Crosses on Shangqiu South Church (Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) in China have been removed by the district government.

It is the first Catholic church in Henan province to have crosses removed. Officials later installed new ones but they were much smaller in numbers and size.

A source who asked to be unnamed told ucanews.com that street office and district committee officials on March 8 asked the church to remove its crosses.

“The officials said the largest one at the highest point of the cathedral had to be removed but church staff disagreed,” the source said.

Church staff reported the incident to both the municipal and district religious affairs bureaus. They also disagreed with the crosses’ removal but the street office and the district committee insisted.

Officials from both bureaus visited district officials, who refused to listen and removed the crosses on March 9 by using a crane.

The South Church comprises an old small church, a cathedral and a gate tower. A total of 10 crosses were removed — six above the cathedral, one above the door of the cathedral, and three above the old church next to the cathedral.

After their removal, a few Catholics went to the cathedral and prayed outside. An old lady was seen crying.

The source said someone reported the incident to the provincial National People’s Congress (NPC) and the provincial Chinese People’s Political Consultation Conference (CPPCC).

Under pressure from the two organizations, the street office erected new crosses on March 10.

Only three crosses instead of six were placed above the cathedral, while one was put above the door of the cathedral and one instead of three on the old church.

The central cross above the cathedral had been three meters in height but its replacement was only half that size.

Father John of Henan province said the cadres’ action was “brutal” and misunderstood the recently revised regulations on religious affairs.

A Catholic who works in the provincial NPC and CPPCC said the cathedral is legal but the removal of crosses was illegal and should be suspended. He asked why the original heritage crosses were not reinstalled.

Several incidents have targeted Christianity in Henan recently, including the removal of crosses and the posting of signs prohibiting minors to enter churches, but Father John believes Henan is not a particular target.

“Since the newly revised regulations on religious affairs were enforced, such incidents have happened nationwide,” he said.

The crackdown on religious groups such as Eastern Lightning started in Henan and then had an impact on Christianity, he said.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena who is on a State visit to Japan met Tuesday with the Chief Incumbents of the Sri Lanka Buddhist Temples in Japan in Tokyo. During this meeting, the President extended his gratitude to the Buddhist monks for their great service in promoting Buddhism and expressed his pleasure in meeting with them.

Sirisena pointed out the need of building our Sri Lankan young generation as a generation rich with moral values and self-discipline while giving them a better understanding regarding our cultural values and the President further said that a great responsibility lies with the religious leaders in this regard.

Later, a group of representatives, including Muslim religious leaders met with Sirisena at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. During this meeting they stated that whatever allegations were leveled against the President by whomsoever his commitment to build sustainable peace in Sri Lanka is praiseworthy and they are ready to provide every possible assistance in this regard.

Expressing his views regarding the recent incidents occurred in Kandy Sirisena stated that he is extremely concerned over that incident which was created by a handful of people, in an environment where steps are being taken to build peace and brotherhood among all the communities.

The representatives expressing their views too said that all the Sri Lankans irrespective of ethnic and religious differences elected President Maithripala Sirisena as the Head of State on January 08, 2015, to establish peace and reconciliation in the country.

The German Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, also known as the NetzDG or Network Enforcement Act (NEA), came into effect last October, with actual enforcement commencing in January 2018. Is this the Fake News silver bullet that Singapore and other nations should be considering?

By Shashi Jayakumar*

Germany’s closely-watched Network Enforcement Act (NEA), popularly known as the “Facebook Law”, has of January 2018 come into full effect. It is aimed specifically at a certain class of content – notably hate speech or forms of incitement – deemed especially dangerous to public discourse and the public peace (e.g. false online reports of mass rapes by asylum seekers). Networks have 24 hours to act (longer in complex cases) after being notified about illegal content. Failure to comply can lead to a fine of up to €50 million for a large company, or €5 million for an individual.

The law is aimed at major social networks that are opinion makers, with networks having fewer than two million users excluded. Messenger networks (such as WhatsApp) are excluded, as are journalistic platforms such as online newspapers. The status of other platforms with mass reach but which are not clearly social networks (Snapchat for example) has not at the time of writing been clarified by the authorities.

What Is New?

The NEA does not radically alter existing German law. It is a restatement; specifying and clarifying existing provisions of the German penal code dealing with the obligation to remove illegal content. What is clearly implied in the NEA, however, is that large social networks need to conform to German law. The large social media companies’ apparent willingness to accept the premise that they must respect national legislation (and not simply the networks’ own community standards) should be counted a major concession.

The German authorities appear to have secured the agreements of large social network companies to work with them to some degree, with the Big 3 social media companies – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – now setting up legal compliance offices specifically for the NEA. (Separately, Facebook in Germany has hired over one thousand content moderators to ensure timely removal of illegal content reported to it.) These concessions will be watched very closely by other governments contemplating legislation.

It needs to be seen, however, how many other countries will be prepared to follow the German approach: largely eschewing strong-arm tactics, and instead preferring painstaking behind the scenes work to engage the large social network companies in getting them to cooperate.

A key provision in the NEA relates to the reporting path for people to report illegal content. This pathway has been kept simple. Checks by the network must be expeditious, with the network also having to keep the complainant informed about the outcome. The public prosecutor has the power to hold hearings and invite the network in question for interviews, as well as to ascertain facts prior to issuing fines.

Critics & Limitations

The takedown clauses of the NEA have limitations. German authorities appear to have originally envisaged that all copies of punishable content need to be deleted, but this appears to have run foul of EU regulations. At present, the networks are not under an obligation to delete every copy of an offending item.

German authorities have through the NEA taken a stand against plain outright lies that can disturb the public peace, but not conspiracies, nor rents to the social fabric. Care has been taken to avoid the appearance of the NEA being an ideological tool for the ruling class, with the authorities mindful of the criticism in some quarters that the NEA contravenes the principle of freedom of expression, and mindful also of the memory of Germany’s past.

The most vocal of the parties in Parliament criticising the law are those from the right wing, especially the Alternative für Deutschland, (AfD), which is strongly against the law and wants it to be abolished. In Germany, use of social media as a primary source of news is much higher with rightwing groups and the AfD.

Areas in Germany controlled by the AfD also show much lower trust in mainstream media compared to other areas, according to surveys. Separately, it also appears that individuals from the extreme right, as well as the AfD, are leveraging on the NEA to simply flag and report content they disagree with.

Limited Impact on Disinformation?

The NEA is over the longer-term unlikely to have much of an effect on state-sponsored disinformation or other issues affecting German society such as the rise of intolerance. On the face of it, these might not seem to matter.

There appears to be some feeling in German government circles, as well as informed observers, that the historically high trust in public broadcasters (unlike in the United States, for example) has blunted the fake news and disinformation threat in Germany. Most expert assessments conclude that the actual nature and scale of Russian disinformation in the September 2017 German federal election was limited in scale.

Limited, but likely not entirely absent. Slant and selective interpretation when deployed in an organised fashion by a skillful actor have an effect on society – and deployment of these subtle methods can shape society over the long-term while evading the ambit of the legal mechanisms NEA.

Some social media networks, as well as Kremlin-linked broadcast media, have an AfD bias as well as reach within the sizable Russian-German audience in Germany. These networks frequently played up certain issues (negative sentiments around refugees, for example) during the election campaign.

Distraction From Other Battles?

Another danger is that focus on enforcing the NEA and bringing large social media companies to heel will distract the authorities from key aspects of the fake news/disinformation conundrum. In Germany, an important role has been played by small fact-checking and rumour-debunking organisations (which some of the big networks such as Facebook have used.) Representatives from some of these organisations privately note that a sustainable approach to fact-checking in Germany has failed to materialise, with the already sporadic funding in danger of drying up entirely.

These organisations themselves operate independently, without cooperating with other likeminded organisations. On the other hand, right wing and extreme groups responsible for spreading fake news increasingly share notes and methods transnationally. Considerable catching up needs to be done.

The bold moves in Germany to underline to major social media companies and the people alike that the constitutional right to freedom of speech is not absolute are noteworthy, and on some levels commendable. The authorities there have drawn a line in the sand : one that they think fits the German context and circumstances. It remains to be seen whether this will have the long-term effect of dampening the fake news problem, whether the means used in Germany are transplantable elsewhere, and whether for that matter the big social media companies will consent to deal with other governments in the same manner that Facebook did with the German authorities.

*Shashi Jayakumar is head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security and Executive Coordinator, Future Issues and Technology at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Baby Boomers – my generation, born between 1946 and 1964 – dominated politics and the economy for years. There were just more Boomers than people of any other generation.  But that’s no longer the case. Now, the biggest generation is the Millennials, born between 1983 and 2000.

Millennials are different from boomers in 6 important ways that will shape the future.

1. Millennials are more diverse than boomers – so as Millennials gain clout, expect America to become more open.  More than 44 percent of Millennials identify as a race other than white. And they’re more accepting of immigrants:  69 percent of millennials think that newcomers strengthen American society, compared to 44 percent of Boomers.

2. Millennials are more distrustful of the political system than Boomers – so as Millennials gain power, expect more anti-establishment politics.  A strong majority of Millennials think the country is on the wrong track. Most disapprove of both the Republican Party and the Democratic party. Virtually no Millennials – only 6 percent – strongly approve of Donald Trump, compared to 63 percent who disapprove. A strong majority – 71 percent – want a third major party to compete with Democrats and Republicans.

3. Most Millennials have a tougher financial road than Boomers – so expect them to demand changes in how we finance higher education. According to Pew Research, Millennials are the first generation in the modern era, “to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty, and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than any other generation at the same stage of life.” No surprise, then, that Millennials are living at home much longer than previous generations, and getting married later.

4. Millennials view the social safety net differently than boomers – so expect them to demand that Medicare and Social Security are strengthened. Boomers move into older age, more and more of the federal budget is going into Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Many Millennials even doubt Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will be there for them when they retire.

5. Millennials care more about the environment – so expect them to demand stronger environmental protection. Over 90 percent of them believe climate change is occurring, compared with 74 percent of Boomers. Over 60 percent of Millennials want to reduce the use of coal as an energy source, compared with 28 percent of Boomers. And over half of  Millennials support a carbon tax, compared with 23 percent of Boomers.

6. Finally, as wealthy Boomers transfer $30 trillion to their lucky Millennial heirs, expect Millennials to demand a fairer inter-generational tax system. America is now on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. As very wealthy boomers expire, an estimated $30 trillion will go to their children and grandchildren over the next three decades. The tax code allows these lucky Millennials to inherit rich Boomer assets without paying capital gains on them, and paying far lower estate taxes than previous generations. Expect this to change.

As I said, I’m a Boomer – born the same year as Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dolly Parton, among others. It’s up to you – the Millennials – to fix a  system we Boomers broke.

The Heritage Foundation, with an annual budget nearing $90 million a year (including over $1 million for the salary of its president), calls itself conservative, but more often than not it practices the kind of corporatism dear to the impulses of President Trump. The Washington-based “think tank/lobbying firm” has quite a score card with the failed gambling czar who lost the popular vote but won the vestigial Electoral College tally to become head of state. In fact, they’ve given him a checklist, and he seems to be obediently implementing the Heritage Foundation’s agenda.

Immediately after his Electoral College selection, Trump’s transition team was swarmed with Heritage personnel and their 334 “unique policy recommendations” comprising its massive “Mandate for Leadership.” Indeed, seventy former Heritage employees now work for the Trump Administration.

According to Heritage’s Thomas Binion, the Trumpsters have adopted or implemented “64 percent of the 334 policy prescriptions.” This success rate, Heritage says, exceeds even President Ronald Reagan’s first year in office when his administration adopted 49 percent of Heritage’s policy recommendations.

Heritage’s boldness and energy levels tower over its counterpart institutions on the alleged left-of-center political spectrum. It helps that big corporate money bolsters Heritage’s various projects, including one recently created initiative “Heritage Action,” which dives directly into electoral politics. In its 45 years of operation, Heritage has fed off demanding oil tycoon heirs such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Shelby Cullom Davis, the relentless Koch brothers and, recently, the Trump-backing Mercer financial interests.

Mr. Binion proudly lists some of his organization’s successes with Trump, and more “adopted” recommendations can be found in the full list. Here is a small selection for your perusal:

–Leaving the Paris Climate Accord and cutting funding for research on climate disruption

–Shrinking the public lands

–Greatly increasing military spending

–Making the needy work for government assistance

–Opening up the federal lands to off-shore drilling and coal leasing

–Withdrawing from UNESCO—a move strongly urged by the Israeli government

–Eliminating Environmental Justice Programs

–Ending Renewable Energy Mandates in DOD

–Eliminating Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for children

–Eliminating the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau

–Eliminating Tribal Housing

–Reducing funding for the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights by 50%

–Cutting budgets for all kinds of help to the poor, the disabled and other deprived Americans such as impoverished patients seeking health care

Hand it to Heritage, it deals with both abstract conservative principles and concrete policies.

