Russia is launching an ambitious series of missions to the Red Planet, starting with an unmanned Mars mission in 2019, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview, according to RT.

“We are planning unmanned and later manned launches into deep space, as part of a lunar program and for Mars exploration. The closest mission is very soon, we are planning to launch a mission to Mars in 2019,” the president said in an interview shown in a new documentary by Andrey Kondrashov.

He added that the lunar exploration program would target the polar regions of the moon.

“Our specialists will try landing near the poles because there are reasons to expect water there. There is research to be done there, and from that, research of other planets and outer space can be undertaken,” Putin said.

The plans for Russia’s lunar program include a landing test at moons’ southern pole scheduled for 2019, testing technology that can be used for a permanent lunar outpost in 2023 and a soil retrieval mission in 2025. A base on the moon may be established sometime in the 2040s or 2050s.

Russia has not attempted any Martian missions since the failed launch of Phobos-Grunt in 2011, but has collaborated with other nations. The 2016 Schiaparelli EDM lander mission was part of a joint program by Russia’s Roscosmos and the European Space Agency, and utilized a Russian rocket.

Millions of people worldwide suffer from depression. Ketamine has emerged in the West as a promising antidepressant. Its use in depression therapy raises important safety and security questions.

By Tan Teck Boon and Nandhakumar Gunasekaran*

With fancy street names like Special K, Vitamin K or Kit Kat, ketamine is a popular street drug among substance abusers in Asia. Ketamine first appeared on the recreational drug scene in the mid-1970s mainly in the United States when it was discovered that a small dose of the anesthetic induces hallucinations and a sense of disconnect between the body and mind. In 2006, it was further discovered that ketamine could be used off-label to treat severe mood disorders like depression.

As ketamine has already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as an anesthetic, physicians are permitted under US laws to prescribe it for any medical conditions which they believe the drug to be effective against. Depression is one of those medical conditions.

Treatment-resistant Depression

A debilitating disease, depression causes one to feel a deep sense of sadness and hopelessness. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 300 million people of all ages worldwide suffer from the mental disorder. Standard treatment for depression includes Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) prescription drugs like Prozac and Zoloft.

These antidepressants work by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain to alter patients’ dark moods. Helping to regulate one’s mood, serotonin is a neurotransmitter that carries signals between different parts of the body for, inter alia, psychological functions.

Yet, in about 30 percent of the cases in so-called treatment-resistant depression (TRD), these SSRI antidepressants are ineffective. Even when they are, it can take weeks or even months before improvement is seen in patients. Yet, with a small ketamine hydrochloride infusion, results are seen within a few hours with two-thirds of TRD patients reporting an improvement in their moods that last up to a week.

Depression is also often associated with suicide. Studies as far back as the 1980s in the US and Europe suggest that 50 to 60 per cent of those who committed suicides may have suffered from depression or related disorders. For those at risk of suicide, recent studies have suggested that ketamine demonstrates potential as a fast-acting treatment.

As one might expect, the apparent efficacy of ketamine in TRD therapy caught the attention of pharmaceutical companies and doctors. Additionally, several private clinics in the US and Australia have sprung up in recent years offering ketamine therapy for TRD patients. Meanwhile, Janssen Pharmaceutica, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has patented esketamine – a ketamine-derivative nasal spray that will soon become available in the US.

Big Unknowns

Yet, questions remain over the use of ketamine for TRD therapy. Could the widespread use of ketamine turn it into a health hazard?

The first is drug safety. Although the ketamine dose administered during TRD therapy is low (about one-twelfth of an anesthesia dose), it is unclear what side effects frequent infusions of the drug can have over time. Long-term use of ketamine can cause damage to the liver, kidneys and bladder.

Cognitive impairment has also been observed in recreational users of the drug. With that in mind, ketamine infusion for TRD therapy is akin to taking small doses of a powerful anesthesia repeatedly over extended periods – the effects of which remain unknown.

The second is drug addiction. Repeated use of ketamine can lead to drug dependence – a condition whereby users are addicted to the drug. The worst outcome is where TRD patients end up substituting their debilitating mental condition with drug addiction. Take the ongoing opioid epidemic in the US for example.

Patients turn into opioid addicts because physicians prescribe opioids like OxyContin to them for pain management before stopping the prescriptions at the end of the treatment period, forcing them to seek alternatives. Addicted, they simply turn to synthetic opioids or heroin for relief. One should not dismiss the possibility of ketamine use in TRD therapy producing similar results.

The third is the market-readiness of the drug. Ketamine has only been given to a small (and at $500 per dose, often wealthy) group of TRD patients. Before a drug is ready for the market, it needs to undergo many years of clinical trials often involving thousands of participants. That being the case, it is easy to see why ketamine is not yet ready for extensive use in TRD therapy.

With less than 400 TRD patients having received ketamine in published clinical trials, its efficacy can at best be described as preliminary and more trials are needed before it can be certified ready for the market.

Security Implications

If Janssen’s esketamine nasal spray is made commercially available, authorities in countries where ketamine is a controlled substance will have to deal with it crossing their borders through international travellers who may have such drugs in their possession, with or without a prescription.

Conversely, citizens may also acquire these antidepressant nasal sprays when they travel overseas. For countries like Singapore that have scheduled ketamine as a controlled substance, they will have to invest in the kind of sophisticated detection capabilities needed to prevent this ketamine-derivative from being smuggled across sea, air and land checkpoints.

Then there is the potential for misuse since esketamine nasal sprays can be inhaled in large doses to induce a hallucinogenic high. For countries where off-label use of ketamine is legal, the emergence of a new class of ketamine addicts cannot be ruled out, especially if the drug were suddenly made unavailable to TRD patients.

If there is one lesson from the ongoing opioid epidemic in the US, it is that prescription medications can turn out to be the source of a deadly drug problem. Close monitoring of those who use esketamine is therefore crucial.

At this point, the potential for ketamine (and its derivative, esketamine) use in TRD treatment is in its initial stages. In addition, there are major safety and security implications to consider. But sooner or later, authorities around the world will have to address this emerging issue as the party drug gains legitimacy in the West as a quick-acting antidepressant. And the sooner they prepare for it, the less likely they will be caught off-guard.

*Tan Teck Boon is Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Nandhakumar Gunasekaran is Senior Analyst in the STSP.

By Sarah Wilson Sokhey*

(FPRI) — Russians are growing frustrated with poor healthcare, underfunded schools, and increasing poverty, a recent poll shows. As President Vladimir Putin prepares for his fourth term, he is making promises and boosting pensions. But he has a mixed record delivering enduring social goods. And in the past, benefits like pensions were often reversed soon after the vote.

The newspaper Vedomosti highlighted common complaints in a widely shared article last year: “10 unfulfilled promises of Putin and Medvedev.” For example, the number of Russians living in poverty since Putin’s last election in 2012 has increased by several million people. Putin tried to reframe this situation during an address this month; while acknowledging some recent declines, he emphasized that the number of Russians in poverty is still much lower than it was in 2000 when he first took office. Putin is right that things are still better than in the late 1990s, but the new group of 18-year-old voters in 2018 – and even those a bit older – may not be well persuaded by “the 90s were much worse” argument.

Poverty was far from Vedomosti’s only complaint. Average wages have increased slightly, but rising prices and the devaluation of the ruble have undermined any gains. In education things are no better: Salaries for teachers still lag behind average wages and, contrary to Putin’s promises, the number of schools has declined by about 7,000 since 2012. Spots in kindergartens and preschools are still limited in some parts of the country. On top of this, utility costs – especially heating and electricity – are nearly 50 percent higher than they were in 2012; the cost of hot water has risen 57 percent over the same period. Mortgage lending rates, another common complaint, increased slightly between 2011 and 2016.

Can Putin survive this decline in economic and social conditions? For now, he has manipulated them to ensure an easy victory on March 18 and to boost turnout – which seems to be the Kremlin’s chief concern. The president has followed through on some specific promises; for instance, subsidizing mortgages for families with two or three children. He has also indefinitely postponed raising the retirement age. Although there were never any concrete plans to increase Russia’s retirement ages of 55 for women and 60 for men, some policymakers and economists have long cited the necessity of doing so; Putin has repeatedly reassured Russians he will not back such proposals.

And, as is standard practice for Russian leaders, Putin has boosted pensions in the run-up to the election. In 1996, Yeltsin oversaw a series of pension increases ahead of his reelection; he also doubled the minimum pension just a month before the vote. In early 2000, then acting-President Putin oversaw a 20 percent increase in pensions a month before his first election. In 2008, Medvedev ran for president; just before his election a presidential decree increased veterans’ benefits and made a one-time additional pension payment for all retirees. And in 2012, the last time Putin ran, pensions were re-indexed to benefit the elderly just before the presidential election; the benefit was reversed a year later.

These are stop-gap measures, not long-term fixes. Attempts at more fundamental pension reforms have failed. Early in Putin’s tenure, in 2001, he oversaw a potentially transformative reform. Often referred to as pension privatization, this measure took mandatory social security contributions and put them in individual accounts which could be privately managed and invested. But in 2012 and 2013, immediate fiscal pressures motivated the government to first temporarily, and then permanently, redirect these social security contributions away from individual retirement accounts. The system introduced in 2001 has been virtually eliminated. The Russian government today plans on a much more short-term basis.

Putin may be able to survive a few more years with this lackluster approach to social policy, but what happens then? Polls show that though Russians’ top concerns are corruption and the economy; issues like pensions, education, and healthcare are among their top 10 worries. Putin’s mixed record fulfilling promises bodes poorly for his and his regime’s legitimacy and legacy.

This article was originally published by Eurasianet on March 13, 2018. Geopoliticus has republished the essay, without further editing, with permission from Eurasianet.

About the author:
*Sarah Wilson Sokhey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado, a Faculty Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, and an Associate Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia.

By Abbas Gallyamov*

(FPRI) — On March 18, a significant number of Russian voters will go to the polls with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they want to vote for Putin—at least out of habit—but they are not very happy with the idea that Putin’s reelection means nothing will change in their lives for the subsequent six years. On the other hand, they are afraid to vote against Putin because they think that without him everything will come crashing down in Russia.

Formally, the president’s ratings remain as high as they were three years ago when Putin’s popularity increased to an all-time high after Crimea. However, data from focus groups show that people are far less enthusiastic now. The standard of living continues to decrease, and the system continues to benefit the rich at the expense of the masses.

This discontent is not yet political; however, the voters just want something in their lives to change for the better. Paradoxically, they are also deathly afraid of change. This is mostly because the memory of the traumatic experiences from economic restructuring and reforms of the 1990s is still fresh in their minds. The Kremlin has run a successful propaganda campaign promoting and exacerbating this fear, instilling in the Russian voters the idea that change does not lead to an improvement of the situation, but rather to its deterioration.

Putin, of course, will win. But the votes he receives will be mainly driven by negative emotions. His victory will be based not so much on the voters’ faith in the future, but on their fear of the future. In such election campaigns, regimes rarely come out strong. Usually, fatigue and disappointment end up dominating the atmosphere.

