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Blowin’ In The Wind: A Source Of Energy?

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It may in the future be possible to harvest energy with the aid of leaves fluttering in the wind. Researchers at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University have developed a method and a material that generate an electrical impulse when the light fluctuates from sunshine to shade and vice versa.

“Plants and their photosynthesis systems are continuously subjected to fluctuations between sunshine and shade. We have drawn inspiration from this and developed a combination of materials in which changes in heating between sunshine and shade generate electricity,” said Magnus Jonsson, docent and principal investigator for the research group in organic photonics and nano-optics at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Linköping University.

The results, which have been verified in both experiments and computer simulations, have been published in Advanced Optical Materials.

Together with researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Magnus Jonsson and his team have previously developed small nanoantennas that absorb sunlight and generate heat. They published an article together in Nano Letters in 2017, describing how the antennas when incorporated into window glass could reduce cold downdraughts and save energy. The antennas, with dimensions in the order of tens of nanometers, react to near infrared light and generate heat.

Mina Shiran Chaharsoughi, PhD student in Magnus Jonsson’s group, has now developed the technology further and created a tiny optical generator by combining the small antennas with a pyroelectric film.

“Pyroelectric” means that an electrical voltage develops across the material when it is heated or cooled. The change of temperature causes charges to move and the generation of an electric current in the circuit.

The antennas consist of small metal discs, in this case gold nanodiscs, with a diameter of 160 nm (0.16 micrometres). They are placed on a substrate and coated with a polymeric film to create the pyroelectric properties.

“The nanoantennas can be manufactured across large areas, with billions of the small discs uniformly distributed over the surface. The spacing between discs in our case is approximately 0.3 micrometres. We have used gold and silver, but they can also be manufactured from aluminium or copper,” said Magnus Jonsson.

The antennas generate heat that is then converted to electricity with the aid of the polymer. It is first necessary to polarize the polymer film in order to create a dipole across it, with a clear difference between positive and negative charge. The degree of polarisation affects the magnitude of the generated power, while the thickness of the polymer film seems not to have any effect at all.

“We force the polarisation into the material, and it remains polarised for a long time,” said Mina Shiran Chaharsoughi.

Mina Shiran Chaharsoughi carried out an experiment in order to demonstrate the effect clearly, holding a twig with leaves in the air flow from a fan. The motion of the leaves created sunshine and shade on the optical generator, which in turn produced small electrical pulses and powered an external circuit.

“The research is at an early stage, but we may in the future be able to use the natural fluctuations between sunshine and shade in trees to harvest energy,” said Magnus Jonsson.

Applications that are closer to hand can be found in optics research, such as the detection of light at the nanometre scale. Other applications may be found in optical computing.


Philippines: Drug Lords Accused Of Using Rights Groups To Discredit Duterte

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By Karl Romano

Rights groups are being used by unnamed drug lords to destabilize the government, President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman said Monday, days after the International Criminal Court said it would push ahead with a preliminary probe into thousands of killings under his anti-drugs war.

Criticisms of Duterte’s government by rights groups “have been vicious and non-stop,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said.

“We therefore do not discount the possibility that some human rights groups have become unwitting tools of drug lords to hinder the strides made by the administration,” Roque said in a statement.

He said Duterte’s anti-drugs war had led to the disruption of the multibillion-dollar industry, the arrest of “tens of thousands of drug personalities” and the closure of big clandestine drug laboratories.

“To continue to do and thrive in the drug business, these drug lords can easily use their drug money to fund destabilization efforts against the government,” he said.

Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, described Roque’s statement as “shockingly dangerous and shameful.”

“Are they trying to have death squads target human rights activists?” Adams said in a statement emailed to BenarNews.

Roque did not specify the names of drug lords or provide evidence to back his allegations about rights groups. Roque also did not return phone calls from BenarNews.

But Duterte was successful in vilifying a senator, Leila de Lima, the country’s former rights commissioner whom he had accused of protecting detained drug lords by allegedly allowing them to continue their business behind bars in exchange for millions in money that she had supposedly used to fund her successful senate campaign.

De Lima, the most vocal of Duterte’s critics, has been in jail waiting for trial for more than a year. The justice department, however, has dismissed criminal charges against a self-confessed drug lord who had implicated the senator.

‘Psychiatric evaluation’

Roque’s statement came just days after The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would carry on with its preliminary examination into allegations of drug deaths under Duterte’s war on drugs.

After initially welcoming the ICC probe, Duterte suddenly backtracked and claimed that the ICC had already prejudged him. He subsequently notified the body that his government was pulling out of the Rome Statute, an international treaty that created the court.

His aides also said that unnamed Duterte critics had “weaponized” human rights to undermine the government. They have yet to name these critics.

The ICC said it regretted the move, but noted that any withdrawal would only take effect a year a government has notified the United Nations.

Duterte’s government has been antagonistic with international rights groups in recent weeks.

Early this month, the Department of Justice confirmed that it had included U.N. special rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz on a list of 600 people whom it wanted to categorize as terrorists. In response, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said Duterte needed “to submit himself to some sort of psychiatric evaluation.”

Rights groups say that since Duterte became president in June 2016, more than 12,000 people have died in the war on narcotics, including three teenagers whose deaths last year spurred widespread protests.

Amid the protests, Duterte temporarily pulled the police from the lead role in the drug war, only to reinstate them because, he said, their participation was necessary.

Government figures through February 2018 show that 4,043 people have died in encounters with police under Duterte’s reign, according to a tally by BenarNews. Rights groups have, however, blame thousands of other unaccounted deaths on pro-government vigilantes.

Felipe Villamor contributed to this report from Manila.

China Sows Confusion On CEFC And Investment Curbs – Analysis

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By Michael Lelyveld

Those seeking consistency in China’s controls over outbound investment are likely to be in for disappointment and a series of surprises.

The government has sought to discourage capital outflows and acquisitions in specific sectors since 2016 when outbound direct investment (ODI) soared 44.1 percent to U.S. $170.1 billion (1.1 trillion yuan).

Investment groups flush with funds raised from wealth management products and other come-ons promising big returns went on a buying binge in overseas markets. Then they ran smack into government regulators who warned against further deals for foreign real estate, entertainment businesses, sports clubs and hotels.

In 2016, non-financial ODI outpaced foreign direct investment (FDI), which posted a slight 4.1-percent rise to 813 billion yuan (U.S. $128.6 billion), making China a net capital exporter.

The outflow issue gained urgency in January 2017 when China’s foreign exchange reserves sank below the psychological mark of U.S. $3 trillion for the first time since 2011.

Last August, the cabinet-level State Council formalized ODI restrictions on “irrational” deals for foreign assets, first urged by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) nine months before.

In December, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued new rules for ODI including total bans on some deals and warnings against others with a 36- point “code of conduct” for ventures abroad.

Investors “should not violate national interests and security, as well as macro and industrial policies,” the top planning agency said vaguely.

The new rules threatened strict scrutiny of investment entities established overseas for illegal transfers, money laundering and capital flight.

“Tax evasion cases will be transferred to the police, industry and commerce departments, taxation and foreign exchange administrations,” the government warned, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Three tough battles

The ODI curbs became part of the government’s campaign to contain financial risks, one of the “three tough battles” designated by President Xi Jinping to be fought by 2020, along with poverty reduction and pollution control.

The restrictions have had a chilling effect on China’s outbound investment, which dropped 29.4 percent last year to U.S. $120 billion (758.5 billion yuan).

The decline made China a capital importer again as FDI rose 7.9 percent to 878 billion yuan (U.S. $138.9 billion).

But the patterns of enforcement have been hard to follow.

Some big investors and hotel buyers like HNA Group have been pressured to sell foreign assets to ease debt burdens, while other over-extended players like Anbang Insurance Group have been taken over by regulators.

In February, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said that Anbang chairman Wu Xiaohui would be prosecuted for “economic crimes.”

Until recently, other rapidly-growing investors like CEFC China Energy Company Ltd. appeared to be exempt from the crackdown.

The little-known conglomerate surprised analysts in September with an agreement to buy a 14.16-percent stake in Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil company for U.S. $9.1 billion (57.5 billion yuan).

For nearly six months, the government had nothing to say about the huge investment, although CEFC had already branched out into wide-ranging foreign holdings in restricted sectors including real estate, a sports club and hotels.

Among its many investments, privately-held CEFC acquired extensive assets in the Czech Republic, where its mysterious chairman Ye Jianming has served as an economic adviser to President Milos Zeman.

Analysts assumed that Ye must have powerful political ties in China to avoid enforcement of the ODI curbs.

But a second series of surprises followed on March 1 with reports that Ye had been placed under investigation and detained for questioning.

CEFC insisted it was operating normally, but reports quickly followed that an investment arm of the Shanghai municipal government had taken over management of the company.

Numerous reports drew links to bribery charges brought against an official of a CEFC affiliate, which allegedly sought to acquire oil rights in Chad and Uganda.

Another surprise came within days as the Financial Times and Reuters reported that a second state-controlled entity, China Huarong Asset Management Co., had bought a 36.2-percent stake in the CEFC subsidiary seeking to acquire the Rosneft shares.

Reuters identified Huarong as “China’s largest distressed debt manager,” citing a Caixin magazine report that the firm “was ordered to conduct a debt-for-equity swap by the government.”

Secrecy surrounding the process

So, were the government-controlled agencies acting at cross-purposes or in tandem to rescue CEFC and the Rosneft share sale?

No one could say for certain because of the secrecy surrounding the whole process, the inconsistent enforcement of ODI policy and the strings behind the Rosneft deal.

The questions left analysts even more perplexed than they were last September when CEFC first surfaced as the unlikely buyer of the Rosneft shares, according to a commentary on the industry website Oilprice.com.

“Six months later, the mystery surrounding CEFC China Energy is not only left unsolved — it has become even more unclear,” it said.

Last week, the surprises kept on coming as President Zeman’s office reported that Ye would step down from his positions at the company, leaving it unclear whether the move applied only to CEFC’s Czech subsidiary or the entire firm.

News agencies also reported that CEFC was in talks with state-owned CITIC Group for the sale of 49 percent of its European interests, sparking speculation that the company might be partially nationalized.

The timing of at least two events may have affected government decisions on CEFC and how to enforce ODI policies.

The first was the initial Caixin report on the Ye investigation, which came on the eve of China’s annual legislative sessions, giving the government an incentive either to make an example of CEFC or to avoid disruptions.

The second was the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) report on March 7 that foreign exchange reserves fell in February to U.S. $3.134 trillion, marking the first drop after a year of monthly gains. While the U.S. $27-billion decline was slight, the reversal was unwelcome news that may have heightened awareness of capital flows.

Mixed signals

Over the past year, the government has sent mixed signals about how the ODI curbs would be enforced.