The problem is that the principles don’t match what Heritage is pressing for in the avaricious arena of Republican corporate politics.

Here are its principles: “free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”

Let’s compare Heritage’s walk to its talk. “Free enterprise?” Rhetoric aside, Heritage is inactive on old and new monopolies, and indeed anything to do with massive corporate welfare for the favored big companies and big money in politics which tilt the playing field and shaft taxpayers.

“Limited government?” What about—to invoke President Eisenhower’s warning words—the big government of the bloated “Military-Industrial Complex?” What about the massive outsourcing of public functions to corporations that consider overcharging taxpayers to be a business strategy? What about the system of “criminal injustice,” in which people can be arrested without being charged with a crime? What about prosecutorial abuses and illegal prison abuses? What about DOJ-promoted for-profit prisons that benefit from social systems that continually perpetuate cycles of incarceration and arrest? Do these qualify as “limited government?”

“Individual freedom?” What about the massive invasion of individual privacy by corporations or the destruction of the freedom of contracts—consumer servitude under unilateral fine print contracts not subject to competition? What about the FCC’s elimination of net neutrality, allowing internet and cable providers to infiltrate, control and monetize every aspect of the internet “commons?”

“Traditional American values?” What about equal protection of the laws in the form of strong enforcement actions against the corporate crime wave that has been documented regularly by the Wall Street Journal and Business Week? Heritage is silent on this obvious, deep American value.

What about compassion values for the poor and preservation of the air, water and soil? Heritage has hooked its reputation onto two of the cruelest of Trump’s henchmen: Scott Pruitt, dismantling the EPA, contrary to his oath of office, and the mad dog of mad dogs—Michael Mulvaney, who heads both the Office of Management and Budget and the Wall Street watchdog, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he is running through the Wall Street corporate meat grinder.

“A strong national defense?” A wasteful defense is a weak defense and military power in the service of Empire only increases hatred, war and civilian adversaries against the invaders and backers of dictatorships abroad. Heritage is silent on such lessons of history and has sided too often with the neo-con war mongers. The libertarian Cato institute, at least, opposes criminal wars of aggression (as in Iraq) and imperialism.

There are people inside Heritage troubled about this conflict between true conservatives and corporatists masquerading as conservatives. They know that the rhetoric about being against crony capitalism or statism (the corporate state) is not part of Heritage’s muscle on Capitol Hill or at Trump’s White House. But they know where their bread is buttered.

While predictive policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority communities and result in discriminatory arrests. An IUPUI School of Science computer scientist conducted the first study to look at real-time field data from Los Angeles, CA and found predictive policing did not result in biased arrests.

“Predictive policing still is a fairly new field. There have been several field trials of predictive policing where the crime rate reduction was measured; but there have been no empirical field trials to date looking at whether these algorithms, when deployed, target certain racial groups more than others and lead to biased stops or arrests,” said George Mohler, associate professor of computer and information science at the School of Science at IUPUI.

Mohler, along with researchers at UCLA and Louisiana State University, worked with the Los Angeles Police Department to conduct the experimental study. A human analyst made predictions on where officers would patrol each day and an algorithm also made a set of predictions; it then was randomly selected which set was used by officers in the field each day.

The researchers measured the difference in arrest rates by ethnic groups between the predictive policing algorithm and hotspot maps created by LAPD analysts that were in use prior to the experiment.

“When we looked at the data, the differences in arrest rates by ethnic group between predictive policing and standard patrol practices were not statistically significant,” Mohler explained.

The study examined data both at the district level and within the LAPD officers’ patrol areas and found there was no statistically significant difference between arrest rates by ethnic group at either geographical level. Finally, researchers looked at arrest rates overall in patrol areas and found that those were statistically higher in the algorithmnically-selected areas, but when adjusted for the higher crime rate in these areas, the arrests were lower or unchanged. “The higher crime rate, and proportionally higher arrest rate, is what you would expect since the algorithm is designed to identify areas with high crime rates,” says Mohler.

Mohler notes that in the developing field of predictive policing, there continue to be lessons learned from each study and implementation. A recent simulation study of predictive policing with drug arrest data from Oakland, CA showed there is potential for bias when these algorithms are applied in certain contexts. Mohler hopes the Los Angeles study is a starting point to measure predictive policing bias in future field experiments.

“Every time you do one of these predictive policing deployments, departments should monitor the ethnic impact of these algorithms to check whether there is racial bias,” Mohler said. “I think the statistical methods we provide in this paper provide a framework to monitor that.”

They have an unwarranted image as brutish and uncaring, but new research has revealed just how knowledgeable and effective Neanderthal healthcare was.

The study, by the University of York, reveals that Neanderthal healthcare was uncalculated and highly effective – challenging our notions that they were brutish compared to modern humans.

The researchers argue that the care provided was widespread and should be seen as a “compassionate and knowledgeable response to injury and illness.”

It is well known that Neanderthals sometimes provided care for the injured, but new analysis by the team at York suggest they were genuinely caring of their peers, regardless of the level of illness or injury, rather than helping others out of self-interest.

Lead author, Dr Penny Spikins, senior lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origin at the University of York, said: “Our findings suggest Neanderthals didn’t think in terms of whether others might repay their efforts, they just responded to their feelings about seeing their loved ones suffering.”

Most of the individuals archaeologists know about had a severe injury of some kind, with detailed pathologies highlighting a range of debilitating conditions and injuries.

In some cases the injuries occurred long before death and would have required monitoring, massage, fever management and hygiene care, the study suggests.

Analysis of a male aged around 25-40 at time of death revealed a catalogue of poor heath, including a degenerative disease of the spine and shoulders.

His condition would have sapped his strength over the final 12 months of life and severely restricted his ability to contribute to the group.

Yet, the authors of the study argue he remained part of the group as his articulated remains were subsequently carefully buried.

Dr Spikins added: “We argue that the social significance of the broader pattern of healthcare has been overlooked and interpretations of a limited or calculated response to healthcare have been influenced by preconceptions of Neanderthals as being ‘different’ and even brutish. However, a detailed consideration of the evidence in its social and cultural context reveals a different picture.

“The very similarity of Neanderthal healthcare to that of later periods has important implications. We argue that organised, knowledgeable and caring healthcare is not unique to our species but rather has a long evolutionary history.”

The study was partially supported by the John Templeton Foundation and published in the journal World Archaeology.

If you were to learn that the way to achieve gender wage parity is to build a less gender-equal society, would you be in favor of it? Two recent studies provide strong evidence that the wage gap between men and women has little to do with gender discrimination and everything to do with women being free to discriminate in how they spend their time.

The first, “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers,” draws on detailed information from a million Uber rideshares and finds a roughly 7% gender earnings gap between men and women drivers. As all decisions reside in the hands of the drivers themselves, clearly employer or consumer discrimination can not account for the gap. The study’s authors conclude:

We find that the entire gender gap is caused by three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences over where/when to work, and preferences for driving speed. This suggests that, as the gig economy grows and brings more flexibility in employment, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based preference differences can perpetuate a gender earnings gap even in the absence of discrimination.

The second study, “The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education,” looks across 67 countries and regions and finds that, on average, girls do as well on tests for science as boys, and in almost every country girls would do as well as boys in college-level math and science course—were they to take them.

However, the paper also shows that in countries in which girls have greater choice and face less discrimination, there are fewer women in STEM.

That is: greater gender equality produces fewer women in STEM.

The reason has to do with choice. While the average girl is as good in science as the average boy, she is even stronger in reading:

Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading. And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject.

The study’s authors posit that countries with the greatest gender inequality produce more female graduates in STEM because women in those countries face less certain economic futures and thus choose careers in fields providing greater financial security. In countries in which women have more choice, as well as greater financial security, they are more likely to choose careers that provide less financial rewards. That is, they are choosing quality of life in pursuing fields that they enjoy more, vs. greater economic reward.

When the study authors looked at the “overall life satisfaction” rating of each country—a measure of economic opportunity and hardship—they found that gender-equal countries had more life satisfaction. The life-satisfaction ranking explained 35 percent of the variation between gender equality and women’s participation in STEM. That correlation echoes past research showing that the genders are actually more segregated by field of study in more economically developed places.

Thus, all things being truly equal, free women choose careers in fields they enjoy more over making more money.

So social engineers and companies singularly focused on creating a workforce comprised of equal representation from among the population—i.e., given a workforce that is statistically 66% male and 55% female, one’s employees should be 66% male and 55% female (“reporting differences” account for this totaling > 100%)—face a dilemma: to truly achieve gender “equity,” they should be pushing for national policies that would produce greater gender discrimination.

In other words, if our goal is equal representation of women in STEM, we need to become a society in which women have fewer choices, and withdraw social programs that provide financial security. Think Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Otherwise, we need to reject simple-minded reasoning that tries to measure social value in money or body counts. A truly equitable society is one in which individuals are free to make their own choices.

This article was published by The Beacon.

By H. L. D. Mahindapala*

“… my administration, I believe, has had the most successful year in the history of the Presidency,” Donald Trump, Conservative Political Action Conference, Maryland, February 23, 2018.

Since it is generally agreed that one week is a long time in politics, it is time to ask, at the end of one year, how far have America’s stature grown since Donald Trump set out “to make America great again.”  From the first step he took to march on the road to White House he has been chanting the mantra of “making America great” which also translates into “putting America first”. They are two shades of the same slogan.

This theme, which he played to the hilt with characteristic brashness, is the most relevant standard available to review his first year in office. It is only fair to judge him by the standard he set himself. He recycled it relentlessly and noisily as the winning mantra. Besides, there isn’t a better standard to judge a man than the one set by himself.

He wrapped himself round this populist slogan to exploit the historical memory of America’s great past as he had nothing new to take or give from the future to add to its past. It was bruited as a vague concept that was left open, without clarifying it with a clear-cut definition, for his loyal base to embrace it freely with meanings that would suit their fancies.

It was also romanticized and packaged as a palatable pill that could be digested readily by America poised nervously on the edge of decline, as perceived by the informed commentariat. His theme of “making America great again (the operative word is again) too was designed to underline the fact that America is in decline.

His emphasis was not in lifting America to greater heights from where it is now. He was not going to build on what has been achieved so far by his predecessors. That would be an admission of the fact that America has not lost its greatness. He clearly underscored the fact that America has declined and that his mission was to make America great again.

It lacked the grandeur and the soaring hopes of the Founding Fathers who had clear and positive vision of America’s future and destiny. It was sheer sloganeering to grab as many votes as he could get to make him great.

His slogan was meant to raise the hopes of the discombobulated electorate swirling in a vortex of uncertainties. It was a time when America felt disoriented and even alienated by the rise of challenging forces threatening its supremacy, both at home and abroad.

Trump emerged, beating all other conventional contenders by assuring the American electorate the restoration of the known certainties of the past. The past was great. And he implied that America can be made great again only by returning to a romanticized past. He also surfaced at a time when President Obama, weighed down by the Nobel Peace Prize hanging round his neck, was dithering between unmanageable wars and unwinnable peace.

Caught in a disorderly world spinning out of the Cold War

Trump was caught in a disorderly world spinning out of the Cold War. Trump is yet to find his feet in the multi-polar world. The multiple centers of power is too confusing for him to handle. Trump’s slogan of “America First” surfaced as a safety net to disengage from the confusing complexities which baffles him.

Multilateralism is viewed as an inimical force to American interests. Trump’s solution, each time he faces a crisis, is either to disengage from the world (Example: exit from TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership), or to seek refuge in the garrison-mentality of the pioneers who withdrew into walled fortresses when they were surrounded by the hostile Indians. (Example: Mexican Wall).

Vindictive reprisals against nations who refuse to fall in line with him is another part of his counter-productive foreign policy. (Example: Cutting aid to those who refused to vote for shifting the capital of Israel to Jerusalem!)

At the end of his first year in office he has gone only deeper and deeper into his own politico-economic swamp and expecting him to change is a bit too rich. Having no constructive alternative, he will continue to stick to his tried and tested strategy of playing up to his base. He has nothing but contempt for anything above his base because there are no votes for him at the higher level.

One of the main characteristics of his controversial victory was that it distanced itself from the open-ended optimism that flowed from the iconic Founding Fathers. Unlike in the period of pioneering Enlightenment, the dreamtime of America, the underlying theme operating right now is to close the doors opened by the Founding Fathers to make America great again.

He rode into power selling this theme of putting America on reverse gear which was mistakenly taken to be a progressive step in the right direction. His electoral mission was carefully crafted to turn his populist slogans into a cult – a cult that would revolve round him.

“Putting America first” – “Putting Donald Trump first”

“Putting America first” was another way of saying “putting Donald Trump first”. Both were intertwined and inseparable. He identified himself as the messiah who had come to save America in peril and he was seeking a mandate to put him first to fulfill his mission.

The hidden side of this populist cult was to legitimize a monolithic political culture which would unfailingly obey his orders. His messianic arrogance was aimed at making America march to his drum beat.

