By Robert G. Kennedy*

In a letter written in 1789, Benjamin Franklin observed that the new American constitution seemed destined for permanency but also noted that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Taxation, in one form or another, has been a feature of civilized life for 5,000 years or more and shows no sign of disappearing. No doubt complaints about the fairness of taxation are just as old.

My objective is to consider ques­tions of justice with regard to taxation through the lens of the Catholic social tradition. By identifying some of the foundational concepts of the Church’s social teaching and applying them to the subject of taxation, we can draw a few conclusions about what the tradition teaches us—and does not teach us—about the levying of taxes.

What the Tradition teaches us

First, the Catholic social tradition teaches us that, as images of God, the natural flourishing of human persons consists in the full exercise of our capacities to reason well, to act for the good, and to participate in civic friendship. As a consequence, the common good of society consists in those conditions that would make it possible for each and every person in the community to flourish. It does not and cannot consist in making individuals passive recipients of the material requirements of a decent life. The state can assist us in becoming self-reliant and self-determining—as social beings, not as isolated individuals—but it cannot do this for us or to us. As a result, the state must respect a very large zone of social life, a rich assemblage of families and associations that it may nurture but ought not to control. This acts as a natural limit on state activity and on the need for tax revenues.

Second, the Catholic social tradition teaches us that individ­uals and families have a natural right to own property privately. It is in recognizing this right that the Catholic social tradition reveals one of its most distinctive features: the emphasis on the family as the foundational element of society. The wealth of a society is an aggregate measure, for the most part, of wealth owned privately by individuals and families; it is not the possession of the state. Nevertheless, the state has a claim on some amount of private property in order to perform its proper functions, and it claims this amount through laws levying taxes.

Third, the Catholic social tradition teaches us that members of a society have a duty to support the common good in various ways, not least by peacefully paying just taxes. Members of a society have a duty in justice to support the common good. This abstract duty is made concrete by just laws enacted by legitimate civil authority. Unless there is an unambiguous demonstration to the contrary, individuals are obliged, in justice, to regard tax laws as just and to obey in letter and spirit.

Fourth, the Catholic social tradition teaches us that the burden of taxation should be proportioned to the ability of individuals and households to pay. For the most part, just taxa­tion will take into account the ability of individuals and families to bear the burden demanded. This principle encourages some degree of progressivity in taxation, especially where the object of taxation is income. It is less clear that the tradition holds that the wealthy (however that is defined) must be required to pay a disproportionately higher rate of tax than the majority of the population. Furthermore, the thrust of the tradition is in favor of lower rather than higher levels of taxation so that individuals and families retain more of their money and can more effectively serve their communities through acts of charity and generosity.

Fifth, the Catholic social tradition teaches us that the people of particular nations are free to make determinations about what operations to delegate to government and what forms of taxation, consistent with natural justice, the community will employ to collect revenue. There is, in other words, no perfect form of taxation, no ideal level of taxation, no object of taxation that is ruled out in principle.

What the Tradition does not teach us

First, the Catholic social tradition does not teach us that all social issues should be addressed through government action. The tradition understands society to be a much larger association than the state. The state has a role to play in supporting the health and integrity of the society but so do the family and a rich collection of intermediate associations. Communities are free to delegate functions to the state but the Church has long been cautious about delegating too much. It recognizes the importance of the intermediate bodies, not only in terms of their efficiency and their proximity to the problems but also in terms of the importance to individuals of the exercise of charity. Whatever government may do, however dedicated and professional its employees, it cannot substitute for charity nor can Christians hire it out.

Second, the Catholic social tradition does not teach us that larger, more comprehensive government is to be preferred. In many respects, the Church has been careful about supporting the growth of government, often justifying government intervention in cases of crisis but warning that the intervention ought to cease when the crisis is resolved. All of this is a reflection of the Church’s concern with subsidiarity, which requires respect for the proper functions of the various organs of society. Our experience in history is that the more powerful organs have a tendency to absorb the functions of those smaller and less powerful.

Third, the Catholic social tradition does not teach us that wealth ought to be redistributed through taxation. The key is to embrace the concept of voca­tion. That is, every person is called to make some contribution to the community, to serve some purpose. One of the functions of the Church is persistently to remind people of their duties to society. To use taxation as a vehicle for distribution, however, is to neglect this dimension. That the wealthy have resources is one thing; what they do with their resources is quite another—and is really the important thing. For the Church, the goal is not to equalize wealth in society but to encourage that wealth be used—gener­ally by private initiative—for the common good.

Fourth, the Catholic social tradition does not teach us that the needs of the poor take priority over all other items in gov­ernment budgets. To be sure, care for the poor is an inescapable Christian duty, but the impact of budgets on the poor is not the only moral measure to be employed. Every dollar of a government budget that we spend on the poor is a dollar not spent on education, infrastructure, policing, public health, or some other critical function. The Catholic social tradition requires the state to support the com­mon good as a whole; it does not require the state to subordinate all functional areas to any single issue—even the situation of the poor. Furthermore, the public definition of poverty tends to be in terms of sufficiency of material resources, and government programs are geared toward addressing insufficiencies. But, as St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us, the most terrible anguish is not physical poverty or material deprivation—though this in itself can be a very bad thing—it is the anguish of not being wanted; of being rejected, neglected, and forgotten; of being alone. Given their nature, government programs, regardless of their size, cannot address this dimension of poverty. In a free society, citizens, at their best, freely attend to needs in their own communities and are supported in doing this when taxation is light enough to allow them to bring their own resources to bear.

Tax policies and tax levies are an unavoidable part of civilized life. The social tradition of the Church emphasizes the duty of citizens to support their government as well as the duties of civil authorities to govern wisely and to respect the ownership rights of individuals and families. The goal in all of this is the promotion of the common good, which requires prudence and balance. This is not easy to achieve and to sustain—but it is worth the struggle.

Excerpted and adapted from Justice in Taxation, the latest volume in Acton’s Christian Social Thought Series.

About the author:
*Robert Kennedy is a professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute.

By Felix K. Chang*

(FPRI) — In 1999, Poland joined the NATO Alliance. Ever since, collective defense has been at the heart of Poland’s national security strategy. But recent changes in Europe’s strategic environment may be leading Poland to think twice about whether collective defense alone can guarantee its security. The combination of a more aggressive Russia, a less resolute Western Europe, and a growing divergence between the military capabilities of Poland and those of the rest of NATO have made unilateral Polish action a real possibility.

Strategic Environment

Despite the West’s economic sanctions against it, Russia has continued to throw its weight around on its periphery. After annexing Crimea and fomenting separatists in eastern Ukraine, Russia appeared to have shifted its attention to the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. Finland, Sweden, and NATO’s Baltic members of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all experienced repeated Russian incursions into their air and maritime spaces. it would not only create a new threat on Poland’s border, but also damage, perhaps irreparably, NATO’s credibility as a defense alliance.

NATO is important to Polish security. Despite its bigger and better equipped military, Poland cannot deter Russia by itself. Poland needs a strong NATO and one committed to the defense of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately for Poland, most of its NATO allies seem less than fully committed. Twenty-three out of NATO’s 28 members do not meet the Alliance’s minimum defense spending , which obligate each country to spend at least two percent of its GDP on defense and 20 percent of that spending on major new equipment or defense research and development.[1] Nor have Poland’s allies invested in the infrastructure needed to deploy their forces to Eastern Europe, Indeed, many of the elites within some NATO countries, most notably Germany and Italy, want to entirely lift the economic sanctions imposed on Russia.

All of these issues make Poland nervous about the reliability of NATO’s security guarantee. Considering Russia’s threat to the Baltics, Poland has begun to think about what it can do to ensure NATO’s commitment to collective defense should a crisis erupt there. Paradoxically, what it can do—owing to its geographic location and increasingly robust military—may lead Poland to take unilateral action.

Strategic Dilemma

On the one hand, Poland could wait for NATO before taking action against a Russian intervention in the Baltics. But such a wait could last for weeks as each NATO country must debate and approve the use of force, mobilize its troops, and send them to Eastern Europe. While NATO’s rapid response forces could go into combat faster, they could not fight for long without sufficient logistical support. That could result in a long pause in the crisis that would give Russia time to consolidate its territorial gains and conduct an information campaign to discourage already reluctant NATO countries from ever trying to liberate the Baltics. The result could be a negotiated settlement that leaves Russia in control of part or all of the region—which would restore peace in the short run, but mean the end of NATO in the long term.

On the other hand, Poland could act immediately, and unilaterally. The swift entry of a major NATO country would undoubtedly complicate Russian operations. It would also escalate the crisis without a unified NATO decision to do so. While that may sound a little troubling, it may not trouble Poland as much as one might think. After all, Warsaw has long sought to

“internationalize Poland’s security within [NATO] to ensure that an attack on Poland would generate a collective allied response.”[3] Reflecting on Western Europe’s lack of enthusiasm to confront Russian aggression, Poland might think it wise to hold NATO’s feet to the fire.

Unilateral Action and Its Consequences

Since the end of the Cold War, Poland has generally worked in concert with other European countries on security matters. But it has acted alone when it felt its interests were at stake. In 2011, after a rigged election in Belarus, Poland unilaterally slapped sanctions on those Belarusian officials it saw as responsible without waiting for the European Union’s (EU) approval. If relations between the EU and Poland continue to deteriorate because of their conflict over Polish judicial reforms, Poland would have even more reason to act to compel a united NATO response.

However, a unilateral Polish reaction to a Russian intervention in the Baltics could make things far more difficult for NATO. Strategically, it could undercut NATO’s ability to manage the conflict’s escalation, a perilous proposal given Russia’s relatively low threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. At the operational level, it could disrupt plans for a larger and more coordinated NATO counteroffensive, which would arguably stand a better chance of success than the piecemeal introduction of Polish military and NATO rapid reaction forces.