Putin could change all of this. In order to do so, it would be enough for him to say that his next presidential term would be radically different from the previous one in that the government’s focus will shift from foreign policy to domestic policy. He could say that the central task of his third presidency—strengthening Russia’s image in the world—is now successfully fulfilled. Putin could tell the Russian people that going forward the world will not ignore Russia’s international interests; therefore, immediately after the election, the government will focus on domestic policy—reforming the economy and addressing social issues. He could tell his voters that moving forward his goal will be to improve the living standards of the Russian population.

If the Kremlin announced that in the upcoming election Russians would be, in fact, voting for Putin’s new domestic focus, it would see an overwhelming voter support for such a re-arrangement of priorities, and the voter turnout would not have to be enforced through administrative measures. Russians would start to line up in the polling stations early in the morning, and a burst of universal enthusiasm would even put the organizers of Stalin’s first Piatiletka (five-year plan) to shame.  Why won’t Putin do this? Because the Russian economy is deteriorating and he knows that there are no great prospects for its future. Putin knows that he must make some unpopular reforms, like raising the retirement age and abolishing certain social benefits. Putin cannot afford to create overly high expectations for the people of Russia because it does not play into his personal long game.

With the election less than a week away, Putin and all of Russia understand that they must move past the election and its results as soon as it is over. Probably, this is the best thing they can do in the current situation.

About the author:
*Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a political consultant in Russia, and comments on Russian domestic policy in Moscow’s leading daily newspapers as a political scientist. Mr. Gallyamov previously held the position of deputy head of the Rustem Khamitov administration in Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

By Dr Subhash Kapila

India and its foreign policy establishment’s most confusing conundrum once again is to clearly define whether in the larger and long-range perspective China is India’s ‘Friend or Foe’? India’s lack of discerning this distinction makes it ecstatically jump at every crumb of feigned friendship that China spasmodically keeps throwing at India

India’s confused China Policy Conundrum has once again surfaced recently when media reports indicate that Indian Foreign Secretary Gokhale sent an advisory note to the Cabinet Secretary that Indian leaders and officials should not attend HH The Dalai Lama’s ‘Thank Yu India’ event in Delhi out of sensitivity for China’s stances on Tibet.

Taking the hint the Central Tibetan Administration relocated this event to Dharamsala. Is it not a pity that India under the dynamic leadership of PM Modi is once again be perceptionaly viewed in Asian capitals as kow-towing to Chinese pressures or political coercion? Is that the image that India wishes to project at a time when the global community is acknowledging India as an Emerged Power?

Ironic is the fact that PM Modi who won laurels for standing up to China in the Dkalam Standoff last year and where China blinked should now become a party to be seen as kow-towing to China. Further ironic is the fact that even a confirmed China-apologist like former PM Nehru defied China by giving political asylum to HH Dalai Lama and Tibetans in 1959 and now we have in 2018 PM Modi’s Foreign Secretary issuing an order which amounts to HH Dalai Lama and Tibetans being made sacrificial goats to appease China.

In March 2018, there are no cogent mitigating factors that have arisen to prompt this sudden change of India’s attitudes and generate positive readings on China other than the personal assessment of India’s new Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale. His postings in Hong Kong, Taipei and in Beijing and being a fluent Mandarin speaker may have made him a China-specialist but not necessarily an accurate diviner of China’s policy attitudes towards India.

Divining China’s hostile attitudes cannot be the sole preserve of India’s top-most foreign policy official. India’s nett assessments on China since 1962 have consistently confirmed that the China Threat to India is a ‘Live Threat’ and which in 2018 stands multiplied manifold.

China has not visibly reset its South Asia policies to incorporate India’s strategic sensitivities. On the contrary, China has vigorously pursued “Anti-India” policies eve since Chinese President Xi Jinping has assumed his office with monarchical contours.

Since 2014, China’s Comprehensive Military Threat now stands out with the ‘Military Threat’ component becoming more prominent, potent and with sharper edges. At such a juncture, India cannot afford the luxury of political outreaches to China which carries the aroma of submitting and capitulating to the China Threat.

Since the military component of the China Threat to India predominates the political and economic threat, incumbent therefore is the imperative that China-intentions reading in India emerge as a joint assessment by India’s Feign Office and the Indian Armed Forces hierarchy charged with defending India’s sovereignty. This obviously has not taken place as the Indian military hierarchy going by Dokalam and post- Dokalam developments would not have agreed to a sudden deference to China’s sensitivities and certainly not on Tibet-related issues.

The points that seem to be overlooked in Indian official discourses on China revolve around the following salient factors that stood highlighted in my Book “China-India Military Confrontation: 21st Century Perspectives” (2015) as follows:

• China-India Military Confrontation ongoing in the21st Century is no longer limited to China’s disputing India’s borders with China Occupied Tibet. It now stands transformed into a fierce ‘geopolitical power-play and tussle’ in which China has exhibited no-holds barred postures against India.
• China’s hegemonistic designs on Asia are a precursor to its ultimate Grand Strategy of attaining “Strategic Equivalence with the United States”. What stands in between are the two contending Asian major powers of India and Japan with whom China has a history of conflictual record.
• China is unwilling to concede any strategic space in Asia to either India or Japan.
• Both in the geopolitical power tussle and the decades-old border confrontation, the Core Issue is Tibet. In fact my very first Chapter in the Book refers to “Tibet is India’s Core Issue in China-India Military Confrontation”
• India today is in the unique position of playing both the “India Card” and so also the “Tibet Card” against China, if only the Indian political leaders and its foreign policy establishment do not lapse into Nehruvian timidity and lack of ‘political will’ use power and balance of power strategies to ward of the China Threat.

In the instant discussion, what is at stake due to faulty perceptions of the Indian foreign policy establishment is India throwing away its most potent and strong “Tibet Card” with which China is ill at ease for decades. In fact, India’s ‘Tibet Card’ is the strongest leverage that India has over China.

China’s hold on China Occupied Tibet cannot be eternal and China fears that like in 2008 Tibet could erupt into serious and violent protests and disturbances linked with any future demise of HH The Dalai Lama. China has made it abundantly clear that it is China which will appoint the next Dalai Lama fearing that the large Tibetans population in India and in the West would not accept the Chinese-foisted choice of Dalai Lama.

The other pertinent question that arises contextually is that does it devolve on India only to display regard for China’s sensitivities on the Tibet issue or other contentious issues that divide China-India relationship? Has China ever displayed such matching sensitivities to India’s concerns?

India and its foreign policy establishment should be in no doubt about China’s intentions about down-sizing India in the perceptions in Asian capitals which are currently looking up to India to emerge as the nett provider of regional security against an uncontrollable China.

In 2018, therefore, the geopolitical power-play basically boils down to managing perceptions in Asia capitals of whether India can outgrow its Non Alignment shibboleths or the attitudinal policy inclinations of its decision-making establishment to seek the easy way out of complex challenges like the ongoing China-India military Confrontation being brought to a head once again in mid-2017 over the Dokalam Standoff;

While China is engaged in an uninterrupted ‘Containment of India “post-1962, the Indian foreign policy establishment’s remnants of the erstwhile Non Alignment Gladiators are succumbing to China’s spurious overtures for peace and friendship with India. Have we not seen this sort of Chinese strategic moves earlier in the middle of the last decade?

Once again recently, the Chinese Foreign Minister asserted that China and India have no choice but that “to tango together “and that even the tall Himalayas cannot prevent China-India friendship.

If China had genuine feelings for India’s friendship then what was the need for China to indulge in ‘Containment of India’ in the last decade politically, strategically and militarily? Why the forging of the China-Pakistan Military Axis? Why the China Pakistan Economic Corridor as explained in my Book of outflanking India’s Northern and Western defensive military deployments? Why the repeated Vetoes by China in the United Nation to stop Pakistan’s top Islamic Jihadi terrorist leaders as ‘global terrorists’. Why the Dokalam Military Standoff in an erstwhile peaceful sector? Why China’s reinforcing its Dokalam military presence into strong permanent military fortifications?

The list is endless and India’s foreign policy establishment advocating peaceful relations with China have no logical and convincing answers to provide.

Perceptionaly, I strongly feel and would advise that India’s foreign policy establishment should not be headed by Chinese Mandarin speaking China-hands who seem to suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome. Since India’s political leaders over-rely on them in the mistaken belief that with their Mandarin knowledge they can decipher Chinese leaders’ intentions, India’s China-policy becomes a captive to erroneous divinations.

India has no reason to kow-tow to China in 2018 when it is globally being perceived as an Emerged Power, something distasteful and unacceptable to the Chinese leadership. Does India under misperceived advisories of its foreign policy establishment wish to go into a downslide and be seen lapsing into the Nehruvian mould of a timid and powerless Asian behemoth.

The Indian political leadership cannot also be oblivious to Indian public opinion which perceives China as an ‘Enemy State” continuously engaged in down-sizing India and cavorting with India’s other confirmed enemy-state that is Pakistan.

The Indian Government and nor its policy apparatus has advanced convincing reasons for India suddenly resetting its relations with China and this leads to suspicions.. One hopes not that the Modi Government has not chickened –out fearing that a repeat of the Dokalam Standoff in 2018 0r2019 by China may find India militarily disadvantaged and that too in the run-up to 2019 General Elections.

India must have a running continuity in its China policy formulations viewing the larger picture and taking long-range geopolitical perspectives as the lodestars. In such perspectives China continues to figure as India’s most potent and dangerous Threat Number One.

While peace and dialogues with China are eminently desirable and should be pursued with vigour it is equally incumbent on India’s political leadership that India pursues with vigour India’s ‘War Preparedness’ to fight a Two Front War likely to be foisted on India by the combined strength of China and Pakistan.

The cardinal principle that India must adhere to is that India’s China Policy does not acquire Chamberlainisque contours of peace at any cost with China. The instant directive by Foreign Secretary smacks of the same. That danger lurks when Indian foreign policy is divorced from military assessments of its military planners.

Indian foreign policy establishment’s confused conundrum would fade away the very moment that India’s foreign policy planners do not succumb to impulsively pick up spurious crumbs of friendship thrown by China sparingly confident in the belief that India would grovel and kow-tow to China. The Indian Foreign Office must be clear that China is perceptively viewed largely in India as Enemy Number One by its demonstrated actions against India.

How can the Foreign Office afford to have different perceptions on China other than what figures in Official Ministry of Defence documents and the accurate readings of China of the Indian military hierarchy?

Concluding, the following observations need to be re-asserted:

• India’s foreign policy establishment’s confused policy conundrum arises from its inability to recognise that the China Threat to India is a ‘Live Threat’ increasing in size and magnitude each passing day.
  India’s ‘China Threat’ should never be under-played or de-emphasised by any organ of the Indian Government.
• China has not made any sustained efforts to reset its South Asia policy to respect India’s strategic sensitivities. Why the sudden urge of India’s foreign policy establishment to respect China’s strategic sensitivities on Tibet?
• India cannot afford to throw away its ‘Tibet Card’ to humour China’s strategic sensitivities
• India cannot afford to display divided perceptions on China between its Foreign Office and its Armed Forces hierarchy as far as the China Threat to India is concerned In the ultimate test when China repeatedly will indulge in Military Stand-Offs with India, it is Indian Armed Forces who have to neutralise China’s propensity for armed conflict with India and not India’s diplomats

Ironic would be the day if India under PM Modi’s dynamism lapses into the Pre-1962 Syndrome of China Appeasement and COMPLACENCY in Defence Budget allocations leading to India’s LACK OF WAR PRPAREDNESS against the dual China=Pakistan Axis as visible in 2018.

