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang. It is important that the United States government seize upon – and that Congress support – this important diplomatic opening that has been forged by our close South Korean allies and agree to engage in talks with North Korea at a very senior level without preconditions,” said Kimball.

It is in the U.S. national security interest to reciprocate with actions and statements that reduce tensions, including being prepared to modify planned U.S.-Republic of Korea military exercises, he declared.

According to the Arms Control Association, the near-term goal of U.S. policy should be to maintain a long-term freeze on North Korean nuclear and missile testing and to reduce tensions on the peninsula and begin sustained negotiations on issues of mutual concern, including steps toward the longer-term goals of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the peace regime.

“Diplomacy will not guarantee success, but it offers the best chance for curbing the North Korean nuclear threat,” noted Kimball.

Earlier, in a March 5 letter to all House and Senate offices, a group of former government officials and members of Congress, nongovernmental organization leaders, and non-proliferation experts called on members of Congress to “publicly express their support for a more effective U.S. diplomatic strategy with North Korea.”

“Missing, so far, from the U.S. strategy has been an effective and consistent strategy for diplomatic engagement with North Korea to halt and reverse its dangerous nuclear and missile pursuits,” the letter stated. “Unless there is a breakthrough in the coming weeks, the action-reaction cycle between President Trump and Kim Jong Un will likely resume soon after the conclusion of the PyeongChang Olympic Games.”

The letter also calls on members of Congress to publicly support more robust efforts by President Trump to engage in negotiations with North Korea in order to reduce tensions and achieve a diplomatic agreement to halt and eventually reverse North Korea’s nuclear and missile program.

The letter is endorsed by several former ambassadors, former members of Congress, including Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), leading non-proliferation and security experts, and civil society leaders.

The letter highlights two bills, H.R. 4837/S. 2016, which clarify that only Congress can authorize U.S. military action in North Korea and calls for the administration to “avoid actions that could contribute to a breakdown in talks, and continue to search for confidence-building measures that are conducive to dialogue” and S.2047, which would withhold funding from military action in North Korea “absent an imminent threat to the United States without express congressional authorization.”

By Pieter-Jan Dockx*

Since the rise of Saudi Arabia’s new de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), there have been subtle yet important changes in the Kingdom’s foreign policy. The traditional Salafist discourse has partly made space for increased references to ‘Arabness’. Although support for Syrian opposition groups during the Syrian war was legitimised based on religion, MbS has framed the current Saudi intervention in Yemen as an Arab matter. When Ali Abdullah Saleh, the assassinated Iran-aligned Yemeni president had called for talks with Saudi Arabia, Riyadh welcomed him “back to the Arab fold.”

Based on this Arab discourse, the Kingdom has also begun engaging Shia Arabs rather than only Sunnis. This is most visible in Riyadh’s Iraq policy. In 2017, former Shia hardliner Moqtada al-Sadr visited the Kingdom; Riyadh invited Ammar al-Hakim, another former hardliner; And Saudi Arabia’s King Salman received Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is part of the Iran-aligned Shia Islamist Da’wa party.

This use of the Arab identity discourse is a noticeable break with Saudi Arabia’s recent past. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saudi Arabia has attempted to isolate Iran by embarking on a Sunni Islamist foreign policy, thus intensifying the latent Shia-Sunni divide in the region. Based on this discourse, the Kingdom has supported various Sunni, and especially Salafist, allies in places like Yemen, Syria and Iraq. However, an Arab component is not entirely new to Riyadh’s foreign policy.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt’s former president Gamal Abdel Nasser (then seen as the leader of the Arab world), supported by the erstwhile USSR, engulfed the region with his Pan-Arabism to roll back Western influence embodied by the Shah of Iran. Despite its fear of the anti-monarchist current that intended to unify the Arab world, the Kingdom partially appropriated the ideology. Especially after Egypt’s defeat in the Yom-Kippur War and the subsequent peace treaty with Israel, Saudi Arabia took up the mantle of Arab leadership. Even in the 1970s, Riyadh’s Arab leadership did not exactly mirror Nasser’s popular thinking. While Pan-Arabism had a distinct secular character, Islam always remained a secondary yet significant component of Saudi Arabia’s appropriation. To highlight this contrast, this article uses the notion of ‘Arabness’ rather than the loaded term, ‘Pan-Arabism.’

The current reintegration of the Arab identity in the Kingdom’s discourse will lead to a fusion of Arabness and Islam as opposed to the secularism Nasser espoused. This policy shift is borne foremost out of pragmatic considerations in the region. Saudi Arabia’s policy of supporting Sunni proxies has largely failed to contain Iran, which made engaging with actors outside of the Sunni world inevitable. The new discourse would also resonate with allies like Egypt. The country is the birthplace of Arab identity politics and is ruled by a secular establishment that is faced with a Salafist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. Surveys have also indicated that in many countries in the region, the most salient identity amongst the youth is not sectarian or national, but the Arab identity. This means the reintegration of Arabness in the Kingdom’s foreign policy has a lot more soft-power potential in the region than its conventional Islamist ideology.

Furthermore, the new identity narrative backed by non-sectarian engagement has the potential to replace the current Sunni-Shia schism in the region by an Arab-Persian division. This could redefine West Asian politics and swing the balance in favour of the Kingdom. As the pool of Arab allies in the region is broader than possible Sunni partners, a shift to an Arab-Persian paradigm would allow the Kingdom to isolate Iran further, limit potential proxies for Tehran and simultaneously increase its influence in the Arab world.

For this new narrative to be effective against Iran’s—who sees no merit in an Arab-Persian schism—sectarian status quo in the region, it needs reciprocation from local actors. Iraqi Shia figures like Sadr, Hakim and Abadi have, for various reasons, embarked on a nationalist discourse based on a sense of Arab unity and antagonism towards Iranian meddling. Thus, they have every incentive to cooperate with a Saudi Arabia that legitimises their discourse and can act as a counterweight against Iranian influence in the country. Before he was killed, Yemen’s former president Saleh, a Zaidi Shiite, too called for an alliance with Saudi Arabia, which too could have led to a cross-sectarian Arab alliance. While the new Saudi approach is taking root in Iraq and possibly in Yemen, a lot will depend on future local political conditions in the Arab world.

To sum up, Saudi Arabia is increasingly framing its regional policy with a discourse hinged on ‘Arabness’ as opposed to one hinged on Islam. This shift, combined with Riyadh’s recent engagement with Shia actors in the region, could redefine the fault lines of conflict in West Asia. However, the success of this envisioned paradigm shift will depend on the capacity of Iranian resistance and local political conditions.

*Pieter-Jan Dockx
Research Intern, IPCS

By Srikanth Kondapalli*

On 26 February, the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) proposed a series of constitutional amendments including changing the two-term norm for the president and vice-president posts. No specific term period was mentioned in the proposals – suggesting numerous terms or even for life – which are expected to be ratified by the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), shortly.

Ever since the 19th party congress took place in October 2017, speculation was rife about the terms of the central leaders in China. This is because out of the seven most powerful politburo standing committee members, according to the party norm of compulsory retirement after attaining 68 years of age, 6 out of the 7 (that is, except Zhao Leji) will have to retire at the next party congress in 2021, including Xi Jinping.

This is seen as a deliberate attempt by Xi Jinping and others to create uncertainty in the ruling party succession saga which since the late Deng Xiaoping has been tailor-made to succession events. Thus Deng selected Jiang Zemin due to his role in the suppression of students, workers and peasants in Shanghai in the tumultuous events of 1989. Jiang ruled from 1989 to 2002. Likewise, Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, ruled China from 2002-12 due to his role in Tibet following the Nobel Prize for the Dalai Lama.

However, the current amendments are for the posts of president and vice-president – the top functionaries of the state and not the party – thus leaving scope for intense bargaining and politicking in the next four years in the party echelons.

For, in China, supreme power rests with the general secretary of the Communist Party, but more precisely with the chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Many presidents of China before – Xiannian or Yang Shangkun – were considered powerless or even rubber-stamps, and in the later years of his leadership, Deng Xiaoping was in fact only the head of billiards association! Many general secretaries of the party were also powerless – including Deng Xiaoping himself in the 1950s under Mao Zedong’s leadership, or Zhao Ziyang during the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 under Deng. Deng even removed the party secretary Zhao for sympathising with the students in Tiananmen.

The most powerful position in China has been the Chairman of the CMC of the party, although a similar and parallel post exists under the state (People’s Republic of China). Mao was chairman of the CMC from 1935 till his death in 1976, followed for a brief period by Hua Guofeng from 1976 to 1978, when Deng took the reins till 1989. Jiang chaired the party CMC till 2004 (two years extra), while Hu gave up this position by 2012 to Xi. Xi today is the president of the state but most importantly the chair of the CMC of the party.