Fate of Collective Defense

The best way to avoid a potentially disruptive, unilateral Polish military action is to ensure that Poland never loses faith in NATO’s credibility. Surely nothing would reassure it like the combination of firm political resolve and strong military forces. Sadly for NATO, that is probably more than it can muster at the moment. NATO needs to do better on both counts. Otherwise, it can expect that some of its members, like Poland, may take unexpected (and possibly unwelcome) actions in a crisis.

About the author:
*Felix K. Chang is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also the Chief Strategy Officer of DecisionQ, a predictive analytics company in the national security and healthcare industries. He has worked with a number of digital, consumer services, and renewable energy entrepreneurs for years. He was previously a consultant in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy and Organization practice; among his clients were the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and other agencies.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] In 2018, the five NATO members that do meet the Alliance’s minimum defense spending goals are Estonia, Greece, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ironically, six NATO members met the Alliance’s minimum defense spending goals when they were first agreed to in 2006. The number gradually fell to three in 2010 and did not rise until after Russia’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine.

[2] Brooks Tigner, “NATO’s rapid deployment ability faces many obstacles,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, May 25, 2016.

[3] Andrew A. Michta, “Polish Hard Power: Investing in the Military as Europe Cuts Back,” in A Hard Look at Hard Power: Assessing the Defense Capabilities of Key U.S. Allies and Security Partners, Gary J. Schmitt, ed. (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2015), p. 164.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

In our paper 6350 dated 19 Feb 2018 we have mentioned that fighting between the Myanmar Army (Tatmadaw) and the Kachins had intensified and that the offensive instead of bringing around the KIA to signing the agreement would only result in throwing them in the lap of the Chinese through the newly formed FNPCC (Federal Political Negotiation and Consultation Committee) led by the Chinese supported UWSA (United Wa State Army).

On 13th Feb. two ethnic armed organisations of the now marginalised UNFC (United Nationalities Federal Council) the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU) signed the nationwide cease fire agreement sponsored by the Government amidst great fanfare with all the important dignitaries including the State Counsellor and the Army Chief attending and addressing the function.

Since 25th January, fighting between the Army and the Kachins escalated to new levels and probably the offensive was to bring round the KIA to sign the agreement. After a lull, a second offensive on KIA controlled areas appears to have started in the first week of March.

Two areas have specifically come under intensive attacks from the Burmese Army- one around the Tanai Township (also pronounced as Danai and Tanaing) on the LEDO Road and another around Sumprabhum on the road from Myitikkyina to Putao.

The KIA is said to have withdrawn from the mining areas of Tanai and its Battalion 14 from its base which was the target of Army. Even as recent as 23rd March clashes have been going between the Army and the KIA and it is said that Army has been using heavy artillery to clear the area. The United Nations and its humanitarian partners have expressed concern over the fighting and about the safety of the civilians affected.

It may be recalled that at the instance of the Chinese representative Sun Guoxiang, representatives of the Burmese Army and the KIA met on Feb 1st- the first of its kind after the cease fire between the two was broken in 2011. The talks ended in agreeing for further talks but in the meeting, the Burmese Army representatives wanted the KIA to vacate and dismantle certain of the formations created by the KIA after the Cease fire was broken in 2011. This was not agreed to, as the contention of the KIA was that once the cease fire is broken with renewed offensive, the KIA is free to strengthen itself. It is also said from sources close to the KIA that the Army’s offensive is a reflection of their opposition to the presence of KIA in northern Shan areas. It is known that historically, the KIA has had a presence in the northern Shan for a very long time.

An interesting and detailed article by a knowledgeable person who writes under the pseudonym Joe Kumbun throws some light on the reasons for the Army’s offensive against four brigades and a battalion of the KIA.

First, is that the Tatmadaw has recently strengthened itself by acquiring fighter jets from Russia and in fact these jets have already conducted air strikes on one formation of KIA. Given the increase in the fighting strength of the Tatmadaw and the creation of new brigades by the KIA, fighting is bound to continue and escalate in the near future.

Second, the offensive is perhaps meant to increase pressure on KIO to sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. This in my view is very unlikely but instead it would only make the KIA become more dependent on the UWSA led alliance and thus to China.

Third, the offensive is meant to be a warning to other non-signatories of the NCA like the AA, TNLA, MNDAA and even the UWSA- the biggest one with over 40,000 fighting cadres in its strength. This again is very unlikely with China holding the key to reconciliation.

The suggestions made by Joe Kumbun for resolving the conflict are very valid and could be tried without any outside interference. These include

One, de-escalation of fighting and establishment of peace in Kachin areas should be the first priority. The cease fire agreement of 1994 was unfortunately broken by the offensive of Tatmadaw in 2011 and more it continues less will be the chances of ethnic reconciliation now being pursued by Suu kyi.

Second, the Army should show some magnanimity and accept a role for the FPNCC in political dialogue and objections to the AA, TNLA and MNDAA participating in the political dialogue should be dropped. Already the UWSA is talking to the government as we will see later, but the objection of the Army over the inclusion of other groups like AA etc. in the political dialogue has some substance. What is the guarantee that more groups may mushroom and go for an umbrella protection under the UWSA even if these groups are now allowed? It is a question of principle.

Last, that the Government and the Army should invite the KIO and other armed groups for the third Panglong Conference due to be held soon. This is doable and can be pursued.

There was a mild flutter and even astonishment when a member of the government’s peace commission announced that the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and the Mongla group (NDAA) had accepted the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement only to be quickly denied by the UWSA subsequently. What perhaps would have happened is that both the government and UWSA may be in touch with each other to explore ways to continue the political dialogue. Even here the problem is that the government as yet is unwilling to recognise the umbrella coalition of FPNCC as a group while willing to deal with the groups individually.

By R. Upadhyay

Of late, some of the leaders of the Muslim community and particularly the radical Islamists are found to be more and more restive and have taken it upon themselves to oppose any move of the government to reform the system for the general good of the community. Whether it is a proposal for modernising madrassa education or reforming the oppressive Sharia laws against women, many of them have taken it as an interference in their religious affairs.

They are now campaigning for “Deen (faith) Bachao Conference” (Conference for saving Deen) proposed to be organised by Imarat-e-Shariah (House of Islamic Laws) in Patna on April 15 under the banner of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB).

Imarat-e-Shariah is an outfit of Deobandi Islamist movement meant to impose Shariah laws on the community. Similarly, the AIMPLB was also established by Deobandi Ulema in 1973 when the then government on the recommendation of a committee of Islamic scholars called for certain reforms in Muslim Personal Laws.

The proposed conference looks to be a ploy of radical Islamists to challenge the women of the community who have been opposing those portions of laws that go against equality of the women. It is also against the move of the government to modernise madrassa education to be in conformity with what is taught in the mainstream schools. In fact the AIMPLB is planning to establish more and more Sharia Courts throughout the country to debar the community from taking their disputes to the mainstream legal system of the country.

Those fundamentalists who have grabbed the leadership in the community, instead of sensitising the community towards the issues related to their overall advancement particularly in the field of education, health care and economic development – are encouraging them towards madrassa education of medieval era which hardly has any space in the changing economic profile of the country. Although separate personal laws based on religion is against the principle of secular democracy, Islamists in India while inciting the community against any reform seek to continue their theocratic overlord ship over them’.

One Lochan Madan filed a PIL seeking an immediate dissolution of all Islamic and Sharia Courts in India which are posing a challenge to the Indian judicial system. On this, the Supreme Court observed that “there is no place for a parallel system of justice. The bench headed by Justice Ruma Pal ruled that fatwas have no locus standi in a secular nation and that every citizen will have to follow the law as laid down in the Constitution of India”. (http://www.cwds.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ShariatCourts.pdf:)

But the Islamist priestly class under the banner of AIMPLB while ignoring the observation of Supreme Court is again trying to mobilise the masses to create a situation like mid- eighties of last century when they put pressure on the government and succeeded in neutralising a Supreme Court verdict in Shahbano case through a constitutional amendment. Now when Supreme Court declared triple Talaq void and subsequently a Bill against triple talaq was passed by Lok Sabha though yet to be passed by Rajya Sabha, the Islamists, apprehensive of losing their theological hegemony over the community are now aggressively agitating against the Bill.

The attitude of AIMPLB indicates its deep rooted conservative patriarchal approach based on religio-cultural tradition of the Arab world in the name of Islam to justify their centuries old subjugation of women by misinterpreting the Islamic laws. This self-acclaimed representative body of Muslim society in India is least bothered either about the verdict of Supreme Court or about the diversity and heterogeneity of Indian Muslims and is found determined to undermine the right to equality for women.

Sharia was compiled a couple of centuries after the death of Prophet Mohammad by the then dominant patriarchal Islamist establishment when the medieval socio-cultural ethos was prevailing over Islamic scriptures. This was the reason why many Muslim countries subsequently reviewed the Sharia laws for reform. Today the Muslim women in India are also conscious of the global socio-cultural ethos which is based on human reasoning. So much so, Muslim women organizations have now raised their voice for reform of the anti-women Sharia laws- particularly polygamy and instant triple talaq.

Ironically, the post-colonial Muslim leadership in India hardly made any sincere attempt to bring about reforms in Muslim Personal Laws. Even an attempt of the Union Cabinet in 1963 in forming a committee of Muslim scholars was negatived by the Islamist radicals who considered it as an interference and an infringement of the religious rights of Muslims. They are not even ready to understand that a larger section of their women population have already launched a movement against their medieval subjugation in the name of religion and are getting support also by liberal sections of the community.

Islamist conservatism in India has been detrimental not only to the overall development of Indian Muslims but it is also a major hurdle in the desired reforms of Sharia laws. The conservatives while politicising all the Muslim issues have now grabbed the leadership of the community only to push the community back into medieval ages.