For months, official media reports highlighted changes “to simplify administrative procedures” that would promote ODI in an apparent effort to balance the warnings against it.

The rules, which took effect on March 1, were supposed to end requirements for filing reports on planned projects or bids of more than U.S. $300 million (1.9 billion yuan) for prior approval.

The new guidelines only required registration with the NDRC, the official English-language China Daily said in December.

But in January, interpretations of the rules took on a harsher tone.

“Outbound investment projects of at least U.S. $300 million or those in ‘sensitive countries or regions’ or ‘sensitive industries’ will be the focus of regulatory supervision and examination,” Xinhua reported, citing the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Jan. 25.

It is unclear what prompted the change.

But the variations in enforcement and inconsistent regulatory responses may pose disincentives to investment generally.

While the government has been trying to steer ODI into its “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative to develop trade routes and infrastructure, other policies like the effort to draw private capital into investments with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) could suffer from the risk of arbitrary takeovers and capital controls.

Despite all the government’s promotion, China’s non-financial direct investment in 59 OBOR countries fell 1.2 percent last year to U.S. $14.3 billion (90.4 billion yuan), according to MOC data.

Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, sees at least some consistent threads running through the government’s ODI crackdown, despite the CEFC mystery.

“I think the reconciling of the supposed liberalization and the continued bans is that ‘good’ investment is being liberalized and ‘bad’ investment is being banned,” Scissors said.

“The subtle part is that ‘bad’ is also ‘We have come to think you are shipping money out of the country and want to make an example of you,'” he said.

Study Links Climate Policy, Carbon Emissions From Permafrost

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Controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades could substantially reduce the consequences of carbon releases from thawing permafrost during the next 300 years, according to a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

Conversely, climate policy that results in little or no effort to control greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide would likely result in a substantial release of carbon from the permafrost region by 2300, the study found.

A. David McGuire, U.S. Geological Survey senior scientist and climate system modeling expert with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, is lead author of the paper. Several other UAF researchers, along with scientists from about two dozen other research institutions worldwide, contributed to the study.

Scientists estimate that the soils of the Earth’s circumpolar North contain about twice the amount of carbon as is in the atmosphere. Much of that carbon is frozen organic matter locked within permafrost. As global temperatures rise and permafrost thaws, the previously frozen organic material begins to decay and releases greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. The release of that carbon can, in turn, cause additional warming and the release of more carbon, something scientists call a positive feedback loop.

Even without immediate controls on greenhouse gases now, the bulk of the permafrost carbon release would not occur until after the year 2100. Study authors note that this could cause society to grow complacent and accept less aggressive efforts to control greenhouse gases. Waiting too long to institute controls could mean the controls come too late to prevent substantive loss of carbon from permafrost soils.

“Society can do something about this, at least that’s what the state-of-the-art models are saying,” McGuire said.

The degree to which climate change could influence carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region has important implications for policy decisions. However, most climate system models have not done a good job of showing the relationship between permafrost and soil carbon dynamics. Because of that, they haven’t allowed an accurate assessment of the effects of climate change on carbon in the region.

In the new study, McGuire and his colleagues used simulations to study changes in permafrost and carbon storage in the northern permafrost region from 2010 to 2299 using two climate change scenarios: One with low carbon dioxide emissions and one with high carbon dioxide emissions. Permafrost expert Dmitry Nicolsky of the UAF Geophysical Institute provided simulation data on changes in the extent of permafrost in the northern hemisphere and the predicted thaw depth under the two scenarios.

The low emission scenario would require carbon emissions by global human society to decrease by 75 percent during this century. In that scenario, the study showed the loss 3 million to 5 million square kilometers of permafrost and changes in soil carbon ranging from a 66-petagram loss to a 70-petagram gain. One petagram equals one trillion kilograms or 2.2 trillion pounds.

In the high emission scenario, or essentially no change in current trends of fossil fuel use, permafrost losses were between 6 million and 16 million square kilometers, while soil carbon losses varied from 74 to 652 petagrams and occur mostly after 2100. This represents a loss of 20 to 63 percent of the carbon now stored in northern permafrost.

The findings suggest that effective new greenhouse gas controls could help lessen the effects of climate change on the release of carbon from soils of the northern permafrost region and therefore decrease the potential for a positive feedback of permafrost carbon release on climate warming.

“If such controls aren’t adopted, it will lead to major changes for ecosystems and infrastructure,” Nicolsky said.

Mexico: Senate Approves Medical Conscientious Objection Bill

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The Mexican Senate has approved a measure protecting the conscientious objections of medical personnel who hold moral or ethical objections to certain treatments.

The decree, approved March 22, states that “professionals, technicians, aides, social service providers that are part of the National Healthcare System shall be able to invoke the right of conscientious objection and excuse themselves from participating and/or cooperating in all those programs, activities, practices, treatments, methods or research that contravenes their freedom of conscience based on their values or ethical principles.”

Critics of the legislation have threatened to challenge it in court, saying that it violates a woman’s right to choose abortion.

Abortion is legal in Mexico City up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, although it is illegal in much of the country.

The legislation does not allow medical professionals to invoke conscientious objection “when the life of the patient is put at risk or it is a medical emergency.”

Representative Norma Edith Martínez Guzmán first introduced the measure in October 2017. After its passage in the House of Representatives, it went on to the Senate where it passed 53-15, with one abstention.

The decree has been sent to the executive branch to be signed into law, and within 90 days, the guidelines for its application must be issued.

Sewage Sludge Leads To Biofuels Breakthrough

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Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a new enzyme that will enable microbial production of a renewable alternative to petroleum-based toluene, a widely used octane booster in gasoline that has a global market of 29 million tons per year.

Results from a study led by Harry Beller , Berkeley Lab senior scientist and scientific lead at JBEI, were published Monday in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. The other lead co-authors are Andria Rodrigues and Kamrun Zargar of JBEI.

A major focus of research at JBEI, and in the broader community of biofuel researchers, is the production of industrially and commercially relevant fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, such as lignocellulosic biomass, rather than from petroleum. The enzyme discovered in this study will enable the first-time microbial production of bio-based toluene, and in fact, the first microbial production of any aromatic hydrocarbon biofuel.

The enzyme discovery resulted from the intensive study of two very different microbial communities that produced toluene. One community contained microbes from lake sediment, and the other from sewage sludge. Since microbes in the environment are a reservoir of enzymes that catalyze an extraordinarily diverse set of chemical reactions, it’s not unusual for scientists working in biotechnology to source enzymes from nature.

Beller was motivated to investigate bio-based toluene after reading literature reports from the 1980s that revealed microbial toluene biosynthesis in anoxic lake sediments. Despite a number of reports of bacterial toluene production since that time, the identity of the enzyme catalyzing this biochemically challenging reaction has been a mystery for decades.

The toluene-synthesizing enzyme discovered in this study, phenylacetate decarboxylase, belongs to a family of enzymes known as glycyl radical enzymes (GREs). Scientists only began to recognize GREs in the 1980s, and phenylacetate decarboxylase is just the eighth known GRE reaction type to have been discovered and characterized since then. However, metagenomic evidence presented in the JBEI study and others points to the fact that many more GREs exist in nature that have yet to be characterized.

The radical nature of GREs allows them to catalyze chemically challenging reactions, such as anaerobic decarboxylation of phenylacetate to generate toluene. Beyond their potential biotechnological applications, a number of known GREs are relevant to human health and occur within the human gut microbiome.

The process of enzyme discovery for this project was both challenging and unconventional. The researchers first started working with a bacterial species reported to make toluene, but when those reports appeared to be irreproducible, the scientists turned to the environment for toluene-producing cultures – specifically to municipal sewage and anoxic lake sediment.

“All enzyme discovery projects are challenging. But moving from discovery in a single bacterial species, to discovery in a complex microbial community from sewage sludge or lake sediments, was more difficult by orders of magnitude,” says Beller. “This study became a needle-in-a-haystack search for the toluene-producing enzyme in a candidate pool of hundreds of thousands of enzymes.”

In fact, metagenome analyses revealed that these microbial communities each contained more than 300,000 genes – the equivalent of more than 50 bacterial genomes. Another challenge was that the anaerobic microbial communities and many of their enzymes were sensitive to oxygen, forcing the scientists to manipulate cultures and enzymes under strictly anaerobic conditions.

The discovery process combined protein purification techniques used by biochemists for decades, such as fast protein liquid chromatography, with modern metagenomic, metaproteomic, and associated bioinformatic analyses, some of which were carried out in collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. An important component of the discovery process was to validate the researchers’ predictions of the toluene biosynthesis enzyme with experiments using highly controlled assays involving purified proteins.

An intriguing question arising from this research is: why would a bacterium produce toluene? The researchers don’t have the definitive answer but present two hypotheses in the paper. One possibility is that the bacterium is producing toluene as a toxin to outcompete other microbes in its environment. Another hypothesis is that the phenylacetate decarboxylase (toluene-producing) reaction provides a strategy for the bacterium to regulate its internal pH in a somewhat acidic, fermentative environment.

Beller and his colleagues believe that their study results have implications for fundamental and applied science. From a biochemical perspective, the study expands the known catalytic range of GREs, and from a biotechnological perspective, it will enable first-time biochemical synthesis of an aromatic fuel hydrocarbon from renewable resources.

“We have so much to learn about the extraordinary metabolic diversity of bacteria,” Beller said. “Through eons of evolution, nature has devised enzymes that can catalyze difficult chemical reactions, and as we discover these, we can harness them for biotechnology.”

The End Of British Influence? – OpEd

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By Jasmin Ademovic

Donald Trump and Brexit threatened the twin pillars of British foreign policy: ‘the special relationship’ with the United States and the UK’s influence over Europe in matters of international affairs. The façade of strength that London has sought to project since the 1980s has further been chipped away by the 4 March nerve agent attack and its relative isolation in attempts to impose further sanctions against Russia.

The building of the twin pillars

During her premiership, Margaret Thatcher began a two-pronged approach to British foreign policy. First, the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the US was cultivated, so as to establish London as an indispensable ally to Washington, with the UK acting as an Atlantic bridge between Washington and the capitals of Europe.

Secondly, Thatcher pursued continued European integration, initially via the single market, looking to increase British power and influence by placing it at the heart of the decision-making process. Thatcher’s work would culminate in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and the formation of the European Union and the Euro.

And their destruction…

As the country negotiates its exit from the EU, it has sought to maintain these twin pillars as best it can. Theresa May rushed to Washington after Donald Trump’s inauguration to strengthen ties with the new administration, project confidence and stature, and secure Washington’s continued trust in the United Kingdom.