While Mao emphasised the party more (and at times the masses – the Red Guards), Deng began the process of guojiahua (strengthening state institutions) to counter lawlessness during the Gang of Four period of the 1970s. Deng also abolished life terms for the party functionaries, which the current amendment in the NPC intends to institutionalise for the state functionaries.

Overall, the current amendments – although they pertain to state (PRC) functionaries such as the president and vice-president – in the run-up to the 20th party congress four years down the line could provide precedent for Xi to promote himself for a third (or potentially more terms) in the powerful party positions. This is the significance of the current amendments. With these measures, Xi is likely to further centralise powers.

Secondly, while Deng argued for accountability as the Gang of Four usurped state and party functions, Xi appears to be moving away from Deng, although the political disturbances like in the 1970s do not exist in China today. Of course, Xi’s anti-corruption drive in the party and the state has rattled the rank and file. Xi suggests this drive, which was a party directive at the 4th plenum of the 18th party congress in 2014, as essential in reinforcing the rule of law.

Thirdly, the amendments to the state functionaries could impact China’s long-term economic diversification and consolidation of the “medium high” economic growth rates as set by the 19th party congress. It could also restructure the economy for domestic consumption and hence sustainable development. The speculation about Liu He for the posts of vice-premier indicates this direction.

Fourthly, while the current amendments have a more domestic political flavour, continuity of state (and later, party) terms for Xi and others are likely to lead to an uninterrupted implementation of the party agenda as set in October 2017. Xi laid down a long-term road map for 2050 to make China occupy the “centre stage” in global and regional issues and realise “socialist modernisation”. More terms for Xi could put the party/state in this direction without hiccups. A more assertive Xi – as reflected in the militarisation of the South China Sea, forays into Senkaku Islands held by Japan, or on the border with India – could as well resolve these issues in favour of China. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was incorporated in the party constitution in October, and whose footprint expands to Europe, Asia and Africa, could also be consolidated further.

All in all, the proposed amendments to the top state functionaries are likely to gather storm in China’s politics in the coming years, thus further consolidating Xi’s power. This is also likely to increase the chasm between political factions domestically, and amplify China’s frictions abroad.

* Srikanth Kondapalli
Professor, Chinese Studies, JNU, & Distinguished Fellow, IPCS

By John R. Haines*

(FPRI) — The past several weeks have seen a peculiar set of events play out in Serbia that would make a plot worthy of any good espionage novel. It opened a rare window into an ordinarily opaque world. A former Navy SEAL who now works for a well-connected private military company, a Serbian arms dealer recently sanctioned by the United States government and seeking relief, purveyors of Washington money and influence, all find their way into the plot. Except here, the former Navy SEAL lands in a Belgrade jail and is held under a judicial detention order, while outside, he is daily tried in the virtual courtroom of the pro-Russia Serbian media, which hints (or declares outright) he is a professional assassin sent to kill Serbian leaders. Some go so far as to accuse him of the January assassination of a high profile Serbian political leader in neighboring Republika Srpska, where anti-Bosnian and secessionist sentiment runs high.

To start at the beginning, on February 4, Serbian Interior Ministry security forces raided a Belgrade apartment house and arrested an American identified as Daniel David Corbett. Serbian authorities allege Mr. Corbett at the time of his arrest was in possession of a Zastava CZ 99 semi-automatic pistol, which had been purposefully defaced to remove its identifying serial number. “This means that this weapon was stolen from a military or police warehouse. A man with such a weapon in his hand is not innocent,”[1] according to Darko Trifunović, a Serbian security studies scholar.

Multiple Balkan media outlets identified Mr. Corbett as a former Marine and Navy SEAL who is now employed by the United States-based security firm, Raven Military. Reports associated Mr. Corbett with this cryptic profile[2] on the Raven Military website, which some erroneously stated had been expunged soon after Mr. Corbett’s arrest.[3]

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić[4] said that while he had “some information” about the arrest, he “wasn’t sure it was anything serious,” deferring further comment until he received “the Serbian security service’s report.”[5] A February 5 Srbija Danas (“Serbia Today”) report quoted former Yugoslav intelligence officer Božidar Spasić[6] linking the date of Mr. Corbett’s arrival in Belgrade to an alleged (but non-existent) United States State Department travel alert.[7]

On February 6, Serbian Interior Minister Nebojša Stefanović confirmed details about the arrest of Mr. Corbett and two Serbian accomplices in Belgrade, an action Srbija Danas and other media portals attributed to information provided by confidential informers. Under the headline, “Did a soldier of fortune come to Belgrade with devilish plan?”[8] Srbija Danas quoted an anonymous Interior Ministry source, who said that Mr. Corbett’s Serbian accomplices (reported as either two or three persons[9]) recently purchased a “clean gun” (štek stanu) for him—the Serbian tabloid Informer called it the type of weapon “commonly used to commit mafia murders”[10]—which authorities linked to Mr. Corbett by forensic evidence. The report published by Informer—a daily tabloid closely aligned with the country’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka or “SNS”[11])—cited a source close to the Interior Ministry that “after his arrest, Corbett said he came to Belgrade as a security contractor and bought a pistol on the black market for personal safety,” an explanation dismissed by the tabloid Informer report as “a transparent and completely unconvincing explanation.”[12] The German Serbian-language newspaper Vesti reported another variant, that Mr. Corbett was arrested when he tried to purchase the weapon from a black market dealer.[13]

Informer—described (along with Alo! and Srpski Telegraf ) by no less than Russia’s Regnum news agency as “propaganda material serving the party[14] (ispol’zuyutsya v kachestve agitatsionnykh materialov, sluzhashchikh partii)—reported that “on the basis of evidence gathered so far, prosecutors and police have to reason to suspect” Mr. Corbett was in Belgrade “to liquidate a well-known and respected politician and businessman, which would then be used as a trigger to provoke unrest and destabilize” the Serbian government. Mr. Corbett, said Informer‘s Interior Ministry source, works for a “well-known international security agency owned by an Israeli who is close to Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj,” whom the report calls “the leaders of the fake state (lažne države) of Kosovo. Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj are Kosovo Albanian political figures and, respectively, the president and the prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo, which unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in early 2008.

“The most likely scenario,” according to what Informer called its confidential source in the Serbian Interior Ministry, is that Mr. Corbett “arrived in Serbia on the orders of Albanian extremists (šiptarskih ekstremista) as part of a wider conspiracy involving both Albanian extremists and Western security services, whose aim was to provoke chaos in Serbia.”[15] “All the evidence suggests,” Informer quotes its Serbian Interior Ministry source as saying, “that the American was preparing ‘an important assassination.’”[16] The possibility cannot be ruled out, the report continued, “that the action planned in Belgrade has something to do with the recent murder of Oliver Ivanović in Mitrovica,” a Serb-controlled city in northern Kosovo.

On the morning of January 16, unknown assailants attacked the Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanović[17] in a drive-by shooting, hitting him six times in front of the office of his political party, which is known by its Serbian acronym SDP (Srbija, demokratija, pravda or “Serbia, democracy, justice”). Mr. Ivanović died shortly afterwards in a Mitrovica hospital. Police later found a torched car in the nearby town of Mali Zvečan that unidentified sources said was used by Ivanović’s assassins.[18] Ballistics tests identified the weapon used to assassinate Mr. Ivanović as a Zastava M70A semi-automatic pistol, originally produced en masse for Yugoslav security services and known today as a favorite weapon of regional organized crime.

Within a fortnight of Mr. Corbett’s arrest, Mr. Vučić was quoted in multiple press reports identifying Mr. Corbett as “a former [United States] Marine and a member of the United States Navy [SEAL] Team 6” who “chased bin Laden” in Afghanistan.[19] Many featured lurid headlines like this one in in the tabloid Blic online, which reads, “Was he preparing an assassination?” (Spremao ubistvo?)