This is the reason that despite being a second largest religious majority in the country, Indian Muslims have failed to play any assertive role in the developmental march of the country even after over seven decades of independence as their future is still held hostage by their religious leaders. These leaders don’t allow them to think beyond mosque and madrassa though there is no reference of either of them in Quran. Similarly, there is no tradition of priesthood or even monasticism in Islam but after the end of Muslim rule in the sub-continent some Islamic scholars transformed the madrassa and mosque as monasteries of Islam, promoted priestly class known as Ulema, Mullhas and Maulana for whom the end of Muslim rule in the sub-continent became unbearable. They then launched an institutionalized Muslim separatist movement by founding Darul Uloom Deoband in 1866 which gradually emerged as the epicentre of Islamic conservatism.

Since there was no challenge from any section in the community, the members of AIMPLB bargained with the ruling party for self-seeking political shares and have pushed the community as pawns in vote-bank politics. They even succeeded in radicalization of a sizeable section in the community members through madrassa education and resisted any attempt by the government to modernize the medieval education and rationalize the Sharia laws.

On the issues of gender equality and Islamic reforms when the radical Islamists from AIMPLB failed to counter the tough theological challenge in TV debates, they took a confrontational path against the government by taking a subversive stand that the court or the government should not intervene in the matter relating to faith. They are not ready to understand that unlike their jubilation over three decades old Shahbano case when the Muslim masses blindly followed their dictates and progressive Muslims also maintained silence, today a sizeable section of Indian Muslims celebrated their defeat in Saira Bano case. But in absence of any aggressive challenge by the progressive section in the community, the Islamists are able to prolong their movement through one of exclusivism, intolerance, gender inequality and discrimination.

From time to time, liberal and moderate sections in the community raised their voice for modernization of madrassas and some of them even wanted to ban the madrassas. According to a media report, Shia Central Waqf Board President Waseem Rizwi wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi asking them to close down madrassas. He alleged that they have produced “more terrorists than civil servants in the last seventy years of independence. He also alleged that All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB) had been a wing of terrorist group running from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan” and asked the centre to ban it. (Times of India dated February 13, 2018). However, the voice of liberal Muslims is so weak that it hardly stirred the Muslim masses against the Islamists’ dictation. The people within the religious majority community loudly raise their voice against the draconian ‘Khap Panchayat’ dictates and the media too highlights it but hardly there is any voice raised against the functioning of Sharia Court and its verdicts.

The Islamists always take shelter under constitutional provisions to practise sharia laws but they never agree to the implementation of constitutional directive for Uniform Civil Code. They have in fact been stalling its implementation indefinitely. So long this politics of minorityism is played by our political parties; the Islamists will never allow the community to become an integrated part of the national mainstream.

Thus, until and unless the progressive Muslims confront the Islamists and popularize the Islamic theology as a religion of peace, inclusiveness, respect for democracy and secularism – the Mullas will continue their protracted war against mainstreaming the community by the government.

The need of the hour is therefore, for both the state and liberal intellectuals in the community to launch a sincere and meaningful campaign to educate the common Muslims so that they are freed from the self-seeking politics of their religious leaders. At the same time intellectuals with great Islamic scholarship should take the initiative for re-codification of Sharia on the basis of a rational, scientific and gender-just interpretation of Quran and other Islamic scriptures which could be instrumental to justify the Muslim women’s struggle for their rights to equality in Islamic laws.

They should also take a lead to ensure that women activists are also allowed to place their views in the proposed ‘Sharia Bachao conference’. The proposal to convene a “Deen Bachao Conference” is a regressive measure and all right thinking individuals of the community should understand what it really stands for.

The US must convince India that it has a strategy for the Indo-Pacific-region for countering China’s increasing dominance in Asia.

By Marc Grossman*

In October 2017, the oil tanker New Prosperity arrived in India’s Paradip Port carrying the first shipment of crude oil from the United States in more than four decades. A few weeks later in Manila, diplomats from the United States, India, Japan and Australia held their first quadrilateral meeting in more than a decade, discussing how best to promote what they called a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The return of US energy shipments to India and the “Quad” may have been a coincidence of scheduling or part of something larger: an effort to fuse the strategic opportunity of America’s energy revolution with an emerging US strategy to help transform the “Asia-Pacific” into the “Indo-Pacific” and include India in the larger task of managing China’s growing influence in the region.

In recent years, the United States has benefited from a shale oil and natural gas production revolution. The Energy Information Administration estimates that by 2022 the United States will become a net energy exporter, while the International Energy Agency says that US output is expected to account for more than 80 percent of global supply growth in the next decade. The Trump administration intends to take advantage of America’s emerging energy dominance. The new US National Security Strategy notes, “As a growing supplier of energy resources, technologies, and services around the world, the United States will help our allies and partners become more resilient against those that use energy to coerce.”

One of those partners is India. In recent years, Indian oil companies have made substantial investments in US shale gas assets, while Indian public-sector firms have signed contracts for 7.85 million barrels of US crude; 1.6 million barrels have already been delivered. An Indian private sector giant, Reliance Industries, owner of the world’s biggest refining complex in Gujarat, has ordered 1 million barrels. And this month, with a 20-year contract to export liquefied natural gas to India and Japan, the Cove Point facility in Maryland begins commercial service.

Simultaneously, administration officials have been describing US interests in Asia as part of a vision for the “Indo-Pacific.” Former Secretary of State Tillerson called India, a core anchor of the Indo-Pacific region, “the most consequential part of the globe in the 21st century.” In his inaugural speech as US ambassador to India, Ken Juster said India is a “leading power in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond” and noted that together, the United States and India want to preserve regional stability and security.

Of course, the root of the current policy goes back several years. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also used the phrase Indo-Pacific to describe the area, and the Obama administration supported official energy dialogues and private contracts for exports to the region. But there are new and intriguing developments in how US officials are using the Indo-Pacific framing explicitly to focus on the challenge from China.

The recently unveiled National Security Strategy notes that “China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.” The Trump administration, and now many others in both political parties, have concluded that the effort, pursued by every president since Richard Nixon, to bring China into the global system has failed, and that Beijing should be taken at its word as it pursues its vision of the future. During his speech to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, President Xi Jinping said China was a “great power” or a “strong power” 26 times, applauding a “new era” in which China will be “moving closer to the center stage.” The March vote of the National People’s Congress to do away with presidential term limits in the Constitution only reinforces this view.

A critical part of China’s efforts is the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure and connectivity initiative with broad geostrategic consequences. China’s vision for BRI is to create or consolidate diplomatic and economic ties with more than 60 countries, encompassing by some estimates 30 percent of global GDP, by investing more than $5 trillion in infrastructure projects in these nations, including $62 billion in infrastructure projects in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

New Delhi has opposed BRI from the start, seeing it as an effort to surround India. In response, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing an “Act East Policy” to promote economic cooperation with countries in the region. The United States must convince Modi that it has an integrated Indo-Pacific and energy strategy. Otherwise, India may make decisions that cut across US interests, such as Delhi’s investment in the Chabahar Port in Southeast Iran.

America, which once promoted its own New Silk Road vision, has responded to BRI with a mixture of attempted engagement and anxiety. In November 2016, I suggested that there might have been possibilities for Washington and Beijing to pursue modest joint projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but now this seems unlikely. President Barack Obama’s decision to shun the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the damaging decision by President Donald Trump to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement have provided China with an opening to set its own course, using BRI, for the region’s future economic development.

Are there US options for countering China and shaping an alternative narrative to BRI?

One is to harness the US energy revolution to advance US interests in the Indo-Pacific by implementing earlier energy deals in the region and promoting new ones. In October Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette traveled to Tokyo, where Japan’s Trade and Industry minister announced plans for a $10 billion public-private effort to build natural gas terminals, power plants and other facilities, many in the United States. The Cove Point terminal is the first gas liquefaction project and export facility on the East Coast and provides commercial liquefied natural gas service for India. And in February, the United States and Australia announced an intent to launch the US-Australia Strategic Partnership on Energy in the Indo-Pacific region. These new energy relationships provide alternative, price-competitive energy sources and a cleaner fuel that has the potential to tackle the region’s toxic air.

A complementary option is to further deepen quadrilateral cooperation among the United States, India, Australia and Japan. The “Quad,” originally conceived by Japanese Prime Minister Abe in 2007, was disbanded by then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 out of concern for Australia’s relationship with China. The Quad meeting in November, while intentionally understated and limited to mid-level government participation, was significant. This forum gathers together the four most powerful nations who want to have influence in the region. The Quad countries will not match China’s BRI resources. But cooperation in energy might preserve some space to work with countries who welcome aspects of the BRI, but also fear Chinese domination.

It is always a danger for outsiders to attribute strategic coherence to random events, even if astutely stitched together. We will know more as America’s role in both global energy markets and the Indo-Pacific evolves, yet – to borrow from statistician Nate Silver – perhaps there is a clear signal of US intentions and objectives in the noise.

*Ambassador Marc Grossman is a Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group. A US Foreign Service Officer for 29 years, he retired in 2005 as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The ambassador was the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2011-2012, and a Kissinger Senior Fellow at Yale in 2013. The author wishes to thank Ingrid Henick, Kate Fernandez and Shelby Stone for their support producing this essay.

The West is doing everything to fabricate a cause of war against or to isolate Russia further internationally. So far, ‘Novichok’ rests on rumors. The affair was made up the British and the French intelligence agencies without having presented any evidence.

The term ‘Novichok’ was used to sound Russian, in fact, this nerve agent is known internationally as A-234. Instead, the Western alliance presents this case as a foregone conclusion. And the Western fawning media agitate as cheerleaders, having specialized in producing fake news a long time ago.

Many countries are producing this kind of nerve gas, among them a British company close to the town Salisbury, where the incident happened. What about the U.S., Israel, Uzbekistan, France, and the Brits themselves? Israel has a vast stockpile of biochemical weapons and does not allow internal inspections. To believe the British story, told by Theresa May or even Boris Johnson, is like thinking into Easter bunny.