By Nasreen Habib*

The recent assembly elections in the three Northeastern states, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, made one thing crystal clear: the BJP’s ability to strike smart alliances has turned things around in its favour. Its wins range from ousting the Left in Tripura after 25 years in power, to bringing down the formidable Mukul Sangma government in Meghalaya. Mizoram is now the only state in the Northeast that has a Congress government.

BJP’s central leadership understood that the party lacked a natural base in the Northeast and its Hinduvta brand of politics would not cut ice with the people here. They thus formed the Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) in 2016, under the leadership of arguably the craftiest leader in the region, Himanta Biswa Sarma. His role in Tripura was limited as Sunil Deodhar, the man in charge of Prime Minsiter Modi’s Varanasi campaign, led the campaign here. In Nagaland and Meghalaya, Sarma’s role in ‘convincing’ the smaller parties and independents to support the alliance has been substantial. It must also be pointed out that Northeastern states are heavily dependent on the Centre for funds:90 per cent of the funds are given by the central government and only 10 per cent is provided by the individual states. Thus, they prefer a government that is ‘friendly’ and will not hamper this comfortable arrangement.

In Meghalaya, the Indian National Congress (INC) emerged as the single largest party with 21 seats, but the National People’s Party (NPP) with 19 seats managed to garner the support of six legislators from the United Democratic Party (UDP), four legislators from the People’s Democratic Front (PDF), two legislators from the Hill State People’s Democratic Party (HSPDP) and two independents. The BJP won only two seats of the 47 it had contested. However, the NPP, led by Conrad Sangma, son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Mukul Sangma, realised that they has to go with the party in power at the Centre. A cursory glance at this alliance is enough to suggest that it is not a stable one; cracks have already developed with UDP threatening to break away if “indigenous rights/local issues” are not made central to the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance and “BJP acts as the big brother.” It also remains to be seen what solution the NPP-led government offers to the issue of coal mining: there is a National Green Tribunal (NGT) ban on coal mining in the state and the NPP had promised a way out so that locally, coal mining could continue. Many believe NPP benefitted from this promise.

In Nagaland, interestingly, just before the elections, civil society groups had taken to the streets to canvass against the assembly elections with the slogan “solution before election,” demanding a solution to the decade-long issue of Naga sovereignty. All political parties supported this demand initially (the BJP had also suspended a member over this),and as a constitutional provision, elections were held. Just before the elections though, BJP in a master move allied with the newly created party Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), which was formed as a result of the split in the Naga People’s Front (NPF) led by Neiphiu Rio, without disowning its earlier alliance partner NPF, led by TR Zeliang. They managed to win 12 seats in Nagaland, a Christian majority state, where church leaders infrequently warned against voting for an “anti-minority” party. This was a huge improvement from their earlier tally of 1. This was partly because they benefitted from their association with Rio’s party, a former chief minister and powerful political figure. Here, too, it remains to be seen how the rivalry between Rio and Zeliang plays out and the understanding they reach. There is apprehension that NPF which had won 27 seats (the NDPP-BJP combine gained 29 seats) may demand a larger share of the pie. Trouble is already brewing in the NDPP-BJP alliance with the BJP securing more berths in the cabinet than the NDPP, including the deputy chief minister’s post. Also, if the NPF manages the support of just four more MLAs, it can stake a claim to the government. It is understood that Zeliang had given his word to Sarma over this. But promises, as they say, are meant to be broken.

In Tripura, the only state where the BJP won on its own, work on uprooting the Left bastion had begun more than three years ago when Sunil Deodhar, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak, was handpicked for the job and sent to work in the state. The BJP Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb who was a gym instructor in Delhi and an RSS member was also carefully honed for the job, though the party had not announced his candidature prior to the elections. With almost clinical precision, the BJP-RSS combine worked to turn over the entire rank and file of the Trinamool Congress party, the only definite opposition to the Left at that time. A look at the vote share reveals that the CPM’s vote share was 43.5 per cent whereas the BJP’s was 42.5 per cent. Political commentators have said that this was because the BJP concentrated on winning seats rather than only garnering votes. There was a definite structure to their whole campaign, with work being delegated at all levels efficiently. Of course, the resentment against the long Left reign also helped the BJP, with people complaining about jobs being given as political favours and non-implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. The tribal discontent against the Left is also clear with the BJP’s only ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), winning 8 seats out of the 9 it contested, a huge improvement over the last elections.

The stability of the alliances stitched by the BJP in the Northeast is now the most important question, and its future remains to be seen. It will have to keep its flock together and work at stemming discontent within the various camps.

* Nasreen Habib
Editor, Eclectic Northeast Magazine

By Shanta Roy

A group of Sri Lankan academics teaching in educational institutions abroad – and numbering about 50 – has written to condemn ongoing violence against Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, especially the “brutal attacks” perpetrated early March.

In a letter published by ‘Groundviews‘, they say: “We are outraged that the government has failed to act speedily and decisively to stop the violence and bring those responsible to justice. The government must act firmly to prevent more destruction and bloodshed.”

“The scale and nature of recent attacks on the Muslim community are the result of years of successive regimes in Sri Lanka pandering to chauvinist nationalists.”

The letter points out that targeted and organized attacks against Muslim communities in Ampara, Teldeniya, and Kandy are not isolated incidents, but must be seen within a longer history of attacks on Muslims in Sri Lanka, including wartime violence by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against northern and eastern Muslims.

After the end of the war, majoritarian attacks against Muslims living in the East and South have escalated. In May 2014, Sinhala Buddhist nationalists attacked and burned the Muslim-owned store, Fashion Bug, and its head offices in Colombo. In June 2014, Sinhala Buddhist nationalists again carried out anti-Muslim riots in Aluthgama, Beruwala and other areas in the Kalutara District, the letter adds.

In 2017 alone, there were 20 documented incidents of violence against Muslims, including the September 2017 attack on a UNHRC shelter housing 31 Muslim Rohingya refugees in Colombo.

The academics also point out that Sinhala Buddhist monks led this last attack in direct violation of international human rights treaties on the protection of refugees, which Sri Lanka has ratified. In some of these instances, members of the police and security forces were present, but did nothing to halt the perpetrators or protect the victims.

“While some civil society organizations in Sri Lanka have condemned these orchestrated acts of violence, the government has failed to hold the responsible political and religious figures to account.

“Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), for example, openly propagates hate speech against Muslims, and promotes xenophobia, racism, and bigotry. Such actors do not operate in a vacuum; the ‘inaction’ of political authorities and the police against them is in fact an active intervention, encouraging groups like the BBS and Maha Sona Balakaya to act with impunity.’

“We, members of the Sri Lankan diaspora, and Sri Lankans living abroad, from all of the country’s diverse communities, stand in solidarity with our Muslim sisters and brothers. “We believe that declaring a state of emergency and curbing free media and social networks are not sustainable solutions to issues of equal rights and the protection of minorities,” the letter notes.

In the long run, such measures will only expand the repressive powers of the state. The government must take swift action to bring those responsible for anti-Muslim violence to justice. “We call on the government to hold accountable law enforcement and political authorities who have reneged on their responsibility to protect all members of the Sri Lankan community.”

“We also call on the government to move on long-term questions of constitutional reform that can lay the foundation for a future of peace with justice and security for all its citizens, including minorities.”

The signatories comprise: Vasuki Nesiah, New York University; Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham, Colgate University; Mythri Jegathesan, Santa Clara University; Kanishka Goonewardena, University of Toronto; V.V. Ganeshananthan, University of Minnesota; Qadri Ismail, University of Minnesota; Sharika Thiranagama, Stanford University; Sonali Perera, City University of New York; Kitana Ananda, City University of New York; and Sanjeevi Nuhumal, Haverford College.

Others who have signed the letter comprise: Kathleen Fernando, Kenyon College; Kanchana Ruwanpura, University of Edinburgh; Pradeep Sangapala, University of Alberta; Arjun Guneratne, Macalester College; Amarnath Amarasingam, University of Waterloo; Arjini Nawal, Harvard University; Neil DeVotta, Wake Forest University; Nihal Perera, Ball State University; Sandya Hewamanne, University of Essex; Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University; Nalin Jayasena, Miami University; and Prashanth Kuganathan, Columbia University.

Still other signatories include: Shiyana Gunasekara, Johns Hopkins University; Sukanya Emmanuel, Cornell University; E Valentine Daniel, Columbia University; Varuni Wimalasiri, Bournemouth University; Dinidu Karunanayake, Miami University; Vidyamali Samarasinghe, American University; Mahesan Niranjan, University of Southampton; Nethra Samarawickrema, Stanford University; Dilshanie Perera, Stanford University; Myra Sivaloganathan, McMaster University; Namika Raby, California State University; Geethika Dharmasinghe, Cornell University; Sudesh Mantillake, University of Maryland & University of Peradeniya; and Eshantha Peiris, University of British Columbia:

The letter has also been signed by: Devaka Gunawardena, University of California, Los Angeles; Themal Ellawala, Clark University; Shobhana Xavier, Ithaca College; Nalika Gajaweera, University of Southern California; Ashwini Vasanthakumar, King’s College London; Yalini Dream, University of San Francisco; Mihirini Sirisena, University of Edinburgh; A.R.M. Imtiyaz, Temple University; Deborah Philip, City University of New York; Tony Anghie, University of Utah; Tanuja Thurairajah, and University of Zurich.

Further signatories are: Sammani Perera, Miami University; Achinthya Bandara, Texas Tech University; Kasun Gajasinghe, Montclair State University; Upul Wickramasinghe, University of Durham; and Thushara Hewage, University of Ottawa.

 “No terrorist bodies; no evidence; no evidence; no crime; no crime; no Tribunals. Disappear terrorist bodies!”

At the site of one of more than two dozen Syrian government’s secret ‘slaughterhouse’ prison body dump sites. This one in Najha, Syria, ten miles south of Damascus Syria and approximately 50 yards north of the burial site of East Ghouta’s conjoined twins Nawras & Mou’az Al-Hashash

One of Bashar al-Assads’ Vladmir Putins’ and Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ali Khameini’s growing problems is that an assortment of Syrian War Crimes Tribunals are finalizing their cases, sooner than many of us thought probable,  is the fact that millions of vetted documents gathered from countless sources within the Syrian government are being prepared for trial including several hundred Syrian and Iranian war crimes cases. Unlike many previous International War Crimes Tribunals once jurisdiction is passed to a body like the ICC or a Special International Tribunal for Syria (SITS), the approaching trials can proceed quite quickly because of all the preparatory work that has been done and there will not be the need for such  long case preparation lag time as in the past.