An American citizen arrested a few days ago in Belgrade is a former US Marine, a member of an elite SEAL unit, and an employee of Raven Military, whose co-owner, Jay Footlik, is a former Special Assistant to Bill Clinton.[20]

Other reports claimed Mr. Corbett was present in Belgrade on three separate occasions in January 2018 alone.[21] All of this is supported by “intelligence” (obaveštajni) according to former Yugoslav intelligence officer Božidar Spasić:

Intelligence suggests [Mr. Corbett] trained before going to Serbia in the ​​Chicago area, which has the largest expatriate Serbian community . . . and also spent time in Bosnia and other former Yugoslav republics where, it is known, he learned to assume a Serbian lifestyle. He intended to stay [in Serbia] long enough to organize a cabal that would set the American plan in motion to undercut Serbia’s leaders, as the Clintons sought. He aimed to fracture Serbia’s government and bring someone to power, who would very deftly recognize Kosovo’s independence. All this would come about by political assassinations or provoking chaos. We’re talking about a very serious geopolitical game played by the Clintons, who remain engaged in the region because their economic interests here are greater than ever.[22]

A commentary by Jelena Đondović concludes by going down the rabbit hole of a Soros-Clinton led deep-state conspiracy:

[Bill] Clinton’s most important interests are to stay in the Balkans and to remain a dominant force. The fact is Bill and Hillary Clinton and even their daughter have a presence in every hick town (selendra) in Kosovo. They have lucrative business interests from smuggling cigarettes, alcohol and other things. From Kosovo alone, they receive roughly $15 million every six months.[23]

“We can only conjecture about the details of the case, but it’s safe to assume he came here to carry out a subversive mission,” said Milan Mijalkovski, continuing, “He certainly didn’t come to Serbia for a vacation.”[24] News portals like Vestinet speculated wildly that Mr. Corbett “had been tasked with liquidating the ambassador of a Middle Eastern country (known to the editorial staff),” which it claimed to know from an “exclusive sources in the Serbian intelligence services”:

In this way, the Americans would kill two flies with one shot: they would cause chaos in Serbia and put our country into a state of permanent instability, since after the assassination of the ambassador it would be nearly impossible to avert retaliatory terror attacks by radical Islamists.[25]

Vestinet quotes Dževad Galijašević—once described as a “self-styled expert on terrorism and one of Dodik’s mercenaries,”[26] and dismissed derisively by the BiH-based Al Jazeera Balkans as “the Republika Srpska’s premier expert, who understands everything”[27]—speculating that Mr. Corbett’s intended target might be “a senior diplomat from Syria or Qatar, where American relations have cooled.” Mr. Galijašević accused the United Stares of trying “to intimidate Serbia to the hilt and make it an Islamist target, and ultimately, to separate it from Russia.”[28] A day earlier, the official Kremlin website ran a short report under the headline “Trying to draw Serbia into a war,” that reads in part “The job of CIA mercenary Daniel Corbett was to liquidate a Middle Eastern diplomat, after which Serbia would be drawn into a direct conflict with Islamists,” citing as its authority an earlier Srpski Telegraf report.[29]

For his part, Mr. Vučić said that while “today, unfortunately, I cannot speak openly about this” because it would “jeopardize Serbia’s position”:

Imagine finding a guy from Team 6, someone who chased bin Laden in Afghanistan, and you find him here with a gun, the serial number of which was recently filed off, and you find out the people here who gave him the gun have criminal links, and you arrest those Serbs who gave it to him but they won’t say what the gun was for. Well, it wasn’t to shoot fish in the Danube.[30]

Russian government-controlled agitprop outlets quickly disseminated the report, quoting other reports that Serbian state security forces arrested “eight foreigners in two days.”[31] Consider this from the Russian government-controlled German language media portal RT-Deutsche published under the headline “President Vučić suspects ‘destabilzation plan’ after former Navy Seal is arrested in Serbia”:

Serbian Interior Minister Nebojša Stefanović does not want to say anything about why the US citizen was arrested, the reason for which remains unclear. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said yesterday. “I’m not sure everyone favors regional stability here, and I believe there are foreign forces who don’t want stability,” Vučić said on the television show, Ćirilica. . . [T]he Serbian people are smart enough to know that someone who belonged to one of the best-known special forces units did not come “just like that” from San Diego to Serbia, said the Serbian president.[32]

The RT-Deutsche report was interspersed with links to other stories on the RT portal with such headlines as “Shadow War of the Special Forces: US Special Forces at the Russian border” and “Why is the US quadrupling the presence of special forces on the European border with Russia?”

Perhaps a more pertinent question was raised in an opinion column written by Jasmina Lukač, editor of the Belgrade daily Danas (“Today”), reflecting on upcoming Serbian parliamentary elections:

Why, then, in such circumstances, does the story of Daniel Corbett appear? Why did the Informer tabloid publish an incredible story about an arrested ex-marine, a specially trained fighter, who allegedly was sent to Belgrade on a security assignment by an unnamed Israeli company? And why did [Serbian Interior Minister] Nebojša Stefanović . . . confirm these facts for TV Pink, and claim that when [Mr. Corbett] was arrested, police found a pistol with a deleted serial number. There can be only one reason — these absurd stories are told to disguise the real story. And the real story is that this campaign continues to hide in the shadow of Oliver Ivanović’s assassination. [33]

Pro-government Serbian media have relentlessly depicted Mr. Corbett as a hired assassin, in many instances citing information about him that, if true, could only have come from well informed intelligence sources. Published under the headline “An American Marine tasked with killing someone important had been in Belgrade since Christmas,” a Telegraf report alleged that Mr. Corbett “had prepared long and carefully”:

He entered Serbia perfectly legally, without any weapons with him at all. He played the part of the classic tourist, staying three days in his hotel before moving to the apartment safe-house. Police arrested him after they were tipped off that two Belgrade Serbs were hiding a stranger who “came to do an important job and then quickly disappear,” the story goes. [Corbett’s] first reaction after he was arrested was to tell the police unconvincingly that he was in Serbia to arrange a security job.[34]

Telegraf quoted a Serbian academic, Miroslav Bjegović,[35] who said this of Mr. Corbett:

According to our intelligence, he’s a CIA contractor who is particular specialty is “silent liquidation”. We can conclude, therefore, what he was supposed to be do here. The problem is who commissioned something like this. It’s symptomatic of anti-government forces in our country that for the sake of their own ambition and personal interest are prepared to do such a thing, even if it involves murdering some government officials.[36]

On February 2, reported the Serbian tabloid Alo!, a Belgrade court ordered the continued detention of Mr. Corbett as well as all three persons arrested with him:

[O]n suspicion that they committed the criminal offense of the illicit production, possession, carrying and trafficking of weapons and explosive materials, while N.A. [one of the alleged accomplices] is also suspected of unauthorized possession of narcotics.[37]

Alo! called Mr. Corbett a witting participant in an “operation involving certain US private security companies and Serbian domestic criminal circles . . . in which over $250,000 had so far been expended to exploit Oliver Ivanović’s murder and strike a decisive blow against peace in Serbia and the western Balkans”:

By monitoring known Serbian criminal elements involved in narcotics trafficking and close to violent Montenegron crime families, Serbian authorities were able to prevent a former Navy Seal, the most elite unit in the US military, from provoking chaos anew, this time in Belgrade.[38]

Asserting in an Alo! commentary that “an American special forces operator came to Belgrade to kill prominent Serbian official,” Jelena Đondović alleged Mr. Corbett is connected to former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton through a senior Raven Military executive, Jay Footlik, who was a presidential special assistant during the second Clinton administration (1994-1997).[39] The Clinton talking point is pivotal in the conspiracy narrative promoted by Mr. Bjegović[40] and others.

According to Milan Ivanović of the Serbian National Council of North Kosovo,[41] “the murder of a well-known Serb has caused great anxiety and fear among people in the KiM and consequently destabilized the political situation, risking a mass exodus [of ethnic Serbs] from the area.”[42]

According to all available information, [Corbett’s] goal either was to kill or to lay the groundwork for the liquidation of a Serbian businessman or politician, in order to further destabilize Serbia and its government. The liquidation plan was modeled on the murder of Oliver Ivanovic, which was so professionally executed that the perpetrators left no traces. This moment was selected because Serbia is caught up in pre-election fever, so another murder would likely ignite a powder keg in the Balkans.[43]

There is nothing novel about such dire warnings in the world of Balkan-focused Russian agitprop:

In the last few years, there have been lots of “warnings” from “well informed” Russian intelligence sources about plans to foment chaos in Serbia and the Balkans . . . [D]espite representations that these stories are wrapped in a cloak of secrecy, they regularly find their way to domestic audiences [inside Serbia] through newspapers like Informer and Serbian Telegraph (Srpski Telegraf).[44]

Case in point, a June 2016 Informer story published under the headline, “Dramatic Warning To Serbia: NATO secret plan to provoke chaos and unrest!” designed “to shake the Serbia from the ground up and restore it as the West’s obedient servant”:

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly at the end of May made emergency military and economic assistance to Serbia one of his new foreign policy priorities. The immediate reason for this sudden decision by the most powerful man of the world was intelligence collected by Russian security services that NATO is preparing to cause disorder across Serbia and the region. Russian security services provided the Kremlin with the Western Alliance’s secret plan to provoke political chaos inside Serbia that would lead to widespread disorder and political turmoil.”[45]