In Europe, Theresa May made it clear that the UK would remain engaged in European affairs and offered an ‘unconditional commitment’ to European security in an attempt to maintain as much decision-making influence on foreign policy and security issues. By leveraging its strengths — diplomatic network, intelligence services, military and presence at the UNSC and NATO —London will seek to preserve its influence over European policy (at the expense of Germany and France), guarantee its grandeur, and preserve its utility to both Europe and the U.S.

However, Russia and the fallout from the nerve agent attack have now dispelled notions of British power and influence.

In recent years, a crucial element in maintaining the two components of its foreign policy strategy has been its focus on Russia — both in relation to British utility to the U.S. and influence over the EU. Due to its limited relationship with the Obama administration, particularly once Hillary Clinton had left the State Department, Downing Street and the FCO had been eagerly awaiting a Clinton presidency.

Throughout 2015 and 2016, the UK pursued European and NATO initiatives against Russia. Then Prime Minister David Cameron was the chief proponent for sanctions against Russia’s economy and Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. With French support, they pushed EU member states with political and economic ties to Moscow — Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria — to ensure the continued renewal of sanctions through to 2017.

A leaked report in August 2016, under heightened tensions in Ukraine and Crimea, revealed a British defense assessment that Russian military capability had surpassed the UK’s. Russia’s battlefield capacity, such as increasingly advanced air defense systems, rocket launchers, cyber warfare, and electronic warfare, was highlighted as a particular concern. The leak was almost certainly aimed at: i) highlighting, reinforcing, and justifying the need for sanctions and cooperation across the EU and NATO, and ii) justifying increased military spending post-Brexit, including a 7% increase in the defense equipment budget and a £800 million fund for next-generation weapons technologies.

Following accusations throughout 2017 about Russia’s role in fake news, the Balkans, eastern Europe, and Syria, British military figures continued to lobby for increased military spending to meet the threat Russia posed. Further, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson called for war crimes investigations over Russia’s bombing of Syria, with then French President Francois Hollande echoing those words, leading to the cancellation of a Putin-Hollande meeting in October 2016.

British and French cooperation, with German support, also extended to an attempt to implement further sanctions over Russia’s bombing of Aleppo. It was blocked primarily because of Italy’s economic interests. Economic concerns came to the fore once again in July 2017 when the US Congress introduced sanctions targeting the Nord Stream II project.

Moving forward

Despite the difficulties it faces with Brexit, London is unlikely to lose sight of Russian action across Europe and the Middle East. However, Britain is unable to pursue or benefit from its anti-Russia strategy until 2021, save for a highly unlikely change in the White House. While it will bring pressure to bear, further sanctions against Moscow will be a difficult undertaking, even with public support from the U.S., France, and Germany.

The March 2018 incident highlights the difficulty Britain faces in this regard. While the U.S., France, and Germany eventually issued broad statements of support and solidarity vis-à-vis Westminster’s claims against the Russian Federation, there will be little in the way of substantial measures and sanctions targeting Moscow.

Even though the EU Ambassador to Russia was withdrawn and all 28 EU member states placed responsibility for the attack on Moscow, EU criticism and solidarity with the UK is not the diplomatic coup the British are portraying it as. The declaration of support did not extend to the implementation of actual measures. Those negotiations will come later, by which time other factors will serve to disappoint Downing Street.

Achieving annual consensus on the renewal of the 2014 sanctions, brought in after the annexation of Crimea, has been difficult enough because of Italian, Greek and Austrian economic considerations. The Italian election results, Angela Merkel’s desire to begin Minsk II talks over Ukraine, and Emmanuel Macron’s goal of pushing through EU reform, means that political capital is not going to be spent on Russia. These diverging positions — between a confrontational British policy and a broadly non-confrontational EU policy — will remain.

The UK will also struggle to negotiate a favorable security agreement with the EU, which member states will understand as an attempt to preserve British influence in diplomatic, military, and security affairs. Meanwhile, Turkey’s presence in NATO will serve to stifle any coordinated action by NATO. The UK has, however, negotiated a bilateral agreement with France to continue their long-standing military and security partnership.

This all serves to highlight the precarious and lonely position the UK finds itself in. Nothing meaningful will come out of the nerve agent indent or from EU summits and FCO-led attempts to target Russia. Any sanctions and public statements, such as Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s comparison of Russia with Nazi Germany, are primarily for domestic public consumption.

 

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

Pakistan: Court Sets Free 20 In Christian Couple Lynching Case

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A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has acquitted 20 people charged with beating to death a Christian couple at a brick kiln in Punjab in 2014.

Shahzad Maish and his pregnant wife Shama, a Christian couple who worked as laborers at the brick kiln in Kot Radha Kishan town of Kasur district, were lynched to death by a mob of 1,000 people over accusations that they had burned a copy of the Quran.

A fact-finding team sent by Pakistan’s independent Human Rights Commission to investigate the incident found no evidence of blasphemy.

It appears that the murdered man had a dispute over wages, or the recovery of advance payment that the kiln owner had given to two Muslim laborers who had absconded. The kiln owners had asked Shehzad to repay the amount given to the two because he had introduced them to the owners, the commission had said in its 2014 statement.

Police had registered a case against 660 villagers and arrested some 100 people.

In 2015, the court charged 106 with the lynching of the Christian couple. In 2016, the court sentenced five men to death and eight others were charged with being involved in the lynching and sentenced to two years each in prison.

On March 24, the Anti-Terrorism Court judge Ijazul Hassan announced the acquittal of 20 people by giving them the benefit of doubt.

Religious minority activists have condemned the verdict.

“Unfortunately, government prosecutors often fail to do their job which results in the acquittal of culprits,” Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, a Christian lawyer and former Punjab lawmaker, told ucanews.com.

Hyacinth Peter, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Major Religious Superiors Leadership Conference described this acquittal as a norm.

“None of those arrested in mob attacks on religious minorities have been punished in the history of the country,” he said. “Courts are pressurized by fanatics who use both their finances and influences to free their goons. They openly abuse judges,” he told ucanews.com.


Moldovans Rally For Unity With Romania And Against Pro-Moscow President – OpEd

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Sunday’s demonstrations in Belarus on the centenary of the Belarus Peoples Republic attracted more attention, but a 7,000- person demonstration in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau against that country’s pro-Moscow president Igor Dodon and for the unification of Moldova and Romania may be more significant.

The meeting occurred on another centenary, that of the unification of Bessarabia with Romania in 1918. The organizers styled the event as “a Grand National Assembly,” and it featured sympathic Moldovan and Romanian politicians (news.liga.net/photo/world/14919210-doloy_dodona_v_moldove_mitingovali_za_obedinenie_s_rumyniey.htm#6).

Former Romanian President Traian Băsescu led some 2000 people from Romania to take part in the demonstration.

Participants signed a symbolic declaration about unity with Romania and held up both Romanian and Moldovan flags while shouting denunciations of Moldovan President Dodon. He took to Facebook to call on the police to prevent the escalation of this demonstration. According to reports, some 21 people were arrested despite the meeting being completely peaceful.

The meeting follows and builds on the declaration of more than 130 Moldovan municipalities calling for unity with Romania. They represent “almost 20 percent” of all municipalities in the country, according to pro-unification leaders (charter97.org/ru/news/2018/3/25/284096/).

Sri Lanka: Government To Introduce Freedom Of Speech Act

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Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the government is contemplating introducing a freedom of speech Act as one of the alternatives for the racial and religious unrest.

The Prime Minister who was speaking at the 44th convention of the Bar Association of Sri Lanaka (BASL) on Saturday said Sri Lanka is looking at this option and also other alternatives such as Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act of Singapore, Racial and Religious Hatred public order Act of UK, Racial Discrimination Act of Australia and Criminal Code of Canada to avoid incidents similar to Gintota and Kandy.

He also accepted that some may perceive that Freedom of Speech Act might control freedom of speech. “The main issue is to define hate speech and I would like to ask BASL’s support for it,” he said.

He said the government is also looking towards ways and means to control social media in order of controlling of hate speech and to avoid a Cambridge Analatica drama where data of 50 million people is said to have been used to influence the outcome of election in the US.

The Prime Minister said government will have discussions with all religious leaders including the Mahanayaka Theras, Cardinal, Ulamas and Hindu Kurukkals to get their opinion on controlling hate speech.

Influencing Electoral Outcomes: The Ugly Face Of Facebook – Analysis

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By Munish Sharma*

Free and fair elections are the backbone of a democratic system of governance, and they are often celebrated as the “festival of democracy”. Election campaigns of political parties and candidates employ a wide variety of strategies and tactics to influence voters. The digital era has added a whole new flavour, be it the eye-catching colossal digital campaigns or instances of foreign governments interfering in the electoral process. Last year, the Presidential elections in both the US and France were controversial due to hacking incidents and data leaks at the campaigns of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and En Marche, respectively. In general, cyber means of intervention appear to be becoming an inevitable part of the electoral process. The Cambridge Analytica incident proves that India is no exception to this trend. During the next general elections in 2019, the Election Commission of India has an uphill task to thwart both external interference and the abuse of social media platforms to influence voter behaviour.

While there is a long history of external interference in elections both through covert and overt means, digital platforms add a new dimension. News and online content over digital platforms can spread at lightning speed, without paying heed to the credibility or authenticity of the source. Moreover, social media platforms generate vast amounts of data related to the socio-economic conditions, purchasing behaviour, interests, hobbies, and political inclinations or orientations of the users. These details are captured and treasured for commercial purposes. Business analytics feed on this data to generate business intelligence and derive monetary benefits for informed decision making. Present day electoral campaigns are also data driven and they are well-funded to let the campaigners harness data for their own political advantage. Data analytics tools can harvest data from user profiles and sift through the trove to support research, augment targeted campaigns and help political parties in assessing and evaluating their performance. These have been quite effective in targeting swing voters and behaviour forecasting.

As the popularity of social media platforms hits new heights, Facebook and Twitter in particular have been under the scanner of both intelligence agencies and election watchdogs. With close to 2.2 billion active users (by the end of 2017), Facebook alone sits on a stockpile of data which could be used to drive election campaigns towards any preferred outcome. Data in itself is worthless, but data science and the corresponding analytical tools turn it into a goldmine for both businesses and political strategists in the digital age.

Cambridge Analytica, the London-based political consultancy firm presently under the scanner, has an eight-year-old association with Indian elections. It undertook an in-depth electorate analysis for the Bihar Assembly Election in 2010 and, as per the case study details on its website, “the client (political party) achieved a landslide victory, with over 90 percent of total seats targeted by Cambridge Analytica being won.”1 This was carried out through Ovleno Business Intelligence, which is an Indian affiliate of Cambridge Analytica’s parent firm Strategic Communications Laboratories. The firm had hit media headlines for its association with Donald Trump’s election campaign, which it has referred to as “A Full-Scale Data-Driven Digital Campaign”. Bringing together the expertise of data scientists, researchers, strategists and content writers in three integrated teams (research, data science, and digital marketing), Cambridge Analytica’s campaign helped Trump win the elections.2 The above case studies, mentioned in the Cambridge Analytica website, are prime examples of the vital role data science has begun to play especially in devising techniques to change voter behaviour in the targeted population or audience.