So far, the Brits have been dining any requests by Russia to take part in the solving of this case. Why? As the public got told, Yulia Skripal, the daughter of double agent Sergei Skripal, is on the road to recovery. Both are still Russian citizens. Russia has been denied to care about its citizens. When can Yulia Skripal testify, do the British intelligence tells her what to say publically? Perhaps she can even ‘prove’ that President Putin himself committed the attack.

The Russian Embassy in London sent the following questions to the Foreign Ministry for clarification:

1. Why has Russia been denied the right of consular access to the two Russian citizens, who came to harm on British territory?

2. What specific antidotes and in what form were the victims injected with? How did such antidotes come into the possession of British doctors at the scene of the incident?

3. On what grounds was France involved in technical cooperation in the investigation of the incident, in which Russian citizens were injured?

4. Did the UK notify the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) of France’s involvement in the investigation of the Salisbury incident?

5. What does France have to do with the incident, involving two Russian citizens in the UK?

6. What rules of UK procedural legislation allow for the involvement of a foreign state in an internal investigation?

7. What evidence was handed over to France to be studied and for the investigation to be conducted?

8. Were the French experts present during the sampling of biomaterial from Sergei and Yulia Skripal?

9. Was the study of biomaterials from Sergei and Yulia Skripal conducted by the French experts and, if so, in which specific laboratories?

10. Does the UK have the materials involved in the investigation carried out by France?

11. Have the results of the French investigation been presented to the OPCW Technical Secretariat?

12. Based on what attributes were the alleged “Russian origin” of the substance used in Salisbury established?

13. Does the UK have control samples of the chemical warfare agent, which British representatives refer to as “Novichok”?

14. Have the samples of a chemical warfare agent of the same type as “Novichok” (in accordance with British terminology) or its analogs been developed in the UK?”1

A similar list of questions was sent to the French foreign ministry by the Russian embassy in Paris. Russia wanted to know on what grounds France was involved in this case. How come that France got a sample of this nerve gas? Or do the French produce this gas themselves? The so-called free Western media do not ask these questions. Instead, they repeat the unfounded allegation by the Brits against Russia, which is so faring fact-free.

How credible is the West, after having staged several incidents that led to wars. Such as Pearl Harbor (Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about it in advance), the Gulf of Tonkin affair, Operation Northwood, operation ‘Gladio’ where NATO countries maintained secret armies to commit terrorist attacks and put the blame on the left. The infamous incubator affair, where Saddam’s so-called henchmen trough new-born out of the incubators. But it doesn’t end here, the staging of the attack against Iraq by Colin Powell’s infamous speech before the UN about alleged Iraqi WMDs and the fabricated dossier of the Brits under Tony Blair.

The latest fabrication concerns the US elections. The so-called Russian collusion in the American electoral process was initiated under the Obama administration and puffed up after Hillary Clinton lost. Without the Deep State and the remains of the criminal Obama people in the administration, this engineering could have never taken place in a properly functioning democracy.

The real problems are not the crooks in the different Western administrations but the media. They have been hammering the fake news home to the minds of the people to believe it as reality. Without having presented any evidence in the so-called Russian collusion affair into the American elections nor the alleged Russian nerve gas attack against Skripal and his daughter, the media have established rumors as facts. That’s how Western ‘free’ media operate, and Western ‘democracy’ is functioning. For both, the future looks bleak.

Notes:
1. https://www.rt.com/news/422871-russia-questions-uk-skripal-case/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications

Les Brown, an American author has extraordinarily remarked, “Forgive those who hurt you.” Recently, a peace proposal was announced by President Ashraf Ghani. It is estimated that more peace approaches will follow in the near future with the help of the Kabul process and participant from around 25 countries including UN and NATO. Lately, the Kabul process under the title of peace and security cooperation affirmed a plan of reconciliation bid to the Taliban movement.

Ghani’s amiable statement invited the Taliban movement to renounce violence and stand for a ceasefire and join the peace process. In return, the government will recognize the Taliban as a legitimate political entity.

Under the proposal which President Ghani has put forward, the Afghan government will allow the Taliban to open an office in Kabul, offer passports to the members of the Taliban and their families, release Taliban prisoners, remove the leaders from the different blacklist and provide security and financial guarantee in order to resettle in Afghanistan.

Impressive, the group on several occasions rejected talking to the Afghan government rather they approach the US for a peaceful dialogue. In an open letter to the American people, the group has favored America for direct communication over the Afghan government, they have also claimed that increasing US military strikes on the group have not produced results over the course of prolonging Afghan war. Taliban appreciated their military gains and called on the US as being failed in the war with the Taliban. The Taliban clearly showed a position of strength over the US military in this letter.

It should be esteemed that the Taliban lettered have nothing to do with military tactics and professionalism on the ground. It also seems that Taliban is not in a stronger position to negotiate with Afghan government because Afghan army is fighting the Taliban, not US armed forces which are stationed in Afghanistan and limited to their bases and on certain operations take part with Afghan National Army. Ghani’s peace proposal is the fittest deal for the Taliban, but now the question is, are the Taliban and their backers ready to approve the peace package?

The Taliban movement is broadly divided into two categories, radical and the moderate. The Taliban had transferred into a completely different phase, most of the Taliban are moderate while their leadership is still under control of hardliners. Though the moderate fiction inside the radical leadership wants to make a peace arrangement with the Afghan government, the hardliner’s fiction and controller of the moderate Taliban whose ideology is in competing for narrative with moderate fiction does not want to have a peace with Kabul government.

Furthermore, the radicals are believed to be playing in the hands of Pakistani intelligence service and cannot take a strong stance without the consent of Pakistani intelligence agency. A few of the Taliban officials could be labeled as a moderate, among them is former Talib Ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef and former Taliban foreign minister Wakeel Ahmed Mutawakil. Though they reject being called moderate Taliban, they still live under the Kabul regime. Which is an American designed democratic state? But, failed on many fronts to be a truly liberal democracy.
Although, the new peace proposal initiated by Kabul government is all-inclusive on the part of Taliban. However, their leadership is still insufficient to embrace the peace proposal. Based on a few reasons the Taliban movement will never be agreed to start negotiation with the Afghan government.

First, the movement is split and scattered, they have no central authority as per their connection is concerning they are still on the payroll of Pakistan spy agency and recently Russia made contacts with them through Pakistan. There is little possibility that the Taliban will come under one leadership, Mullah Muhammad Rasul group, Mullah Habiatullah Akhunzada group, Haqqani Network. These groups have made contacts with different countries to counter American forces inside Afghanistan. The Afghan government has an option to make a peace with a powerful group. The Haqqani Network and Habiatullah, however both of these groups come under the category of extremist Taliban.

Second, Russia, China, and Pakistan have made a triangle to counter American policies in South Asia and central Asia. Pakistan opened the gate for Russia and China to have linkages with Taliban. Pakistan once an ally of the US during cold war and war on terror now shifted its policy. Further, to put it in simple terms two veto power and three armed nuclear countries are involved in the Afghan conflict. However, Pakistani security establishment has not abolished the policy of strategic depth, the country is agitated with Indian presence in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s shift in the policy could be fundamentally this single reason. The Afghan leadership on many occasions has expressed their willingness that Afghanistan will not be used against another country.

Due to Afghanistan’s strategic location the country has plunged into a great power competition.

Third, US presence in Afghanistan is treated as a security challenge to China and Russia. The SCO main objective is to prevent terror threats and at the same time fight terrorism in Central Asia. The member states are fully in support of the terror-free region. Likely Afghanistan also has SCO observer status, which is considered to be a tremendous opportunity to the country diplomatically. Afghanistan needs to gear up its diplomatic efforts in order to pursue SCO member states to help the country in acquiring peace.

Fourth, Russian aid to the Taliban could possibly have severed implication for Afghanistan’s future. Moscow will encourage Taliban to weaken the central government of Afghanistan as they did in Syria against American backed rebels by supporting Bashir Al Asad. If in case Russian commits such mistake to support the Taliban financially and military from the new honorary consulate in Peshawar. The result could be a disaster for the whole of the region such as the one in Syria. Though, humanitarian crisis will be on a high level.

Finally, the only suitable option to Afghanistan will be to talk to countries notably China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran and US and actively plays its diplomacy. It’s also extremely important to prepare a roadmap and start a Quadrilateral Group meeting, nevertheless this time Taliban should be encouraged to participate. Peace seems difficult, but it still requires regional dialogue.

The so-called trust deficit between China, Russia, and the US has to be resolved through dialogue and diplomatic channels if Afghanistan is to see peace in the near future.

It’s extremely important to have a shared vision for a peaceful Afghan state and build indigenous capability to accomplish this goal, other than that American military will not have different results by changing strategies.

*Ihsanullah Omarkhail, studies MA Internati, and onal Relations at Zhejiang University, China and writes on Foreign policy, Peace and State Building, terrorism, security and strategic affairs. He tweets at @ihsan_asif

By David Gordon*

It is hardly a secret that Pope Francis opposes the free market. On what grounds does he do so? Do any of these grounds have merit? What are the sources of his ideas? How similar are his views to those of previous Popes? These are among the questions addressed by the contributors to this important book.

The Pope maintains that the free market encourages the false ideology of “consumerism.” People under capitalism want more material goods, but their pursuit ends not in happiness but in futility. Robert M. Whaples, the editor of the volume and Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, points out that in “[his encyclical] Laudatio si’, Francis argues that this excessive, self-destructive consumption on the part of the rich is partly the fault of markets. ‘[T]he market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, [and] people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. . . This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.’ The market caters to people’s emptiness. ‘When people become self-centered and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own, and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality.’” (pp. 10-11)

The Pope has missed the target. The free market is a means by which consumers can satisfy their preferences. It does not dictate what these preferences must be. An advocate of the free market can with complete consistency favor a simple style of life. If people want more and more material goods, the market will supply these; but “consumerism” and capitalism are very different things.