The Informer story was dutifully reprinted by sympathetic media portals such as Srbija Danas[46] and Pravda[47] and by regional ones such as Croatia’s Dnevni Žurnal[48] (“Daily Journal”). Informer doubled-down a few weeks hence and reported that Russian intelligence officials delivered a “dramatic warning” to the Serbian government about a secret plan hatched by NATO and “the Ustaše regime.”[49] Under the pretense of a terrorist attack, NATO would intervene militarily in neighboring Republika Srpska, an ethnic Serbian-dominated constituent entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).[50] In November 2017, Informer reported another alleged Western conspiracy against the Serbian government:

The US Central Intelligence Agency last month organized a meeting of heads of the Montenegrin, Macedonian, Albanian, Kosovo, Bosnian and Croatian secret services, held at the Podgorica Hotel in Montenegro’s capital . . . We learned that the gathering of regional intelligence officers was held 23-25 October, during which “radical measures” against the Serbian leadership and a strike on the Security and Information Agency were proposed and adopted. According well-informed diplomatic sources, Serbia was labeled a “dangerous Russian base in the Balkans,” one through which Vladimir Putin is trying to destabilize the entire region.”[51]

“What is behind these stories,” reads a Vesti commentary written a few weeks after Mr. Corbett’s arrest in Belgrade, “and whether Serbian government leaders are in actual danger or it is instead an attempt to cause public panic to score political points, remains unclear at the moment.”

What is known, and what was confirmed yesterday, is that two Americans and two Ukrainians were arrested while [attempting to launch a video surveillance drone] near the old General Staff building in downtown Belgrade. Tabloids close to the authorities proclaimed the four are dangerous spies because they were attempting to record video of the building in which the Military Intelligence Agency and the Military Security Agency are located, and where Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin often works . . . [T]he Defense Ministry confirmed reports of the unauthorized recording and said military police captured the aforementioned persons.[52]

According to Pravda, Serbian authorities released the two Ukrainian nationals without filing criminal charges.[53] Other media reports said the two were “women from Luhans’k,”[54] one of whom is said now to reside in Ohio and the other in California.[55] The two reportedly are employed by an unidentified California-based non-governmental organization, and claimed upon arrest that they were “filming a documentary about the consequences of American air strikes.”[56]

The Serbian service of the Russian media portal News Front had this to say about the arrests of Mr. Corbett and the unnamed American drone operators:

Judging by the news, Belgrade this month has become a scene of spy games of the sort not seen since the days of the Cold War. First, former US Special Forces officer Daniel David Corbett, who was found with unmarked weapons, was arrested at the beginning of February, while two Americans caught launching surveillance drones were arrested yesterday at the old General Staff building in Belgrade.[57]

So, why is it that Mr. Corbett “came to Belgrade with another [unnamed] American”? Vesti offers this explanation:

[Mr. Corbett] is a director of the American company Raven Military, which recruits former military specialists to provide security services around the world, but also deals in arms trafficking. We have knowledge that he came to Belgrade with another American. The reason why [Mr. Corbett came to Belgrade] is still being investigated, but we have information that he intended to meet Slobodan Tešić, the well-known arms dealer. [Mr. Tešić] is willing to pay several million dollars to get off the American blacklist or to ensure the sanctions against him are not extended. [Mr. Corbett] and the unnamed American intended to leverage their connections in the United States government, and then collaborate with Tešić on weapons sales around the world, according to our security sources.[58]

Politico reported in late February that the Washington law firm Venable LLP:

[R]etained SPG to help get one of its clients, Slobodan Tešić, removed from a list of foreign nationals sanctioned by the Treasury Department, according to a letter signed by Tešić’s lawyer, D.E. Wilson Jr. The Trump administration slapped sanctions on Tešić late last year.[59]

This is the referenced letter:

SPG is an acronym for the Sonoran Policy Group, a Washington lobbying firm whose founder, Robert Stryk, was profiled by The New York Times in August 2017.[60] According to the firm’s website, SPG is:

[A] team of experts who in 2001 joined forces to create a full-service government relations and geopolitical advisory firm to assist clients in identifying opportunities, managing risk, and providing innovative solutions to complex challenges. We deliver a highly experienced team of professionals with robust relationships within the United States & foreign governments, Fortune 50 companies, and disruptive global networks.[61]

Returning to the Vesti report that Mr. Corbett came to “Belgrade with another American,” an obscure Russian language weblog published by a Moscow-based think tank, the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST),[62] quoted an Intelligence Online report that identified the “other American” as SPG’s Mr. Stryker. Intelligence Online identified a third person who accompanied Mr. Stryk to Belgrade, Abraham Golan, whom it called “a long-standing friend of [Slobodan] Tesic”[63]:

According to Intelligence Online’s sources, Golan and Stryk’s initiative went down badly in Moscow. Tesic is a key player in Russian clandestine diplomacy and the sanctions place him firmly in Moscow’s camp. Corbett, a member of their security team, was arrested by the Serbian security services shortly after Golan and Stryk left the country.[64]

Intelligence Online’s claim about Kremlin displeasure aligns with, for example, a report in the Serbian language service of Sputnik,[65] the Russian government-controlled media portal, in which Mr. Corbett was identified by name and connected to Mr. Golan through Raven Military. Sputnik also associated Mr. Golan with Raven’s Mr. Footlik through their mutual involvement in a Serbian-registered company, Crno Jezero Group. That company, Sputnik reports accurately, is listed as a “strategic partner” on the Raven Military website. Sputnik and like reports in Novosti,[66] Informax,[67] and elsewhere played up Mr. Footlik’s former role as a special adviser to then-President Clinton.

One might think a narrative that could readily anchor the next season of Homeland would receive wide attention, but in truth, it has received almost no coverage whatsoever beyond Serbia, even in Russia where it has received almost none. The intensity of that coverage has nonetheless been a propaganda coup for Russian efforts to push, pull, or prod the Serbian government away from the West.

At one level, the narrative illustrates how the Western Balkans is today’s ground zero in Russia’s effort to halt the westward drift of nations where its geopolitical interests and cultural ties run deep. Russian efforts to subvert Balkan governments are well established. So, too, Russia actively foments ethnic Serbian agitation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which threatens to split in half. There and elsewhere, Russian interests studiously follow a longstanding playbook, contriving border conflicts and breakaway enclaves and exploiting them instrumentally to forestall further NATO and EU accessions. That the United States has seemingly elected to cede the playing field in the Balkan culture wars to Russian agitprop is both troubling and short sighted. What also troubles is the absence of any counter-narrative to Russian-leaning Serbians’ gleeful portrayal of Mr. Corbett as a political assassin. Where, today, in the nation that practically invented digital marketing, is Frank Wisner’s “mighty Wurlitzer . . . capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired?”

In the meantime, an American citizen, who served his country with honor and distinction, languishes in a Belgrade detention cell where he will remain for at least the next several weeks, and no one seems to care.

The translation of all source material is by the author unless noted otherwise. Author’s note: Linguists recognize “Serbian” and “Bosnian” as, in fact, different dialects of one common or polycentric language. It is the practice sometimes to identify the language of source-material as “Serbian” or “Bosnian” based on whether the Cyrillic or the Latin alphabet is used. The author has instead elected to identify Latin alphabet source-material as Serbian, since almost all of the sources in question are Serbian media portals.

About the author:
*John R. Haines is the co-chair of the Eurasia Program at FPRI and Executive Director of FPRI’s Princeton Committee. He is also a Trustee of FPRI

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] “Zastrašujuće! Američki Specijalac Koji Je Uhapšen u Beogradu Je Ubica Bin Ladena: Kriminalci ga naoružali brušenim pištoljem!.” Kurir [published online in Serbian 20 February 2018]. http://www.kurir.rs/crna-hronika/2999043/zastrasujuce-americki-specijalac-koji-je-uhapsen-u-beogradu-je-ubica-bin-ladena-kriminalci-ga-naoruzali-brusenim-pistoljem-citajte-u-kuriru. Last accessed 23 February 2018.

[2] Informer, a Serbian tabloid, published what is clearly a photoshopped image [left, below] purporting to show Mr. Corbett [on the left] next to his Belgrade detention center cellmate, Zoran Marjanović, who was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife, the singer Jelena Marjanovic, in April 2016. See: “Zoran Marjanović ćeliju deli sa marincem koji je trebalo da ubije “veliku zverku” u Beogradu!” Informer [published online in Serbian 17 February 2018]. http://informer.rs/vesti/hronika/370101/cimer-iz-nocne-more-zoran-marjanovic-celiju-deli-sa-marincem-koji-je-trebalo-da-ubije-veliku-zverku-u-beogradu. Last accessed 22 February 2018. Alo! published the image [below] that was photoshopped into the Informer photo, which it credited to Mr. Corbett’s Facebook page. That person appears similar to the one in the Raven Military profile.