Facebook has played a central role in this entire episode. In a statement, Facebook has accepted that in 2015 a research app for psychologists with the name “thisisyourdigitallife”, developed by a psychology professor at Cambridge University, was used for commercial purposes by Cambridge Analytica and other firms in violation of its platform policies. The app, meant for personality prediction, had around 270,000 downloads. Users revealed content related to their likes, preferences, and their own social circles according to their privacy settings.3 The access to Facebook content, in technical terms, was legitimate and through proper channels but the information was passed on to third parties likes Cambridge Analytica and Eunoia Technologies, which exploited it for commercial gains. However, Cambridge Analytica has outright denied allegations of using Facebook data as part of the services rendered to the Trump presidential campaign and while working on the Brexit referendum in the UK.4

As of January 2018, with 250 million users, India is the largest user-base for Facebook. It is also an important tool for the government to take forward its flagship programmes to the wider populace. Facebook is one of the top contenders for partnering with the government’s societal development and digital inclusion plans. The Election Commission of India had also partnered with Facebook in 2017, launching a nationwide voter registration campaign.5 Indian users, paying little regard to the privacy terms and condition of social media platforms, uninhibitedly share images, pictures and other content, and are extremely vulnerable to the tools, techniques and campaigns devised for influencing both commercial and political behaviour. Against this backdrop, the government’s concerns have been raised by Cambridge Analytica’s alleged mining of data from the profiles of 50 million US Facebook users without their consent.6 If such an incident were to occur in India, it would constitute a serious violation of the IT Act. Not just in India, Cambridge Analytica is also at loggerheads with the Electoral Commission in the UK over its alleged role in the BREXIT vote and in Europe for violating EU privacy laws in collusion with Facebook.

Although Facebook has tendered an assurance of data security on its platform for the upcoming elections in India (2019) and Brazil (October 2018), the incident has caused severe damage to its reputation even as a development partner for governments in digital inclusion or other societal benefits plans. As the stakes in elections go up, political parties are unlikely to shy away from leveraging the technical expertise of data analytical firms like Cambridge Analytica fed with expansive data sets harvested from prominent social media platforms.

Data is being extensively harvested and harnessed for commercial purposes, targeted marketing campaigns and to influence consumer choices. It is ethically and legally controversial when information derived without the consent of the users or through dubious means is leveraged to influence political choices. Flourishing in the void of effective legal and regulatory regimes, such incidents seriously undermine the trust of people in the democratic process. To an extent, users understanding the perils of sharing unwanted details or content on social media platforms and aware of their privacy settings is pertinent for containing such instances of abuse. For India, as a functioning democracy, the Cambridge Analytica episode highlights the need to expedite the process of developing a data protection framework and probably amend the IT Act in accordance with the changing realities of cyberspace. The earlier this is realised, the better it would be for the healthy functioning of our democratic systems and processes.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*Munish Sharma
is Consultant at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:

Sharur, Kangarli, Shahbuz: Azerbaijan’s Ancient Regions – OpEd

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The Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan – Azerbaijan has been highly acclaimed by international scholars and visitors for its well preserved archaeological sites, religious pilgrimage caves, historical villages and natural monuments.

On my latest visit to Nakhchivan, in November 2017, I was delighted and intrigued by some of these ancient monuments in the regions of Sharur, Kangarli and Shahbuz, that are home of some of the ancient monuments that are very valuable to humanity and European culture.

In the village of Guney Gishlag, Shahbuz Region, is located a cemetery that carries the village’s name. This ancient cemetery contains headstones, some of the graves are surrounded with little stones and others are covered with large size lime stones. This cemetery has mysteries that wait to be discovered by international historians, it has embraced a valuable heritage that speaks volumes in relation to Nakhchivan’s ancient illustrious past. On most of the head stones there are inscriptions written in Arabic language and numbers. Some of the headstones date back in the XI century, clarifying once again the ancient Turkic origins of these lands. According to the local inscriptions, archaeological findings, this grave site dates back to the XI Century AD.

The Kangarli Region, in addition to its wealth of seven different types of marble (exported to Europe and Middle East countries), is well known for its Gunorta Stone (Gunortaj); a natural monument located at 1,500 meters above sea level, on the western slopes of Chalkhandagh. The locals call this natural monument as Gunortaj, because it is covered with the Sun’s shadow up until gunorta (afternoon) and exactly in the afternoon its shadow disappears.

Since ancient periods, the local inhabitants of the villages: Chalkhangala, Tazakand, Khinjab and Sust have used Gunortaj’s astronomical features for agricultural projects, mining, shepherding animals and other rural engagements. Moreover, they utilized the shadow of Gunortaji, as a watch used to set a certain schedule for milking cows and shepherding other animals. This monument and natural clock, through its toponymy (“Gunortaj”) reminds us the land of Basat who had pulled out the eyes of Tapagoz, a hero in the Epos of Kitabi – Dade – Gorgud. It is believed that this place, identified in the Epos, is near the cave of Salakhan Valley (Salakhan) where Tapagoz was living and had committed deadly tortures against the innocent people. With this information available from Salakhan (in the western slopes of Gazan mountainous range of Babek Region) it leads us to establish a connection with Gunortaj mentioned in the “Kitabi-Dade-Gorgud,” a location that is the highest peak where the sun rises.

The archeological monument of Hachaparag, on the slopes of a hill, to the right of Nakhchivan – Ashabi – Kahf paved highway, there are square shaped settlements of houses, built with local materials, stones, and walls plastered with mud on both sides. Furthermore inside these houses visitors will appreciate the fire-places and little recesses, they are equipped with a few rooms. Under archeological investigations there was discovered a large presence of ceramic products and in the northern side there is a kehriz, which is the only water resource to the area. Nearby this settlement is a cemetery that must have been established in the XVII century.

Sharur Region is home of the Hadigaib Cave, an archaeological monument located around the precipitous cliffs; it has a length of over 10 meters, a height of 2 meters and in some places it reaches 3 meters. The entrance of the cave has been built by stones. Sharp obsidian pieces are placed inside the cave. Based on the archaeological investigations, it is certain that this natural monument has been used by humans during the early bronze period; a series of potteries and weapons have been discovered on this area.

Shahbuz Region is the cradle of some of the majestic archaeological monuments; one of them is Haggikhlig Archeological monument located in the very same resting place nearby the Village of Kulus.

This archaeological site is identified on a plain land between mountains. During agricultural cultivations this area has lost some of its physical features and original territorial shape. In the recent impressive archaeological investigations, international scholars have identified in Haggikhlig Monument numerous ceramic objects of grey and pink colors; unique pieces of granulating millstones that date back in the Middle Bronze and Early Iron Ages. The archaeological items found on this site, clarify once again the importance that Shahbuz Region has played in the ancient history of Nakhchivani people and cultural heritage of Azerbaijan; pointing out important advancements during the 2nd millennium BC.

On the left banks of Kuluschay in Kulus Village (Shahbuz Region), is located the graveyard of Haggikhlig that goes back to the 2nd millennium BC. It is discovered on the top of a precipitous hill surrounded by mountains from the North East and South East, there are graves built by stones on a square shape.

In the 1990s, French and Local archaeologists have conducted research in this area and have discovered remnants of human skeleton, animal and bird figures, clay pieces of pink and grey colors as well as table wares , arrow points and bronze daggers, animal bones and plenty of precious beads, bracelets, valuable ear rings, bronze rings and hooks built to make carvings. Furthermore, ancient pots, bowls, glass and mugs made out of local clay where also extracted.

The spears and impressive carvings observed on the edges of Havush Sacred Place in Sharur Region are some of the memorable works done by the ancient people of Nakhchivan. With a depth of more than 15 meters, a width of 3 – 4 meters, this sacred place has rock carvings of fighters with spears inside and represents rare values of Azerbaijan’s history. Only recently a preservation project has been implemented inside the cave that enables historians to appreciate the rare carvings and battle scenes on the lustrous lime stone surfaces. A few square meters of pre-historical art work have been preserved and made available for tourists to observe. Moreover, human skeletons were discovered on a depth of 40 cm; a weapon of black color with a piece of sharp edge was found at one meter in depth.

It is certain, according to Academician Vǝli Bakhshaliyev, this ancient cave has been an old settlement and down the path of ancient history has become a sacred place as a result of the respect and trust paid to Nakhchivan’s ancestors. To make things more mysterious; should be mentioned that the presence of a sole pear tree in the Havush Sacred Place is a famous destination for all women who have fertility problems. In order to be pregnant, women visitors sit on hammock hanging on the branches of this tree and later on will emerge fertile positive results.

In Shahbuz Region is located the Havush Mine, within the village that carries the same name. It is situated in the slopes of Daralayaz massif chain in the left banks of Havushchay. This is an important archaeological site due to the wealth of rare pottery and ancient hand crafts being discovered; dating back in the Middle Ages. The exploration and analysis of Havush Mine, has identified only lead and other ore components.

After such an exciting excursion I returned in down town Nakhchivan City accompanied by my dear local friends Hasan Pashali and Prof. Ali Jabbarov; the three of us sat at the main lobby of “TABRIZ” Hotel to taste some of the crispy mouthwatering apples one could have ever tried (brought from Shahbuz Region) paired with locally grown almonds, raisins, and dried delicious apricots from the legendary Ordubad Region. This was a remarkable leisure meeting and a scholarly expedition that I will always remember and treasure.

Sources:
Babayev S. “Kitabi – Dade – Gorgud toponyms in Nakhchivan. B. 1999.; Encyclopedia of “Kitabi – Dade – Gorgud” V. 2. B., 2000.
Novruzlu A. I. Bakhshaliyev V. B., the archeological monuments of Shahbuz region. B. 1992; Seyidov A. G. Nakhchivan during Bronze Age. B., 2000.

What Gov. Cuomo Means By Child Welfare – OpEd

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo has waded into the matter of child welfare, and it’s time everyone understood what he means by it.

In his budget proposal, which is the subject of much negotiation this week—the budget is due April 1—Cuomo includes the Child Victims Act. In his State of the State address earlier this year, he voiced support for the Reproductive Freedom Act. Both issues touch on child welfare; they also tell us a great deal about where he stands on this matter.

The Child Victims Act would extend the age by which victims could bring suit; this part of the bill is uncontroversial. The “look-back-window,” however, is very controversial: it would allow a one-year period where a victim could bring suit for being molested at any time in the past. New York State Catholic bishops are opposed to this provision.