The simmering crises in the internal affairs of the White House stem from Donald Trump’s urge to override the tried and tested principles, laws, and norms. The new recruits to the White House find that the chances of standing straight on the Titanic, without losing their footing and future, were much greater and foreseeable than balancing on Trump’s keeling deck.

For instance, not even his Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, knows his future because he refuses to be the obedient bandmaster playing the music according to score dictated by him. Obama at least had the knack of masking his use of power with sophisticated and theoretical verbalizations.

Trump has reduced his justifications of the abuse of power to snappy tweets in a daily exchange of fire with the media. His verbal crassness bursts out from time to time like his “toilet talk” which, incidentally, was recorded in the tapes of Billy Bush, the NBC host. Referring to his dealings with women he told Bush: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they (women) let you do it. You can do anything…..Grab them by the pussy! You can do anything!” (p.13. Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff.)

This summarizes the raw essence of the unvarnished man. There doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between his grab for power and his other tendency “to grab pussies”. Once you attain a position power, as he says, you can do anything. Even grab pussies! Twenty women have complained on record about his sexual misconduct.

The image of America is fast turning out to be like that of Trump: its crumbling  down daily. The scandal of Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was paid $130,000 to silence her affair with Donald Trump, has thrown the White House into the latest storm.

In every sense Trump has been the outsider who barged in promising to redefine America’s identity in the new world, breaking away from the heights attained in the post-WWII decades. The role of the outsider suited his authoritarian personality to act arbitrarily dismissing with contempt traditions, conventions, precedents, norms if any of them obstructed his path.

He cultivated with disdain an attitude of disrespecting and dispensing of tradition to make it easy for him to impose his erratic and unpredictable will. Tradition was cramping his style. Obama’s departure marked the end of the era that was striving to maintain the respectability attached to the office of the President.

Obama struggled strenuously to draw lines that would make him look as if he was standing on the right side of history. With almost missionary zeal he spent considerable time in defining the morality of the day. Though controversial he wrestled in his own way to clear any ambiguity about morality. His morality was aimed at maintaining the dignity of the “indispensable nation”.

Whether accepted or not, America was actively engaged in playing the role of a moral leader, taking great pride in “American values”. Whatever happened to those American values after Trump took over the Oval Office? Quite brazenly, he touts “America First” as his trade mark in foreign policy, dismissing all other values as irrelevant to making America great again.

In a practical sense, which other country will put “America first” sacrificing their interests? The intricately meshed international order, dependent on each other despite pursuing individual interests, can survive and thrive only on a fine balance that is mutually beneficial.

Unilateral action, disregarding consequences, has the potential to unhinge the connected parts and send them spinning in a free fall. His latest decision to raise the tariff of steel and aluminum, putting “America first”, is not going down well with the rest. Feeling the hostile reaction he is now wriggling to tone down his arbitrary decision.

The world outside an extension of Trump Tower

This is typical of his style of decision-making: he treats the world outside as an extension of his Trump Tower, expecting them to follow his orders. In his decision-making he has shown an extraordinary talent to create new enemies out of old allies. He began with the Mexican Wall, expecting them to pay for the wall he plans to put up for his own protection. It is this erratic behavior that questions his fitness to be President of America.

His favourite pastime has been to pick fights with anyone who does not fit into his agenda. He is at his best when he sanitizes words dropped in the toilet for common use in headlines. His stubbornness, his limited experience in handling complex international affairs rooted in a tangled past, and his obsession with his own greatness often have landed him in his own “shitholes”.

His excremental vision of the world is not likely to take him or America into heights of greatness. On the contrary, the moral settings that elevated America to adulatory peaks have been shattered daily by the unprincipled politics of a short-sighted President who is yet to discover whether he is Donald or Trump.

The fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the end of the history that gripped the post-colonial period dominated by Cold War ideologies. The universality of Marxism was displaced by the fragmentation of the world into narrow domestic walls. Communalism proved to be far more forceful than communism. The working class cut loose from the global brotherhood and realigned as ethnic entities.

Western Liberalism congregated around its new broad church of economic blocs. As usual, history refusing to lie low in ideological jackets, produced the miracle of lifting 300 million Chinese from poverty for the first time in history not on Marxist principles but through capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

Communist commissars of China surprisingly turned Marxism on its head and stunned the capitalists by teaching them how to make money within a communist framework. Simultaneously, America, the shining symbol of capitalism, went into decline. The specter of class war that haunted the 20^th century disappeared into the theoretical bookshelves from where it came.

The digital generation of the Fourth Revolution, no longer confined to Dickensian factories, was in search of a new ideology which went briefly in the direction of human rights. But it was soon hijacked by big powers who used it as a tool to impose neo-colonialism. The new age needed a new messiah with a new message.

He stepped into political stage at a time when America too was seething with anger against the new currents sweeping inland from the intrusive world, disturbing their familiar universe. His idiosyncratic behaviour, together with his abrasive language but surely, appealed to the introverted American base that was withdrawing from the broad-based, inclusive culture.

Exhausted by unwinnable wars America too was withdrawing slowly but surely. In an unmanageable world, slipping out of its hands, America was casting around, looking for a new compass. Most of all, America was running around looking for new ideological moorings to locate its next phase in history. Marie le Pen and Nigel Farage in UK were surfacing as the claimants to the new leadership.

They knew how to exploit the fears of a dying past but not to produce the solutions for peaceful co-existence in the new world. The bewildered world was spinning without dependable certainties. The feeling of insecurity was pervasive. The ambience was open for messianic figures to triumph with inward-looking populism.

Stepping into the vacuum

Trump stepped into the vacuum. Trump marketed himself successfully as the light at the end of the tunnel. He stepped in posing as the flaxen-haired Moses in a lengthy tie that dropped below his belt. It signified his aggressive style. In the run up to the election, he demolished his rivals in the arena with below-the-belt blows.

Overnight he became the master of the ring. He was putting on a show “the like of which America had not seen before.” Its novelty swept the mesmerized Americans off their feet. In the prevailing mood of the time, Trump breezed in as a wave of fresh air that was needed to clean up the cobwebs in decaying America.

In 2016 the American base voted for what they thought he would be in their minds and not for what he stood for in reality. In fact, in 2016 he too was a bewildered candidate who was neither trained nor qualified to hold the White House job.

Without any solid grip of the tasks ahead of him he could only mouth bland generalizations like “We shall start winning wars again” to “make America great again”. He has yet to keep his promise. Right now, he is sinking deeper in the longest of American wars – the 17-yearold war in Afghanistan.

On the Inauguration Day he was fit only to savour the flavor of the occasion. He is yet to show any signs of being Presidential. His White House has gone beyond the limits of white lies.  “The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump passed a milestone that none of his predecessors is known to have attained: just short of the anniversary of his first anniversary in office, he told his two thousandth lie.” (The New York Review of Books, Feruary. 22, 2018).

Besides, under the Trumpocracy proxy wars continue unabated in the Middle East and at the UN. Oddly enough, he has blurred the Cold War lines by embracing Putin. So far he has been gingerly backing off any serious confrontations with Putin, though to keep up appearances he drops a bomb or two in Syria which is Putin’s backyard.

Of course, Trump also makes appropriate noises at the Security Council against Putin which are akin to the noises made by prostitutes imitating a fake orgasm. The decibel level of his anti-Kim Jong-Un has been far more threatening than his toned-down rhetoric against Putin.

He is also never happy unless he is fighting with someone. Provoking women, media, minorities, his own White House staff, etc., has been a part of his daily routine. An aggressive tweet a day helps him to stay awake for the rest of the day.

Trump is totally lost when it comes to dealing with the “bigly” world that overwhelms him. Not knowing how to handle the world outside he plans to hide behind walls despite the prophetic warning that “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,/And spills the upper boulders in the sun”. (Robert Frost).

Seeking refuge in building political and economic walls

In his world there are no reds under his bed now. There are only Feds. And he raves and rants against the sacred institutions that had served America’s best interests at all times. In his eyes the enemy within is seen as an inimical force greater than those outside.

He seeks refuge in building political and economic walls. Each time he sees America coming apart he blames it all on foreigners. His xenophobia borders on paranoia. Amidst this despair he believes he is the only one who is doing great things to make America great!

He is now claiming greatness even before he could complete his first term. Like any other Abominable Showman he is wont to writing cheap advertisements for his own glory. He believes that he has fulfilled a messianic role that surpasses that of all other presidents. He fancies himself as the new American Moses.

In the past messiahs came out of the deserts of despair to lead their people into new worlds of promise. Moses, for instance, brought forth a whole new political and moral culture to hold the derelict Jews together. His power and glory was in imposing the new morality.

He was the commander of a new morality. He derived his authority from the values contained in the God-given laws. The greater the universality of the law the greater the power of the morality to command acceptance and obedience.

Once upon a time America’s boast was that it exports great American values. Does anyone know what is left of America’s values that are available for export? After the arrival of Trump does anyone know even what those values are?

How great can America be after President Trump is booed not by the usual raucous claque in the streets but by a section of the most respected elite gathered at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos?

How great is America when India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, gets a standing ovation at the World Economic Forum and not Donald Trump? How great is America when its mighty destructive forces, “the like of which the world has never seen”, are knocked into a cocked hat in Afghanistan?

How great has been Trump’s power to impose his will on the world to establish Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? How great is America when it wins only Israel and loses the rest of the world? When the 11 members of TP) – a 500 million market worth $14 trillion – thumbed its nose and continued to function as if nothing has happened after Trump’s withdrawal from the multilateral trade agreement, hasn’t the world proved that America is no longer up there, holding the coveted status of being “the indispensable nation”?

Doesn’t Trump’s sham show of power to a tin-pot dictator in N. Korea make him the Great Pretender on the world stage? Most of all, how great is the man who claims to possess the code to destroy the world in a flash but does not have the power to prevent a 19-year-old mentally disturbed from walking into a shop in Florida and buy a gun that led to the latest mass massacres in his America? Doesn’t each mass massacre expose the powerlessness of America than its greatness?

His egotistic braggadocio reveals his powerlessness in the post-Obama age to reconstruct the world according to his image. The least he should have done was to give hope and momentum to enhance the credibility, viability and the reliability of American leadership.

Global Gulliver thrown to the ground by an Asian Lilliputian

Instead the Global Gulliver has been thrown to the ground by an Asian Lilliputian and is lying paralyzed, pinned down by the impotency of his counter-productive missiles. Of course, in the prevailing balance of terror, no one is going to come out as winner.

Nevertheless, the balance of terror is tilting in favour of N. Korea with Trump holding the superior weapons and means of destruction without having the power and consent to press the pulverizing button. He will have to strike at multiple targets to eliminate the total nuclear armory in N. Korea without leaving a second chance for Kim to strike back. Kim Jon Un has only to hit one target to make his point and humiliate America – a unique foreign blow which has never hit America in its history

In any likely flare-up N. Korea cannot win. That is given. When a little fellow fights a big fellow the outcome is always a foregone conclusion. However, the little fellow fights not to win but to humiliate the big fellow. Leaving even one single black eye is a victory. Leaving even one single nuclear black hole on American soil is a victory for N. Korea.

Trump’s arrogant attempts to impose his greatness on the world are challenged instantly by a hostile global reaction that tends to isolate America and leave him out in the cold. His egotistic arrogance, which he mistakes for greatness, is making America increasingly irrelevant in the emerging world order.

The world that voted against him in the UN, refusing to walk with him into Jerusalem, has not crumbled because he cut off aid to the pro-Palestinian nations. It was a childish reaction of a peeved imp who had lost his marbles in the kindergarten.

So far the greatness he claims has not gone beyond the shock he gave America and the world when he won the presidential election which the best of leading pundits thought he could not win.

Shift from the tiny Trump Tower to the “bigly” White House

His volcanic rise from the bottom layers of the American depths has shaken the very foundations of the vaunted American values, leading directly to question the future of the American way of life. Most of all, his rise to power has divided America into two entrenched camps. His shift from the tiny Trump Tower to the “bigly” White House has traumatized the best and the brightest of America.

So far the major political and economic actions of Trump has thrown America, one of the most stable nations, off balance. Ever since his rise to power the main focus of American politics has been to find ways and means of coping with the chaos created by Trump.

Baffled by the overwhelming post-Trumpis(s)t phenomenon, which is yet to find its meaning, definition and direction, American is left with only theoretical guesswork and speculation. It is so gassy and incoherent that not even the President’s men and women assigned to explain his policies to the public do not know for certain today of what he has said and done yesterday.

In broad outline, leaving aside the diurnal details, the unfolding drama at the White House could not have been scripted by the best of Kafkesque writers. As far as the search for meaning goes he stands out as the sole representative marking the beginning of the end of the traditional way of American politics.

Obama seems to be the last of the best in the American tradition. The world will have to wait a long time to recapture the rapture of the American style, substance, and the spirit if, by any sad chance, crude Trumpis(s)m catches on as the new normal in America.