U.S. and European officials allege that Assad’s regime and its allies have committed war crimes on an industrial scale. They contend that rarely in the annals of international justice has the evidence of such actions been as voluminous.  These invaluable photographic and documental resources in addition to more than a dozen other current reliable professional forensic evidence gathering undertakings constitute a massive amount of probative evidence. Once Syria’s Hobbesian nightmare of massive crimes against humanity dissipates somewhat, and the day of justice draws near, the prosecuting global community will have much more dispositive evidence to secure convictions than we’ve had anywhere or at any time since Nuremberg.

For reasons perhaps known only to Assad and his inner circle, hospital functionaries, working closely with Syrian intelligence agents, have been carefully documenting the regime’s handiwork, using a distinctive numbering scheme to track victims and keep records of the killings that contain fictitious death certificates.  The paper trail shows that Assad himself “reviewed the proposals [of the cell], signed them, and returned them for implementation,” according to the New Yorker, adding: “Sometimes he made revisions, crossing out directives and adding new ones.”

One regime investigator, Mr Salem Barak (assume name to protect his family in Syria) reported to investigators in Europe that he  was “certain that no security decision, no matter how small, was made without Assad’s approval.”

One group of highly experienced specialized international war crimes lawyers has already drafted a 400-hundred page legal-brief, which traces the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coordinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives, who reported on the success of their campaign to their superiors in Damascus. Acts of torture, murder, and detention under inhumane conditions in Syria have been widely reported by survivors but never linked to signed orders by Bashar al-Assad. Now they have been.

Many of these documents come from Syrian government security and intelligence facilities taken over by government defectors or anti-Assad groups. Other documents were stolen by others who worked as moles within Assad’s top security committee and secreted scores of thousands of documents out of Syria to investigators.

The most striking evidence concerns Assad’s response to the mass protests his rule that swept Syria from 2011 onwards. He appointed a “Central Crisis Management Cell” and gave the security chiefs on this committee supreme responsibility for suppressing the unrest.

Amnesty International, working on this case with a former government employee of the Al-Assad appointed “Central Management Crisis Cell.” The cell held daily meetings in Damascus, chaired by Mohammad Said Bekheitan, the second most senior member of the ruling Ba’ath party. The government employee reported that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison north of Damascus. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in a four-year period since a popular uprising descended into war. Today the number has been estimated to total more than 50,000.

In another “Crimes Documentation Center”, for two years, as Syria’s civil war became ever deadlier, one government employee, later using the code name, “Caesar” downloaded thousands of high-resolution photographs onto flash drives, he snuck into the empty office of his boss and took cell-phone pictures of the papers on the man’s desk. Among them were execution orders and directives to falsify death certificates and dispose of bodies. Armed with as much evidence as he could safely carry, the photographer fled Syria country for Europe.

The Syrian intelligence images that Caesar secreted out of Syria continue to be thoroughly studied by western specialists and intelligence agencies and judged to be indictable evidence of massive war crimes. The photos, most of them taken in Syrian military hospitals, show corpses photographed at close range—one at a time as well as in small groupings.

Virtually all the tens of thousands of bodies show clear signs of torture: gouged eyes; mangled genitals; bruises and dried blood from beatings; acid and electric burns; emaciation; and marks from strangulation. “Caesar” took a number of these pictures, working with roughly a dozen other photographers assigned to the same military-police unit, at the Damascus area “Horror Hospitals” Tisreen, Messeh (“Hospital 601”) where, in addition to three other Syrian hospitals this observer visited when searching for conjoined twins Nawras & Mou’az Al-Hashash in late summer 2016. Both “hospitals” seemed “normal” to me with friendly doctors, smiling nurses and busy arrival and departure hospital lobbies. I never gave of thought about what might be happening several floors down.

Some relevant key dates:

August 2013, Syrian police photographer “Caesar” presented clear evidence to the global community of the Syrian regimes war crimes. “Caesar” smuggled out more than 57,000 photographs, most of them taken in Syrian military hospitals Tisreen and Messeh (Hospital 601) among other locals. Both Mezzeh and Tishreen are run by Syria’s Military Medical Services. The authenticated photos show corpses photographed by “Caesar” and his colleagues at close range with all of the bodies show signing of torture: gouged eyes; mangled genitals; bruises and dried blood from beatings; acid and electric burns; emaciation; and marks from strangulation. “Caesar” worked with roughly a dozen other photographers assigned to the same military-police unit.

Mid-2015 and forward, more than 600,000 documents exposing crimes against humanity and war crimes by the government of Syria, some bearing the stamp and signature of Bashar al-Assad are smuggled out of Syria and transported to the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) for analysis and trial preparation.

May of 2017. Based on US and EU monitoring of Sednaya prison north of Damascus, the Trump administration announced that the Al-Assad regime has set up many crematoria and is incinerating thousands of corpses in order to destroy evidence that could be used to prosecute war crimes.  Some Syrian opposition supporters asked why, if the US had satellite pictures suggesting the existence of the Syrian crematoria why they were only now being made public. Others accused the Obama administration for sitting on the satellite images.

3/15/2018 and continuing and indeed intensifying, are Syrian, regional and international crimes against humanity evidence collection campaigns documenting in detail, often with consultation from specialized international criminal lawyers, the massive accelerating war crimes in Syria these past nearly eight years. This painstaking evidence gathering became a major secret project in late 1212. Today it is dramatically intensifying with the increased involvement of former and current government employees including Baath party officials, current high-ranking members of the military, security services, and reportedly includes members of the regimes inner circle.

8/24/2016. Death of conjoined twins Nawras & Mou’az Al-Hashash.

8/29/ 2016. Graveyard sleepover by this observer with the boys and the chance witnessing body dumping at the government military cemetery at Najha, 10 miles south of Damascus.

Dear reader may have seen earlier reports by this observer the past couple of years from Syria about the short life and homicide of East Ghouta conjoined twins, Nawras and Moaz Al-Hashash. Link:  Why Conjoined Syrian Twins Nawras and Mou’az Were Condemned to Death, September, 16, 1916.

A few days after the boys death, I was allowed by the Syrian government to visit their gravesite and add a stone but no name. Next to the boy’s small concrete slab, the Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Lebanon (MSRCL) left the boys, their grieving family and the Syrian public a copy of the original one drawn by Syrian artist Akram Abo Alfoz.

I personally failed the boys. Surely there was more this observer could have done to help save them. And as Syria’s civil war enters its 8th year, without any end in sight, another generation of Syrian children face ever increasing ruin, with child deaths doubling last year and the number of child soldiers tripling since 2015. A new report by UNICEF found 2017 was the worst yet of the war for young Syrians, with more than 1,100 killed this past year that has taken a vastly disproportionate toll on the country’s most vulnerable people.

Near the end of my visit with the boys and sitting at their gravesite and telling them about Gulliver’s Travels, it began to get dark. A security guard approached and warned me that the area was not safe at night and that I should leave quickly. Only later was I to learn his real motive. After singing softly to the boys, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” which I like to think is their favorite song, I told them another story and planning to return to Damascus, I dozed off instead after a long day.

​​The time was approximately 3 a.m. on 9/14/2016 when I was awakened by the sound of a roaring dump truck entering the large field perhaps 50 yards behind the boys grave site. (see photo below).  I had no idea what it was doing and tried to ignore the noise.  When it did not leave for about half an hour and I heard yelling, I carefully looked up and was shocked to see what looked like bodies being pulled from the truck and then dragged and thrown into a large freshly dug pit.  I wondered what that was about but then recalled having been told that the area of Najha was considered my locals as “the land of government cemeteries given the air force cemetery complex a few miles north including this one. When it started to get light, I spoke with the boys for a few minutes and headed back to Damascus.

At this point I had heard gossip and rumors but I knew little of the regimes ‘horror hospitals”, “slaughterhouses” or crematoria but upon learning more I reported what I saw and was assured that the site would be monitored by UN specialized agencies to acquire evidence of war crimes and crime against humanity.  A week later I was informed that given the disclosure of events at the Najha cemetery that no bodies would likely be removed from or added to the site on orders from Soleimani or Al-Assad but if any were they would be photographed via satellites and drones and would be available for examination by the relevant UN agencies pursuant to criminal indictment and prosecution of all concerned.

CONCLUSION Mr. Solemani and those he instructs with respect to “no bodies, no evidence, equals no crimes” misses the point and methodology of forensic investigations. In addition of thousands of bodies, the governments will not be able to locate and “disappear” there are countless additional sources of proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria over the now past eight years.

Not least of which being literally hundreds of thousands of eye-witnesses including thousands from within the higher echelons of the Assad regime and increasing numbers of regime loyalists defect. Many are gathering probative, relevant, material and admissible evidence which is not a major problem and Soleimani’s instructions to ‘disappear” damaged terrorist bodies’ will not solve the Al-Assad regimes legal problems before the approaching Special Tribunal for Syria (STS).

On March 14, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black issued a preliminary injunction blocking an Ohio law that would have banned abortions performed solely due to a diagnosis of Down syndrome.

It made the ACLU and Planned Parenthood happy: they both support killing babies who are 80 percent born (partial-birth abortion), so it’s easy to see why they were delighted with this outcome.

Judge Black explained his reasoning by saying, “The State’s attempt to carve out exceptions to a categorical right where none exist fails as a matter of law.” He’s wrong. In some states it is illegal to abort a child on the basis of sex. Pennsylvania is one of those states.

Pennsylvania is currently considering legislation similar to the one struck down in Ohio (North Dakota has a law, which has not been challenged in the courts, that bans aborting children with Down syndrome).

On March 12, Karen Gaffney spoke at the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg in favor of the ban in Pennsylvania. She has Down syndrome. She is also a champion swimmer who has traversed the Boston Harbor, the San Francisco Bay, and Lake Tahoe; she also participated in a relay that crossed the English Channel. Perhaps the ACLU and Planned Parenthood could explain to her why she has no right to live.

In Iceland, as George Will wrote in his March 15 column for the Washington Post, “upward of 85 percent of pregnant women opt for prenatal testing, which has produced a Down syndrome-elimination rate approaching 100 percent.” He calls that genocide. “It is simply the deliberate, systematic attempt to erase a category of people.”

Will quotes an Icelandic counselor who consoles mothers about to abort their Down syndrome baby. She says, “We don’t look at abortion as a murder.” Then what is it? “We look at it as a thing that we ended.” (My italic.)

A “thing.” This kind of sanitization of the language is not merely troublesome, it is demonic. It is precisely the kind of language used by the Nazis: the Final Solution began by killing the disabled. Though we are not about to repeat that horror in the U.S., the road to killing the unwanted and the infirm is inexorably greased by this mind-set.

By Jill Richardson*

America, can we talk? We need to talk about “free trade.” We’ve needed to have this conversation for a while, actually. Like, since the 1980s.

For the past several decades, the U.S. political establishment has advocated free trade as part of a broader economic ideology called neoliberalism.

Now, you may need to ignore the word “liberal” in there — its meaning here is different from how most people use it in our politics.