Gov. Cuomo says that his support for the “look-back-window” is justified on the basis of protecting minors. In fact, it won’t protect a single child. All it will do is open the door to rapacious anti-Catholic lawyers out to “get the Church” for alleged offenses that took place when Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon.

As I pointed out recently, it is nearly impossible to fairly adjudicate old claims. Besides, Catholic dioceses in New York State have already addressed this issue by instituting a program designed to bring justice to those who were truly abused in the past. Gov. Cuomo knows all of this, yet prefers to grandstand anyway, at the expense of justice to the Catholic Church.

What makes his position on this legislation so odious is his enthusiasm for sacrificing the lives of innocent children in the name of “reproductive rights.” I am not talking about abortion: I am talking about children born alive as a result of a botched abortion. Cuomo says let them die on the physician’s table, unattended by any healthcare professional. Yes, that is what the “Reproductive Freedom Act” permits.

Cuomo is now sanctioning infanticide—the killing of infants. This is not child welfare: it is child abuse in its most grotesque form.

It is said that Gov. Cuomo has presidential ambitions. Once the public learns of his tortured understanding of child welfare, it should be enough to finish him. What he is doing is morally wrong and politically stupid.

Trust Lost: How Social Media Users’ Data Should Be Protected – OpEd

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By Bill Ottman*

Over the past few days, there has been public outrage over the way Facebook is handling personal data. This was brought to light by the recent scandal with Cambridge Analytica, but really should come as no surprise as Facebook has been treating its users this way since it launched back in 2004.

What Happened with Cambridge Analytica

The story that broke over the past few days is really just a piece of a much larger issue with Facebook and how they handle personal data. To summarize, a developer named Aleksandr Kogan developed an application in 2014 offering a personality quiz to Facebook users. About 270,000 users took the quiz, but in doing so they granted Kogan’s app access to not only their Facebook data, but the data of ALL of their Facebook friends as well— meaning the app now had data on 50 million users. Kogan then provided this data to Cambridge Analytica, who used it to create over 30 million psychographic profiles about potential voters.

Facebook is at fault for a major data breach because it failed to protect the personally identifiable information of its users.

1) Data Policy

Up until 2014, Facebook’s policy allowed for an application developer to ask permission from Facebook users to access their data. However, it also allowed the apps to collect that same data about ALL of that user’s friends on Facebook, without consent. Facebook changed this policy in 2014 to ensure that apps could not collect data on user’s friends, but at that point, the damage had been done.

An ex-Facebook employee on the privacy team stated, “At a company that was deeply concerned about protecting its users, this situation would have been met with a robust effort to cut off developers who were making questionable use of data. But when I was at Facebook, the typical reaction I recall looked like this: try to put any negative press coverage to bed as quickly as possible, with no sincere efforts to put safeguards in place or to identify and stop abusive developers. When I proposed a deeper audit of developers’ use of Facebook’s data, one executive asked me, ‘Do you really want to see what you’ll find?’”

2) Data Collection

The crux of the issue lies in the data that Facebook requires from new users in the first place. You are forced to provide your first name, last name, email or phone number, birthday and gender. The reason is simple – this information is a marketer’s (or a politician’s) targeting dream, and also the key to Facebook’s revenue and entire business model.

Facebook, however, does share blame with its users because when you sign up, you are agreeing to hand over rights regarding your personal information, so there is the level of consent. However, Facebook further deceives and confuses their users into thinking their information will not be disclosed by providing layers of permissions and privacy settings. If users were more aware about how much of their personal data was actually public (or being shared with government), they would be much more reserved in giving it away. Your personal data on Facebook is not private, and Zuckerberg has known this since the beginning. Obviously he has attempted to apologize for the below comments, but he has demonstrated no tangible actions to actually address the public concern.

How can you protect YOUR data?

1) Allow users to be anonymous if they want, untracked and free from surveillance and spying.

Anonymity means that site data is de-identified and not traceable to a person. As a result nearly all users data is public by default.

2) Maintain zero-knowledge on sensitive data.

This is essential in ensuring that users can chat freely with each other without the concern that the conversation is being monitored by anyone including Minds. All sensitive data on Minds is encrypted end to end whether in motion or at rest and original content is the property of the user.

3) 100% free and open source for public accountability and inspection.

Unlike top proprietary social networks, social media should be open source.  You must be able to inspect code and even help contribute and build the network. This provides much needed community ownership and transparency into what the platform is actually doing, as opposed to simply taking their word for it.

This debate exposes the paradox between transparency and privacy, both of which are core principles of Internet freedom pioneers. Facebook has gotten themselves into a deadly trap by pretending they are giving people privacy with layered permissions levels and supposed ‘privacy’ settings while also exposing massive amounts of data without consent. They are handing over data to the highest bidders and the user has lost all control.

Social Networks must give that control back to the people. This is only the beginning of the privacy movement and we all must join together for a better future for everyone.

About the author:
Bill Ottman is an American internet entrepreneur, freedom of information activist and hacker based in New York City, best known as the CEO and co-founder of Minds, an open-source social networking service. He is a graduate of the University of Vermont, and co-founded Minds with John Ottman and Mark Harding in 2011.

Source:
This article was published by Truth in Media.

Death And Impunity: Iraq Fifteen Years After – OpEd

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It might have made a bit more than a whimper had the US political scene not found itself in yet another paroxysm of the drama known as the Trump White House. Fifteen years before, governments aligning with the dogs of war decided, in defiance of millions of protestors globally, to invade a sovereign state. Papers cheered with blood lust; propagandists and public relations firms were hired to push the politics of regime change in a country that was already hemmed in by sanctions and surveillance.

The invasion of Iraq must, over time, be given its own specific criminal gravity. It sundered the Middle East, it tore at the artificially imposed borders contrived by former colonial masters. It emboldened new foes and generated further disagreements. For generations, chaos will be guaranteed on the heaped folly of the 2003 decision.

“The results are in,” went a sombre Charles P. Pierce for Esquire. “Iraq never recovered. Syria devolved into civil war. We got closer than ever to the inhumane regime in Saudi Arabia, now engaged in mass slaughter in Yemen with weapons we supplied, because there’s never been a problem with that before.”

As Matt Taibbi reflected, the invasion had the element of “awesome drama, made more thrilling by the seemingly obvious craziness of it all.” The subtext was a lack of sensible reason, distorted by the mania that Iraq had somehow become a global threat with a trigger happy maniac. In place was ample hysteric delight, characterised by the opening phase of the campaign: “Shock and Awe”.

As with the Indochina War, the invasion mirrored an emerging malaise back home. Invading Iraq was “one of the great crimes of this or any age and destined to be a crossroads event in the history of America’s decline”. It was “a cold, calculated, opportunistic power grab, aimed as much at future targets, and even our own population, as at the Iraqi ‘enemy’.”

The US allies who, with unfazed enthusiasm went in with similar destructive intent, were also showing mixed degrees of reflection. In Australia, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd saw a chance to chastise his predecessor, John Howard, for having joined the US-led enterprise. “John Howard’s decision to commit thousands of Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq 15 years ago,” began his opening salvo, “ranks as one of the two great failures of Australian foreign policy since the Second World War.”

Rudd can show periods of sensible reflection. The decision to invade Iraq had to also rank alongside another US-led mission that was doomed: the Vietnam War. Again, the leadership in Canberra felt it logical and automatic that the soldiers of the South Cross should shed blood alongside those of the Stars and Stripes.

In Rudd’s reflection, analysis of legitimacy and interest was lacking. There was no specific Australian take on it, not a consideration of “the credibility of American military strategy to both win the war and secure the peace, as well as the long-term consequences for Australian national interests.”

Being a former diplomat, Rudd’s survey of the grotesque consequences is even deeper than Pierce. Sectarian violence between the Shia majority and Sunni minority was unleashed; Christians, having co-habited with Muslims for some 1,300 years were, were brutally expelled; Iraq was pushed into Iran’s orbit while Iraq duly imploded, becoming the base for regional terrorist influences.

The apologist’s tactic in these instances is one tried in history. We were sincere in inflicting our butcheries; we were solemn in making our errors of judgment. We only did what was appropriate at the time. Even if those weapons of mass destruction had never turned up, Saddam Hussein was vicious, a sadist, murderer and torturer. Never mind those who knew better.

For John Howard, it was a case of making a decision on “available evidence” from Australian intelligence agencies at the time tying the Saddam regime with those ultimately elusive weapons of mass destruction. Howard duly “concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction” and insisted that Rudd place himself in “the shoes of the government at the time”.

In the case of the evangelised Tony Blair of Britain, such ham sincerity is pure theatre, even convincing the likes of Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the public inquiry examining the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. While he was not “straight with the nation” about the reasons for invading Iraq, he was “emotionally truthful”.

As Chilcot explained to the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg last July, “Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.”

As for President George W. Bush, he remains, along with Howard and Blair, elusive from the judicial bench of any tribunal, foreign or domestic. War criminals have received weighty sentences for less but this triumvirate are at little risk of being apprehended. In the autumn of their lives, they are witnessing a conflagration they happily initiated when in office.


Afghanistan Achieves Pyrrhic Success Via Chabahar Port – Analysis

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By Elaha Rahmani*

(FPRI) — Afghans celebrated the new access that Iran’s Chabahar port provides the country, but this victory may turn out to be a pyrrhic one. As recent as May 2016, India, Iran, and Afghanistan signed their first-ever trilateral partnership agreement allowing Indian goods to reach Afghanistan and Central Asia via Iran, while also inserting new geopolitically competing players into the region. Over one year later, in October 2017, the first shipment of Indian wheat arrived in Zaranj, Afghanistan, via Chabahar port.

While utilizing Chabahar does fuse common regional and economic interests by allowing an alternate trade route into Afghanistan—and thereby reducing Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistani ports—relying too heavily on Chabahar raises serious security and economic concerns in Kabul because using Chabahar is bound to further fray Afghanistan’s already tenuous relationship with Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s access to Chabahar will have greater implications for the geopolitical situation and for countries in the region, specifically India, Pakistan, and Iran.

India: Developing New Opportunities

India’s development of the Chabahar port is a calculated move granting New Delhi unimpeded access to Afghanistan and thence to wider Central Asia, while summarily bypassing the subcontinent’s archrival, Pakistan.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s mid-February visit to India indicated a new strategic collaboration between India and Iran punctuated by the countries’ signing of nine additional agreements extending Iran’s 2018-19 bilateral energy infusion to India by some half a million barrels per day (25 MT), an increase of 25% over the 2017-18 estimate of 370,000 barrels per day (18.5 MT). Considering India’s lack of oil and natural gas reserves, opening the gates to Iran’s major ones makes perfect sense, and it is specifically Chabahar that has afforded India the opportunity to import even more natural resources from Iran, which will surely add to the port’s already growing geo-economic cachet.