Already there is an opening for a Trumpis(s)t dynasty to succeed him. The greater danger is in Trumpis(s)m gathering momentum and putting down roots at the base as the  new political force in the American landscape. That would be the time when

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

But that can happen only if

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” (The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats)

*H.L.D. Mahindapala is a senior Sri Lankan journalist residing in Australia.

Following its defeat in Iraq and Syria last year the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) has expanded to other parts of the Muslim world including Southeast Asia by linking up with local militant groups. Countries in the region recognise the need for stronger cooperation in counter-terrorism and are increasingly roping in their militaries.

By Rohan Gunaratna*

Following the shrinking of its battle space in Iraq and Syria, the group that calls itself Islamic State (IS) is expanding worldwide, including to Southeast Asia. Against the backdrop of the rising terrorist threat, Singapore as chair of ASEAN will host a series of meetings to discuss the renewed threat and enhance the region’s counter-terrorism cooperation to tackle it. Last week, Singapore hosted the 15th ASEAN Chiefs of Defence Forces Informal Meeting to discuss ways to build capacity and strengthen practical regional cooperation.

The ASEAN defence ministers who had met earlier at their retreat in Singapore on 6 February 2018 identified terrorism as the single biggest threat to the region, even as they recognised several other regional security challenges, ranging from the troubled South China Sea to the North Korea issue. In a joint statement following the retreat, the ministers noted: “Terrorism is a severe threat to ASEAN’s progress, prosperity and very way of life.”

Region’s Unpreparedness

Although the traditional role for fighting terrorism is with the law enforcement authorities, with the escalation in threat, the military forces today play vital front-line and support roles, ranging from direct action to intelligence gathering. Southeast Asia’s military forces, law enforcement authorities and national security agencies are assessing the impact of IS transforming from a caliphate-building group to a global terrorist movement.

Despite its defeat in Mosul, Iraq, in July and in Raqqa, Syria, in October last year, IS is evolving into a transnational terrorist movement by linking up with local groups and expanding into other parts of the Muslim world, including to Asia, which hosts 63 per cent of the Muslim population. In Southeast Asia alone, 63 groups pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and they are resistant to government action.

With its continuous recruitment both in the real and virtual spaces, IS will be able to sustain itself drawing support from thousands of supporters and sympathisers to mount sporadic bombing, assassinations, ambushes and other forms of hit-and-run attacks.

The threat in Southeast Asia is an extension of the developments in South Asia and the Middle East. The siege of Marawi in the Philippines demonstrated how unprepared the region was to the rising threat of IS. Although Marawi was initially identified as an intelligence failure, stronger leadership and operational capabilities could have helped to recognise and appreciate the threat of IS in Southeast Asia.

ASEAN’s Response

Since the advent of IS, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have suffered from terrorism. Plots to attack Singapore have been thwarted. With the relocation and return of foreign fighters and the flow of propaganda, funds and technology, the scale, magnitude and complexity of the terrorist threat in the region continue to grow and deepen.

Countries in the region recognise the need for stronger cooperation in counter-terrorism. It is commendable that several regional counter-terrorism initiatives have been proposed, such as the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement in the Sulu Sea by Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines; and Indonesia’s Our Eyes initiative to improve information-sharing for counter-terrorism in the region.

To help optimise resources and increase the region’s collective counter-terrorism capabilities, Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen proposed a 3R (Resilience, Response and Recovery) framework to guide regional efforts and cover the full range of actions that countries can take.

Resilience, Response and Recovery

The 3Rs will build up the region’s resilience to deter and prevent terrorist attacks, such as through information-sharing initiatives and countering extremist narratives; to enhance ASEAN’s responses to address terrorism through capacity-building and operational initiatives; and to recover from terrorist attacks and prevent the spread of radicalisation in areas significantly affected by terrorism, such as Marawi, a city besieged by IS for six months.

The threats will include not only those from conventional terrorism but also niche chemical, biological and radiological threats by terrorist groups and rogue states.

It is thus useful that Singapore, as ADMM chair this year, proposed concrete initiatives — the establishment of a virtual ASEAN network of chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) defence experts, and an information-sharing workshop among ASEAN armies this year. The CBR network will improve the region’s ability to respond to such threats and help CBR defence experts to build up ways to share information and best practices and establish quick contact in crises.

Unless the guardians of security in the region move from counter-terrorism cooperation to collaboration, the threat of ideological extremism and its operational manifestations — insurgency and terrorism — will persist. Given these developments, the meetings in Singapore among the defence, intelligence and operations chiefs of the armed forces of Southeast Asia are an opportunity for them to reaffirm the ASEAN militaries’ role and commitment to strengthening practical cooperation on counter-terrorism, and cannot be more timely.

*Rohan Gunaratna is head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research and professor of security studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A version of this appeared in The Straits Times.

In the brutal 2014 World War II (WII) movie “Fury,” a soldier definitively states, “Ideals are peaceful. History is violent.” That’s what the entire world and particularly Southeast Asia should be asking themselves about China’s ascendant rise. Are they peaceful, violent or somewhere in between? The evidence suggests more violence than peaceful coexistence if the global community doesn’t allow unfettered Chinese ambition.

The maritime disputes that China has with Japan in the East China Sea and in the hydrocarbon-rich and multi-trillion dollar trade route in the South China Sea with Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines caused Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the United States (US) Pacific Command to say during the New Delhi Raisina Dialogue in mid-January, “I believe the reality is that China is a disruptive transitional force in the Indo-Pacific. They are the owners of a trust deficit.”

With Navy Chiefs from India, Japan, and Australia who compose the four-nation realist balancing structure against China known as the “Quad,” while also supporting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Admiral Harris’ statements were significant, and could be one of the chief reasons President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese products. Moreover, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative has “satellite imagery,” detailing Beijing’s, “long-term strategy employing coercion and military force to establish dominance over the South China Sea.”

China’s actions undermine the claim it wants an equitable and fair resolution to these land-grab and intimidation quarrels in their oceanic influence. And while there is military dialogue between China, the Quad and ASEAN in these maritime disputes the political dialogue is lacking, thereby ratcheting up tensions and potential for war-like escalations. But does that need to be the case when China has said, “that it has no hostile intent, that its military (PLA) is for defensive missions, and that defense spending is transparent.”

The PLA, which is the world’s largest military, recently asserted it needs double-digit budgetary increases, “to deal with increased global uncertainty.” The Chinese military-industrial-establishment has also “flexed its muscles domestically,” against President Xi because they believe Trump’s threats of force against their proxy, North Korea, attempts at self-rule by Taiwan and continued border disputes with India over the Himalayan region of Ladakh and Bhutan’s Doklam plateau, which borders India and China are threats against Chinese growth.

India’s troubles with China are particularly disturbing since over two billion people are involved when combining the two country’s citizenry. China’s presence on the plateau caused Prime Minister Modi to send troops in a confrontational stance against the PLA in 2017. These probes have rattled Modi’s government in India and caused him to refuse endorsement of Beijing’s ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI): “a sprawling plan aimed at connecting China with much of Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

This ambitious though troubling initiative takes on deep geopolitical significance over the release of a new study by the Center for Global Development that found elevated debt risks over the BRI linked to Chinese predatory lending practices:

“For the 68 countries identified as potential borrowers in the BRI, 23 were found to be already at ‘quite high,’ risk of debt distress and nine countries, particularly Pakistan, Djibouti, Laos, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Montenegro, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have problems servicing their debt.”

This “backlash,” across the region against the BRI over China creating indentured nation-state servants adds further distrust to Chinese intentions when taking into account the PLA’s “saber-rattling,” through increased military drills. Vietnam is showing its displeasure with Beijing by a growing military relationship with the US when it allowed the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier in early March to dock in Da Nang. Even peaceful Australia finds itself pushing back against China when Australian media reports uncovered:

“A hidden world of Chinese inducements, threats and plausible deniability that sits between the poles of economic attraction and military force where soft power gives way to more precise concerns about covert interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

This new, “Life in China’s Asia,” should cause capitals from Washington to Tokyo all the way to the EU grave concern. Sure, the US is still the dominant power in Asia, but China is rapidly closing that gap. A Chinese regional hegemonic march could be derailed by domestic or economic concerns, however, China will “supplant the United States as the region’s economic, military and political hegemon,” soon according to the book, Unrestricted Warfare by PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui; upending seventy years of liberal, peaceful security and coexistence since the end of WWII. Then the US, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and all of Asia will need to ask difficult questions about security cooperation, free-trade zones and do they accept Chinese dominance the way they have Washington’s since the late 1940s?

According to Chinese analysts now that Xi has cast aside Presidential term limits by saying, “he could rule for the foreseeable future,” a new era of China returning to “strongman rule,” where power is grabbed, and “ideological ambitions,” are on full display, means authoritarianism will be exported by China. Possibilities of a new Cold War between the US and China while Xi takes on Mao-like status has enabled his ability to govern without restraint, promote Communist party ideals like never before and truly give the world an autocratic form of government as a viable substitute to US leadership. Now that Xi and the party are seemingly above the law, state-owned enterprises and private companies that all have “communist cells,” imbedded in their endeavors are now above legal and regulatory oversight and only answer to the President. If the BRI is any indication of Chinese leadership under Xi then the consequences of him being ruler for life are chilling for Asia, the US and world security. Xi’s biggest priority seems to be legitimizing his authority for life and placing the party above all aspect of China, the Indo-Pacific areas and possibly the world.

But is this all the west’s fault for decades of hapless economic giveaway policies to China, and believing China like Russia and Iran before them will take on western Judeo-Christian standards of human rights while evolving into a “benign regional hegemon?” Yes it is. While the CCP has to restrain the PLA and global hegemonic appetites in the name of economic growth dependent on trade, that doesn’t mean Beijing will embark on peaceful relations with their neighbors – recent examples backing up this claim – are Iran’s land grabs in Iraq, Syria and Yemen; and Russian annexations in Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia.

However, Xi stated China, “never engaged in colonialism or aggressions thanks to its ‘peace-loving cultural tradition.’” Typically the way regional and aspiring global hegemons behave is they wield economic power for dominating purposes, build large militaries, confront near and far rivals and use institutions to broaden their scope of influence. That describes Xi’s China at this time.

Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, “Strategic deterrence had been lost due to the prior US administration allowing unchecked Chinese ascendance and a comatose approach to North Korea.” Fantasies over China integrating into the world community the way Germany, Japan, Italy and South Korea did all happened because of heavy US and allied military presence and economic pressure. Otherwise those countries faced being annihilated by the Soviet Union and North Korean regimes.

Massive US Defense Department cuts for over five years and NATO’s unwillingness to approach 2% of GDP spending threshold have allowed China’s rise. “Strategic patience,” didn’t work, though forcefully attempted, and the fatal delusions of western nations for over a decade now have to ask this all-encompassing question: what is the greatest threat to world and American security today? China, Russia, North Korea, Islamist extremism or South American and African failed-states? No one is certain, but the years ahead will need vigilance and policies for challenging, “an ideologically driven Chinese government.”

*Todd Royal, M.P.P. is the Managing Partner for Energy development, Oil & Gas, and Renewables for Ascendance Strategies, a global threat assessment and political consulting firm that is based in Los Angeles, California

Nine months into the GCC Crisis that started in June of last year, the blockade on Qatar is still ongoing. It began when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed an air, land, and sea embargo on Qatar closing their borders.

The blockading countries accused Qatar of supporting terrorism, which Doha denies. Kuwait has been trying to mediate the crisis, but with little success. It recently pushed towards a new avenue for negotiations with support from the United States and the European Union.

U.S President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with leaders from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar over the next two months, and he hopes to organize a GCC Summit to resolve the crisis. Even though this particular crisis came into being nine months ago, the quadrant has been conspiring against Qatar for over two decades going back to the 1996 crisis that infiltrated a coup that called for regime change in Qatar.

The two episodes of 1996 and 2017 have clearly shown that they were not about cracking down on terrorism because it wasn’t until the late 1990’s, early 2000’s that we started to hear about the terrorism terminology more often than in the past. Both episodes were about 1) undermining Qatar’s sovereignty, 2) securing the wealth and resources of the country, 3) the geopolitical map of the Middle East, and 4) distracting the people of these countries to achieve political agendas.

It is ironic that both the 1996 crisis and the 2017 crisis involved the same key players that drove a political crisis against Qatar. What we see right now are the same people having a problem with the direction Qatar is going with policy reforms in the country such as diversifying the economy, challenging authoritarian conservatism, promoting civil liberties, and framing pluralist government. This disrupted the flow of where the Gulf was going, and it undermined the authoritarianism in the region.

For the Saudis, this crisis was more about silencing a country that could become antagonistic in terms of foreign and security policy, rather than on supporting terrorism. For the Emiratis, they wanted to silence a competitor since both Qatar and the UAE are small nations, and Bahrain is in this group as well, so they also went along with the Saudis and the Emiratis.

From the Emirati/Saudi point of view, the Arab Spring was one of the key events that worsened the political and social dynamics in the region. In the 1990’s, Qatar was a nuisance that had plenty of wealth, and now it is a small nation punching above its weight.