Neoliberalism is not a Democratic idea. Ronald Reagan was a huge champion of it. In more recent decades, all of our presidents from both major political parties were on board with it — until, to some extent, Trump.

The simple way to understand neoliberalism is that it’s the package of economic and trade policies the U.S. has lived under since the Reagan administration. Deregulation. Privatization. That sort of thing.

One pillar of neoliberal ideology is free trade.

In business school, I was taught not to question it. The idea was that if countries removed trade tariffs, then everyone would benefit.

Each country would produce what it’s most “efficient” at producing: Developing nations will manufacture goods with cheap labor. The U.S. will grow lots of corn and soybeans and export them. And everyone wins because there will be low prices.

The counter arguments are often humanitarian and environmental. If we’re going to buy clothing and iPhones from nations with cheap labor, lax environmental laws, and few labor rights, then the people who make the goods we buy will work in unsafe and inhumane conditions.

That’s essentially what happened.

For example, in 2013, a building housing garment factories in Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring thousands more. Cracks had appeared in the building before it collapsed, and an engineer declared it unsafe. Factory owners ordered their workers back to work — and then the building collapsed.

The workers were producing clothes for export, including top U.S. brands. But, on the upside (say the neoliberals), clothing made in Bangladesh is nice and cheap in the United States.

Also, corporations get massive profits. You can make more money when you can pay workers only $3 a day.

Free trade may help our consumers and corporate CEOs — but it hurts workers. In the book Threads, Jane Collins details how the garment industry changed after some companies began sending jobs overseas.

Workers in the U.S. became limited in how much they could push for higher wages. They knew that if they pushed too hard, their employer would fire them all and move the factory to Mexico, Vietnam, or Bangladesh.

Furthermore, an American company that wanted to pay its workers well was limited in its ability to do so, because it was competing with other companies that paid less for labor overseas.

A similar trend has played out, rather more famously, with manufacturing jobs.

For some voters in hard-hit regions, part of Trump’s appeal is that he was one of the first major party candidates to oppose free trade.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s got a great alternative for it.

Pugnaciously declaring he’s implementing a steel tariff has so far done little more than outrage our allies and provoke Europe to retaliate by putting tariffs on American goods like bourbon and blue jeans, which could also hurt American workers.

Trade wars won’t fix the deeper problem of neoliberalism. But maybe future leaders will see that it pays to question the costs of “free trade.”

*OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

Since he took power in China in 2013, Xi Jinping has been using an anti-corruption campaign to get rid of political rivals, infusing the ruling Politburo with his cronies, smashing dissent, and sinking the tentacles of the state further into the Chinese economy. He has now culminated the transition from collective autocracy into one-man rule by removing term limits on his tenure as China’s leader.

Such moves are a retrogression from Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, beginning in the late 1970s, which partly freed the economy from the complete state ownership of Maoist communism and established a regular leadership turnover, so that no future leader could establish a disastrous Mao-like cult of personality ever again. Deng’s reforms are responsible for China’s economic miracle.

Because the West naively hoped that China’s economic progress and integration with the world would lead to political liberalization, Xi’s rollback of Deng’s reforms, including Xi’s abolishment of leadership term limits, has come as a rude shock. Yet even though it is true that societies usually need to achieve a certain level of wealth to sustain democracy, it is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for political liberalization.

Because of such naivete, many analysts in the West were appalled when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appropriately said of Xi’s disposal of leadership term limits: “That’s a decision that would be up to China.”

Those analysts now fear that because China is now ruled by a dictator, Xi will become more aggressive in foreign policy. However, the opposite could occur. American policymakers and its populace regularly mistakenly correlate internal repression with external aggression.

Going back to ancient Greece, democratic Athens was the aggressive party, not autocratic Sparta. If Xi succeeds in his quest to become emperor for life, he may become more immune from nationalistic public opinion—and thus less assertive abroad—than if he had taken the opposite course. Even if China would become a liberal or illiberal democracy, it could become more aggressive in foreign policy to satisfy the nationalism of its population—as elected U.S. presidents have done throughout American history.

After World War II, in terms of military and covert meddling in the affairs of other nations, the democratic United States empirically has been the most aggressive country in the world. In addition, the democratic British and French Empires were also very rapacious overseas.

Anti-China hawks talk of the future Chinese threat by warning of increased Chinese defense budgets and territorial claims in nearby areas. Yet the much wealthier United States has outspent China for decades on defense by vast sums (the United States still spends three times what China does), which has a cumulative effect on national military power; in contrast, China is still only a regional power that has trouble projecting power even in the East Asian area.

Such analysts skirt over those facts and focus on China’s $1 trillion initiative to help countries build infrastructure in Asia, Europe and Africa as being truly sinister. However, this government-driven spending in search of “global influence” merely is a drain on Chinese resources, with little in return to show for it (except perhaps in the economically backward and strategically unimportant countries of Cambodia, Rwanda and Thailand).

More generally, Xi’s movement away from Deng’s freeing of the economy, reinserting state regulation and control, will very likely lessen Chinese growth rates—and thus China’s future power. Xi’s building of “strategic industries,” increased interference in private companies, and state-sponsored mercantilism to get more foreign market access for Chinese firms, while restricting foreign concerns in China, hasn’t worked in other countries and it won’t work in China either.

China will likely be economically weaker under Xi than under prior, term-limited leaders who generally followed Deng’s pioneering policies.

President Trump’s economically illiterate response to Xi’s mercantilism seems to be to make the United States poorer too by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and limiting Chinese investment in U.S. technology—thus perhaps starting a commercial war.

Under Xi’s dictatorship, China’s path back toward being a Third World country in both political and economic terms—when combined with China’s aging population, environmental pollution, regional separatism, heavily indebted private and state-owned companies, and soaring public expectations requiring high economic growth rates to perhaps avoid revolution—is bad for the Chinese people but could limit Chinese future power and the threat it poses to the United States and the world.

Instead of active economic or military policy against China, the Trump administration would be better served to adopt a wait-and-see posture.

This article was published at InsideSources.com and republished with permission.

Southern African Development Community (SADC) Ministers of Health have agreed on a course of action to mitigate the outbreak of Listeriosis in the region.

This action includes the harmonisation, procedures of prevention, detection and response across the region.

These will see SADC member states collaborating and strengthening inter-ministerial actions at border posts, inter-sectoral and multi-sectoral coordination, effective communication in public health as well as hazard risk assessments for the outbreak.

“We have called on the [SADC] Secretariat to facilitate experience sharing and information exchange between member states. We have also requested the support of international and regional partners like WHO to support capacity building for member states,” Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said on Thursday in his capacity as the chair of SADC Ministers of Health.

The Minister gathered with his regional counterparts in Gauteng for an extraordinary meeting to discuss the outbreak of Listeriosis in South Africa and the efforts made by government to contain it. The meeting also looked at preventing a trans-border outbreak of Listeriosis.

The food-borne disease, which was first identified in June 2017 in South Africa, has claimed 180 lives and to date, 940 Listeriosis cases have been reported in the country.

The regional Ministers also agreed to strengthen the control of food industries in terms of compliance to food safety standards, as well as the enforcement of policies that are aligned to international codes as well as public education of the disease.

SADC member countries comprise Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

One Namibian receiving treatment, region on alert

Ministers and the representatives attending the meeting indicated that they have no reported cases of Listeriosis in their countries, except for Namibia.

A representative at the meeting, Dr J Kavencunar, said a 41-year-old Namibian man was diagnosed with the disease on Monday and is being treated in a hospital in the capital Windhoek.

“This was the only case of Listeriosis reported in Namibia since the outbreak… Our surveillance and monitoring systems are in full force,” she said.

Most Ministers indicated that they might have victims of Listeriosis in their country but because of the lack of capacity in diagnosing the symptoms, they might have been missed.

They said they have complied with the recall and ban of the South African processed meat products, as most indicated that they did import from the implicated companies.

Despite the recall, the regional Ministers welcomed South Africa’s transparency and urgency in dealing with the outbreak. They hoped that the agreed measures put in place will help equip the different countries with prevention, detection and responses.

After having been the Prime Minister of India for around four years now and having introduced several path breaking measures to promote transparency in governance, eliminate corruption and initiating several measures to promote industrial and economic growth, Mr. Modi has to now only look forward and forge ahead.

Some of the strong measures he initiated such as demonetization, introduction of anti-benami law, bankruptcy law, elimination of shell companies certainly highlight the quality of commitment and strength of purpose of Mr. Modi. He has taken these measures, some of which have not won many friends for him, that are purely motivated by his desire to strengthen the fibre and fabric of India.

While many people do appreciate and understand the spirit of such decisions, several pledged critics have been extremely severe in attributing motives to Mr. Modi and questioning his sense of purpose.

However, unlike in the case of some of the earlier Prime Ministers from a particular family, future historians will applaud his personal honesty, courage of conviction and foresighted outlook. History will certainly prove many of his policies to be correct, though some people at present may not be able to appreciate as they are now too near the events and see only the inevitable hiccups that happen when fundamental policy measures to ensure appropriate changes in attitude, procedures and approach to solve issues are being introduced.

Of course, some elements in Mr. Modi’s party itself have been making obnoxious and unintelligent remarks from time to time and even admirers of Mr. Modi think that he should have disciplined them in more effective way.

The recent defeat of the BJP candidates in the by elections in UP and Bihar should have certainly rattled the BJP leadership. It is only hoped that advisors and supporters of Mr. Modi would see the happenings and developments in proper perspectives and would not develop any sense of panic, that would prompt them to think that changes in the policies and priorities of Modi government are required, in the wake of the by election results.

While several significant initiatives have been taken by Mr. Modi such as clean India campaign , construction of millions of toilets for poor people, free LPG scheme for poor households, opening of zero balance bank account to millions of poor people, the biggest expectation of people from Mr. Modi is that he should root out corruption in India from one end to the other at all levels.

In the coming one more year before national election, Mr. Modi should take very strong steps to meet the expectations of the poor and downtrodden people who form the large share of the vote bank , by ensuring corruption free India to a large extent, so that the common men would get relief from the corrupt employees in the government machinery, corrupt politicians in power whichever party they belong to, apart from middle men and business people who have spread themselves in every area like educational institutions, hospitals and even in religious places.

Several steps initiated to combat corruption like GST, anti-benami law etc. are all long term measures which many people do not fully understand and section of the media and opposition parties misguide the common men by motivated propaganda, which may have caused some votes for Mr. Modi’s party in the recent by elections.

People in the lower income group and those marginally above the poverty line are the people worst affected by the prevailing corruption in government machinery. They feel that corrupt policemen, doctors and others in the government run hospitals, in the government owned educational institutions, civil supplies departments etc. are harassing them and making their life miserable. Many posts in several state governments are now suspected to be for sale and common men feel frustrated, as they do not get jobs in the government in most cases without greasing palms.

People want to see the corrupt persons punished just like pesticides kill the pests in agricultural farms. This should happen not only at top level of the administration but also at the lower level, so that the common men will feel the positive impact in quick time.

Since BJP is in power in several states, it should be possible for Mr. Modi to take stringent measures not only to eliminate corruption and punish corrupt people but it should also appear to happen in the eyes of the common men.