India made this strategic move to compete with China, its main economic rival in Asia, and also the world’s top importer of Iranian oil commodities. However, India’s reaping of its own political and economic benefits via its agreement with Iran is certain to leave Afghanistan as the odd-country-out, standing more unstably vis-à-vis its potential economic threat to Pakistan, due to Afghanistan’s declining resource dependence.

Pakistan: Complicated Relationships

According to the World Bank, Pakistan’s contribution to Afghan trade has declined from 56.5% in 2008 to 38.9% by 2015, with Iran and India now as the largest importers of Afghan goods. The trilateral agreement on Chabahar port between Iran, India, and Afghanistan has allowed Afghanistan to diversify the ways and means by which it distributes goods to and from its provinces. By design, it completely bypasses Pakistan, which could create a new conflict between Kabul and Islamabad, and more so if Afghanistan continues to disentangle its import/export ties. The resulting deeper tensions would certainly result in further adverse effects on Afghanistan’s still fragile security and economy. The potential for such adverse effects has been amplified by the World Bank’s 2016 public recognition of Pakistan’s hostile Afghan intentions, a recognition that sharply indicates that if push comes to shove over Afghanistan’s further utilization of the Chabahar port, Afghanistan would remain defenseless if faced with a threat from Pakistan.

Iran: A New Power Broker?

Iran’s February anti-government protests again signaled Tehran’s instability to the region and the world. The West’s frequent imposition of sanctions, coupled with international criticism over Iran’s role in Syria and Yemen, reveals that global mistrust of Iran is still widespread. Furthermore, in March, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Iran would extend the Chabahar port project to Pakistan and China. The statement may have come as a shock to the region since the sole purpose of the port was to sidestep Islamabad. It is not a concrete partnership and more of a diplomatic declaration to indicate that ties between Tehran and Islamabad are not hurt.

Kabul doesn’t trust Tehran, yet Afghanistan still views Iran as its obligatory, if fickle, diplomatic partner. U.S. intelligence officials have recently revealed that Tehran has gallingly equipped the Taliban with arms, and even deployed Afghan refugees as its foot soldiers in Syria’s bloody civil war. Given these developments notwithstanding the geographic necessity of Iran in the Chabahar agreement, Afghanistan has little say in final trade route decisions; it’s hard not be cynical about the long-term prospects of Afghan international trade. Having such a domineering, frequently disruptive regional power as a neighbor and primary trade partner forces Afghanistan to tacitly accept its severe disadvantage. Another disadvantage is that Afghanistan can’t cut ties with Pakistan because then it would have to rely solely on the already hemmed-in Chabahar route. Were that to occur, Iran would have a leading role in the region not only by establishing Tehran as a major channel of trade entry and exit, but also by potentially giving the Islamic Republic the upper religious and cultural hand in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Gambit: Looking to the Future

History tells us that something deceptively simple and non-political as a trade port can have major security implications both regionally and globally. This is especially true in the Chabahar case, given its natural limitations and the generally fraught state of affairs in Central Asia. The United States remains a strong partner to Afghanistan, both in fighting terrorism and in bolstering Kabul’s overall progress as a governing body, and the Trump administration has (so far) pledged its full support. However, Kabul simply cannot—and should not—rely on a single partner, especially due to its rising tensions with Pakistan. This dynamic makes Afghanistan’s strategic relationships with India and Iran essential, though these relationships are by no means be a perfect one, due to the haranguing influences of Pakistan.

Though Afghanistan is often referred to as the “beating heart” of Central Asia, its distant and isolated geographic position has always left it economically, politically, and militarily vulnerable. There are no easy solutions to the country’s difficult circumstances, but connecting Afghanistan with Chabahar via a calculated geopolitical strategic move with India and Iran could prove a worthwhile gambit, despite its potential for only pyrrhic success.

About the author:
*Elaha Rahmani
is an M.S. Candidate at New York University, Center for Global Affairs, concentration on Transnational Security, with a regional focus on Central Asia and Russia. Elaha’s professional background includes working at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. and on number of developmental projects in Afghanistan.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

The Macron Paradox: Internal Liberalization, External Statism – OpEd

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By Daniel J. Mitchell*

In last year’s French presidential election between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, I joked that voters should choose the socialist over the socialist, but made a serious point that Macron – despite having been part of Hollande’s disastrous government – was preferable since there was at least a hope of market-oriented reform.

…the chance of Macron being good are greater than zero. After all, it was the left-wing parties that started the process of pro-market reforms in Australia and New Zealand. And it was a Social Democrat government in Germany that enacted the labor-market reforms that have been so beneficial for that nation.

And after Macron won the election, I reviewed some of his initiatives to restrain government, including plans to reduce the burden of government spending, lower France’s corporate tax rate, and to shrink the size of the bureaucracy.

His ideas sounded so good that I wrote – only partly in jest – that “I wish the Republicans in Washington were as sensible as these French socialists.”

We’re not quite to the one-year anniversary of his election, but let’s take a look at Macron’s track record. And we’ll start with a very encouraging report from the New York Times.

…if France’s young president, Emmanuel Macron, has made one thing clear, it is that he is not afraid to shake up France and take on its venerable institutions. Now it is the turn of the heavily subsidized and deeply indebted French rail system. Mr. Macron says he wants to erase the railway workers’ special status, which gives them more generous benefits than almost any other workers, including a guarantee of early retirement. In doing so, he has set himself a new and formidable challenge in his expanding campaign to reshape France’s society and economy, which started last year with a law that made it easier for private companies to hire and fire workers, a near revolution for France.

Macron has a difficult task.

…the railway workers are a public-sector work force, one of the most powerful in the country, with a chokehold on as many as five million riders daily. When they go on strike, the whole country feels it. …rail unions have already pledged to join a strike by public-sector employees planned for Thursday… The rail workers then plan weeks of strikes starting in April that will be staged on a rolling basis.

Here’s some of what Macron wants to fix.

French rail workers’ current, ample benefits — including in some cases, the option of retiring at 52 — date to the first half of the 20th century, when many railway jobs involved hard, physical labor… Mr. Macron…to push for a broader overhaul that, for new hires, would end advantages like guaranteed jobs, automatic pay raises and generous social security benefits. …The French rail system is both heavily subsidized and deeply in debt, to the tune of 55 billion euros, or about $68 billion.

And if the French President succeeds, there are other reforms on the horizon.

Mr. Macron has pledged to follow the railway plan with an overhaul of the unemployment system later in the year. Next year he intends to take on the French pension system. …changing the employment terms for railway workers appears to be part of a larger crusade to push French workers into the 21st century.

Good. Similar reforms were very beneficial for German workers and the German economy, so I’m sure Macron’s proposals will produce good results in France.

Writing last October for CapX, Diego Zuluaga expressed optimism about Macron’s agenda.

…it is the French government that is tackling the big barriers to growth and dynamism that have stifled their economy since 1975. …Emmanuel Macron…has vowed to attack this status quo. He aims to deconstruct the onerous French labour market law, the infamous Code du travail. This is a 1,600-page, 10,000-article gargantuan piece of legislation which is blamed for clobbering employment in France over the past 25 years. …Macron may be able to deliver considerable reforms when it comes to the labour market. His cabinet intends to move a larger share of collective bargaining to the firm level, remove the requirement of union representation for small- and medium-sized businesses, limit severance pay – right now it averages €24,000 per dismissal – to give employers greater certainty about the costs of hiring… Spain reformed its dysfunctional hiring and firing regulations in 2012, and robust employment growth followed. Now, it is long-ossified France that is taking up the baton.

If you stopped reading at this point, you might conclude that Macron is a French version of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.

But that would be a considerable exaggeration. The French President also is pushing some questionable policies, such as higher taxes on luxury goods. But, in Macron’s defense, those class-warfare taxes are an offset for the abolition of the wealth tax, which was a very good reform.

Emmanuel Macron’s administration will propose a tax on luxury yachts, supercars and precious metals in France’s 2018 budget.  Lawmakers will propose amendments after critics attacked the President’s move to scrap the wealth tax in France. Mr Macron abolished the tax, which has been seen as a symbol of social justice for the left but blamed by others for driving thousands of millionaires abroad. …The wealth tax, introduced by the Socialists in the 1980s, was levied on individuals with assets above 1.3 million euros (£1.2 million).

Since I’m not familiar with the details (i.e., do these changes result in a revenue-neutral shift, a net tax cut, or a net tax increase?), there’s no way to determine if swapping the wealth tax for luxury taxes is a net positive or a negative. Though I assume the overall effect is positive because wealth taxes are a very bad idea and luxury taxes, while self-destructive, generally are futile.

But this doesn’t let Macron off the hook. Even if we decide that he’s a pro-market reformer inside his country, he has a very bad habit of promoting statism at the European level.

The Wall Street Journal opined unfavorably last year on his plan for greater centralization.

…the French President issued a call for more, more and more Europe. …His EU would be responsible for many of the functions traditionally performed by a nation-state, such as defense, taxation, migration control and economic regulation. …The problem is…Mr. Macron’s dreams of fiscal and economic union. He wants to create an EU finance ministry, funded by corporate and other taxes, that can spend money across the bloc with minimal interference from national capitals. Mr. Macron also wants to harmonize—eurospeak for raise—corporate taxes across the EU. He’d further establish Franco-German regulatory excess as the benchmark for the rest of the EU… This is a recipe for political failure because Europeans already know these policies are economic duds.

Writing for the New York Times, a German journalist poured cold water on Macron’s plan to give redistribution powers to the European Union.

It would be funny if it weren’t dangerous — the solution offered by the new, pro-Europe president, Emmanuel Macron, is to create a eurozone budget, with its own finance minister. …Mr. Macron’s proposal is a disaster in the making. It will only further alienate Europeans from one another and weaken the bloc economically. …Brussels’s money has often been Europe’s curse. The Greek government, for instance, knew it could take for granted the support of the other euro members for its unsustainable budget after Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany recklessly declared, “If the euro fails, Europe fails.” Athens slowed down on reform, knowing Brussels would bail it out, and northern Europeans grew angry. In the worst case, Mr. Macron’s plan could turn this disincentive into a characteristic feature of the European Union. …Brussels would end up holding the purse but not the purse strings.

So what’s the story with Macron’s schizophrenic approach? Why is he a pro-market Dr. Jekyll for French policy but a statist Mr. Hyde for European policy?

I don’t have the answer, but Diego Zuluaga wrote about this dichotomy for CapX.