Qatar was also a nation that had regional influence to determine the outcomes of the Arab Spring in order to promote and support the people that were demonstrating for change against repressive governments.

Now, it seems like Qatar is more influential in regional policy than it had anticipated, and it had also successfully undermined the security narrative that the Saudis and the Emiratis were trying to propagate, which was a narrative of authoritarian stability in the region.

Meanwhile, Qatar may say that stability is not solely about authoritarianism, but it is also about empowering the people to bid for a government that can be pluralistic to meet their needs, and many of the quadrant players are very afraid of this.

The countries in the GCC have no other choice than to get along so then they can negotiate some type of diplomatic settlement out of this crisis. If the crisis continues, it will have devastating impacts on the four blockading countries and Qatar.

At some point, all the players need to come to the realization that they need to negotiate, sit down, and work things out for the GCC as a whole. However, the question of when and how they do this remains to be seen.

The ways in which the blockading countries are behaving gives an impression that they do not want to see a resolution anytime soon, unless there is an external force like the United States that could push the quadrant countries and Qatar to come to the table so then they can put their differences aside. However, if this does not happen, the GCC crisis will continue for a long time.

The Qataris are betting on two solutions to the crisis. First, is the initiative led by Kuwait that has done well by addressing the need for all sides to mediate, but Kuwait has been snubbed by the Saudis and the Emiratis.

The second bet is the initiative of U.S involvement in resolving the crisis. President Trump suggested to the Qataris that the United States would step up its involvement through strategic talks between the U.S and Qatar, as well as bringing the other GCC countries together individually.

Trump will be meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman very soon, after that with UAE leader Mohammad bin Zayed, and lastly with Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to discuss potential avenues for a way out of this crisis once and for all.

For a long time, the relationship between the United States and the GCC has been a relationship of dependence, and it is difficult to see how the U.S could still have leverage to pressure a partner like Saudi Arabia or the UAE to buy into a diplomatic policy if they are not willing to do so.

The narratives coming out of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi suggests that they are not willing to talk anytime soon, and they are also not willing to make concessions that will continue to enhance the status quo in the region.

Creating narratives about supporting terrorism or establishing cordial relations with Iran to accuse Qatar of something is not the right direction to end the GCC Crisis, a dispute that goes back decades.

The 2017 crisis was never meant to allow Qatar to abide by the thirteen demands from the quadrant countries because there was nothing Qatar could do. The Gulf countries have so much in common from membership in the GCC to the Arab League, but for some reason, cannot settle their differences through dialogue and negotiations.

If the crisis continues, the GCC as a bloc for regional stability could disintegrate in the future. Instead, the GCC has turned into a talking shop where leaders don’t participate and countries end up going in different ways to pursue their own agendas. A bilateral alliance between the Emiratis and the Saudis could very well bring the GCC to its knees, and now the region is divided between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries that will continue to loom over the Gulf for years to come.

In Pakistan’s context, the national security establishment originally meant civil-military bureaucracy. Though over the years, civil bureaucracy has taken a backseat and now “the establishment” is defined as military’s top brass that has dictated Pakistan’s security and defense policy since its inception.

Paradoxically, security establishments do not have ideologies, they simply have interests. For instance, the General Ayub-led administration in the sixties was regarded as a liberal establishment. Then, the General Zia-led administration during the eighties was manifestly a conservative Islamist establishment. And lastly, the General Musharraf-led administration from 1999 to 2008 was once again deemed a liberal establishment.

Similarly, the Egyptian and Turkish military establishments also have a liberal outlook but they are equally capable of forming alliances with conservatives if and when it suits their institutional interests. In fact, since military’s top brass is mostly groomed in urban milieus, therefore its high-ranking officers are more likely to have liberal temperaments.

The establishment does not judge on the basis of ideology, it simply looks for weakness. If a liberal political party is unassailable in a political system, it will join forces with conservatives; and if conservatives cannot be beaten in a system, it will form an alliance with liberals to perpetuate the stranglehold of “the deep state” on policymaking organs of state.

The biggest threat to nascent democracies all over the world does not come from external enemies but from their internal enemies, the national security establishments, because military generals always have a chauvinistic mindset and an undemocratic temperament. An additional aggravating factor that increases the likelihood of military coups in developing democracies is that they lack firm traditions of democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism which act as bars against martial laws.

For the last several years, two very similar insurgencies have simultaneously been going on in Pakistan: the Baloch insurgency in the Balochistan province and the insurgency of the Pashtun tribesmen in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering the American-occupied Afghanistan.

The Pakistani neoliberals fully sympathize with the oppressed Baloch nationalists, but when it comes to the Pashtun tribesmen, they are willing to give the security establishment a license to kill, why? It’s only because the tribal Pashtun insurgents use the veneer of religion to justify their tribal instinct of retribution.

The name Islam, however, is such an anathema to core neoliberal sensibilities that they don’t even bother to delve deeper into the causes of insurgency and summarily decide that since the Pashtun tribesmen are using the odious label of the Taliban, therefore they are not worthy of their sympathies, and as a result, the security establishment gets a carte blanche to indiscriminately bomb the towns and villages of Pashtun tribesmen using air-force and heavy artillery.

The Pashtuns are the most unfortunate nation on the planet nowadays because nobody understands and represents them; not even their own leadership, whether religious or ethnic. In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are represented by the Western stooges, like Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani; and in Pakistan, the Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) loves to play the victim card and finds solace in learned helplessness.

In Pakistan, however, the Pashtuns are no longer represented by a single political entity, a fact which has become obvious after the 2013 parliamentary elections in which the Pashtun nationalist ANP was wiped out of its former strongholds.

Now, there are at least three distinct categories of Pashtuns: first, the Pashtun nationalists who follow Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s legacy and have their strongholds in Charsadda and Mardan districts; second, the religiously inclined Pashtuns who vote for Islamist political parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-F in the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and finally, the emerging new phenomena, the Pakistani nationalist Pashtuns, most of whom have joined Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in recent years, though some of have also joined Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League.

It would be pertinent to mention here that the general elections of 2013 were contested on a single major issue: Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and has displaced millions of Pashtun tribesmen who have been rotting in refugee camps in Mardan, Peshawar and Bannu districts since the Swat and South Waziristan military operations in 2009.

The Pashtun nationalist ANP was routed because in keeping with its supposedly “liberal” ideology, it stood for military operations against Islamist Pashtun militants in tribal areas; and the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province gave a sweeping mandate to the newcomer in the Pakistani political landscape: Imran Khan and his PTI because the latter promised to deal with tribal militants through negotiations and political settlements.

Though Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif both have failed to keep their election pledge of using peaceful means for dealing with the menace of religious extremism and militancy after they endorsed another military operation in North Waziristan in 2014, the public sentiment was, and still is, firmly against military operations in the Pashtun tribal areas.

The 2013 parliamentary elections were, in a way, a referendum against Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror in the Af-Pak region and the Pashtun electorate gave a sweeping mandate to pro-peace political parties against the pro-war Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pashtun nationalist ANP.

As I mentioned earlier that security establishment does not have an ideology, it simply has interests. If a liberal political party is unassailable in a political system, it will join forces with conservatives; and if conservatives cannot be beaten in a system, it will strike an alliance with liberals to weaken civilian political forces and maintain its grip on its traditional domain, the security and defense policy of a country.

All political parties in Pakistan at some point in time in history were groomed by the security establishment. The founder of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was groomed by General Ayub’s establishment as a counterweight to Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League during the sixties.

Nawaz Sharif was nurtured by General Zia’s administration during the eighties to offset the influence of People’s Party. And then, Imran Khan was groomed by General Musharraf’s establishment to counterbalance the ascendancy of Nawaz Sharif.

In order to obtain permission for the North Waziristan military operation in 2014, the security establishment executed its divide and rule strategy to perfection by instigating Imran Khan to stage street demonstrations and mass protests and Nawaz Sharif’s government was eventually subdued to an extent that it once again ceded Pakistan’s defense and security policy to the establishment.

The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, banned from being publicly even mentioned, in The West. So: since that event is necessarily mentioned in this article, and is even linked-to here, so that the reader can see videos of it that were posted of it online while it was happening, and there is even “smoking gun” evidence showing government officials actually planning it, and covering it up, and blatantly lying about what they had done, this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban. As a consequence, probably none of the hundreds of major news-media in The West that this news-report is being submitted to for publication, will publish it. But perhaps a half-dozen of the small ones will publish it. After all: a few small news-media cannot have much impact. The government and media don’t need to fool everyone in order to succeed, but only to fool the vast majority of people. (However, maybe now they don’t any longer even need to continue worrying about public opinion, at all. So: maybe they no longer need to continue such bans. But they do continue them, perhaps simply out of institutionalized bad habit.)

Wherever you’re so fortunate as to be reading this: here is the reason why the market for luxurious deep-underground nuclear-resistant bunkers has so suddenly blossomed:

In February 2014, an extremely violent, and US-engineered but ‘democracy’-masked, coup in Ukraine on Russia’s very doorstep, was successfully culminated by its overthrowing Ukraine’s neutralist and democratically elected leader, and then by its installing there a rabidly anti-Russian government, out for Russian blood, just like Hitler had been, and, in fact, strongly inspired by him, in many ways, including an ethnic-cleansing campaign. Within less than a month, Russia responded to that coup by accepting the still predominantly Russian Crimea back into Russia. (Crimea had been part of Russia until the Soviet dictator had arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine in 1954.) For Russia’s having done that, US President Barack Obama (and America’s foreign vassals) slapped economic sanctions against Russia and mobilized NATO troops and weaponry onto and near Russia’s borders — as if they wanted to out-do 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, which they are doing, but in reverse direction (against not America, but, this time, against Russia).

Ever since that singular 2014 event — that coup (which destroyed Ukraine) — the hottest market amongst the super-rich has been nuclear-resistant bunkers deep underground: such as here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

I think that the three best of these articles about luxury nuclear bunkers, are this (with the best pictures of one of these facilities) and this (with the best commentary about the entire phenomenon), and this, which discusses the increasing number of builders of these facilities. Some billionaires, however, are instead moving to New Zealand.

So: ever since 2014, private planning to survive a nuclear war is the most booming field amongst the super-rich. This is a real-estate market that no ordinary person could afford to buy into. These people are either principals themselves in the aristocracy, or else prime agents for them and thus likewise extremely wealthy and already well on their own personal ways to entering the aristocracy — the aristocracy of extreme wealth. They’re thus all well-connected; they’ve got the best contacts and sources inside governments. And, since 2014, they are rushing to prepare: to prepare for a nuclear war.

If these people aren’t well-informed about the global situation, then no one is. And they’re investing accordingly. Lots of people invest in stocks, bonds, gold, etc, but only the richest few can afford to invest in nuclear-resistant bunkers, and that’s where the boom nowadays especially is, amongst only the super-rich. (We’re not talking here about high government-officials; they’ve got their Spartan nuclear bunkers long-since paid for by US taxpayers; but these are all just private and extremely wealthy individuals.) Maybe their attitude is: if you’ve got three-or-more homes, then at least one of them should be designed for the post-WW-III world and near enough to your main home so that maybe you can reach it before any missiles will be flying.

A nuclear war between US and Russia would be over within less than 30 minutes, start-to-finish; so, there won’t be any time to plan if the nuclear phase of the NATO-v.-Russia (plus, maybe China) war appears to be imminent — waiting that long in order to depart for one’s private bomb-shelter would already be too late. A quick ‘vacation’ to the secret location would thus necessarily be of the unplanned sort, which means that the system by which the owner will reach the spot, needs to be operational 24 hours every day, and needs to be maintained continuously, until — if and when — the nuclear exchange starts. Therefore, these facilities have airports and helicopter-access, and are continuously staffed, so that the richest people in the US and its allied countries, can arrive there at any moment’s notice and receive the full range of services that they are accustomed to.

Any of these billionaires and centi-millionaires could have chosen instead to establish (either alone or in combination with one-another) the first foundation or other propaganda-operation to publicize the fraudulence of the US-and-allied case for sanctions against Russia, and the fraudulence of NATO’s continuing assertions after 1991 that it’s a ‘defensive’ military alliance (it’s no longer that, at all), and the fact (contrasted against that fraud) of NATO’s being nowadays purely an alliance for aggression against Russia and China, as if the Cold War had never ended (and it never really did end except on the Russian and Chinese side, which now recognize that the US and its allies had lied in 1990); so, all of these billionaires rather buy private nuclear-bomb shelters, than establish a foundation to expose to the public the US side’s apocalyptic lies, which actually cause the danger that’s heading to destroy the entire world.

America’s own leading scientists on strategic weaponry have recently (on 1 March 2017) documented that the US nuclear-weapons-modernization program against both Russia and China is “planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” Obviously, only the most-insiders of insiders will know in advance about this “surprise first strike.” (Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a surprise, and the advantage of being the first to attack will be gone.) However, nuclear-proof bunker-space is presumably so limited so that the people who are buying these few spots will be amongst those few. (Of course, high federal officials will be taken care of elsewhere.)