Consumerism, the Pope alleges, merits condemnation not only because it leads people astray about the nature of the good life. It also makes people treat with indifference the plight of the poor. In arguing in this fashion, the Pope turns a blind eye to a fundamental point. The rise and development of capitalism has resulted in a massive decrease in global poverty. As Lawrence J. McQuillan and Hayeon Carol Park aptly note, “Wealth must first be created before it can be given to others. Capitalism is the greatest wealth creator the world has ever seen, lifting billions of people out of abject poverty. The pope’s antimarket fervor stands at some distance from the facts.” (p.95)

Whaples reinforces this point. “According to economists. . .the numbers simply don’t support this [anti-capitalist] position. Branko Milanovic has traced out the worldwide income distribution in recent decades as people in countries around the world have used markets to expand trading and as technology—largely developed by the world’s profit-driven firms— has spread to poorer countries. His numbers are stunning and show that the whole world is getting richer.” (p.25)

Opponents of capitalism might respond in this way. Even if it is true that capitalism has helped the poor, this fails to prove that capitalists are beneficent. The benefits to the poor arise from the superior productivity of capitalism. The entrepreneurs who drive the system aim for as much profit as possible. Self-interest, not good feelings for the needy, motivates them.

This argument is vulnerable at two points. First, even if self-interest motivates capitalists, so what? Would not the poor care much more about their better lives than the purity of the capitalists’ motives? (By the way, why is it taken for granted that self-interest is “bad”?)

In his failure to take adequate account of this point, Pope Francis ignores a line of thought stressed by the seventeenth-century Jansenists. As A. M. C. Waterman explains: “The market economy. . .is a powerful instrument for bringing ‘personal interest’ and ‘the interest of society as a whole’ into ‘fruitful harmony.’ Jansenists of the late seventeenth century were the first to see this confluence clearly, and their insight was fully developed in the classical political economy of the English School. Jansenist theology was deeply Augustinian. . .The institutions of human society, such as the market economy, are conceived in sin and must always be imperfect. Yet under Divine Providence they may become a remedy for the ‘wound of original sin’ by recruiting self-interest to the common good.” (p.148)

The second point at which the response of the opponents of capitalism is vulnerable challenges more directly their main contention. It is false that capitalists are motivated entirely by self-interest. The opponents of the free market ignore charity. In fact, McQuillan and Park note, “There is ample evidence that capitalism and its core institutions—private-property rights and economic freedom—are key drivers of private charitable giving. The link is important because private charity is the most effective form of charity for uplifting the poor, whereas government redistribution is inefficient, largely ineffective, and often counterproductive.” (p.111)

Pope Francis criticizes the free market for yet another alleged failure. It despoils the environment. Precisely the opposite is the case, as Robert Murphy reminds us in a characteristically excellent article. ”How can we ensure that unborn future generations have access to tin, copper, natural gas, and so on?. . .The short answer is that so long as there are secure property rights—a condition that rules out the government imposing a ‘windfall profits’ tax when resource prices rise—-then normal market operations, especially in advanced economies with sophisticated futures markets, provide an elegant solution to the problem.” (p.209)

Murphy answers alarmism about “climate change,” another feature of the Pope’s encyclical. Drastic restrictions on production are defended as “insurance” against an environmental catastrophe. Murphy responds: “Yet if the proper justification for aggressive climate change policies is insurance for unlikely events ‘just in case,’ then it should be clear that the public has been misled all this time. Nobody sells a homeowner fire insurance by saying, ‘We can see the ravages of the fire on your property as we speak!’” (p.218)

However well-meaning Pope Francis may be, he has failed to understand how a free economy works. Economics is a science, and to ignore economic law is futile. As Mises trenchantly observes, “it is futile to approach social facts with the attitude of a censor who approves or disapproves from the point of view of quite arbitrary standards and subjective judgments of value. One must study the laws of human action and social cooperation as he physicist studies the law of nature.” (Human Action, Scholar’s Edition, p.2)

About the author:
*David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, and editor of The Mises Review.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Aniqa Raihan*

It’s now been over a month since 17 teenagers were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, culminating in a march that brought nearly a million people to the capital. Yet Congress is still dragging its feet on guns.

While Republicans and Democrats gridlocked over the best way to prevent shootings, the Oregon state legislature took action to prevent a particularly deadly form of gun violence — and it didn’t involve arming teachers or outlawing AR-15s.

Just one day after the devastating Valentine’s Day shooting in Florida, the Oregon House of Representatives passed a bill to close what’s called the “boyfriend loophole” in its gun laws. The new law will prevent anyone from buying or owning a firearm who’s been convicted of stalking or domestic violence, as well as people with active protective orders against them.

While federal law is already supposed to prevent gun ownership by domestic abusers, the law’s outdated definition left out those who didn’t live with or have children with their victims — hence, the boyfriend loophole.

While this news received relatively little coverage, it’s a huge step forward and will unquestionably save lives. Over 1,000 women are murdered each year by current or past husbands or partners — that’s three women a day, or one woman dead each time you sit down for a meal.

And though the story of the battered wife is not an unfamiliar one, a recent study at the University of Pennsylvania found that over 80 percent of intimate partner violence incidents reported in 2013 involved current or past dating partners, while current and past spouses accounted for less than 20 percent of incidents.

As Americans continue to get married later and less frequently, the nationwide population of unmarried adults will grow, which is why closing the boyfriend loophole should be a top priority for lawmakers across the country.

Oregon’s new law makes it the 24th state to officially close the loophole, but there’s still much work to be done. The federal law prohibiting gun ownership for abusers doesn’t actually outline a mechanism for them to hand over weapons they already own.

Twenty-seven states require convicted abusers and those subject to protective orders to relinquish their firearms, but only half of those specify whom the weapons should be given to. And just four require law enforcement to proactively remove guns from offenders rather than wait for them to be turned in.

Meanwhile, 13 states have no laws at all to prevent domestic abusers from owning or buying new guns. Six of those states are in the top 10 with the highest rates of gun deaths.

Representatives Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Dan Donovan (R-NY), along with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), have introduced legislation to close the boyfriend loophole on the federal level. But that alone won’t be enough to ensure that abusers don’t have access to deadly firearms.

We need thoroughness and uniformity across state lines. We need specific systems to remove weapons from dangerous people, including laws allowing law enforcement to seize weapons found while responding to reports of intimate partner violence.

We need legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to report offenders for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

And, of course, we need universal background checks on all gun sales, no matter where they occur.

Survivors everywhere deserve support, security, and peace of mind, and it’s long past time our laws reflect that fact.

*Aniqa Raihan is a writer, activist, and community organizer with a focus on violence against women. She led a movement against campus sexual assault at the George Washington University. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

The “national security strategy” that was recently initiated by tUS President Donald Trump clearly and strongly frames the Islamic regime of Iran as a rogue government that is primarily antithetical to American values and interests in the greater Middle East. It gave the message that the world community should not just focus on the Islamic regime’s nuclear capability; its support of terrorism, accelerated development of ballistic missiles and regional expansion should also be considered. All endanger peace in the region and pose a direct threat to the security of the world. Further, the Islamic regime could also destabilize global energy security by closing the Hormuz Strait to passage of over 21 million barrels of crude oil and its products daily.

According to reports from banned newspapers in Iran that have been echoed by the international media, Iranian people remain in the lowest standard of living since the Islamic regime took over the country about four decades ago. No one can recall any part of the world where a country so rich in natural resources and manpower experienced such a profound and rapid deterioration of the general standard of living, as did Iran after the so-called Islamic revolution in February 1979.

Then, Why the Revolution?

For many decades before the Islamic revolution, Imperial Iran was considered the West’s staunchest ally. However, for understanding the full implications of the Islamic revolution in Iran, we must begin to review and analyze the events before the revolution. The West, by pinpointing Iran’s few shortcoming – if there were any at all – had an undeniable role in undermining Iran’s legitimate government, and thus by conspiratorially interfering in the country’s internal affairs, gave credibility to the fanatical revolutionaries who are in power today.

It all started in 1975 when officials from the Aspen Institute, the Club of Rome, and the Institute of International Studies of Geneva, along with Anglo-American Intelligence specialists on Iran, participated in the Aspen Institute Symposium at the historic “Persepolis” in Iran. The attendees concluded that modernization and dynamic industry in Iran undermine the spiritual and nonmaterial values of ancient Iranian society, and that these inherited values must be preserved wholeheartedly and above all other values. Therefore, so-called foreign experts secretly planned to reverse the late Monarch’s industrialization program and to cause dynamic Iran to regress into a model dark ages regime in the fast moving world.

Therefore, from 1975 until the rise of Khomeini’s activities in 1978, the Aspen Institute established a closer relationship with the Iranian Ministry of Education, particularly through well-placed agents like minister Manuchehr Ganji (Hostage to Khomeini, by Robert Dreyfus, published by: New Benjamin Franklin House, NY 1980) and his advisor, professor Ali Shariati, who was a member of the British intelligence “Freemasonic” movement and in charge of the Center for Propagation of Islamic Truth Society in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Shariati was radically antimaterialist and the originator of so-called Islamic Marxism. He sowed the seeds of “antimaterialist” rebellion among Iranian youths, especially college students, and aimed to restore their faith in Islam. Of course, his activities were guided by the Aspen Institute and Club of Rome networks which had gathered at Persepolis three years earlier and were the foundation of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. By 1977, evidently Shariati, with support from the Aspen Institute and Club of Rome, began rallying against the Monarch of Iran, and that attitude was the main issue in a late 1977 conference in Lisbon sponsored by the Interreligious Peace Colloquium and the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

A short while before the fall of the monarchical regime in Iran, Andrew Young, President Carter’s ambassador in the UN in 1978, called Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, a “saint.” William Sullivan, Carter’s ambassador in Tehran, had described Khomeini in one of his reports to the State Department as a “Ghandi-like individual,” and as a savior who was to bring justice, freedom and compassion to his countrymen, and depicted pre-revolutionary Iran as a massive prison and the late Monarch of Iran as a dictator.