The puzzle of Macronism is that it tends to advocate dynamism at home, but stasis abroad. The French President, both during his tenure in Hollande’s cabinet and in his new office, has championed reform of the country’s bewilderingly byzantine employment code, which has promoted social exclusion and led to a high rate of structural unemployment. …But Macron’s liberalism seemingly stops at France’s borders. On the EU level, he has called for increased risk-sharing among euro member states, a eurozone budget and finance minister… Whatever one makes of his climate-change activism, it is nothing if not dirigiste in the extreme, wishing to curb carbon emissions through bureaucratic pacts on a global level. What we are left with is the pro-market equivalent of Stalin’s pre-WWII economic policy of  “socialism in one country”. Liberalism in one country acknowledges the need for economic flexibility and a greater reliance on market forces at home. It champions tax reform and deregulation of industry and hiring. But it shuns those principles on the international level.

By the way, Mr. Zuluaga is using “liberalism” in the classic sense, meaning pro-market policies.

Let’s close with a couple of items that show France still has a long way to go.

First, a leftist columnist wants us to believe that recent riots, caused by a sale on Nutella, are symbolic of a dystopian future.

You may have seen the videos: in French supermarkets Intermarché, customers are rushing towards shelves of Nutella jars. They’re running, shouting, fighting, rummaging to grab a jar of the chocolate flavoured paste… This mess happened simultaneously in various French supermarkets when grocery chain Intermarché advertised a massive sale on 1kg Nutella jars, priced at €1,41 instead of the usual €4,50. …I don’t find this news funny, not even remotely. …it is telling of a France that is more and more divided… The massive response to this sale shines light…on the precarious position in which many French workers, and shoppers, find themselves. …And it’s not going to get any better for them. Macron’s looming labour reform is already eroding French workers’ rights… Macron’s great vision for France increasingly looks like a country where only the rich and “successful” will be able to afford Nutella – and those who “are nothing” will be left to fight for sale prices.

This type of over-wrought analysis makes me want to cheer for Macron.

Why? Because I understand that the best hope for workers is faster growth, not “labor-protection policies” that actually undermine job creation and cause wages to stagnate.

Second, we have a story that highlights the impossible regulatory burden in France.

A French boulanger has been ordered to pay a €3,000 fine for working too hard after he failed to close his shop for one day a week last summer. …Under local employment law, two separate regulations from 1994 and 2000 require bakers’ shops to close once a week… He has been advised the only way to get around the regulations would be to open a second boulangerie with different opening hours. …The federation of Aube boulangeries and patisseries questioned 126 members at the end of last year: the majority were in favour of maintaining the obligatory one-day closure. Eric Scherrer of the retail union CLIC-P, said French employment laws were there to protect workers and employers and had to be respected. …“These people need to have a rest day each week. We can’t just allow them to work non-stop. It’s absolutely necessary that both bosses and employees have a day of rest.”

The bottom line is that Macron should drop his statist European-wide proposals and put all of his focus on fixing France.

If you look at his country’s scores from Economic Freedom of the World, he should be working day and night to reduce the fiscal burden of government.

And lowering the regulatory burden should be the second-most important priority.

Originally published at International Liberty

About the author
Daniel J. Mitchell is a top expert on fiscal policy issues such as tax reform, the economic impact of government spending, and supply-side tax policy. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. His blog is Liberty – Restraining Government in America and Around the World.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Media Literacy The Real, Interactive Way: Credibility And Neutrality Of Media – Essay

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The basic hypothesis of this research was that media literacy is the basic prerequisite for establishing a society of developed democratic consciousness. At the same time, the second hypothesis appeared as a logical sequence in the title and refers to the political manipulation of subjects of political pluralism precisely on the basis of insufficient media literacy of the society itself. The third hypothesis also applies to the professionalism of the intermediaries themselves, journalists, the specific personality that exists between the public and the source of information. The mesh and mutual conditionality of the given hypothesis has also assumed the realization of scientific research based on which conclusions were drawn that shapes this work as well.

Can people, and under what conditions, express their opinions, ideas and attitudes freely? The ability to think nature has given us, or how it is interpreted in a different way – God. I think, therefore I exist1. This right and freedom can not be taken away by us by any authority, even the most rigid totalitarian order. Simply, everyone can think and to shut up. The problem occurs if the thoughts that he/she thinks about – when he wants to tell that to others.

For the speakers of the public word, primarily for professional journalists, it’s a question of what I can and what I can not, not to know, but to publish. Only by this act the journalist’s testimony becomes public, and the author’s responsibility for the announced word immediately follows after that. Ultimately, in all countries, best journalism would be the one in which all journalists could, and should, publish everything they know. However, such a situation rarely came to fruition. Every public speaking messenger who has tried to work in journalism has a certain experience of what he/she knew and what he/she was not able to publish. He/she knows, too, and for which he/she has abandoned the public word – whether he/she was prevented by the force of law and some authority (censorship), or was afraid to take responsibility for the consequences of his/her public word (auto-censorship).

The conflict, the desire to speak publicly and the fear of the consequences of this act or the burden of responsibility derives from the fact that the right to freedom of expression of the thoughts and feelings is the natural human right. It belongs to the corpus of human rights and fundamental freedoms that are aboriginal and fundamental, such as the right for life, for freedom, to have property, to the integrity of a personality … And, in a healthy sense, such rights have always been considered undeniable. As no one has ever denied that the sun is coming up and going down, so there has been no doubt about the existence of basic human rights. But many conflicts around this notorious fact (sunrise and sunset) came about when the question arises: Why is this happening? Is it because the Earth is turning around the Sun, or vice versa. If you have given this question an answer that has opposed to the valid “truth” or dogma, you could have been, because of the given public opinion, end up at the bonfire.

To trust, or not …

Thus, the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and freedoms have been discussed, but also opened, a multitude of disputes and dilemmas when asked the question: Under what conditions can they enjoy it and if there are limits beyond which they can not be practiced? Responses to these questions were of particular importance to the journalistic profession because, in the nature of their work, it was focused on public insight, ie. public opinion.

The audience in most cases blindly trusts media, ie, journalists, and many “reporters” report on what they heard from others, and publish untruthful information. As journalists, we always have to ask: are the facts presented true and how can we interpret them (why something happened, what are the causes and what will be the consequences of it)? The basic rule of journalistic profession requires that the publicly announced facts be objective, but permits their interpretation to be different. In the professional jargon of journalism, this is the rule to differently creates presumptions of the creations for the information that are presented, but also differently be responsible for the news and opinion, commentary. And again, as in the past, due to some interpretation of the facts, journalists will be “rewarded” and because of different facts, criticized and even punished.

The media have tremendous power. What it’s suppressed or overlooked, as if it did not happen. What they emphasize or repeat, as if it were the most important in our lives. Hence, it is socially and democratically justified to have journalists, due to the proportionately high power they possess, journalists and the media simultaneously undergo greater responsibility.

The Doctrine of Social Responsibility of Media and Journalists starts from the good faith that abuse through public words will not come. It also confirms that the boundaries of media freedom must exist. However, this was not the most important issue with regard to the responsibility of journalists in practice, which is: who and how it makes the boundaries of the press freedom, that is, all the media sui generis?

When we talk about freedom of criticism, Winston S. Churcill, a British state governor, in an interview with New Statesman, the British magazine for Social and Political Issues, issued on January 7, 1939. said2: “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.”

Above all, moral respect of the laws

Journalistic independence is not, as stated in the book “Elements of Journalism3” of the authors: Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, an neutrality. While the words of editors and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is their accuracy, intellectual justice, and the ability to inform them of their attachment to a particular group or result of the very consequences of their work.

However, professional journalists, those who respect professional ethical standards, must avoid to wander into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism when implementing their own form of independence. At the same time, without integrity, journalism is suspicious and unreliable, and can not be trusted within its appearance. Integrity gives the reporter the authority to investigate questions, “cast light” on “dark places” and to dig up where others will not. As mentioned earlier, information aimed for the development of a democratic society of different subjects of political pluralism, it is of the utmost importance that a concrete public debate on matters of importance to society is settled on the basis of reliable solid professional journalism.

Professional ethical standards must stimulate moral imagination, recognize behavioral rules in ethical issues, and direct the subjects of political pluralism to work on the development of analytic abilities, as well as work on acquiring the sense of moral obligation and personal responsibility with the expressed tolerance on disagreement, that is, with a simple vocabulary said – it must work on acquiring an ethical condition. Most of all because ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with moral behavior issues. Lawyers and judges tell us that the laws are within the foundation of our civilization. They are not right and that is not true, and here I emphasize that – The foundations of our culture(s) lies in moral respect for the laws.

What is the function of the media in the system of professional ethical standards? Mass media are among the most influential companies in a democratic society (especially social networks in XXI Century), at the crossroads between citizens and their political, economic and social institutions.

How can we overcome the problems faced by journalism when faced with a situation of overwhelming social networks? Rumor problems, manipulation of disinformation, lies, deception and hypocrisy of politicians who are even ready to change the laws if it suits them personally or in other words – to adapt legislation to their own interests and thus directly or indirectly usurp all the possibilities for forming a deliberative society democracy which may be the only outlet not only for the local areas of South East Europe, but also for the wider, global meaning of that word4.

This is something that, when social networks are concerned, also pointed out by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg in his status on 19.11.20165: “Bearing in mind that the problem of disinformation and false (fake) news is a technical and philosophical complex, the most important is the discovery of a specific area to handle. In that sense, Facebook is working on a better detection system.”

At the same time, how to be ethical in society, where no matter what political option they belong to, the principle exists “in a society where everybody steals, nobody steals”6?

There are a number of questions that I will try to give appropriate answers during 2018 on the pages of Eurasia Review, but the success of theoretical reflections is verifiable only in practice where there will be ethics in journalism that will be focused, universal, common good, and not merely to an individual benefit per se.

Today, the truth is an integral part of professional ethical standards, honesty (objectivity), impartiality, appropriate relationships with sources of information, respect for persons who are subject to information, elimination of any discrimination and journalist’s responsibility.

However, in the world of global sin in which we are living, we are still so far away from that. Aren’t we?

These essays started on 14.2.2018 on the pages of Eurasia Review are the part of the book “Media literacy vs. political manipulations“ – author Assoc. Prof. Dr. and Dr Honoris Causa Sabahudin Hadžialić – published by International University Travnik, 2018, in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina (and the book will be promoted first at this University on 31.3.2018 at the hall 11 – 3rd floor at 2 p.m. together with the book “World as Global Sin“ about which Eurasia Review already wrote about on 12.1.2018: https://www.eurasiareview.com/12012018-155335/ ).