Ever since at least 2006, America’s Establishment — its billionaires and their agents — have been virtually unanimously and actively supporting the abandonment of the “Mutually Assured Destruction” concept that had long dominated nuclear thinking on both sides (not only on the Soviet and continuing under the Russian side, but also on that of America and its NATO military alliance) and have been replacing that paradigm, the “M.A.D.” paradigm (which has staved off WW III ever since 1945). They replaced it by the US-NATO paradigm (ever since at least 2006) of “Nuclear Primacy,” in which The West’s nuclear weapons are to be used not to stave off WW III, but instead so as to achieve ‘victory’ in an actual US-v.-Russia nuclear war. Ever since 2014, US-and-allied military moves cannot be coherently explained on any other basis than that the US and NATO are planning a blitz nuclear attack against at least Russia — and perhaps also against China.

Clearly, whoever are buying these luxury-pads for the post-apocalypse, are hoping for a NATO ‘victory’ in WW III, and are certainly not favorably inclined to preventing that armageddon, which they know is based on lies (unless they’re too stupid to be able to distinguish between their own propaganda versus the actual historical reality, which is documented in the links here, which links show that any decent billionaire in The West would instead be publicly exposing the horrific fraud that’s perpetrated by all of themselves, not trying to protect themselves from that fraud’s immediate global consequences).

Unfortunately, these people are the ultimate “conformists.” It’s clear by their 100% unity on this. They’ve become so gated-community, one-way-glassed, that they’ve no concern remaining (if they ever did) for the billions of people (not to mention entire planet) that they’re placing into the severest form of danger: global annihilation. Instead, their only concern (quite evidently) is to be ‘winners’. (Like I had said at that last link: “In military parlance, the side that suffers the less harm is the ‘winner’, regardless of any other factor. That’s the basic reality of military strategy: it’s inevitably win-lose, not win-win.” However, M.A.D. was the first-ever exception to that strategic principle; and, now, it’s gone — as of 2006 in US, and by now also in Russia (if not also in China). M.A.D. is gone; it’s been replaced by a real insanity, which is clearly psychopathic and clearly pervasive amongst the super-rich: “Nuclear Primacy”.

The psychological reality that had long staved off a WW III is completely gone. And the people who have caused it to end are now buying all these nuclear bunkers for themselves.

In a rare exception to the unanimity of the US aristocracy’s voices regarding what’s behind this change (which cause is the stifling nazi or racist-fascist ideology at the top in America), the capitol-hill newspaper, The Hill, allowed to be published on 9 November 2017, an article — even with numerous links to high-quality sources — titled “The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda”. An indication of just how extraordinarily thorough the takeover of the US Government by nazis has become, is that both under President Barack Obama and under President Donald Trump, the US has been among the only 3 countries (in Obama’s case) and the only two countries (in Trump’s) that officially stood up at the United Nations in support of nazism, even of its Holocaust-denial. On both occasions, Ukraine joined with the US on that vote. On one occasion, Canada also did (thus being the third). This scandal was virtually entirely ignored in the Western ‘news’ media.

This is the world we are living in today. How many ‘news’ media are reporting this reality? How many have reported it? Just one billionaire standing out from the pack, so as to reach the masses with these truths, could make a whole world of difference. But, instead, perhaps they’re all just buying nuclear bunkers, so as to be amongst the few ‘winners’, in a war on behalf of the global regime that represents, actually, only themselves.

This is the catastrophe of our times.

*Eric Zuesse, investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010

First published at strategic-culture.org

CNN has aired its first installment of CNN’s six-part series, “Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History.” Its treatment of the rise of the papacy through the centuries was mostly even-handed—until it got to the Crusades.

To be sure, the show featured some cogent observations from St. Louis University professor Thomas Madden. He pointed out that “the Crusades were, first and foremost, an act of piety,” undertaken to stop Islamic invaders who were violently attacking nuns, clergy, and pilgrims; the Christians also sought to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from its Muslim conquerors.

But Madden’s observations were drowned out by the overriding theme of this segment: that the Crusades were little more than a power grab by Pope Urban II.

We are told that Pope Urban II saw the Crusades as “an opportunity to reunite Christians and restore the reign of the Roman Catholic Church”; that he “called for violence in the name of one world under one Catholic Church”; that the Crusades, while “partly motivated by religious zeal,” were also “partly motivated by a simple desire for conquest”; and that as a result, Pope Francis “is today trying to heal wounds his predecessor inflicted almost a thousand years ago.”

Such assertions are nothing new. Princeton’s Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s most noted historians, has written, “At the present time, the Crusades are often depicted as an early experiment in expansionist imperialism.” Yet, “To the people of the time, both Muslim and Christian, they were no such thing.”

Rather, Lewis explains, “The Crusade was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war—to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”

Just as important, as Madden has pointed out many times before, “All the Crusades met all the criteria of a just war.” But one would never know this by watching this episode on CNN. There is no question that the uninformed viewer was presented with a jaundiced view of the Crusades.

Reducing our bet on fossil fuels requires a long time. A rapid transformation of the existing energy systems and infrastructure is a slow process too. However, we are not utilizing the natural climate solutions, already available if we want to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Our lands provide an untapped opportunity – both storing carbon and reducing carbon emissions. Our forests, grasslands, and wetlands are the key to natural climate solutions, can help address climate change in three ways: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, capturing and storing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and improving the resilience of ecosystems.

But, we found continuing imbalance in investment in nature-based solutions despite being cost-effective. Still, a quarter of the world’s governments hasn’t prioritized natural climate solutions to address climate change. The UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change reports that, by 2030, up to a third of its annual land-based emissions reductions targets could be achieved at a cost of $20 or less per carbon tons. While the transition to low carbon energy will take decades, natural climate solutions could provide a biological bridge to a low-carbon future in the near-term.

Justin Adams, in a new study produced by the Nature Conservancy, has addressed the most promising ways to mitigate climate change are what we call “natural climate solutions”: the conservation, restoration, and improved management of land, in order to increase carbon storage in landscapes worldwide.

Along with 15 other leading institutions, this study has prioritized the protection of “frontier forests” – that serve as natural carbon sinks. The preservation of frontier habitats also helps regulate water flows, reduces the risk of flooding, and maintains biodiversity. Secondly, it also emphasized on the reforestation, as an estimated 4.9 billion acres of land has been deforested or degraded globally. According to their study, it has estimated, the world could capture three gigatons of CO2 annually. Thirdly, it has highlighted the agricultural reform, as the food sector is a major contributor to climate change through direct and indirect emissions, and by its often-negative effects on soil health and deforestation.

Reforestation is the single largest nature-based climate mitigation opportunity we have. In addition, reforestation provides cleaner water, cleaner air, flood control, and more fertile soils, not to mention wood products and tree crops.

The coastal wetlands are also key, also known as ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems. Many coastal wetlands have converted to agriculture, aquaculture or urban development in different corners of the world. In Southeast Asia, meanwhile, where mangrove forests are converted for aquaculture, palm oil production, and rice farms. Our coastal wetlands are possible to conversion in new form keeping the natural biodiversity, as we are already blessed with the largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.

We know, in Bangladesh, an estimated 35 million people of 19 coastal districts are vulnerable to climate change, may result in over 25 million climate refugees due to global warming by 2050. In this backdrop, this country has adopted few natural climate solutions like reforestation projects to protect coastal wetlands.

Already, in 2009, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has introduced ‘Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change through Coastal Afforestation (CBACC)’ in coastal areas of Bangladesh. This programme is an example of drawing together climate change adaptation and economic development through 9,000 ha. of mangrove afforestation.

Later, in 2016, UNDP has initiated ‘Integrating Community-based Adaptation into Afforestation and Reforestation (ICBA-AR) Programmes to reduce the vulnerability of communities to the adverse impacts of climate change. With the help of Bangladesh Forest Department, this project aims to reforest 650 ha. of degraded mangroves with 12 different species to enhance the resilience of mangrove through diversification.

To make the natural climate solutions successful, these programmes have adopted of Fish-Fruit-Forest (FFF) model to climate risk in the coastal area, which is now providing agricultural, fisheries, livestock and innovative livelihood support to poor communities.

It also engaged local communities in coastal forest management and sharing forest benefits among others. Around 10,500 poor local households are projected to be benefitted from the project. In 2017 the project has reached 2,310 households of which round 44% beneficiaries are female.

About the author:
*Zulker Naeen is a communication graduate from University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), is a freelance journalist at Climate Tracker. naeenzulker@gmail.com

References:
Adams, J. (2017). Natural Solutions to Climate Change. Dhaka: Green Watch Dhaka.
The Nature Conservancy. (2018). Nature’s Sleeping Giant. Arlington: The Nature Conservancy.
UNDP Bangladesh. (2017). Community-based Adaptation to Fight Climate Change For Coastal Communities. Dhaka: UNDP Bangladesh.

By Zachary Gross*

(FPRI) — On March 18, Russia will hold its presidential election. The outcome is not in doubt: current President Vladimir Putin will be elected to a fourth term. Opposition candidates readily admit as much: one of Putin’s putative rivals in the contest, Ksenia Sobchak, said, “I’m quite realistic: [In a] casino, [the] casino always wins. In Russian elections, Putin always wins.” Though the Central Election Commission has approved seven other candidates to run, it barred Alexei Navalny, the only candidate seen as a genuine threat to the Kremlin, from campaigning. This primer does not include Putin’s platform, but rather highlights the positions of the candidates opposing him.

Despite the election being a “casino” with the odds stacked in favor of the house, there is still much to learn from studying the candidates opposing Putin in the election. Their platforms reflect vastly different visions of what Russia could be, ranging from a heavily centralized, Communist state to a Western-style democracy to an even more nationalist and conservative version of the current government. Furthermore, at least one candidate is already angling for a position in the post-election Putin government, suggesting that, in some cases, one may be able to get a preview of future Russian government policy by studying opposition platforms.

Above all, interpreting the candidates the Kremlin has fielded to run against Putin means interpreting an important signal from Putin himself, one intended for both the Russian people and onlookers abroad. The spectrum of ideas represented by the candidates delineates what Putin considers acceptable to have a public debate over (or at the very least, to give federal television airtime to) and what he does not. Thus, the platforms of the candidates contained in this primer should be taken seriously, but not literally. They offer a window into the political system the Kremlin wants people to believe exists in Russia; one that gives off the air of dissent, but in fact suppresses the issues the Kremlin feels truly vulnerable about.

There have not been any credible, recent, independent polls to gauge each candidate’s support. The Levada Center, Russia’s largest independent polling outfit, has refrained from publishing any politically relevant polling after the government labeled it as a “foreign agent.” Thus, to provide a sense of the relative popularity of each candidate, this primer relies on a state-backed polling firm, which obviously does not have the same incentive to provide unbiased results that Levada does.

Communist Candidate Pavel Grudinin

Pavel Grudinin is a candidate for the Communist Party in the 2018 election. The director of a farm that sends produce to Moscow, Grudinin was a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party when it formed in 2001. Grudinin’s selection as an election candidate came as a surprise because he was selected in December instead of veteran party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Broadly, the Financial Times described his platform as a mix of “classic Communist party demands . . . with calls to improve the business climate.” Opinion polling has found Grudinin to be the most popular non-Putin candidate as of mid-January 2018. One poll from a government-funded polling organization, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, found Grudinin had support from 7.2% of voters, ahead of all other non-Putin candidates included in the poll. Alexei Navalny was not included in the survey.

Grudinin’s platform places a heavy emphasis on nationalization as a tool to fight the power of the oligarchs, calling for a government takeover of state industries like ethyl alcohol production. He also calls for significant reforms to Russian banking; he supports reducing interest rates on bank loans to small- and medium-sized businesses and the return of rubles held in foreign banks to “Russian sovereignty.” His broad economic vision sees Russia reducing foreign direct investment, withdrawing from the World Trade Organization and increasing the size of its manufacturing sector from 15% to 70% of its economy.

Grudinin also supports a large expansion of the Russian social safety net. He wants to guarantee free gas, electricity, water, and sewage to those living in rural areas, price controls for medicine, transportation, and housing, a minimum wage of at least 25,000 rubles, state-covered treatment of the seriously ill, and guaranteed jobs for new university students.

Grudinin’s platform also addresses military and political issues. He advocates increasing military readiness and the prestige of service and guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary from law enforcement through the direct election of judges. He also calls for an overhaul in how key government institutions are run: Grudinin wants the cabinet to be approved by parliament and the Central Bank and Accounting Chamber to adopt transparency reforms.

Thus far, Grudinin’s candidacy has sparked a significant amount of interest. YouTube videos promoting his candidacy have been viewed millions of times and his campaign has been profiled in major foreign press outlets like the Washington Post. According to Kommersant, Grudinin was featured 19 times on Russian federal TV broadcasts from December 23-26, slightly less than rivals Ksenia Sobchak and Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Grudinin’s candidacy has also attracted controversy. Russian election officials announced in early March that he had 13 undisclosed bank accounts in Switzerland, which would be a violation of Russian election law and reason enough to remove him from the race. Grudinin denies the claims, and some claim the investigative focus on him is a result of his relatively robust polling numbers.