[3] See, for example: “Vodio akcije od velike važnosti. Što je radio u Beogradu?” Jutarnji Vijesti (published online in Serbian 13 February 2018). https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/svijet/sto-je-radio-u-beogradu-misterij-uhicenja-covjeka-koji-je-bio-jedan-od-najelitnijih-marinacatvrtka-u-kojoj-je-zaposlen-naglo-nestala-s-interneta/7026675/. Last accessed 20 February 2018.

[4] Mr. Vučić, who became Serbian president on May 31, 2017, first rose to prominence in 1998 as Information Minister under Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who died while being tried in The Hague for war crimes. Mr. Vučić served as Serbian Defense Minister and First Deputy Prime Minister before being elected Prime Minister in 2014 and again in 2016.

[5] “Vučić: Uhapšena grupa Amerikanaca.” N1 [published online in Serbian 18 February 2018]. http://ba.n1info.com/a244210/Svijet/Svijet/Vucic-U-Srbiji-uhapsena-grupa-Amerikanaca.html. Last accessed 20 February 2018.

[6] Mr. Spasić is the former head of a special counterterrorism team within the SDB (Služba državne bezbednosti), a short-lived (1991-2002) security agency within the Yugoslav Interior ministry. In November 2016, a Belgian court convicted Mr. Spasić in absentia for the 1990 murder of Kosovo political activist Enver Hadri in Brussels, for which the Belgian court sentenced Mr. Spasić and two Serbian accomplices to life in prison. See: “Božidar Spasić osuđen za naručivanje ubistva.” Krik [published online in Serbian 23 November 2016.] https://www.krik.rs/bozidar-spasic-osuden-za-narucivanje-ubistva/. Last accessed 22 February 2018. Mr. Spasić acknowledged his role in organizing the murder of Mr. Hadri, whom he called a “terrorist,” in his 2000 book Lasica koja govori, but in a November 2016 KRIK interview called his own story ”a fairytale.” See: Božidar Spasić o ubistvu Envera Hadrija (KRIK intervju) published 25 November 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0LsMj4eV_A&t=19s. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[7] “UBICU u Beograd poslali Tači i Haradinaj: Američki specijalac hteo da LIKVIDIRA visokog državnika Srbije.” Srbija Danas [published online in Serbian 5 February 2018]. https://www.srbijadanas.com/vesti/hronika/ubicu-u-beograd-poslali-taci-i-haradinaj-americki-specijalac-hteo-da-likvidira-visokog-drzavnika-2018-02-05. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[8] “Stefanović potvrdio hapšenje bivšeg marinca: Plaćenik došao u Beograd sa paklenim planom?.” Srbija Danas [published online in Serbian 6 February 2018]. https://www.srbijadanas.com/vesti/hronika/stefanovic-potvrdio-hapsenje-bivseg-marinca-placenik-dosao-u-beograd-sa-paklenim-planom-2018-02-06. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[9] For example, Srbija Danas reported Mr. Corbett has two Serbian accomplices, while Alo! put the number at three and gave their initials as “N.V, N.P., and N.A.”. Alo! also reported that a Belgrade judge ordered that Mr. Corbett and his three accomplices be held in detention for up to three months, after which he would review the detention order every 30 days to assess whether it should be extended or terminated. See: “O tri meseca pritvor marincu koji je hteo da ubije srpskog zvaničnika!” Alo! [published online in Serbian 12 February 2018]. http://www.alo.rs/odreden-pritvor-bivsem-americkom-marincu/145959. Last accessed 23 February 2018.

[10] “Uhapšeni bivši marinac Korbet D. radi za izraelsku agenciju za obezbeđenje čiji je vlasnik blizak sa čelnicima lažne države Kosovo.” Informer [published online in Serbian 6 February 2018]. http://informer.rs/vesti/politika/368625/ubicu-u-beograd-poslali-siptari-novi-detalji-afere-amerikanac-ukazuju-da-se-spremalo-krupno-ubistvo-1517945753. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[11] Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka or “SNS”) is a populist rightwing political party formed in 2008 by former members of the Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka or “SRS”), a nationalist political party.

[12] Informer, 6 February 2018, op cit.

[13] “Vesti saznaju: Trgovac oružjem postao ‘ubica’.” Vesti [published online in Serbian 7 February 2018]. http://vesti-online.com/Vesti/Hronika/685951/Vesti-saznaju-Trgovac-oruzjem-postao-ubica. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[14] “Pervyy shag k novoy Serbii.” Regnum [published online in Russian 6 February 2018]. https://regnum.ru/news/2376925.html. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[15] Informer, 6 February 2018, op cit.

[16] Ibid.

[17] In January 2016, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo sentenced Mr. Ivanović to nine years in jail for war crimes, but an appeals court annulled the verdict thirteen months later and ordered a new trial.

[18] http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-serb-leader-killed-in-north-kosovo-01-16-2018. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[19] See, for example: “Serbia: presidente Vucic su marine arrestato a Belgrado, esistono fattori esterni che non vogliono regione stabile.” Agenzia Nova [published online in Italian 20 February 2018].

[20] “SPREMAO UBISTVO? Bivši američki marinac koji je naoružan uhapšen u štek stanu u Beogradu je saradnik Klintonovog asistenta.” Blic online [pubo=ished online in Serbian 11 February 2018]. https://www.blic.rs/vesti/hronika/spremao-ubistvo-bivsi-americki-marinac-koji-je-naoruzan-uhapsen-u-stek-stanu-u/mhrzq5q. Last accessed March 1, 2018. According to published reports, Mr. Footlik’s co-principle at Raven Military is Abraham Golan. According to a May 2012 recruitment advertisement by a private security company, Blacksand Group US, in which Mr. Golan was a principle, he “was an officer in the French Foreign Legion and within Israeli Special Forces, with more than twenty years experience in the Middle East and Africa.” See: https://gallantfew.org/blacksand-group-seeks-rangersof/. Last accessed 2 March 2018. Messrs. Footlik and Golan are also listed in public directors as directors of a Serbian limited liability company, Crno Jezero Group DOO Belgrade, which was organized in April 2016 and liquidated in September 2017. The Raven Military website lists Crno Jezero Group as a “strategic partner”.

[21] “Insajder: Uhapšeni specijalac u Beogradu u januaru tri puta.” N1 [published online in Serbian 11 February 2018]. http://rs.n1info.com/a363656/Vesti/Vesti/Insajder-Uhapseni-specijalac-u-Beogradu-u-januaru-tri-puta.html. Last accessed 2 March 2018.

[22] “OTKRIVAMO! Hilarin prijatelj poslao ubicu u Srbiju!.” Alo! [published online in Serbian 11 February 2018]. http://www.alo.rs/hilarin-prijatelj-poslao-ubicu-u-srbiju/145651. Last accessed 2 March 2018.

[23] Ibid.

[24] “Uhapšenom Amerikancu tri meseca pritvora zbog oružja.” Politika [published online in Serbian 12 February 2018]. Uhapšenom Amerikancu tri meseca pritvora zbog oružja . Last accessed 1 March 2018. Colonel Mijalkovski is the retired chair of Advanced Security and Defense studies at Serbia’s National Defense Academy.

[25] “KAKO JE JEDAN AMERIČKI MARINAC UČINIO DA SE SRBIJA SUOČI SA BEZBEDNOSNIM IZAZOVIMA NAJVIŠE KATEGORIJE! OVO JE BIO ZADATAK DANIJELA KORBETA!” Vestinet [published online in Serbian 24 February 2018]. http://www.vestinet.rs/tema-dana/kako-je-jedan-americki-marinac-ucinio-da-se-srbija-suoci-sa-bezbednosnim-izazovima-najvise-kategorije-ovo-je-bio-zadatak-danijela-korbeta. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[26] “Dodikov plaćenik Galijašević napao Vučića da je izabrao SAD i ‘muslimansku stranu’.” Patria [published online in Serbian 15 October 2016]. http://www.nap.ba/new/vijest.php?id=29807. Last accessed 1 March 2018. Milorad Dodik is President of the Republika Srpska. Later in the article, Mr. Galijašević was quoted accusing Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić of “cowardly turning tail and choosing the American and Muslim side” in Serbia.