A New Iran is Just a Matter of Time

The bulk of the Iranian population was born after the revolution and is therefore under forty years of age. Fortunately, they are very active in social affairs and aware of their country’s history and daily politics. They know the clergies that currently govern Iran did not come to power in 1979 on the basis of political merit, and that they were installed by foreign powers that used the clergies’ depravity and backwardness for their own benefit. They are very much informed about the events that took place years before the revolution, such as the Aspen Institute Symposium and its players, decisions and purposes.

This generation has realized that after the Islamic revolution 39 years ago, not only was freedom lost, but also the great majority of citizens have been deprived economically. They are witnessing the national resources of the country being depleted due to the mismanagement and systematic corruption of the Islamic regime. The Iranian people not only have endured years of oppression under the rule of dictatorial theocracy, but they have also been isolated throughout the world as a result. Therefore, the great majority of Iranians have recognized that the resolution of the country’s serious economic, political and social problems is clearly beyond the competence of theocratic and intrinsically corrupted clergies in Tehran.

The sense of nationalism as well as the demand for free elections and secular government are growing everyday and clearly spreading continuously across the land. President Trump should advocate the overthrow of the Islamic regime and should not demoralize the growing secular opposition in Iran by appearing to give in as President Barack Obama did to the terrorist blackmail school of Islamic diplomacy.

*Mansour Kashfi, Ph.D., was petroleum geologist with the National Iranian Oil Company and Chairman of the Geology Department at Pahlavi University in Iran from 1970 to 1979. Now he is president of Kashex International Petroleum Consulting and is a college professor in Dallas, Texas. He is also the author of innumerable articles and books about the petroleum industry and its market behavior worldwide. mkashfi@tx.rr.com

Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are powerful weapons our body’s immune systems count on to fight infection and combat diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis, and lupus. Finding ways to spark these potent cells into action could lead to more effective cancer treatments and vaccines.

While several chemical compounds have shown promise stimulating iNKT cells in mice, their ability to activate human iNKT cells has been limited.

Now, an international team of top immunologists, molecular biologists, and chemists led by University of Connecticut chemistry professor Amy Howell reports in Cell Chemical Biology the creation of a new compound that appears to have the properties researchers have been looking for.

The compound – a modified version of an earlier synthesized ligand – is highly effective in activating human iNKT cells. It is also selective – encouraging iNKT cells to release a specific set of proteins known as Th1 cytokines – that stimulate anti-tumor immunity.

One of the limitations of earlier compounds was their tendency to cause iNKT cells to release a rush of different cytokines. Some of the cytokines turned the body’s immune response on, while others turned it off. The conflicting cytokine activity hampered the compounds’ effectiveness.

The new compound – called AH10-7 – is uniquely structured so that does not happen.

“One of the goals in this field has been to identify compounds that elicit a more biased or selective response from iNKT cells, and we were able to incorporate features in AH10-7 that did that,” said Howell, who has been studying the role of glycolipids in modulating the human immune system for more than 20 years.

The robust study, years in the making, also applied advanced structural and 3-D computer modeling analysis to identify the underlying basis for the new compound’s success. These highly detailed insights into what is happening at the molecular level open up new paths for research and could lead to the development of even more effective compounds.

“We synthesized a new compound, demonstrated its effectiveness with biological data, and learned more about its interactions with proteins through X-ray crystallography and computational analysis,” said UConn associate professor of chemistry José Gascón, a specialist in quantum and molecular mechanics. “We are providing protocols so that other scientists can rationally design related molecules that elicit desired responses from iNKT cells.”

The molecular analysis helped validate and explain experimental results.

“By exposing a crystalized form of the molecular complex to a high-intensity X-ray beam at the Australian Synchrotron, we were able to obtain a detailed 3-D image of the molecular interplay between the invariant natural killer T cell receptor and AH10-7,” said corresponding author Jérôme Le Nours, a structural biologist with the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Australia. “This enabled us to identify the structural factors responsible for AH10-7’s potency in activating iNKT cells. This valuable insight could lead to the development of even more effective anti-metastatic ligands.”

Efforts to harness the therapeutic potential of human iNKT cells began 20 years ago with the discovery that natural and synthetic forms of glycolipid ligands known as alpha-galactosylceramides, or α-GalCers for short, were potent activators of iNKT cells. Scientists immediately recognized their possible value in fighting cancer and other diseases. These α-GalCer ligands serve as tiny dock masters in our immune system, helping antigen-presenting cells attract and bind with iNKT cells so they can be activated to kill cancerous cells or fight off pathogens and other foreign invaders.

The first promising version of a synthesized α-GalCer was a compound known as KRN7000. While KRN7000 powerfully stimulated iNKT cells in both mice and humans, it triggered the release of a flood of many types of cytokines, limiting its potential for clinical applications. Since then, researchers have been searching for new variations of KRN7000 that maintain their effectiveness in activating human iNKT cells while also favoring release of the powerful tumor fighting Th1 cytokines.

In the current study, Howell and colleagues made two significant modifications to an α-GalCer ligand in an attempt to make it more effective. They found that adding a hydrocinnamoyl ester on to the sugar stabilized the ligand and kept it close to the surface of the antigen-presenting cell, thereby enhancing its ability to dock with and stimulate human iNKT cells. In addition, trimming off part of the molecule’s sphingoid base appears to initiate the critical Th1 cytokine bias. Both changes, working in tandem, strengthened the effectiveness of the entire molecular complex in terms of activating human iNKT cells, Howell said.

To further validate AH10-7’s effectiveness, the researchers tested the new compound in wild mice as well as partially “humanized” mice, whose genomes were modified to mimic the human iNKT cell response. Notably, AH10-7 was shown to be at least as effective as KRN7000 in suppressing the growth of melanoma cells in the partially humanized mice.

Finland, a country noted for deep felt suicides executed during long dark winter months, has become the happiest nation on earth. This statistical superstition, contrived to feed a social-media diet free of substance and light on evidence, belies one fundamental point: Scandinavia can boast its examples of curious killings and extravagant murders.  Little wonder, then, that there has been something of a competition, and in some cases cooperation, between the countries in the making of the genre known as Scandi noir.

The signifiers of this rapidly tiring genre are standard: snipped limps, removed heads, disembodied creatures.  This is the stuff that has enticed people whose living standards are the envy of the world. Crime must be exotic in its gruesomeness, spectacular in its execution. It may be presumed in this case that luxury and plenitude produces its own degeneration – but in what form?

In this case, the sadist (presumed) killer has run amok with abandon.  Audiences in Scandinavia, and specifically Denmark and Sweden, have been led to believe that the industry behind such works as The Killing has actually been imitated.

Charged Danish inventor and the seemingly disturbed Peter Madsen seems to possess the troubled profile of a Scandi noir protagonist.  By disturbing, and doomed chance, Swedish journalist Kim Wall found herself on Madsen’s 17-metre submarine, then found herself, quite literally, in pieces.  Her torso had been removed; limbs were found separated and weighed down by metal pipes in Køge Bay.  Police noted 14 interior and exterior stab wounds to the victim’s genitals.

The New York Times could barely hide its morbid fascination: “It took three dogs trained to search on water, an oceanographer and a team of military drivers to find the body of Kim Wall, a Swedish journalist, in the bay off Copenhagen after she went missing on Aug. 10.”

Anne Mette Lundtofte, writing in The New Yorker, admitted a queasy awareness about a parallel between the fate of Wall and the victim in the debut episode of The Bridge, “in which a woman’s dismembered body is planted strategically on the mid-point of the sea bridge that connects Denmark and Sweden.” In what counts as dull Danish understatement, Special Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen called it “a very unusual and brutal case which has had tragic consequences for Kim Wall and her relatives.”

Madsen’s story evolved, shot through with inconsistencies and stages of embroidering.  He first claimed that Wall had suffered an accidental death inflicted by the blow of a heavy portal.  (This account was altered at trial: Wall had expired due to the locking of the hatch occasioned by a malfunction that stopped the engines, inducing a fall in pressure and the release of poisonous gas.)

Madsen would then admit to conducting the butchering exercise on his submarine before dumping the various body parts in the ocean in what he termed a “sea burial”.  But this, he argued, neither involved sexual assault or murder.  His acts were simply anatomical in nature, absent a guilty mind.  “I didn’t want to share with the rest of the world,” he claimed at the trial, “the horrible manner in which she died.”

With the trial of Madsen opening on March 8, the cultural commentators buzzed and convened over the ghastliness.  The Danish inventor was likened to a string of maverick types typical of a certain Danish male. He had been a Klods-Hans amateurof “charm and cheek” lacking sophistication and a sense of the world.  In some quarters, there was disbelief that this had been anything other than a stunt typical of the man.  A psychiatric evaluation of Madsen found him to be “severely aberrant” rather than insane.

The Swedish side saw matters rather differently. Walls’ colleague Victoria Greve found the whole matters spookily ironic, given that the reporter had been sending copy from places as diverse and troubled as Haiti and North Korea only to then disappear in Denmark.  Walls disappearance also triggered a storm of debate about the vulnerability of women in the workplace.

In March last year, critic Mark Lawsoneulogised on the subject of Scandi noir, bravely predicting its demise.  European broadcasters, he accused, had denigrated “a beloved genre” turning thrillers into bland fillers “in just under six years”.  The Danish series, The Killing, became a font of inspiration of makers of crime series in Britain, inspiring such spinoffs as Broadchurch, The Missing and River.

This also set the scene for a gorging: the British diet for such programs saw The Bridge, Borgen and Wallander make their appearance. Midnight Sun, charges Lawson, signalled a descent into dullness, a fictional fusion “flattening out the local zests to produce a bland Euro gruel.”

Off the screen, even more graphic scripts are being written, and nothing better to match the panoramic violence and investigation of the Madsen-Wall affair.  The move of this ghoulish saga from actual event to celluloid is already set to take place.