Liberal Democratic Candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is a candidate for the Liberal Democrats, a far-right nationalist party, in the election. A veteran politician (and presidential candidate—this is his fifth time running), he has been a member of the State Duma since 1993. In the foreign press, he is best known for his xenophobic views and outlandish antics. Newsweek, for example, wrote that Zhirinovsky threatened to “shoot and hang lawmakers from [Putin’s] United Russia party,” in 2017 and the Washington Post listed him as one of five foreign political figures most similar to Donald Trump. He has been criticized by members of the opposition as being a pawn for Putin and is known for “rubberstamping Kremlin-backed legislation in Parliament.” A poll from the Kremlin-funded Russian Public Opinion Research Center gave him 4.7% support in mid-January.

Zhirinovsky’s platform is extremely nationalistic. He calls for “protecting the Russian language” and restoring “the former greatness of the Russian empire.” He states directly that “any revolution is evil,” that perestroika should be condemned, and that more old Soviet archives should be published. He also wants to “protect traditional values” and restore old, patriotic names for streets, squares, and cities.

Zhirinovsky also has a vague vision of substantial legal reforms. Specifically, he wants to reform the “entire Judiciary,” update parts of the Criminal Code to “humanize” it, and make it easier to organize rallies.

Zhirinovsky has an ambitious plan for foreign policy and security affairs. He wants the U.S. and EU to lift their sanctions against Russia and simplify their visa processes. He also wants to form alliances with Iran, Turkey, and Syria, reclaim former Russian territories, and protect Christians across the world.

Economically, he wants to nationalize the tobacco, sugar, and alcohol industries. He also wants to withdraw Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves from American securities, reduce the interest rate on loans and small business regulation, and review the impacts of privatization on the Russian economy.

Given Zhirinovsky’s long history of failed campaigns and his political alignment with Vladimir Putin, his campaign has not received much attention in Western media outlets. According to Kommersant, Zhirinovsky was featured on 16 news broadcasts on federal channels between December 23 and 26, behind fellow candidates Pavel Grudinin and Ksenia Sobchak.

Civil Initiative Candidate Ksenia Sobchak

Ksenia Sobchak is the Civil Initiative Party presidential candidate in the election. Before running, she was an anchor on the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd, became famous after serving as the anchor for the reality TV show Dom-2, and is known in Russia for being a socialite. Her candidacy has raised concern amongst opposition figures because, despite her anti-Kremlin platform, her family has close ties to Vladimir Putin. When her dad, Anatoly Sobchak, served as mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin served as his deputy, and her mother is currently a politician in the upper house of the Russian parliament. She has received by far the most coverage in foreign press of any officially sanctioned candidate running against Putin. She has been written about in the New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC, and even held a press conference in Washington, D.C. in February to drum up interest in her candidacy. A mid-January poll conducted by the Kremlin-funded Russian Public Opinion Research Center had her only at 1% support.

Sobchak’s platform is much more liberal (in the Western sense) than those of the other frontrunners. The first item of her party’s platform is that Russia should become a “European secular democratic federal state with a market economy that protects the rights and freedoms of citizens.” She also calls for dramatic expansion of freedom in Russian political life, calling for the abolition of “all laws or by-laws that somehow restrict the rights of people depending on their political or religious views, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, professional activity or place of residence”.

Sobchak’s political reforms would reshape the role of government in Russia. She calls for constitutional reform, as well as reforms and oversight for Russia’s powerful law enforcement and security agencies. She would also rebalance Russia’s separation of powers, giving parliament the ultimate authority to appoint key officials such as the governor of the central bank and foreign minister.

She also promises to reform the Russian judicial system. She wants to expand significantly the use of jury trials and liberalize the Russian criminal code to ensure suspects get access to timely and fair trials.

Sobchak also proposes a market-focused view of the economy. She states directly that the government “should not control, but regulate the economy” and that large monopolies and state-owned firms should be privatized to increase efficiency.

Finally, her foreign policy platform is based on her view that Russia is a fundamentally “European” country. She wants to reduce Russia’s diplomatic isolation and believes “the main threat to Russia’s national security lies . . . in Russia’s own technological backwardness.” Sobchak also promised to end Russian propaganda efforts and its support of “hybrid wars” such as the one in eastern Ukraine.

Overall, Sobchak has been received more as an oddity than a serious threat to Putin in Western media. While giving her credit for drawing attention to the cause of detained Chechen human rights activist Oyub Tetiev, the New Yorker, in an article representative of the many others that had been written about her candidacy, ultimately labeled her as a “curious” candidate working inside of Putin’s system, rather than as an outsider attempting to other throw it. Sobchak received 1% of the vote in a poll conducted by a state-funded firm in mid-January.

Russian United Democratic Candidate Grigory Yavlinsky

Grigory Yavlinsky is running for president as a candidate of the Russian United Democratic Party. An economist by training, he is best known for his 500 Days Program, a proposal right before the Soviet Union’s collapse to transform the Communist state into a market economy. He previously attempted to run in the 2012 presidential election, but was banned by the electoral commission after some signatures in support of his attempt to get on the ballet were deemed inauthentic. He is running on a platform of broadly liberal policies, such as withdrawing Russian troops from Syria and Ukraine and privatization-based economic reform. Yavlinsky’s candidacy has not attracted much attention in foreign press, but he did receive a profile in the Times of Israel, highlighting his Jewish faith and calling him the “main opposition challenger to Putin.”

Yavlinsky’s platform covers an array of topics relevant to Russian life, but its main focus is on economic and social reform. In his first 100 days in office, he says he would substantially reshape Russian commitments abroad, away from “inciting hatred . . . and war propaganda” against Ukraine and towards a normalization of relations with the U.S. and EU. Economically, he calls for a universal basic income funded from natural resource exports, unconditionally inviolable private property rights, and increased privatization of land resources.

Yavlinsky’s candidacy, like those of the other candidates running against Putin, is not seen as a threat to Putin’s rule. Radio Free Europe (RFE), for example, noted that Yavlinsky said in November 2017 that Putin had offered him the role of “point man” on Ukraine, which should be surprising given that both men have starkly different views on what Russia’s role in the conflict should be. RFE suggests that the move could be a signal to Russian liberals that Putin might embrace a post-election “thaw,” or it could suggest that there is some degree of quid pro quo guiding Yavlinsky’s campaign. Yavlinsky received 0.6% support in a mid-January poll from a Kremlin-funded polling firm.

Party of Growth Candidate Boris Titov

Boris Titov is running for president as the candidate of the Party of Growth. He currently serves as Russia’s “ombudsman for entrepreneurs’ rights,” a job he was appointed to by Vladimir Putin, and is the co-owner of a popular Russian champagne brand. He is known for being supportive of business interests and is running on a pro-growth platform developed by the Stolypin Club, a group of connected business people who have worked with the government to improve business conditions. Given his close ties to Putin, he is not seen as a serious contender for president. The Moscow Times speculated that his inclusion in the race could be because the Kremlin wants to boost “business voter” turnout in a bid to increase the elections’ legitimacy in the eyes of domestic Russians and the international community.

Titov’s platform is focused on improving Russian living standards. He calls for improving the quality of education, healthcare, and social security as well as boosting economic growth and creating an “intelligent and modern ‘state for man.’” Geopolitically, he calls for Russia to become Eurasia’s transport, infrastructure, and financial hub. He also says that economic development should be an explicit goal of Russian foreign policy.

Titov’s candidacy has not garnered much attention in foreign press. He made headlines in cryptocurrency-focused outlets after he spoke positively about the potential for integrating blockchain technology into the Russian economy. Other than that, however, coverage has been sparse and focused on his place at the fringes of Russian politics. Titov received 0.3% support in a mid-January poll by a Kremlin-funded firm.

Barred from Running: Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny is a Russian opposition activist who has been barred from running in the upcoming presidential election. Despite having amassed a reported 200,000 signatures and opening 81 campaign offices nationwide, he was ruled ineligible to run by the Russian election commission due to a suspended prison sentence that has been criticized as unsubstantiated. Navalny has a history of opposing the Kremlin: he has served three prison terms for protesting and was targeted last year in a chemical attack by a Putin supporter. Abroad, Navalny is seen as a figure who genuinely opposes the Kremlin: in December, the U.S. State Department criticized his ballot ineligibility. His campaign and subsequent legal obstacles has been a regular subject in the foreign press and has been commented on by the EU in addition to the U.S.

Navalny’s platform focuses on three key areas: the economy, corruption, and foreign policy. Economically, he wants to raise Russian living standards and reduce income inequality. To accomplish this goal, he suggests increasing the minimum wage to 25,000 rubles, reducing mortgage interest rates, de-monopolizing the construction market, and using revenue from state assets to fund the Russian pension system.

To tackle corruption, he proposes unconditionally ratifying the UN Convention Against Corruption, taking public control of state-owned firms and increasing transparency about their compensation schemes, creating a special, independent anti-corruption law enforcement unit, and recovering money stashed abroad that was acquired by corruption.

Navalny also proposes a dramatic shift in Russian foreign policy. In his words, his primary task would be “to reduce tensions in relations with the EU, the US and Ukraine.” He would redirect money spent to sustain Russia’s presence in Syria and Ukraine towards domestic projects, unconditionally fulfill Russia’s commitments to previously ratified international treaties, let Crimea independently decide its geopolitical status, and develop a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. He would also require labor migrants to have work visas.

Navalny’s candidacy has revealed much about his opposition. Putin has pointedly refused to mention him by name; during a press conference in December, he responded to a question about Navalny by referring to him as “those individuals you have mentioned.” Ksenia Sobchak, a candidate who has been running on a similarly liberal platform, has been surprisingly critical of Navalny. In January, she criticized Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s would-be campaign manager, after Navalny said Sobchak was “an unelectable ‘caricature liberal candidate’ whose candidacy the Kremlin is using to project the illusion of an open electoral process while simultaneously discrediting true opposition candidates.“

Because Navalny has been barred from running, there are no credible, recent polls on what his standing would be in the race.

About the author:
*Zachary Gross is a research intern in the Eurasia Program at FPRI and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania double majoring in Economics and International Relations

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

North Korea’s Kim relies on an old playbook with new concessions, luring Trump into a rushed, haphazard meeting.

By Shim Jae Hoon*

Kim Jong-un’s verbal statement expressing willingness to open denuclearization talks with the United States and Donald Trump’s surprising acceptance of the invitation to meet as soon as May suddenly eased fears of nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula. But this dramatic sequence of events, full of mystery and hope, carries elements of instability with the potential of derailing the negotiating process aimed at denuclearization of the peninsula. North Korea’s record of duplicity inspires little trust in this latest proposal, and Kim’s nuclear and missile capability has moved too far along to think that he might negotiate it away for a price. Given endless tensions emanating from the unpredictable regime for two decades, it’s inconceivable that Washington or Seoul would accept a partial settlement leaving North Korea’s nuclear arsenal frozen, if not defanged.

Kim’s statement follows the peaceful mood of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games and the US ignoring Kim’s bid for dialogue. So, Kim moved from supporting the China-endorsed “double-freeze” formula – a proposition under which he would suspend nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the US halting annual military exercises – to the US demand for outright denuclearization. His goal is in question, whether this is another trap for buying time or whether the nation is buckling under US-led global economic sanctions. Japanese officials suggest that increasingly effective sanctions, including marine interdiction operations against ship-to-ship oil transshipments involving Chinese vessels, have forced Kim to change his strategy.

Tightening sanctions on his puny economy is not the only factor. The Trump administration’s tough stance in which military options figure prominently, with the United States considering “preemptive” or “surgical strikes” at the North’s major targets, has sobered Kim. The United States has deployed numerous strategic assets such as aircraft carriers and nuclear-capable Stealth fighters capable of flying deep into the North’s territory. Trump’s threat to rain “fire and fury” on the regime may have had the desired effect of forcing Kim rethink his options. Many South Korean experts suggest that the North is highly sensitive to the kind of saber-rattling it uses for propaganda. The North fears an attack so much so that Kim has bolstered his personal security teams against a “decapitation” attempt. For a regime that devotes time to reading Washington tea leaves, the exodus of US diplomats opposing the use of force likely did not escape Kim’s attention.

Still, Kim’s proposal on denuclearization is long on propaganda and short on substance. Ambassador Chung Eui-yong, President Moon Jae In’s chief national security advisor who led a five-member delegation to Pyongyang, sat for four hours with Kim, taking notes but not engaging in probing conversation or raising hard questions on the 5-point proposal. Over dinner, Kim said he was willing to talk denuclearization with the United States, would suspend nuclear and missile tests while talks were underway, and would not mind – “understand” is the term he used – the United States and South Korea proceeding with scheduled military exercises as talks continued. Summing up the discussion, he repeated the standard propaganda line that “there is no reason for the North to maintain its nuclear arsenal if military threats against it were removed, and security of his regime guaranteed.” As US Vice President Mike Pence is said to have reacted, Washington is being shown the same old movie again.