If Mr. Modi would be successful in making the people living in the conditions of below poverty line and marginally above poverty line appreciate that corruption is being fought and they would get relief from the corrupt people , Mr. Modi will win the 2019 elections hands down and country will take care of him.

A fourth Gender Parity Task Force has been launched in Latin America to increase the number of women entering and progressing through the labour market. Following earlier announcements by Argentina, Chile and Panama, Peru is the latest country in the region to adopt the public-private collaboration model on economic gender parity developed by the World Economic Forum and applied in Latin America in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

“Gender parity is important not only as a matter of equity. It can also yield a huge growth dividend,” said Luis Alberto Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington DC. “If our region achieved parity in labour force participation, our GDP could increase by 16%. We’re pleased to partner with the government of Peru and the Forum to knock down the barriers keeping women from the labour market and from developing their full potential.”

With an average remaining gender gap of 29.8%, Latin America scores in the middle of the range of the Global Gap Index, behind Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Women throughout Latin America are less likely to enter the workforce and much less likely to be paid commensurately or to reach senior management roles.

Peru currently ranks 98 out of 144 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report on economic participation and opportunity. Recent advances in female education make the country ideally placed to maximize women’s economic potential. It is this potential that Peru is committed to help maximize through country-level collaboration.

“It is not just a task for us women,” said Mercedes Aráoz, Prime Minister of Peru. “Working towards equality means working in equality, with active and equal participation of men and women to achieve a more just and beneficial situation for all.”

Claudio Muñoz, Co-Chair of Chile’s Gender Parity Task Force and Chairman, Telefónica Chile, echoed this sentiment. “We are in a world that is ever more open and connected, and we have to be capable of understanding these issues in order to be creatively competitive on a global stage. It’s a challenge for all, for both the private and the public sphere, and we must take responsibility in order to advance. Fostering diversity, talent and millennials, and fomenting the participation of women in the workforce are fundamental pieces of our strategy and, without doubt, are practices that should spread throughout the country.”

“Gender equality is both a moral and economic imperative,” said Saadia Zahidi, Head of Social and Economic Agendas, Member of Executive Committee, World Economic Forum. If the pace of change that has happened over the last 12 years continues to hold true in the future, it will take us another 100 years to close the global gender gap. We cannot wait this long. The future prosperity of the world – not just half of it – depends on how effectively we accelerate the pace of gender parity.”

The model for public-private cooperation was developed over three years by Forum-led gender parity task forces in Japan, Mexico, the Republic of Korea and Turkey. In each of the four pilots, partnerships were established with the aim of reducing the gender gap in each country by 10% in three years, relative to its starting point. This was achieved by encouraging business and policy-makers to take action, as well as fostering public-private dialogue and collaboration. The model aims to address gender gaps and reshape gender parity for the future, with a focus on closing gaps in participation, remuneration and leadership.

By Jay Syrmopoulos*

Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival on March 11, billionaire polymath pioneer Elon Musk warned “AI is far more dangerous than nukes” regarding the dangers associated with the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence (AI). “I’m very close to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me,” Musk told the crowd.

“Narrow AI is not a species-level risk. It will result in dislocation… lost jobs… better weaponry and that sort of thing. It is not a fundamental, species-level risk, but digital super-intelligence is,” Musk told the audience in Austin.

“I think the danger of AI is much bigger than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot,” Musk said. “Nobody would suggest we allow the world to just build nuclear warheads if they want, that would be insane. And mark my words: AI is far more dangerous than nukes.”

Musk made clear that he believes the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are outpacing any potential regulation of the technology, thus creating a dangerous paradigm and a need for regulation.

“I’m not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight,” Musk said. “There needs to be a public body that has insight and oversight to confirm that everyone is developing AI safely.”

Musk highlighted the case of Google’s AlphaGo, AI-powered software that can play the ancient Chinese board game Go— reputedly the world’s most demanding strategy game— as evidence of exponential learning capacity of machines. In early 2017, AlphaGo clinched a decisive victory over the top Go player in the world.

While some AI experts dismiss such fears, downplaying potential threats posed by artificial intelligence to humanity, Musk believes these “experts” are falling victim to their own delusions of intellectual superiority over machines, calling their thought process “fundamentally flawed.”

“The biggest issue I have with AI experts… is that they think they’re smarter than they are. This tends to plague smart people,” says Musk. “They’re defining themselves by their intelligence… and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be smarter than them, so they discount the idea. And that’s fundamentally flawed.”

During his SXSW talk Musk also discussed the possibility of another coming of the Dark Ages and a colony on Mars as a “hedge” against civilizational collapse on Earth.

“I think it’s unlikely that we won’t have another world war again… there probably will be at some point,” Musk said. “[So] there’s likely to be another Dark Ages,” Musk said. “Particularly if there’s a Third World War… [And] we want to make sure that there’s enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else so that we can bring civilization back and shorten the length of the dark ages.”

About the author:
Jay Syrmopoulos is a geopolitical analyst, freethinker, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at the University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs and holds a BA in International Relations. Jay’s writing has been featured on both mainstream and independent media – and has been viewed tens of millions of times.

Source:
This article was published by Truth in Media.

The Maldivian reaction to Indian initiatives on Maldivian democracy was not totally unexpected.

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

By drawing a parallel between the Kashmir issue and the current democracy issue in Maldives, the Yameen presidency may have administered more than an anticipated snub on India. Taken to its logical conclusion, it could well imply that the Yameen Government would not be averse to conferring legitimacy on Kashmir groups, militant or otherwise, the same way India has related to the Joint Opposition (JO) in Maldives.

Interacting with visiting foreign journalists, that too at the President’s Office, Maldives Fisheries Minister Dr. Mohammed Shainee, however, delivered a positive rendering of what was otherwise a negative approach to India. Leading the government delegation for the continually aborted all-party talks, Dr. Shainee said that Maldives did not interfere with India’s Kashmir problem, and expected India, too, not to interference in the internal affairs of his country.

The Maldivian reaction to Indian initiatives on Maldivian democracy was not totally unexpected, not when Yameen was in power, as I had said in one of my earlier article. If anything, unlike jailed-yet-self-exiled former president and opposition MDP leader, Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, Yameen was not unknown to react the way his government has done since, but only after making sure that the other side was wearing the shoe on the wrong foot(!).

In political terms, it might only be Yameen’s way of telling his cadres in the country that he was powerful enough to take on the larger Indian neighbour. In diplomatic terms, the consequences of such a confrontationist approach could undo South Asia and South Asian unity (barring, of course, Pakistan) in more ways than one. Leaving aside the India-Pakistan tangle since the latter’s creation seven decades back, the Shainee statement is fraught with greater dangers than possibly acknowledged.

‘Official recognition’

Despite their various and wavering approaches, no nation has conferred ‘official recognition’ on any or many of the separatist groups. That includes Pakistan, which wants Jammu and Kashmir merged in its entirety, and not as a separate nation. Even before the emerging neo-Cold War centred on the region, and the hot war of 1962, China too is circumspect on this score. Beijing recognises the ‘Uighur Islamic separatism’ in Xinjiang Province, as much in diplomatic terms as it is unwilling to accept it as a domestic political issue for it to try and sort out without force (alone).

In Sri Lanka too, the dreaded LTTE had tried at the height of its occupation of territory creation of symbols of a state structure, including courts, currency and standing navy in the ‘Sea Tigers’ without official recognition by an acknowledged nation-state. When reports claimed that the LTTE was working on Eritrea, a sovereign nation in the Horn of Africa, the war-time Rajapaksa Government in Colombo intervened effectively, and put all such efforts at naught.

Any such Maldivian construct implied in the Shainee statement has two sides to the same. As with other Yameen interpretations of New Delhi’s concerns over the need for political stability, and hence democracy, in Maldives, the ‘K-reference’ implies that the Male dispensation may have already concluded forgoing its diplomatic recognition by such other recognised nation-states, including India.

Differing ‘self-interest’

The Indian concerns over democracy in Maldives flows from the ground reality that there still exists a substantial voter-following for Nasheed and his MDP on the one hand, and much more for the four-party JO. Through the past years of the Yameen Government and ahead of his ascendancy to power through elections 2009, India was seeking only free and fair elections after ensuring a level playing field for the Maldivian Opposition, starting with Nasheed, for the very same reasons and justification.

It is also not about China, as some may want to interpret. It is much more about avoidable instability in the vast and varied Indian Ocean neighbourhood especially, and India just cannot afford it — and hence, not allow it, either. While sovereignty matters in such cases, when looked at from the Maldivian standpoint, ‘supreme national self-interest’ matters as much for India.

Modern-day foreign policy theories do acknowledge the latter as much as the former. For decades now, the India-Maldivian relations have been fraught with problems of the kind. Whichever government has been in power in New Delhi, India has been talking and acting with ‘supreme national self-interest’ in mind.

In the uneven power-projections of South Asia (barring Pakistan in context), Indian ‘self-interest’, especially in geostrategic terms, translates also into ‘supreme regional self-interest.’ In the case of Maldives, it has invariably remained as self-interest of the ruler of the day, whoever he was/is. Contrary to professions, the list should include Nasheed, too.

India-China equations

In the immediate context, India may have engaged with Maldives in the ways it has done even without China, though the immediate concerns have got identified with the Yameen administration signing the China FTA, accompanied by avoidable secrecy. Even without China as forceful in Maldivian affairs as it is now, India had sought free and fair elections when Nasheed’s successor, President Waheed Hassan Manik was in office.

In doing so, India was known to work closely with Yameen, who was also one of the many political leaders of the time in the country. What more, India readily conferred recognition on Yameen’s presidency when Elections-2013 threw him up as the winner, though under very controversial circumstances.

Earlier, India was the first and foremost nation to recognise the Waheed Government after President Nasheed resigned in a huff and Parliament went through motions of elevating the Vice-President, under the provisions of the 2008 Constitution. This was so despite Nasheed retracting his earlier position, claimed that it was not resignation, and criticised India for recognising what he claimed was a coup as constitutional succession.

Male-based Miadhu has since indicated that India had offered to send an intermediary but the Yameen Government had declined the same. However, The Times of India quoted Minister Shainee from Male that the Yameen Government had kept the UN and the EU posted on its negotiation efforts. “A third party is willing to negotiate on the issue,” the Indian daily quoted Minister as saying, but refusing to specify if it was an international body or a country. “It is neither China nor India.” Asked about China’s big brother role, Shainee said: “India, not China, is the big brother in the region. And we will continue our India-first policy.”

On-again, off-again

The world has once again got busy with itself otherwise after initial and at time disproportionate reaction to the 1 February Supreme Court order. It was only to be expected, and Yameen was/is not the one to miss the mark. The government has since revived the on-again, off-again call for all-party talks. The JO has once again declined to hold talks unless it is held under UN facilitation and participation.

In inviting the opposition parties for talks, Minister Shainee, when he met the foreign media, also disclosed that the government had previously held secret talks with Nasheed through third parties. He did not say when those talks were held or why they did not progress. Nor has the Nasheed camp reacted to the government’s claim.