Russian authorities should drop the charges against a Jehovah’s Witness adherent for practicing his faith and release him immediately, Human Rights Watch said.

On April 3, 2018, a criminal court in Orel is slated to begin the trial of Dennis Christensen, a 46-year old Danish citizen who has been in pretrial custody for nearly 11 months. If convicted on charges of organizing activities of an “extremist organization,” he faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Russian authorities are seeking to punish a Jehovah’s Witness for exercising his right to practice his religion,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “From the start, investigators have been warping Dennis Christensen’s peaceful participation in his faith to make it appear criminal. He did nothing wrong and should be freed.”

In 2016, a local court banned the Orel Jehovah’s Witness organization as an “extremist religious organization.”

Police in Orel arrested Christensen, who has had a Russian residence permit since 2000, on May 25, 2017, during a raid by riot police on a Jehovah’s Witness worship service. Christensen, a Jehovah’s Witness elder, had given a sermon during the service. He was not on the staff of the Jehovah’s Witness organization, but had unlocked the building where the members had gathered.

Authorities charged Christensen with “organizing activities of a religious organization that has been declared extremist.” The charge sheet, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, states that he was “actively involved in organizational work aimed at continuing the unlawful activities of the [banned Orel Jehovah’s Witness organization].”

Christensen’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that the charges stem from Christensen’s actions on May 25 and from two previous incidents, in February 2017, when Christensen participated in discussions about a religious publication. They are also linked to Christensen’s role in organizing worshippers to help with the upkeep of their place of worship before the court ruling banning the organization entered into force in July 2017, and to persuading several other people to worship with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

An April 2017 Russian Supreme Court ruling banned all Jehovah’s Witnesses organizations throughout Russia. The ruling declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses Administrative Center an extremist organization, closed the organization on those grounds, and banned the religious group’s activities throughout Russia. The Jehovah’s Witnesses Administrative Center was the head office for 395 Jehovah’s Witnesses branches throughout Russia.

In recent months, Jehovah’s Witness worshippers in several other Russian cities have faced raids and criminal charges.

In January 2018, law enforcement officials in the Kemerovo region searched 15 homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses as part of a criminal investigation into the religious group. The Jehovah’s Witnesses organization said that in some cases investigators forced their way into apartments with the help of armed members of the Interior Ministry Rapid Deployment Task Force, and National Guard troops. The Kemerovo branch of the Investigative Committee, Russia’s criminal investigation service, said that investigators confiscated phones, electronic devices, computers, hard drives, and personal objects. The investigation is ongoing.

Further searches were carried out on February 7 among Jehovah’s Witnesses in Belgorod. Police searched 16 apartments, fingerprinted residents, and confiscated Bibles, electronic devices, hard drives, and passports. The lawyer for Anatolii Shalyapin and Sergei Volkov, who were detained during the raids, told Human Rights Watch that the two were held for two days and then released, and are suspects in a criminal extremism case.

Previously, in November 2015 a court in Tangarog found 16 Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of extremism for continuing to gather for worship after a court had banned the local organization in 2009. They received suspended sentences and fines.

Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe and a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, is obligated to protect the rights to freedom of religion and association. The government has previously been found to be in violation of the European Convention for actions taken through the courts to dissolve communities of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow v. Russia, application no. 302/02).

The case against Christensen and the raids against Jehovah’s Witness adherents violate the right to freedom of religion, denying them the right to worship, and cannot be justified as either a necessary or proportionate measure to protect public safety or public order, Human Rights Watch said. Christensen has filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights alleging among other things that his arrest constituted unlawful interference with his right to freedom of religion.

“The Russian authorities’ ruthless persecution of Jehovah’s Witness adherents has been picking up steam,” Denber said. “Dropping the case against Christensen would be a good first step toward ending the raids and other criminal cases against people who are merely practicing their faith.”

Rim Banna passed away at the age of 51. Her death on March 24 after a decade-long battle with cancer brought grief to Palestinians everywhere. Rim, a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, united the Palestinian people across political and geographic divides.
When she sang for the homeland, nothing mattered but Palestine. Christians and Muslims, Fatah and Hamas, Gaza and Ramallah all became one.

Through her soulful and warm voice, she imparted sorrow, yet celebrated life. Her songs “Fares Odeh” and “Sarah” were poetic interpretations of precious young Palestinian lives cut short by Israeli soldiers. “The butterfly will carry you to the back of a cloud. The gazelle will run with you to a hollow of sycamore. The scent of bread will take you, a martyr, to the embrace of your mother. The star said to him, ‘Bring me to the courtyard of my house. Take me to the mattress of my slumber.’ Sleepiness climbed up my sides. And settled in my head.”

Music unites Palestinians when politicians fail. In fact, while for years the collective calls for “Palestinian unity” have gone unheeded, Palestinian music has continued to bring Palestinians closer.

Deep-rooted culture is what makes Palestinians who they are: A people with a unique and lucid identity, despite 70 years of exile, ethnic cleansing, sieges, numerous borders and wanton killings. When Rim sang, her voice penetrated through the seemingly impregnable apartheid walls, checkpoints, military curfews and unbridgeable distances.

It was during the First Intifada of 1987 that Rim gained access to the hearts and homes of many Palestinians; initially in Palestine and, eventually, all over the world. Her voice, soft and reassuring, gave hope to those who lived under a seven-year Israeli military campaign. Israeli tactics were then aimed at breaking the spirit of the rebelling Palestinian people.

Rim’s music offered modern renditions of traditional songs, but without erasing the historical and cultural identity of that music. Her music belongs to the Palestinian genre of nationally driven and culturally centered art forms, which are aimed at reintroducing and, sometimes, reinventing the past in a more relatable fashion.

While Israel is doing its utmost to deny and erase Palestinian culture, such cultural icons as Banna, but also Reem Kelani, Kamilya Jubran and Shadia Mansour, among others, have reasserted Palestinian culture, thus identity, around the globe.

Although a rarely publicized form of resistance, cultural resistance is at the heart of the Palestinian fight for freedom.

Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by fascist Italy for much of his life because of his ideas on cultural resistance, had warned of how cultural hegemony is as much the enemy as outright dictatorship.

Palestinians contend with cultural hegemony, not as an academic notion, but as a daily reality. Israel has spent decades launching and perfecting its cultural war against Palestinians, aimed at erasing their culture, on the one hand, while imposing its own cultural alternatives on the other.

Oddly, much of what Israel brands as Israeli culture is, in fact, the very Palestinian and Arab culture that has spanned millennia; from food to music to fashion and everything in between, “Brand Israel” is essentially a Palestinian, Arab brand, stolen and rebranded.

But, unlike military and political war, cultural wars are often invisible and incremental. While the Israeli government is now busy replacing Arabic street names with Hebrew ones and outlawing the commemoration of the Nakba — the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 — it also aims at breaking the unity of Palestinian culture altogether.

Early Zionists promoted the false idea that Palestine was a land with no people and that the natives of the land were nomads, passers-by with no cultural roots, no identity, thus no collective political aspirations. Such propaganda was essential in promoting the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. The supposed “nomads” who existed in Palestine eventually evolved to become the “refugee problem.” To this day, Zionists and their right-wing supporters still encourage the cruel idea that Palestinians are an “invented people.”

So, when Banna, Kelani, Mohammed Assaf and numerous others — joined by poets, artists and other Palestinian cultural warriors — celebrate the traditions, music and culture of their people, they stand at the frontlines of the fight against a violent Zionist discourse that has, for over a century, been committed to the total erasure of Palestine.

In her music, Banna fought against Israeli attempts at the cultural dispossession of the Palestinian people, while humanizing the likes of Fares Odeh, Sarah and many others.

This is why many Palestinians wept when Rim died; it is also why millions wept tears of joy when Assaf — a refugee from Gaza — won the “Arab Idol” competition in 2013. It was not merely because he had a beautiful voice and that he deserved to win, but because of the representation of that thundering, self-asserting voice, his lyrics and, of course, the singer himself.

Assaf’s family was driven from historic Palestine during the violent Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign of 1947-48. He was born in Libya but his family returned to Gaza when he was a child, only to live under a hermetic Israeli siege. He broke the siege to participate in the competition.

When Assaf sang, millions watched in wonder as he skillfully demolished all the walls, erased the checkpoints and bridged the distances. Suddenly, Gaza, Ramallah, Nazareth and Haifa were once more united. Those in diaspora returned. The homeland became one.

Banna too offered that multi-layered representation, which supersedes politics and geography into a realm in which the Palestinian nationhood was made of shared culture, grief, resistance, poetry and hope. She may have died, but the generation of artistes she patiently nurtured will continue to sing, to celebrate a culture and a civilization that cannot be tamed by guns or imprisoned by walls.

Rim Banna was the voice of Palestine that can never be muted.

At the end of last week, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova said the West has as its main goal now organizing a boycott of the 2018 World Cup, a statement quite likely issued so that when a boycott doesn’t happen, Moscow can claim victory and say the world has repudiated Washington and London.

But Zakharova’s remark has prompted Moscow commentators like Aleksey Polubota of Svobodnaya pressa to suggest that “it is difficult to believe” that the West would view disrupting the World Cup as its goal or think that doing so would achieve any of its ends. It has bigger plans and more means it will use to seek to achieve them, he says (svpressa.ru/politic/article/196767/).

Bogdan Bespalko, a member of the Presidential Council for Foreign Relations, says that in the existing “information war,” Moscow must “respond to any provocations from the West in a calm fashion,” especially because in his view, many Western populations do not support the policies of their governments toward Russia.

As far as any threat to boycott the World Cup in Russia this year, he continues, such a move is “only one of the occasions that can be used to dehumanize and demonize our country in the eyes of the Western populace.” According to him, such a policy so far has not been very successful.