In Seoul, independent analysts are dismayed that neither Chung nor others at the dinner probed Kim for details, such as whether he is ready to accept inspections of nuclear facilities. “The key issue is not declaration of intent,” and Chung left Kim off the hook, according to Korea University Professor Kim Sung Han, who has spent decades studying North Korea. The devil is in the details, and the North has a history of reneging on promises by rejecting inspection and verification. The US insists on a complete formula called CVID – Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization. From the 1992 inter-Korean Basic Treaty to the 1994 Agreed Framework and the 2005 Six Party Agreement, North Korea has broken every agreement on its denuclearization accords.

Surprisingly, neither Chung nor Suh Hoon, Seoul’s national intelligence chief, also at the dinner, asked for a formal, documented statement affirming Kim’s talking points. They jotted down his statements by hand in a notebook, the only record on which to base Kim’s remarks, leaving room for later repudiation. Nor, for that matter, was it clear if Trump’s agreement to meet rests on a formal invitation from Kim or whether it was relayed by Chung by word of mouth.

South Korea’s security was relegated to footnote status as Kim and the envoys spent most of the time talking about US–North Korean relations. Almost as sop to Seoul, Kim said he would meet with Moon in April at the Panmunjom armistice village, what would be his first face-to-face talk with a South Korean leader. Almost tongue in cheek, Kim said the North would refrain from attacking the South with “nuclear or conventional weapons,” a moot point given the US–South Korean alliance. No apology was made for the North Korean torpedo attack in 2000 that sank the South Korean Navy corvette with 46 men or a subsequent artillery barrage against Paengnyong Island killing civilian farmers.

For the moment, Kim appears set on resuming contacts with Seoul to fight the tightening economic sanctions expected to cost his regime up to 90 percent of its export earnings from coal, fish and textiles. China’s halfhearted participation makes resumption of ties with Seoul more pressing. With each missile launch costing tens of millions of dollars, the North is desperate for cash to buy parts and food. According to a Brookings Institution analysis, Kim is in dire straits after directing no fewer than 84 missile launches and four underground nuclear tests since 2012, with the last nuclear test thought to be a thermonuclear or hydrogen type of bomb.

Ironically, South Korea’s two decades of détente policy and aid programs worth US$10 billion, including a US$500 million bribe Kim Dae Jung paid Kim Jong-il for 2000 summit talks, have inadvertently helped fund the North’s nuclear program, according to some estimates. “South Korea virtually stopped the North’s collapse with its economic aid,” is the assessment by Hwang Jang Yop, a top North Korean party figure who escaped to Seoul in 1997.

Much about this rushed and haphazard meeting remains a mystery,. The North has not informed its 25 million people about the proposed summit, and many South Koreans worry about Trump pouncing on an ill-advised deal. Probably in response to such concerns, Suh Hoon said during a newspaper interview that Seoul will be in the driver’s seat on the summit process, but that questions like withdrawal of US troops from South Korea or proposed changes in the current alliance structure will not be the subject of concessions.

Kim may not accept such limits. For two decades, the North has not wavered from the idea that a nuclear arsenal constitutes its last pillar of survival with a nuclear state enshrined in its state constitution since 2012. Kim has taken to reminding top officials of the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi after giving up their nuclear programs. For North Korea, though, a nuclear arsenal is also “the chief instrument for attaining reunification of the peninsula under its terms,” says Yoon Dok Min, veteran head of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. In short, Kim cannot give up the nuclear program without risking his family’s role in a reunified Korea – a point Trump should consider in preparing to deal with Kim.

*Shim Jae Hoon is a journalist based in Seoul.       

By William Hongsong Wang*

News that the Chinese government was preparing to remove constitutional term limits on President Xi Jinping shocked most Chinese. Many worry that an unlimited term of office will lead to unlimited power and increased restrictions on individual liberty. Will President Xi become a Chinese version of Russia’s President Putin? Will Xi become another Mao Zedong-style dictator? Or is it even possible that Xi would proclaim himself emperor?

Due to internet censorship in China, people cannot express their opposition publicly so they still use insinuations and sarcasm to voice their opinions. Some of them even use the story of the failed monarchy restoration of the first President of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai, in 1916.

The restoration of the monarchy in late 1915 caused the republicans to start a war against Yuan Shikai. Yuan was forced to cancel plans for monarchy just thirty-three days after his initial declaration. Yuan died soon thereafter amidst shame and resentment. His death was followed by a chaotic warlord era in China (1916-1928). During that period, many died, and many private fortunes were destroyed because of the wars and state abuses.

A few decades later in 1949, the Communist Revolution succeeded, and Mao Zedong started to rule China until his death in 1976. During Mao’s 44-year reign, millions of Chinese individuals died because of the Anti-Rightist Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and other totalitarian political campaigns.

Considering that the above described tragedies happened in China in the 20^th century, and considering Xi Jinping’s support of State-Own Enterprises, media censorship, centralization of power with Xi Cult features, it is reasonable for so many to worry about the future of China. Nevertheless, there are still some positive factors which may help China avoid entering another Mao-style dictatorship.

Since the 1978 market reforms, more and more Chinese have been realizing the benefits of open markets. Though individuals may not know how to defend the ideas of liberty, more and more of them have been adopting and practicing concepts of the market and private property rights which have improved the quality of life.

Economic Freedom Is of Critical Importance

Thus, the marketization process and a deeper understanding of the market economy and individual liberty makes another Mao-style dictatorship less possible. As Huerta de Soto said in his Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship,

[A]s the wealth of society and the development of civilization increase, socialism becomes much more difficult. The less advanced or more primitive a society is, and the more plentiful are the means the directing authority has available to handle information, the less complicated the problem of socialism appears (though from a logical and theoretical standpoint it is always impossible when applied to human beings endowed in their actions with an innate creative capacity.)

However, Friedrich Hayek cautioned in the Constitution of Liberty, “in the long run it is ideas and therefore the men who give currency to new ideas that govern evolution.” So Chinese libertarians should do their best to learn, to understand, and to promote the hard-core theories of liberty and economic science. Chinese libertarians should not only spread the ideas and ethics of freedom to those living in China but also to the global Chinese community who are suffering the consequences of the current Communist Regime.

For this purpose I quote Ludwig von Mises from the last chapter of Human Action about the relationship between economics, citizens, and freedom:

There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. … As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake.

[E]conomics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen…

These are sad facts. However, there is only one way in which a man can respond to them: by never relaxing in the search for truth.

No matter what Xi Jinping is going to do, our fight for liberty in China continues.

About the author:
*William Wang is a PhD candidate in economics at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. He received his Master’s degree in Austrian Economics at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain. He is a 2017 Mises University alumni.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

In the Autumn of 1948, after some eight months of continuous fighting, I was promoted to the lofty rank of corporal. After taking part in a crash course for squad leaders, I was allowed to choose my new soldiers – new immigrants from Poland or Morocco.

(Everybody wanted Bulgarians, but the Bulgarians were already taken. They were known to be excellent fighters, disciplined and stoical.)

I chose the Moroccans. I also got two Tunisians and five Turks, altogether 15 men. All of them had just arrived by ship and not one spoke Hebrew. So how does one explain to them that a hand grenade has a high course of flight and a sharp angle of descent?

Fortunately one of them knew some Hebrew, so he translated into French, one of the Turks understood some French, and translated into Turkish, and so we got along.

It was not easy. There were a lot of psychological problems. But I decided to adapt myself as much as possible. For example: one day we got an order to go to the sea shore and fill a truck with sand, in order to enlarge our camp with more tents.

When we arrived on the beach, none of my soldiers moved. “We have come to this country to fight, not to work!” their spokesman explained.

I was nonplussed. What to do? The course had not prepared me for such a situation. Then I had an idea. I said: “You are quite right. So please sit under that tree and enjoy the shade!”

I took a spade and started to dig. I heard them whisper. Then one of them got up and took a spade. Then another. In the end we all worked happily.

Unhappily, we were an exception. Most Ashkenazis (Jews of European descent) who had been born in the country, or immigrated years before, thought that they had done their part and suffered enough, and that now it was up to the new Oriental immigrants to do theirs. Cultural difference were huge, but nobody paid much attention to them.

Soon after that scene, we were allowed leave for a few hours in Tel Aviv. When I got on the truck, I noticed that some of my men did not get on. “Are you crazy?” I cried. “Leave in Tel Aviv is paradise!”

“Not for us,” they replied. “The girls in Tel Aviv won’t go out with us. They call us Morroccan-Knives.” There had indeed been a few cases of hot-headed Moroccans who had felt insulted and attacked people with knives.

My attitude towards “my Moroccans” paid off. When I was severely wounded, four of them brought me out, under heavy enemy fire. They granted me 70 more years of life (so far).

A few years later, when I was already the Chief Editor of a news magazine, I published a series of investigative articles under the title “They Fuck the Blacks”. It contained revelations about the discrimination against the Oriental immigrants (nicknamed “blacks”, though they are brown). It aroused a storm of anger throughout the country. The very suggestion of discrimination was vehemently denied.

At the end of the 1950s, a minor incident in the Wadi Salib quarter of Haifa triggered major disturbances by Oriental Jews. All the press took the side of the police, my magazine was the only one which justified the rebels.

I bring up all this ancient history because it has suddenly become very topical.

A TV series by an Oriental filmmaker is whipping up a storm in Israel. It is called “Salah, This is The Land of Israel”, and claims to describe the experiences of his grandparents when they arrived in Israel in the early 1950s. Salah is an Arab first name.

They wanted to settle in Jerusalem, the only place in the country whose name they knew. Instead they were taken to a remote spot in the desert, thrown from the trucks, and left there to vegetate in tents, without work except for a few days per month of “emergency work”, digging holes for trees.

According to the filmmaker, David Deri, it was a gigantic “conspiracy” (his word) by the Ashkenazis to have the Oriental Jews come here, to throw them into the desert and leave them there, prey to hunger and deprivation.

Deri is not making things up. He quotes extensively from secret official protocols in which the operation was discussed at length and explained as a national necessity in order to fill the empty areas (from which the Arabs had previously been expelled).

All the facts are right. Yet the overall picture is wrong. Deri did not try to describe this chapter in history objectively. He produced a propaganda piece.

Let me cite again my personal experiences.

I was born in Germany to wealthy parents. When the Nazis assumed power, in 1933, my father immediately decided to leave Germany and go to Palestine.

No one received us with flowers. We were left to fend for ourselves. We brought with us a large sum of money. My father was not used to the commercial customs then prevailing in the country, and we lost all our money within a year.

Both my parents, who had never done any physical work in Germany, started to work very hard, 10-12 hours a day. Seeing this, I left elementary school after 7 classes and started to work at the age of 14, as did my brother and sisters. Not one of us complained. The happenings in Germany reminded us every day what we had escaped.

The lot of new immigrants is hard, and has always been so everywhere. We were intent on building “our” country. The immigrants who came from East and West after World War II were expected to do the same.

Much later I became friendly with one of the main organizers of the “absorption” of the immigrants in he 1950s, Lova Eliav. He told me how the immigrants, Eastern and Western, were brought to the empty Lakhish region, and when they refused to get off the trucks, the driver was told to operate the mechanism and literally pour the people onto the ground. He was not ashamed of it – for him it was a part of building the country.

Lova, by the way, was one of the country’s great idealists. At an advanced age he himself went into the desert, near the Egyptian border, to live with the young people for whom he built a new village far from everywhere.

Deri discovered that police spies had infiltrated “Oriental” groups. That made me laugh out loud. Because it was an open secret that for many years the secret service had spied on every move of my editorial staff, especially mine.

Deri is not troubled by the fact that during those years the Communists were treated much worse, not to mention the Arab citizens, who suffered daily oppression under “military rule”.

All in all, Deri did not actually falsify or invent anything. But he takes everything out of context. It is as if somebody took a painting of Michelangelo and removed one color – say red. It’s still basically the same painting, but it’s not the same.

David Deri was born 43 years ago in Yeruham, one of those villages created by Lova Eliav and his colleagues in the middle of nowhere, south of Be’er Sheva.

Today, Yeruham is still one of the poorer townships. But it has advanced a lot. Politically it is, of course, solidly Likud.

Deri makes no attempt to paint a “balanced” picture. On the contrary, he quite openly tries to incite the Oriental Jews against the Ashkenazis.

I don’t know his political outlook. But in today’s reality, the film serves the incitement campaign of Binyamin Netanyahu against the imaginary “leftist Ashkenazi elite”, which includes the media, the universities, the police and the courts (and me as well, of course).

By the way, Deri himself is the best evidence of how in two or three generations those poor Moroccans who were thrown into the desert are forming a new elite.