Notes:
1. “Cogito, ergo sum“ – René Descartes (1596-1650)
2. Info: http://www.newstatesman.com/archive/2013/12/british-people-would-rather-go-down-fighting
3. The Elements of Journalism“ Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel, Izdavač Crown publishers, 2001, USA – Info https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/elements-journalism/
4. Eurasia Review, USA (14.6.2016), author Sabahudin Hadžialić: http://www.eurasiareview.com/14062016-world-as-global-sin-deliberative-democracy-as-the-only-way-out-essay/
5. Mark Zuckerberg – FACEBOOK status (19.11.2016): https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061
6. Prof.dr. Mladen Mirosavljević – „Korupcija kao način života“ (Corruption as a way of living) – Al Jazeera, 19.12.2015: http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/korupcija-kao-nacin-zivota

Not Every Barrel Of Oil Is Equal – OpEd

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By Cornelia Meyer*

Oil prices slumped on the Monday after President Putin’s re-election when Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced that he considered the agreement between OPEC and 10 non-OPEC countries to have run its course when markets reached balance.

The deal has taken 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) out of international oil markets since January 2017. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih put things in perspective toward the end of the week when he reiterated his preference for markets to be on the tight side. He also said that the agreement would run through 2018 and that he was investigating future frameworks for cooperation.

Prices started to rally earlier though, because the Energy Information Administration’s numbers showed a 2.8 million barrel withdrawal from US crude inventories and a whopping 580,000 barrel decrease in US crude imports, a sign of changing trade patterns as US shale production ramps up.

Donald Trump’s firing of his National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and replacement with John Bolton sent jitters through the markets because Bolton is a hard-liner on Iran. Observers fear that a US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal could potentially take as many as 1 million bpd out of the market. The last week saw oil prices rally to $70 per barrel, the highest since January 2018.

We see these swings precisely because markets are getting tighter. At the same time markets and trade flows are realigning, as increased US shale production is entering international markets. As the US is set to become the world’s top oil producer toward the end of the year, the question will be where these incremental shale barrels will find their markets.

The first shale revolution redirected trade flows away from the US to Asia. In particular, African crudes no longer crossed the Atlantic but searched for a home in China, India and so on. When oil prices bottomed during 2015, US shale production went into a hiatus.

Since then, the shale space has become leaner and meaner and can now easily produce at a profit as long as the price does not go below $40 per barrel, which is in part what explains its explosive production growth over the past 12 months. By now legislation is also allowing for US crude to be exported. Whereas this gives every incremental shale barrel more options, it may not always be so easy to accommodate the quality.

Shale oil is lighter than other crudes and refineries are largely configured to accommodate a heavier and sourer quality of crude. This means that many US shale barrels will criss-cross the globe to find a refining home. For instance, when the first cargo of crude reached the UAE last December, it was not so much an achievement of US oil exports but rather a sign that it was hard to place these incremental shale barrels.

In other words, these barrels will slosh around the world in search of an opportunity to be processed. The harder it gets to find that home, the more they will be traded at a discount. (As long as the price is between $60 and $70 per barrel, costs can easily be covered.) Refiners will try to find balanced supplies, which accounts for instance, for the African cargoes now going back to the US to make up for lost imports from Venezuela.

As long as demand is growing all barrels will find their refining home, but some qualities of crude will be traded at a relative premium and others at a discount.

For the GCC producers, Saudi Arabia in particular, the OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts have come at a cost. Saudi Arabia has lost out to Russia as the biggest crude importer to China and surrendered that position in India to Iraq. KSA in particular will have to observe how the incremental shale barrels will affect its exports.

We should take a more differentiated approach when looking at ever-growing shale production and take into consideration trade flows, because they matter in terms of supply strength as well as in terms of relative price levels. Expect those battles to be fought out in the hotly contested Indian and Chinese markets, which account for at least 50 percent of demand growth over the years ahead.

  • Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macroeconomist and energy expert. Twitter: @MeyerResources

To Delete, Or Not To #deleteFacebook, That Is The Question – OpEd

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Given the massive breach of faith by Facebook, it’s unclear how long it will take to re-establish trust in their motives even if companies pledge to improve their data security systems and guidelines.

By Maya Mirchandani

For the last few days, I’ve been grappling with an unexpected existential crisis over whether or not to delete my Facebook. While the harvesting of data of 50 million Facebook users in America for political gain, without consent, is unconscionable, the issues the Cambridge Analytica scandal has raised — of privacy, consent and data security — highlight perhaps the biggest challenge of the 21st century — that of governing the internet.

Since joining Facebook a decade ago, I’ve found it fun and extremely serendipitous — finding people I had long lost contact with, school friends, or making new friends, courtesy conversations on other’s pages. It is also useful in allowing me maximum contact with a vast family with minimum effort. All these reasons that made so many of us join Facebook dulled us into complacent comfort, consenting without reading the fineprint or understanding the ramifications of giving up so much of ourselves each time we voluntarily tagged photos, did random personality quizzes and checked into different places.

In the absence of clearly spelt out rules of governance, we didn’t see that this seamless syncing of our virtual world with the real world was creating a Frankenstein’s monster that could turn on us. We had no way of knowing that those fun quizzes telling us whether Rome was the perfect city to live in, or yellow was our aura colour, or which 1980s’ popstar we would be born again were fodder for political analysts, tasked with profiling us to either influence our politics or reinforce our biases — sometimes with violent consequences. The privacy settings we checked off perhaps ensured safety from criminals, but each time we took and allowed these quizzes to access our friends’ list and photographs in order to proceed, we surrendered a little more of ourselves.

It is this heady addiction to Facebook — logged in 24/7 on our computers and phones — that has brought us to this pass. As individuals we have become data points for commercial gain, and perhaps far more dangerously, political gain — without the remotest pretense of permission. The developers of these quizzes mapped our food habits, book choices, political ideologies and concerns and monetised that information by selling it to the highest bidder. In the case of the political consulting company, Cambridge Analytica, members of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign management bought and used the information of 50 million Facebook users to send targeted political messaging aimed to influence voters during the contentious 2016 American Presidential race.

Several reports indicate that it was Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama whose campaign team first discovered the immense possibilities of using Facebook for political gain in 2012. It is also true that if it weren’t for the fact that liberal America is still reeling with shock since Trump’s win, perhaps such a scandal may never have come to light, nor would we be having a global conversation on fake news, even though so many of us in India have been voicing concerns over the spread of unchecked propaganda and fake news on social media for the last few years.

It is now time to recognise that as enraged as we might be over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this is only one of several alarming realities to contend with in our social media-driven world — most importantly, as concerned citizens who follow the rule of law, our own roles in surrendering ourselves to tech giants. Our smartphones are loaded with all kinds of personal data — phone numbers and photographs, financial information, travel, reading and shopping preferences. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple together know everything there is to know about us through our online habits — a reality that makes it imperative for us to seek ways of plugging the damage since these companies, irrespective of the outrage, are probably here to stay.

But like everything else in our technology-dependent universe, all attempts to plug the damage come with their own dilemmas. The European Union is prioritising privacy concerns over fears of political misuse — misinformation and attack that can pose threats to democratic functioning as we know it. Germany, on the other side, has already passed legislation warning social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google against fomenting hate speech. The law demands that networks remove illegal content as defined in Germany’s criminal code promptly, else face fines of up to Euro 50 million each time they fail to act.

Social networks became popular because they allowed individuals to exercise absolute freedom of speech. Unless their broad community standards are breached and reported as abusive, these networks have provided an uninterrupted, unfiltered flow of information and ideas to a vast global population that feels empowered to challenge the relevance of mainstream media in today’s polarised world. Last year, Facebook itself said it took down an average of 288,000 posts a month based on reports of hate speech and violent content.

On 12 March, ten days before the scandal over Facebook’s data breach for political gains broke, Mazurki Darusman, chairperson of the United Nations Independent Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar, blamed Facebook for playing a key role in what the UN Human Rights Commissioner called the possible genocide of Rohingya Muslims last year. Darusman said Facebook was a huge part of public, civil and private life in Myanmar, used both by citizens and government, but it had “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and conflict within the public.. Ultra-nationalist Buddhists, through their own pages were inciting violence against Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.”

Facebook, under fire globally for the spread of hate speech well before this latest scandal, has been proactively trying to promote what it calls “counter speech” through various initiatives engaging young people, civil society organisations and celebrities in efforts to promote narratives of tolerance, diversity and acceptance on the platform. Whether these efforts are noble, or simply geared towards taking the heat off from growing accusations of fomenting hate worldwide is debatable, but the initiatives have yet to see any substantive results.

In India, where Facebook crossed 240 million users last July, (over 10% of the platform’s global user base) efforts are further complicated by the fact that fake news, propaganda and hate speech all exist and circulate within the same ecosystem of political and religious polarisation. Many more, especially rural and older populations who cannot or will not go through the complications of logging on via email, simply use their smartphones to access the now encrypted instant messaging service WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook for $16 billion in 2014.

Today, WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton is one of the biggest names leading the #deleteFacebook campaign, urging us all to care about privacy, as we well should. But WhatsApp in India is fast becoming a bigger concern. Its encryption may well protect our privacy, but examples abound of its inability to prevent the spread of fake news and incitement to violence. WhatsApp’s ease and falling prices of both smartphones and data has meant we are flooded with unverified, unfiltered, often uninformed communication, even misinformation. In an extreme comparison, some have even voiced concerns over the potential of WhatsApp in India to become that of the radio in Rwanda where 800,0000 Tutsis were killed in three months in 1994. The radio became the trigger that incited and mobilised the Hutus.

Perhaps that’s a stretch, but in December 2010, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that the rise of “‘interconnected estate’ where any person with access to the internet regardless of living standards or nationality is given a voice and has the power to affect change” will create both opportunities and challenges to established institutions as we know them and warned of the potential of these connection technologies for both good and evil. Given the potential for abuse and manipulation in charged political times, there is no question of state control or regulation of social networks by those in power. The fact that social networks like Facebook must be accountable for galloping roughshod over our rights is equally unquestionable.

Under these circumstances, can these platforms self-regulate? More importantly, given this massive breach of faith by Facebook, its unclear how long it will take to re-establish trust in their motives even if companies pledge to improve their data security systems and guidelines. As we ponder these challenges, there are no easy answers at the moment, beyond perhaps ensuring that we as citizens of the internet educate and empower ourselves enough not to surrender our freedoms of privacy and expression to darker forces, until a global ‘internet governance’ regime is agreed upon with the involvement of all stakeholders — tech giants, civil society and governments.

Meanwhile, whatever we have already put out there on social media exists somewhere in the ether. Deleting or not deleting accounts today doesn’t change the fact that our metadata is already secured on their servers somewhere. A download of ones Facebook archive will give a sense of just how much about us they know, both with and without our active consent. Therefore, my existential dilemma continues. Perhaps it’s a question I will pose to my friends on Facebook, who from the number of people I continue to see online, are grappling with the same questions.

This article originally appeared in The Wire.

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