[27] “Desetogodišnji ‘mudžahedin’ Dragana Mektića.” Al Jazeera Balkans [published online in Bosnian 23 July 2017]. http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/desetogodisnji-mudzahedin-dragana-mektica. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[28] Vestinet, 24 February 2018, op cit.

[29] “HTEO SRBIJU DA UVUČE U RAT! Amerikanac došao u Beograd da ubije ambasadora!.” Kremlin website [published online in Russian 23 February 2018]. http://kremlin.rs/2018/02/23/хтео-србију-да-увуче-у-рат-американац-д/. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[30] “Istraga o namerama američkog specijalca: Svedoci ispitani, čeka se veštačenje…” Insajder [published online in Serbian 22 February 2018]. https://insajder.net/sr/sajt/tema/10131/. Last accessed 2 March 2018.

[31] “Američki specijalac, uhapšen u Beogradu, bio u potrazi za Bin Ladenom.” RTRS [published online in Serbian 20 February 2018]. http://www.rtrs.tv/vijesti/vijest.php?id=289975. Last accessed 20 February 2018.

[32] “Nach Festnahme von Ex-Navy Seal in Serbien: Staatschef Vučić vermutet ‘Destabilisierungs-Plan.” RT Deutsch [published online in German 21 February 2018]. https://deutsch.rt.com/europa/65498-serbischer-staatschef-vucic-verhafteter-jagte-bin-laden-nun-serbien/. Last accessed 21 February 2018.

[33] “Korbet D.: Aleksandar Vučić tehnički gledano kampanju vodi perfektno.”Danas [published online in Serbian 7 February 2018]. https://www.danas.rs/dijalog/licni-stavovi/korbet-d/. Last Accessed 28 February 2018. Danas (“Today”) is a Belgrade-based daily newspaper with a social democratic, pro-European integration editorial orientation. TV Pink is reputedly Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s favored media platform according to BIRN, which reported “He is one of the more frequent guests on the station’s shows hosted by Dragan Vučićević, editor-in-chief of tabloid newspaper Informer.” See: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/pro-govt-media-keeps-right-wing-serbs-onside-08-30-2016. Last accessed 28 February 2018. It is so closely aligned editorially with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party that Russia’s REGNUM News Agency calls it “practically a party channel”.

[34] “Američki marinac koji je imao zadatak da ubije nekog važnog u Beogradu bio još od Božića.” Telegraf [published online in Serbian 6 February 2018]. http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/hronika/2933284-imao-je-samo-jedan-zadatak-posle-koga-je-trebalo-da-nestane-uhapsen-bivsi-marinac-u-beogradu-cuvala-ga-dva-srbina. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[35] Miroslav Bjegović is the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Security at the Univerzitet Educons in Sremska Kamenica, Serbia. He is described on the university’s website as “a specialist in counterterrorism and organized crime.” See: https://educons.edu.rs/terorizam-gostovanje-na-tv-pinku-dekana-prof-dr-sci-miroslava-bjegovica/. Last accessed 22 February 2018.

[36] Telegraf, 6 February 2018, op cit.

[37] “O tri meseca pritvor marincu koji je hteo da ubije srpskog zvaničnika!” Alo! [published online in Serbian 12 February 2018]. http://www.alo.rs/odreden-pritvor-bivsem-americkom-marincu/145959. Last accessed 23 February 2018.

[38] Ibid.

[39] “OTKRIVAMO! Hilarin prijatelj poslao ubicu u Srbiju!.” Alo! [published online in Serbian 11 February 2018]. http://www.alo.rs/hilarin-prijatelj-poslao-ubicu-u-srbiju/145651. Last accessed 4 March 2018.

[40] See, for example, Mr. Bjegović’s 11 February Novo jutro interview broadcast on Pink-TV. http://wap.pink.rs/politika/57890/strucnjaci-za-novo-jutro-amerikanac-uhapsen-u-beogradu-strucnjak-sa-tihe-likvidacije-sa-tajnim-zadatkom-video

[41] The Serbian National Council of North Kosovo (Srpsko nacionalno Veće Kosova i Metohije or “SNV KiM”) is the elected representative body of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo. Its president, Milan Ivanović, is Director of the Clinical and Hospital Center of Kosovska Mitrovica (KBC u Kosovskoj Mitrovici), where the injured Mr. Ivanović was brought and later succumbed to his wounds.

[42] “Milan Ivanović: Atentat na Olivera ima više motiva i ciljeva.” Alo! [published online in Serbian 21 January 2018]. http://www.alo.rs/atentat-na-olivera-ima-vise-motiva-i-ciljeva/141950. Last accesed 23 February 2018. His reference to “people in the KiM” is to Serbs in Kosovo, known officially as Kosovo & Metohija or “KiM.”

[43] Alo! 12 February 2018, op cit.

[44] “Na šta nas sve upozorava Rusija.” N1 [published online in Serbian 2 February 2018]. http://rs.n1info.com/a361627/Vesti/Vesti/Istinomer-tajmlajn-Na-sta-nas-sve-upozorava-Rusija.html. Last accessed 28 February 2018. The story was published on the internet portal of the regional television network N1, which is known for its independent political stance.

[45] “STIGLO DRAMATIČNO UPOZORENJE SRBIJI OD RUSIJE: NATO pravi tajni plan” Srbin [published online in Serbian 6 June 2016]. https://srbin.info/2016/06/06/stiglo-dramaticno-upozorenje-srbiji-od-rusije-nato-pravi-tajni-plan/. Last accessed 28 February 2018.

[46] https://www.srbijadanas.com/clanak/stiglo-dramaticno-upozorenje-srbiji-od-rusije-nato-pravi-tajni-plan-koji-ce-izazvati-haBoth were said to be os-i. Last accessed 27 February 2018.

[47] http://www.pravda.rs/lat/2016/06/06/stiglo-dramaticno-upozorenje-srbiji-od-rusije-nato-pravi-tajni-plan-koji-ce-izazvati-haos-i-nemire/. Last accessed 27 February 2018.

[48] http://dnevnizurnal.com/stiglo-dramaticno-upozorenje-srbiji-od-rusije-nato-pravi-tajni-plan-koji-ce-izazvati-haos-nemire/. Last accessed 28 February 2018.

[49] The term “Ustaše regime” is a derogatory reference to the Croatian government. The Ustaše were a fascist terrorist group c.1929-1945 that openly collaborated with Italian and Nazi occupation forces during World War 2. “DRAMATIČNO UPOZORENJE PUTINOVIH OBAVEŠTAJACA: Ustaški režim u saradnji sa NATO sprema ‘OLUJU 2’?!” Informer [published online in Serbian 30 August 2016]. http://informer.rs/vesti/politika/286676/dramaticno-upozorenje-putinovih-obavestajaca-ustaski-rezim-u-saradnji-sa-nato-sprema-oluju-2. Last accessed 27 February 2018.

[50] The other constituent entity is the predominantly Bosniak and Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), known in Bosnian and Serbian as Federacija Bosna i Hercegovina (FBiH) and in Croatian as Federacija Bosna i Hercegovina (FBiH).

[51] Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency is known by its Serbian acronym “BIA” (Bezbednosno-informativna agencija). See: “CIA UDARA NA SRBIJU! OTKRIVAMO ŠPIJUNSKU AFERU: Na sastanku u Podgorici dogovorene ‘radikalne mere’ PROTIV BIA I VLASTI U SRBIJI!” Informer [published online in Serbian 16 November 2017]. http://informer.rs/vesti/politika/357416/cia-udara-na-srbiju-otkrivamo-spijunsku-aferu-na-sastanku-u-podgorici-dogovorene-radikalne-mere-protiv-bia-i-vlasti-u-srbiji. Last accessed 28 February 2018.

[52] “Vulina lovili dronom?!” Vesti-online [published online in Serbian 7 February 2017]. http://vesti-online.com/Vesti/Hronika/685951/Vesti-saznaju-Trgovac-oruzjem-postao-ubica. Last accessed 1 March 2018. The Military Intelligence Agency (Vojnoobaveštajna Agencija or “VOA”) is the Serbian Defense Ministry’s military intelligence agency. The Military Security Agency (Vojnobezbednosna Agencija, or “VBA”) is the Serbian Defense Ministry’s security and counterintelligence agency.