The idea seems to be for the government to sow seeds of suspicions in the minds of the other three JO constituents, including jailed ex-President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. However, the work in the opposition’s hands is so overwhelming that they may now not have the time or inclination to squabble over ‘such small things’, especially when aware of the motives behind such disclosures.

Independent of international intervention or facilitation of any future talks, the JO may be in no mood for any interaction of the kind with the Yameen leadership until Gayoom, the President’s half-brother and one-time party boss, was freed from jail. Should it happen, suspicions of family ties and consequent favouritism would be sought to be sworn in the minds of other opposition parties, with or without success, however partial.

For starters, religion-centric Adhaalath Party (AP) boss, Sheikh Imran Abdulla, would have to be freed from his long, court-ordered prison-term, on terrorism charges. MDP’s Nasheed and and Jumhooree Party (JP) boss, Gasim Ibrahim, have purportedly jumped jail, both flowing from local court orders, and living in self-exile, overseas. The opposition too may not want to yield without freedom for jailed Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and brother-judge Ali Hameed, charged with plotting a coup against bribery, along with Gayoom and the latter’s parliamentarian son, Faaris Maumoon.

After sending out confusing signals when the government first sent out the invitation not long after the 5 February emergency proclamation, the Yameen leadership has since categorically ruled against UN participation or facilitation. By extension, such a bar could include India, which is the most suited of all players to undertake such a job, balancing all interest and stakeholders, including those of the Maldivian State and Government leadership.

Ahead of all this, the Yameen Government had taken on the other neighbour, Sri Lanka. Even while waiting to present his credentials to Sri Lankan President Maithiripala Sirisena some months ago, the Maldivian Ambassador-designate, Mohammed Hussain Shareed ‘Mundhu’ told media persons that he would seek Colombo’s cooperation to have Nasheed sent back to Male (to face courts and prison authorities), if he was asked to do so. However, less and less of him has been heard since his assuming office.

Interestingly, the present Sri Lankan Government, which had reacted relatively strongly, to Nasheed’s trial and arrest in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’ and related issues, has been maintaining relative silence since the Supreme Court’s controversial order of 1 February and the subsequent proclamation of emergency in Maldives, other than a solo statement in general terms. This was long after then British Prime Minister David Cameron had told the House of Commons that Sri Lanka was the ‘frontline State’ in dealing with Yameen’s Maldives.

If it was the reason and if it was also to provoke India into taking more than the customary passive position in non-Pakistani neighbourhood affairs, it did not happen then and there — not at least when Cameron was in power. Already, India, along with Sri Lanka, had worked on the Yameen administration, to let a jailed Nasheed go to the UK or medical treatment. But then British overtures of the kind also seemed to have silenced Sri Lanka, since viz. Maldives, though not to levels Amb Shareef ‘Mundhu’ would have liked.

By Dr. Matthew Crosston*

In February, an eye-opening new report was released by the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University. This 116-page report, The Travelers: American Jihadists in Iraq and Syria, is a powerful mix of the best of political science and sociology. It exposes the reader to both the definitions and statistics around American- and European-based jihadist travelers, while also providing context via meaningfully detailed backstories of a select few cases.

While this report makes excellent distinctions between the much larger community of European-based jihadists compared to the smaller and more isolated American-based one, there are several key aspects of radical recruitment that deserve further research and greater elaboration.

Addressing Isolation in Immigrant Communities

It is clear that the past three years in America have seen an increase in the same small-scale acts of terrorism that were recently only taking place in Europe.

While the report acknowledges that there is much fanfare about the Islamic State’s savvy use of social media and technology to do “abroad recruiting,” it finds that a personal touch still plays a big role in developing successful recruits who venture all the way over to Iraq and Syria.

In the United States, evidence points to a loosely connected network of radicalization that dates all the way back to the Balkans ethnic conflict in the early 1990s. This provides further evidence of the “social Balkanization” that has remained stubbornly prevalent in the United States when it comes to newer waves of emigrant populations.

The GW report acknowledges the feelings of isolation in many new recruits in America. However, it does not make a connection between the isolation of individuals and the clear failures of select communities to successfully integrate immigrants into American culture. The report does not address this problem, largely because it considers the alienation and isolation process in Europe to be more stark than in America. However, I am not entirely sure this presumption is true and it is certainly not provided for in the report in any evidentiary way.

It also seems clear that the perpetrators of those acts are remarkably similar in their feelings of isolation and alienation from the home culture, whether they are Belgian, French, English, or American. Understanding why some groups in the modern era are coming to the United States but not finding any great attraction to the political and social values of America could be a huge leap in helping law enforcement agencies ascertain where the most vulnerable communities are and which people are most susceptible to such pernicious recruitment.

As a whole, the American diplomatic, social assistance, and academic communities have not done an adequate job investigating the phenomenon best described as being “in the West” but never truly becoming “of the West.” It is this aspect of the recruitment process that is not yet examined in any report but deserves much greater attention.

The gap that supposedly exists between Europe and America in the GW report may in fact be closing and we need to come to terms with its consequences. The report suggests that the West’s success in destroying the political goal of the Islamic State in establishing a Caliphate across the greater Middle East could harbor an unintended negative consequence: Robbing ISIS of the opportunity to achieve their ultimate goal at home may spur recruitment to initiate “revenge” violence back in the West.

Why ISIS’s Recruitment Strategy is More Successful Than al-Qaeda

The report glosses over one of the more unfortunate “successes” of the Islamic State since its inception that makes this so-called “revenge” terrorism more likely: namely, its ability to overcome what I have in the past called al-Qaeda’s “9/11 Syndrome.”

In many regards, al-Qaeda fell victim to its own surprise success with 9/11. After hitting the Pentagon and seeing the total destruction of the Twin Towers, al-Qaeda succumbed to a unique version of self-imposed peer pressure: after such a devastating and history-changing attack, the group would be hard-pressed to consider itself successful if future initiatives only amounted to bus bombings, car attacks, or individual suicide-vest bombers. Such minor acts would only be seen as a regression of relevance and impact.

This has been one of the great conundrums of American counter-terrorist strategists: Was the success in preventing a second 9/11 because of how quickly we reacted and learned from our mistakes? Or was it because al-Qaeda became obsessed with only perpetrating a second version of 9/11, no longer satisfied with smaller-scale acts of terrorism?

We may never know the answer, but what seems clear as a point of distinction between the two terrorist groups is that the Islamic State took any act of terrorism to be a successful act as long as it caused injury, chaos, and death. This is why its social media recruitment is more powerful and more effective than al-Qaeda’s: If you can achieve the same heavenly rewards of martyrdom for an act you can easily commit yourself with little-to-no training and/or consultation (such as blowing up a bus or randomly shooting at people in a nightclub) and don’t need to travel very far from home, then why bother trying to pull off a much more complicated and less-likely-to-succeed fantasy act of high terrorism in a foreign land?

The Islamic State was not handcuffed by the success of 9/11 and its most dangerous weapon so far in terms of Westerner recruitment has been its ability to characterize smaller acts of terrorism as being valuable and important. The report touches on the edge of this reality but does not investigate it fully by encapsulating it within the possibility of “revenge” terrorism. This is where the true epicenter of home-grown Islamic State fanaticism in America is likely to grow and emerge and is therefore an area that needs to be investigated more seriously.

Impacts on Counterterrorism Strategies

The unfortunate truth, as highlighted in the report, is that the perpetrators of future acts of homegrown terror in the United States – motivated by Islamic State recruitment – might only be getting more isolated and more socially alienated, thus becoming harder to detect and preempt. As the Islamic State leans ever-more heavily on social media, demanding less personal contact and perhaps no requirement for foreign travel and training, the prevalence of “lone wolf” acts are likely to become more dominant.

Unfortunately, our methods of counter-terrorism may also be growing antiquated. If this is so, then important reports like “The Travelers” will depressingly become out-of-date much faster than we would like and the emergence of “Jihadi Janes and Johns” will not be marked by travel overseas or by direct personal contacts with known radicalized communities.

Up to now, we have hoped and relied upon that patchwork of loose radicalized elements, centered around well-known communities within major American cities, to produce the most highly motivated recruits, thereby giving us ample evidence of where to focus our law enforcement efforts.

Which leaves one disturbing counter-terrorist Faustian bargain hanging in the air: which do you find more terrifying? Terrorist acts that are large-scale and highly planned, resulting in greater casualties but are quite rare? Or terrorist acts that are smaller-scale and random, resulting in fewer casualties, but are far more common?

Deepening our understanding of evolving recruitment strategies can help us prevent both types of attacks.

About the author:
*Dr. Matthew Crosston is Vice Chairman of Modern Diplomacy and member of the Editorial Board at the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

The end of presidential term limits in China makes way for authoritarian rule and swift decisions for influencing global affairs.

By Frank Ching*

The removal of term limits for China’s presidency marks the end of an era. Xi Jinping is the first Chinese leader who is not a revolutionary like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, or selected by one of modern China’s founders. Deng put poverty-stricken China on the path to development and political reforms, and his influence continued after his 1997 death – both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were chosen by Deng.

Xi’s grab for sustained power dashes hopes that China might become democratic as it develops. His move generated a storm of criticism, but governments by and large have remained silent. As explained by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “I believe that’s a decision for China to make about what’s best for their country.” US President Donald Trump was less restrained. “I think it’s great,” he said, possibly joking during a closed-door fundraiser. “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

Actually, the logic behind Xi’s leadership over the last five years almost dictates a need for indefinite power, certainly beyond the customary 10 years. Since November 2012, when he became the Communist party leader, he may have had no intention of stepping down. Two weeks after his appointment. Xi led the six other members of the Politburo standing committee to the National Museum in Tiananmen Square to view a grand exhibition called “The Road to Revival.” The exhibition recalled China’s “century of humiliation” beginning with the Opium War. Afterward, Xi talked about the China Dream, or “the great revival of the Chinese nation.”

Needless to say, such an ambitious goal, restoring China to its preeminent position from earlier centuries, could not be achieved in 10 years.  Similarly, his highly ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, possibly the largest infrastructure and investment project ever articulated, covering some 66 countries, was unveiled during the first year of his presidency. Such an initiative, designed to enhance China’s global influence, could not be wrapped up in two five-year terms.

Xi has ended Deng’s policy of “biding time and hiding strength.” Instead, at the 19th Party Congress last October, he made clear in his 3½-hour speech that it was time for China to move to center stage backed by a strong military. By not naming a successor, the practice for two decades, Xi confirmed suspicions that he intended to remain leader indefinitely.

Mao called for world revolution when China’s economy was puny, but Xi leads a country becoming more powerful by the day. As Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, once observed, Japan and India combined cannot balance China. The month after Xi’s speech, representatives of four democratic countries – the United States, Japan, India and Australia – held talks in Manila on widening their security cooperation. The quadrilateral security dialogue ostensibly was not directed at any specific country, but clearly was a response to China’s increasing assertiveness under Xi. As China’s shadow lengthens, that semi-alliance may well attract new members.