[53] “”STVARANJE HAOSA I NEMIRA U SRBIJI”: Vulina lovili dronom?!” Pravda [published ionline in Serbian 20 February 2018]. http://www.pravda.rs/lat/2018/02/20/stvaranje-haosa-i-nemira-u-srbiji-vulina-lovili-dronom/. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[54] “Serbia’s Defense Ministry confirms arrest of U.S., Ukrainian citizens.” Unian [published online 19 February 2018]. https://www.unian.info/politics/10013339-serbia-s-defense-ministry-confirms-arrest-of-u-s-ukrainian-citizens-media.html. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[55] “U Belhradi zatrymaly dvokh meshkanok Luhansʹka, yaki fotohrafuvaly Henshtab.” Glavcom [published online in Ukrainian 19 February 2018]. https://glavcom.ua/news/u-belgradi-zatrimali-dvoh-meshkanok-luganska-yaki-fotografuvali-genshtab–474802.html. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[56] “U Serbiyi zvilʹnyly dvokh zatrymanykh za shpyhunstvo ukrayinok.” Novoho Vremeny [published online in Ukrainian 20 February 2018]. . Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[57] “OPASAN ŠPIJUNSKI RAT: ŠTA JE CILJ INVAZIJE AMERIČKIH KRTICA NA SRBIJU.” News Front Serbia [published online in Serbian 20 February 2018]. https://srb.news-front.info/2018/02/20/opasan-shpijunski-rat-shta-je-tsil-invazije-americhkih-krtitsa-na-srbiju/. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[58] Vesti 7 February 2018, op cit. On 21 December 2017, the United States Treasury Department imposed sanctions to freeze the assets of Mr. Tešić and 12 other “serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors” under authority of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (GLOMAG). The Treasury Department’s press release announcing the action included the following statement:

“Slobodan Tesic (Tesic) is among the biggest dealers of arms and munitions in the Balkans; he spent nearly a decade on the United Nations (UN) Travel Ban List for violating UN sanctions against arms exports to Liberia. In order to secure arms contracts with various countries, Tesic would directly or indirectly provide bribes and financial assistance to officials. Tesic also took potential clients on high-value vacations, paid for their children’s education at western schools or universities, and used large bribes to secure contracts. Tesic owns or controls two Serbian companies, Partizan Tech and Technoglobal Systems DOO Beograd, and two Cyprus-based companies, Grawit Limited and Charso Limited. Tesic negotiates the sale of weapons via Charso Limited and used Grawit Limited as a mechanism to fund politicians. In a related action, OFAC designated Preduzece Za Trgovinu Na Veliko I Malo Partizan Tech DOO Beograd-Savski Venac (‘Partizan Tech’), Charso Limited, Grawit Limited, and Technoglobal Systems DOO Beograd.”

See: United States Treasury Department (2017). United States Sanctions Human Rights Abusers and Corrupt Actors Across the Globe. Press Release dated 21 December 2017. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm0243. Last accessed 1 March 2018.

[59] Theodoric Meyer & Marianne Levine (2018). “SPG signs DRC, will open London office.” Politico [published online 20 February 2018]. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2018/02/20/spg-signs-drc-will-open-london-office-111295. Last accessed 2 March 2018. The referenced “letter” is a Foreign Agent Registration Act registration, which can be viewed here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4384976-6399-Exhibit-AB-20180216-15.html.

[60] “How to Get Rich in Trump’s Washington.” The New York Times [published online 30 August 2017]. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/magazine/how-to-get-rich-in-trumps-washington.html. Last accessed 2 March 2018.

[61] See: http://robertstryk.com. Last accessed 2 March 2018.

[62] The Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies also known by its English language acronym CAST (Tsentra analiza strategiy i tekhnologiy or Tsentr AST) is a well-regarded, Moscow-based independent think tank founded in 1997 by Ruslan Pukhov and Konstantin Makienko. CAST focuses for the most part on Russian defense matters and has significant connections within the Russian defense community. One of its co-founders, Mr. Pukhov, has advised both the Russian Defense Ministry and the Duma.

[63] “Turf wars over Serbian arms dealer Tesic.” Intelligence Online [published online 14 February 2018]. https://www.intelligenceonline.com/government-intelligence/2018/02/14/turf-war-over-serbian-arms-dealer-tesic,108294106-art. Last accessed 4 March 2018.

[64] Ibid.

[65] “Propadnik specijalnih snaga SAD – FokeFoka u šteku — Insajder: U Beogradu uhapšen američki specijalac, saradnik Bila Klintona.” Sputnik [published online in Serbian 10 February 2018]. https://rs.sputniknews.com/politika/201802101114499631-foka-hapsenje-beograd-insajder/. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[66] http://www.novosti.rs/вести/насловна/хроника.405.html:710990-Insajder-Uhapseni-marinac-saradnik-Klintonovog-asistenta. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

[67] http://infomax.mk/wp/фирма-блиска-до-клинтон-го-испратила-с/. Last accessed 3 March 2018.

The Saudi criminal justice system tramples the rights of Pakistani defendants to due process and fair trials, Human Rights Watch and Justice Project Pakistan said in a report. The glaring defects in the criminal justice system are especially acute for Pakistanis, who face substantial difficulties finding legal assistance, navigating Saudi court procedures, and getting consular services from Pakistani embassy officials.

The 29-page report, “‘Caught in a Web’: Treatment of Pakistanis in the Saudi Criminal Justice System,” documents the Saudi criminal justice system and Saudi courts’ rampant due process violations in criminal cases involving Pakistanis. The violations include long periods of detention without charge or trial, lack of access to legal assistance, pressure on detainees to sign confessions and accept predetermined prison sentences to avoid prolonged arbitrary detention, and ineffective translation services. Some defendants reported ill-treatment and poor prison conditions.

“Despite years of promising reforms, Saudi authorities blatantly disregard the rights of both Saudis and non-Saudis in criminal cases,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Its treatment of Pakistani defendants shows just how far Saudi Arabia has to go to improve the rule of law.”

Saudi Arabia hosts 12 million foreigners, over one-third of the country’s total population. About 1.6 million Pakistanis, most of them foreign migrant workers, make up the second-largest migrant community in Saudi Arabia.

Human Rights Watch and Justice Project Pakistan interviewed 12 Pakistani citizens detained and put on trial in Saudi Arabia in recent years, as well as seven family members of nine other defendants. They were involved in 19 criminal cases, ranging from petty theft and document forgery to murder and drug smuggling, which are often capital offenses in Saudi Arabia.

Due process violations were most consequential for defendants involved in the most serious cases. Since the beginning of 2014, Saudi Arabia has executed 73 Pakistanis, more than any other foreign nationality, nearly all for heroin smuggling. Three of the drug-related cases reviewed resulted in the death penalty, four in prison sentences from 15 to 20 years, one in a prison sentence of four years, and three remained on trial.

Family members said that four of the defendants had been forced by drug traffickers to serve as “drug mules.” But they said that Saudi courts were not interested in the circumstances and did not attempt to investigate or appear to take coercion claims into account during sentencing.

In all the non-death penalty cases, judges did not give defendants an adequate opportunity to mount a defense. They said that at their first court hearings, judges issued predetermined convictions and sentences based solely on police reports and asked defendants to accept them. They were allowed to challenge the decision in writing, but judges presented the same rulings at subsequent hearings, leaving the impression that not accepting sentences would mean indefinite detention.

“The judge had our case files in front of him,” one person said. “He passed our sentences without listening to our stories.”

Nine defendants said that court officials pressured them to agree to rulings without the opportunity to read, review, or fully understand them. One said he was sentenced to 10 days and 80 lashes for alcohol and fighting, and was later shocked to discover that the sentence also ordered his deportation.

Only one of those interviewed had a defense lawyer largely because the others did not have the resources to locate or pay a lawyer while in prison. Four said that court-appointed translators did not provide adequate services, sometimes intentionally misrepresenting detainees’ statements or failing to accurately describe the contents of Arabic-language court documents.

Some of the detainees and family members described poor prison conditions, including overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, lack of beds and sheets, and poor medical care. Two former detainees and one current detainee said that Saudi prison authorities had subjected them to ill-treatment, including slapping, beating with a belt, and shocking with an electrical device during interrogations. The family member of another detainee said that authorities had beaten her husband with “sticks.”

Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which Saudi Arabia ratified in 1988, Saudi Arabia has an obligation to inform Pakistani consular officials when they arrest a Pakistani citizen. In the cases reviewed, however, it did not appear that Saudi officials informed Pakistani consular officials about the arrests. Justice Project Pakistan wrote to Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry officials about all of the Pakistani detainees but received no response. Family members interviewed generally did not know which government agency to contact when their relatives were arrested in Saudi Arabia.

Most of the Pakistanis did not seek consular services from the Pakistani embassy in Riyadh or consulate in Jeddah because they did not believe Pakistani officials would offer any assistance. One person had met with a consular official, but others who contacted embassy officials received help only with deportation procedures. They said that Pakistani officials rarely if ever visited Saudi prisons, unlike representatives of other countries.

“There is no excuse for Saudi Arabia’s treatment of Pakistani citizens, but Pakistani authorities should dramatically improve consular services for those in detention or on trial,” said Whitson. “Improved services will give Pakistani citizens more of a fighting chance to survive Saudi Arabia’s arbitrary and unfair justice system.”

By Yves Engler*

The NDP leadership’s naked suppression of debate on the “Palestine Resolution” is rooted in a long pro-Israeli nationalism history.

At last month’s convention the party machine blocked any debate of the Palestine Resolution, which mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it called for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.” As I detailed previously, the Palestine Resolution was confusingly renamed, deprioritized and then blocked from being debated on the convention floor. The suppression of a resolution unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many outside groups and over 25 riding associations was the latest in a long line of leadership anti-Palestinian actions.

However, the first leader of Canada’s original social democratic party actually took a sensible humanist position, criticizing the colonialist/nationalist movement’s impact on the indigenous population. In 1938 CCF (the NDP’s predecessor) leader J. S. Woodsworth said, “it was easy for Canadians, Americans and the British to agree to a Jewish colony, as long as it was somewhere else. Why ‘pick on the Arabs’ other than for ‘strategic’ and ‘imperialistic’ consideration.”

After Woodsworth’s 1940 death the party’s stance shifted and by the end of World War II the CCF officially supported Zionism. Future CCF leader and premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas and long-time federal MP Stanley Knowles were members of the Canadian Palestine Committee, a group of prominent non-Jewish Zionists formed in 1943 (future external minister Paul Martin Sr. and Alberta premier Ernest C. Manning were also members). In 1944 the Canadian Palestine Committee wrote Prime Minister Mackenzie King that it “looks forward to the day when Palestine shall ultimately become a Jewish commonwealth, and member of the British Commonwealth of Nations under the British Crown.”

Not long after 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland. In 1947/48 CCF officials said the refugees should not be allowed to return. CCF MP Alistair Stewart said that taking in anything more than a small proportion of the refugees might destroy Israel and would be “asking more than any modern state would be prepared to accede to.”

Despite general misgivings towards arms sales, the CCF backed Canada selling 24 F-86 Sabre jets to Israel in the lead-up to its 1956 invasion of Egypt. The party justified Israel’s invasion alongside declining Middle East colonial powers Britain and France. Party leader M.J. Coldwell said, “Israel had ample provocation for her action in marching into Sinai… Egypt’s insistence that Israel be made to obey United Nations resolutions [while it had] hampered Israel’s shipping without lawful excuse. Egypt’s insistence that Israel be made to obey United Nations resolution sounds no less than cynical coming as it does from a government which for years ignored and flouted the Security Council and United Nations when they ordered free passage for Israel’s ships through Suez.”

The NDP also took up Israel’s justification for invading its neighbors in 1967. They criticized Egypt’s blockade of Israeli shipping while ignoring that country’s strategic objectives, which the CIA concluded were the: “Destruction of the center of power of the radical Arab Socialist movement, i.e. the Nasser regime.” (2) “Destruction of the arms of the radical Arabs.” (3) “Destruction of both Syria and Jordan as modern states.”

Despite Ottawa’s strong pro-Israel alignment, NDP leader Tommy Douglas criticized Prime Minister Lester Pearson for not backing Israel more forthrightly in the 1967 war. Describing the NDP convention shortly after the Six-Day War Toronto Star reporter John Goddard wrote, “the delegates were solidly behind Israel. I remember David Lewis leading the discussion at the Royal York Hotel, the look of steely resolve on his face, and the sense of relief in the room over the defeat of the Arab armies.”

After Israel conquered East Jerusalem in 1967 the party came out in favor of a “united Jerusalem”. “The division of Jerusalem,” said David Lewis, a significant figure in the party for four decades, “did not make economic or social sense. As a united city under Israel’s aegis, Jerusalem would be a much more progressive and fruitful capital of the various religions.”

As Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai, Lewis made “impassioned warnings that Israel was in danger.” During his time as federal leader from 1971 to 1975 Lewis spoke to at least one Israel Bonds fundraiser, which raised money for that state.

Just after stepping down as federal leader Lewis was the “speaker of the year” at a B’nai B’rith breakfast. In the hilariously titled “NDP’s David Lewis urges care for disadvantaged”, the Canadian Jewish News reported that Lewis “attacked the UN for having admitted the PLO” and said “a Middle East peace would require ‘some recognition of the Palestinians in some way.’ He remarked that the creation of a Palestinian state might be necessary but refused to pinpoint its location. The Israelis must make that decision, he said, without interference from Diaspora Jewry.”

After a trip to that country Tommy Douglas said “Israel was like a light set upon a hill – the light of democracy in a night of darkness – and the main criticism of Israel has not been a desire for land. The main enmity against Israel is that she has been an affront to those nations who do not treat their people and their workers as well as Israel has treated hers.” (Douglas’ 1975 comment was made after Israel had driven out its indigenous population and repeatedly invaded its neighbours.)

The NDP labelled the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was created in 1964, a danger and vociferously opposed the UN granting it observer status in 1974. Federal party leader Ed Broadbent called the PLO “terrorists and murderers whose aim is the destruction of the state of Israel.” (Apparently, multiple players within the NDP-aligned Broadbent Institute voted against allowing the full convention to debate the Palestine Resolution at an early morning session prior to the main plenary.) In the late 1970s the NDP called on the federal government to intervene to block Canadian companies from adhering to Arab countries’ boycott of Israel, which was designed to pressure that country to return land captured in the 1967 war.

Ontario NDP leader from 1970 to 1978, Stephen Lewis was stridently anti-Palestinian. He demanded the federal government cancel a major UN conference scheduled to be held in Toronto in 1975 because the PLO was granted observer status at the UN the previous year and their representatives might attend. In a 1977 speech to pro-Israel fundraiser United Jewish Appeal, which the Canadian Jewish News titled “Lewis praises [Conservative premier Bill] Davis for Stand on Israel”, Stephen Lewis denounced the UN’s “wantonly anti-social attitude to Israel.” He told the pro-Israel audience that “the anti-Semitism that lurks underneath the surface is diabolical. The only thing to rely on is Jew helping Jew.” (Stephen Lewis’ sister, Janet Solberg, was maybe the loudest anti-Palestinian at the NDP’s recent convention. Former president of the Ontario NDP and federal council member, Solberg was a long time backroom organizer for her brother and works at the Stephen Lewis Foundation.)

In the 1989 book The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Irving Abella and John Sigler write, “historically, the New Democratic Party (NDP) has been the most supportive of the Israeli cause, largely because of its close relationship to Israel’s Labour party, and to the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union movement.”

Excluding non-Jewish workers for much of its history, the Histadrut was a key part of the Zionist movement. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir remarked: “Then [1928] I was put on the Histadrut Executive Committee at a time when this big labor union wasn’t just a trade union organization. It was a great colonizing agency.” For its part, Israel’s Labor party (and predecessor Mapai) was largely responsible for the 1947/48 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, 1956 invasion of Egypt and post 1967 settlement construction in the West Bank.

Relations with Israel’s Labor party continue. Labor Knesset Member Michal Biran was photographed with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh at the recent convention. In the lead-up to that event Biran wrote: “Western progressives must not buy into the simplistic notion that peace is Israel’s gift to bestow upon the Palestinians… Palestinians must make peace with Israel as much as the converse. Here again, recognition [of a Palestinian state] achieves nothing: it will not cause Hamas to halt its missile attacks; it will not encourage the PA to cease payments to terrorists to incentivise murders of Israeli civilians; it will not convince Mahmoud Abbas to cease his antisemitic screeds and Holocaust revisionism. Unilateral recognition offers a free diplomatic gift whilst demanding no Palestinian concessions essential to peace.”

When proponents of the Palestine Resolution tried to reprioritize their resolution so the convention could debate it, Singh mobilized his family and community to block it. Two dozen Sikh delegates, including members of Singh’s family, voted as a block against allowing the full convention to debate the Palestine Resolution, which failed 200 to 189. A Facebook meme by Aminah Mahmood captured the sentiment: “When they USE Brown people to vote down the Palestine Resolution.” (Later in the evening I asked Jagmeet Singh’s brother if he voted against the Palestine Resolution, but he refused to answer.)

The suppression of the Palestine Resolution should stir internationalist minded party members to finally confront the NDP’s anti-Palestinian legacy. A first step in breaking from this odious history could be ending all ties with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Israeli Labor Party, Canada–Israel Parliamentary Group and other Israel lobby organizations/forums. If the party believes in justice this is the least it should do.

*Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.