China is pleased the United States is paying less attention to the Asia region and interests of its partners. The South China Sea, in particular, is quiescent in the aftermath of China’s rejection of the 2016 ruling by an arbitral tribunal in The Hague supporting the Philippines against China’s claims to virtually the entire sea.

The ruling was not enforceable. In the Philippines, the Rodrigo Duterte administration opted for economic benefits through improved relations with China. The Association of Southeast Asia Nations went silent on the issue, pleasing China to no end. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi alluded to the United.States when he said at a March 8 press conference: “Some outside forces are not happy with the prevailing calm and try to stir up trouble and muddle the waters.” Washington sent an aircraft carrier to Vietnam, from March 5 to 9, and The Global Times responded with an article headlined: “USS Carl Vinson’s Vietnam visit will be to little avail.”

Individual Southeast Asian nations have little ability to stand up for their interests, and Beijing continues to use various means to demonstrate its sovereignty over disputed waters. The nation is proposing a marine park in the disputed area to “protect the region’s ecology,” with no mention of a joint project with other nations.

As strongman, Xi can be more effective, acting swiftly and wielding influence over outcomes. Consider when Kim Jong-un became North Korea’s leader in December 2011. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, approached China for help to replace Kim with his older half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, who lived in Macao. It is known that Jang met China’s Hu Jintao on August 17, 2012, three months before Xi was due to take over. Hu reportedly gave no decision, suggesting he had to consult colleagues. Subsequently, Kim’s uncle was executed for “treason” and the half-brother was killed in Malaysia with nerve gas. If Xi had been approached, he no doubt might have been more decisive and influenced history.

The China model of authoritarian development has its attractions. With Xi pouring scorn on Western democracy, some African and South Asian countries may well emulate China, and create a more amenable environment for Chinese-style authoritarianism worldwide. On the negative side, the personality cult around Xi may result in arrogance that clouds his judgment. Already, at the National People’s Congress session where the constitution was amended, the party leader of Qinghai, Wang Guosheng, said some Tibetans were calling Xi a “living bodhisattva,” in Buddhism, a person who delays approaching nirvana to help others  Ironically, the party constitution is clear: “The Party forbids all forms of personality cult.”

Xi will likely continue using the United Nations to achieve Chinese purposes. On human rights, for instance, China last year introduced a resolution in the Human Rights Council loaded with political slogans, such as Xi Jinping’s call for a “community of shared future.” The resolution doesn’t contain Xi’s name but in December, at what China called the “First South-South Human Rights Forum,” the resolution did mention Xi by name.

China uses international bodies to carry out its agenda. After Margaret Chan, a Chinese-Canadian physician, became director-general of the World Health Organization in 2006, that body consistently used the term “Taiwan, province of China,” in its documents as insisted by China. Xi refers regularly to “the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation,” tens of millions of ethnic Chinese who are citizens of other countries. For China, the diaspora can be used as part of the United Front, which Xi calls a “magic weapon” as China relentlessly seeks to enhance its influence in countries such as Australia.

Taiwan is a priority area for Xi. He has repeatedly said that rejuvenation cannot occur without reunification. Now Xi has a deadline for returning Taiwan to the fold: 2049. Although Xi continues to talk about “peaceful reunification,” it would be wise to remember the words of Xu Guangyu, the retired general who explained Chinese aggressive activities in the East China Sea in 2010: “We kept silent and tolerant over territorial disputes with our neighbors in the past because our navy was incapable of defending our economic zones, but now our navy is able to carry out its task.”

Chinese capabilities, including the development of missiles capable of destroying aircraft carriers, continue to grow, and it must be remembered that China passed a 2005 law giving itself the right to use “non-peaceful means” to take over Taiwan. In the annals of Chinese history, the Qin emperor is revered for unifying China, and Xi wants to go down in history as the man who finally unified China – and possibly the first ruler of “all under the heaven.”

*Frank Ching is a journalist and author of Ancestors: 900 Years in the Life of a Chinese Family. Follow him on Twitter.

By Mihail Neamţu*

“The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceaușescu’s rule.” This is how the famous British actor Christopher Lee described his encounter with my native land at a time when the Cold War was threatening the stability of the planet.

In 1989, Communism finally collapsed. My generation included, as far as I can tell, countless fans of rock music and avid listeners to the subversive Radio Free Europe. On our first official post-communist Christmas holiday, my family was hoping that the political landscape of Eastern Europe would quickly be shaped by healthy democratic institutions, secure private property and free trade, economic competition, as well as a robust sense of personal responsibility. Those high expectations have been miserably disappointed.

Despite its stunning beauty, cultural diversity, and richness in mineral resources, Romania remains to this day one of the poorest European countries. In less than a decade, 20 percent of the total population has turned into economic refugees. The Romanians currently living in exile are some of the brightest, most industrious, and most entrepreneurial people of my generation. Not even in times of famine and war has an exodus of such massive proportions ever taken place.

When dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989, Romania had zero public debt and probably more than $200 billion in state assets. Since then, most of the former Communist factories have been turned into piles of scrap iron. A growing demographic contraction is creating a massive labor force shortage while putting public finances at risk. The deficits in the pension schemes are escalating. Despite the fact that it officially belongs to NATO and the EU, Romania suffers at the hands of a mafia-style political hierarchy and cartel-like networks of power at the local level.

State monopolies still govern the transportation, healthcare, energy, and education sectors. Local governments do not embrace merit-based individual mandates for mayors, school principals, and hospital managers. Nepotism and profligacy are rampant. However, the most lethal threat to this young democracy comes from the undermining of the independent judiciary. In recent years, various courts have sentenced to jail a large number of media tycoons and Members of Parliament, including the former Prime Minister Adrian Năstase. The Socialist Party, which is currently in power, wants to reverse this trend abruptly.

Despite its sense of fatigue, hopelessness, and even despair, the civil society has reacted to the constant attacks of corrupt politicians against the magistrates. In January 2017, nearly a million people took to the streets and called for a radical departure from the old-style politics, as shaped by former Communist nomenklatura. Again in January 2018, at minus 10 degrees Celsius, hundreds of thousands of people protested against the malignant status quo, which brings Romania closer to authoritarian Russia than to any flourishing Western democracy.

For more than a year now, ordinary citizens, small entrepreneurs, and young professionals have gathered in the cities of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova. These rallies received significant coverage by the international media. The protestors see corruption as the cause of poverty. They want higher standards of moral integrity in the public realm.

For too long, the “swamp” of Bucharest has failed to discover, to attract, and to promote competent individuals from the private sector into the high offices of the administrative state. One needs to see a “deconstruction” of the monopoly of power. For decades, now, ruthless politicians have stolen massive amounts of state assets. Those in power had only rights and no obligations. When it comes to rigged contracts and public expenses, political bosses don’t hesitate to give their clients a free ride. Red tape is ubiquitous.

The Socialist members of the Romanian Parliament are precisely those who oversaw the massive process of property redistribution, securing themselves economic privileges while skillfully playing the game of Europeanization. Their primary goal now is to prevent any local or national party leader from being charged by the independent prosecutors of the National Directorate for Anti-Corruption (led by Laura Codruta Kovesi). Will they succeed?

Just as in Russia, Moldova or Turkey, fragile civil society stands against the vested interests of the political class, which still controls much of the mass media. Romanian President Klaus Werner Iohannis has embraced the anti-corruption agenda while pushing for reforms in key state institutions.

Though some believe that a magic solution might come from the outside, Romanian democracy will be renewed mainly through an awakening of those civic, cultural, and spiritual traditions that made this nation strong in its historic pursuit of freedom. After all, the notion of sovereignty and self-determination makes no sense when the national elites beg the unelected bureaucrats from Brussels to “rescue” their own country. As the brilliant African president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, put it in a conversation with the French leader Emmanuel Macron, “We have to get away from this mindset of dependency.”

It is true that the young democracies of Eastern Europe have a strategic role to play in the transatlantic alliance. After a hundred years of existence as a modern state, Romania still needs genuine encouragement from its traditional friends for the sake of preserving individual liberty, the rule of law, and vibrant civil society.

About the author:
*Mihail Neamtu, Ph.D., is an Eastern European conservative author and public intellectual. He has written 10 books on American politics, Christianity, and Islam, as well as new trends in Marxist culture. His forthcoming publication is The Trump Arena: How did a Businessman Conquer the World of Politics?

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute.

By Ángel Manuel García Carmona*

Last Thursday, US President Donald Trump, signed an executive order to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports — of 10 percent and 25 percent respectively — exempting Canada and Mexico. In large part, the that protectionist measure is in response against the phenomena of “dumping,” in which it is believed that some regimes — specifically the Chinese — are subsidizing steel exports.

The Chinese are not the only ones known to subsidize exports, however, and we have seen the Spanish state do this as well with Spanish-grown olives.

It is interesting then, that among the countries and geopolitical blocs that have denounced that Trump’s policy is the European Union. In fact, in response to the new US tariffs, European Commission president, Jean Claude Juncker, has threatened tariffs on Harley Davidson motorbikes and jeans brands like Levi’s, both made in the US.

Nevertheless, the EU has already engaged in a trade war remarkably similar to that the Trump administration is now implementing. Following a European steel industry complaint, the European Commission found “dumping” practices in China, so the Commission raised new barriers to “corrosion-resistant steel from China” with “anti-dumping” duties of up to 28.5%.

Additionally the EU boasts of “an unprecedented number of trade defense measures in place targeting unfair imports of steel products, with a total of 43 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures, 20 of which are on products originating from China.”  Leaving aside the fact that the Obama administration indulged in protectionist measures as well, it must be said the EU is being hypocritical again on trade issues.

The EU’s Protectionism

There is no coherence on EU policies in regards to trade. If Brussels’ bureaucrats last year imposed anti-dumping measures based on import tariffs as a way to punish Chinese steel producers, it is difficult to understand why EU officials now react with so much dismay against those recent measures taken by the Trump Administration. But some of us may know EU establishment is not exactly known for its consistency. But, we do know that protectionism — understood in this case as a political reaction against foreign competition — ought to now be expected from EU officials. After all, thousands of import taxes are applied by EU officials, and existing bilateral agreements and the Agrarian Common Policy are clear evidence of the Commission’s lack of support for free trade. When EU defenders talk about the“single market” they don’t mean “free market.”

But, even if the Chinese are subsidizing exports, this is not justification for the US to engage in a global trade war in name of “free and fair trade.” It is a shameless act of mass thievery, and the problem of government intervention of markets isn’t solved with even more intervention. As Lew Rockwell has noted:

The whole point of free trade is that the private sector (producers and consumers) should have peaceful and voluntary commercial relations with the world, and the U.S. government should have nothing to say about it.

Nor should the EU government have anything to say about it either. While Trump is wrong in his tariff stance, the European Union is exposing itself as an organization guided not by open markets or free trade, but by “anti-Trumpism.”  If the EU were really committed to free trade, it would be calling for unilateral liberalization. But that’s not something the EU has ever been about.

About the author:
Ángel Manuel García Carmona (Spain, 1996) is a Student of Computer Engineering at the Open University of Madrid (UDIMA).

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.