“But in the future,” Bespalko says, “the West may provoke both more conflicts around the perimeter of our borders and in Russia itself, for example, in the Caucasus.” Russia will have to respond to such things and Moscow’s responses will become the occasion for new charges by the West against that. The same thing is true in the economic sphere.

A direct military clash between Russia and NATO is possible, the Kremlin advisor says, although neither side is prepared for it. “In the West, they think that Russia is still too strong to fight with. And we don’t need a war.” What we do need, Bespalko says, is a world where everyone plays by rules everyone agrees to rather than those imposed by the West.

After the disintegration of the USSR, he continues, “we agreed to play” according to the rules of others,” despite the fact that they could impose one set of rules on Russia and quite another on themselves and others. Moscow must recognize this and take steps to counter it in all directions.

For example, Bespalko says, “I do not understand why with us McDonalds is still registered as a store rather than a restaurant,” an arrangement that gives it significant tax benefits. It shouldn’t have them nor should other Western firms doing business in Russia under current conditions.

A second expert, Boris Shmelyov, head of the Center for Political Research at the Moscow Institute of Economics, says that the West won’t be able to organize a complete boycott of the World Cup even if it tries. And it won’t try that hard, he says, because that competition is “too petty a goal in the great geopolitical game the West is playing.

According to him, the West has “intentionally chosen a policy of balancing on the edge of war,” a particularly dangerous approach given that “neither side can make concessions to the other without a loss of face. Therefore,” Shmelyov says, “we must hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”

By Nijeesh N.*

Ongoing investigations by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in seven separate cases of ‘targeted attacks’, five of which resulted in six killings, reported from across Punjab, through 2016 and 2017, have uncovered a transnational network of conspirators affiliated to Khalistani terrorist groups backed by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), working relentlessly to revive the ‘Khalistani terror threat’ in Punjab. In November 2017, the Punjab Police had cracked the conspiracy and arrested the ‘hit man’, Hardeep Singh aka Shera, as well as key conspirators, including Jagtar Singh aka Jaggi and Taljit Singh aka Jimmy, both from the UK. In view of its “national and international ramifications”, and the fact that “the handlers, conspirators and financers in the targeted killing cases operated from countries such as the UK, Canada and Italy”, the Punjab Government decided to hand over these seven cases to the NIA in December 2017, for further investigation and prosecution. The cases include:

October 17, 2017: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Ravinder Gosain was shot dead by two unidentified assailants near his house in Mohalla Gagandeep Colony in Ludhiana District.

July 15, 2017: The pastor of a local church, Sultan Masih, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants outside the church in Peerubanda Mohalla in Ludhiana District.

February 25, 2017: Two Dera Sacha Sauda followers, Satpal Sharma and his son Ramesh Kumar, were shot dead by two unidentified assailants at their canteen at Naam Charcha Ghar, a meeting centre for the Dera followers, in Jagera village in Khanna District.

January 15, 2017: Amit Sharma, the ‘Zila Pracharak (District President)’ of the Hindu religious organization, Sri Hindu Takht, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants near Guru Nanak Stadium in Ludhiana District.

April 23, 2016: Shiv Sena’s labour wing chief in Punjab, Durga Prasad Gupta, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants near Lalheri Chowk in Khanna District.

February 3, 2016: Former Shiv Sena youth wing leader, Amit Arora was injured as two unidentified assailants shot at him near Jyoti Motor Basti Jodhewal in Ludhiana District.

January 18, 2016: RSS leader Naresh Kumar was injured when two unidentified assailants fired upon him in the wee hours at Shaheedi Park in Kidwai Nagar in Ludhiana District.

There were another three such ‘targeted attacks’, all of which resulted in killings, according to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM). These include:

October 30, 2017: The Hindu Sangarsh Sena ‘district chief’, Vipan Sharma, was shot dead by four unidentified assailants in the Bharat Nagar locality along the Amritsar-Batala road in Amritsar.

August 6, 2016: Senior RSS leader, Brigadier (Retired) Jagdish Gagneja, was shot at by two unidentified assailants when he was shopping with his wife at a market in Jalandhar. He succumbed to injuries on September 21, 2016.

April 4, 2016: Chand Kaur, wife of the late Satguru Jagjit Singh, the former head of the Namdhari sect, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants at the Bhaini Sahib Gurdwara complex in Ludhiana District.

In all these incidents masked unidentified assailants came on motorcycles and pumped bullets into their victims from a close range.

A total of 11 persons have been arrested thus far, in connection with the 11 cases that have been handed over to NIA. On February 13, 2018, the NIA arrested arms’ supplier Parvez aka Farru, for providing weapons used in the targeted killings. Parvez was wanted in connection with supplying arms to one of the main accused, shooter Hardeep Singh aka Shera, who had been arrested from Fatehgarh Sahib by the Punjab Police on November 10, 2017. During investigations, NIA has so far found that the ‘targeted attacks’ “were executed as part of an international conspiracy whose objective was to destabilize the law and order situation in Punjab and to revive militancy in the State”.

Significantly, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) in its 28th report of Committee on Estimates titled ‘Central Armed Police Forces and Internal Security Challenges-Evaluation and Response Mechanism’ which was tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2018, observed,

Sikh youth are being trained in ISI facilities in Pakistan. Interdiction and interrogations have revealed use of jailed cadres, unemployed youth, criminals and smugglers by Pakistan based Sikh terror groups for facilitating terror attacks.

Similar concerns were raised by the Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab, Suresh Arora on January 4, 2018, when he said,

Nearly 21 foreign handlers involved in providing logistical and financial support to these terrorist modules have been identified. These modules were mainly being operationalised, networked and financed by operatives based in Europe, North America and West Asia, and were aimed at targeted killings of members of organisations associated with the minority community, in order to spread communal disharmony and revive terrorism in Punjab…

On February 21, 2018, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh during his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was on an eight day official tour of India beginning February 17, 2018, reportedly “raised the issue of Indo-Canadians believed to be involved in targeted killings in Punjab” and “sought the Canadian Prime Minister’s cooperation in cracking down on separatism and hate crime by a fringe element, constituting a miniscule percentage of Canada’s population.” He also handed over to Trudeau “a list of nine Category ‘A’ Canada-based operatives alleged to be involved in hate crimes in Punjab by financing and supplying weapons for terrorist activities, and also engaged in trying to radicalize youth and children here [Punjab].” The names include six alleged members of the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) and three belonging to the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) or the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI). Police have shared only five names with the media: Gurjeet Singh Cheema, Gurpreet Singh Peet, Gurjinder Singh Pannu, Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Malkit Singh. Other names were withheld as disclosure could compromise ongoing investigations.

Meanwhile, Border Security Force (BSF) personnel killed two Pakistani infiltrators (suspected militants) along the Indo-Pakistan border in Ajnala sector of Amritsar District in the intervening night of September 19-20, 2017. “When challenged by BSF troops, infiltrators fired on ambush line with automatic weapons. Taking cover, the fire was appropriately retaliated and infiltrators were neutralised near the border fence,” the BSF spokesperson stated. An AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, over two dozen rounds, a Pakistani SIM card, four kilograms of heroin and PKR 20,000 were recovered from the slain infiltrators.

During 2016, Punjab had recorded 14 terrorism-related fatalities [one civilian, seven Security Force (SF) troopers and six terrorists), all in one attack: the Pathankot Indian Air Force (IAF) Base incident on January 2 – 3, 2016. Eight infiltrators were also killed along the border. In addition, as discussed above, three incidents of ‘targeted attacks’ were also reported. Similarly, in 2015, there was only one attack, when, after firing at a bus, terrorists attacked and holed up in the Dinanagar Police Station campus in the Gurdaspur District of Punjab in the early hours of July 27, 2015. 10 persons were eventually killed – three civilians, four SF personnel and three terrorists – before Police ended the standoff. Significantly, both these attacks were carried out by Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist formations.

Despite relentless efforts, Khalistani terror formations have failed to inflict major damage within the State over the past over 10 years. On October 14, 2007, seven persons were killed and another 40 were injured in a bomb blast inside a cinema hall in Ludhiana. While there has been no definitive identification of the group responsible, Police sources and contextual information suggest that this was the handiwork of a Sikh terrorist formation based in Pakistan.

Much of the credit goes to the Punjab Police, which continued to register counter-terrorism successes through 2017. On January 4, 2018, Suresh Arora, Director General of Police, Punjab, disclosed that during 2017, Punjab Police launched a sustained drive against terrorist elements and identified and neutralized eight terrorist modules with the arrest of 47 persons and seizure of 43 weapons. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, at least 44 Khalistani terrorists were arrested during 2017 in addition nine arrests in 2016. At least another three persons have already been arrested in the current year (data till March 31, 2018). According to reports, a total of 158 Khalistani terrorists, principally associated with the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), Bhindranwale Tigers Force of Khalistan (BTFK), Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), ISYF and some minor factions, were arrested between 2010 and 2015.

Back in 2015, KPS Gill had noted:

…There have been continuous intelligence flows indicating that the ISI has been pressuring the many ‘rump elements’ of the defeated Khalistani movement – who Pakistan continues to host and fund in the hope of a possible revival – demanding that they ‘do something’ in Punjab to earn their keep. That they have failed is proof of the degree to which their ideology and networks were completely defeated in Punjab, the complete absence of traction that their occasional efforts have met, and the capacities and penetration that the Punjab Police and intelligence continue to retain. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s intentions and objectives in Punjab have never been in doubt, and the prospect that they could employ different instrumentalities – including the Islamist terrorists in their stables – is something we should have been completely prepared for, and utterly unsurprised by…

The ‘ongoing effort of revival’, therefore, is bound to fail unless and until there is complete negligence on the part of the Governments – both at the Central and State Level – in addressing the limited challenges that emerge from time to time.

*Nijeesh N.
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

By Ajit Kumar Singh*

On March 25, 2018, three woman cadres of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) were killed during an exchange of fire between Security Force (SF) personnel and the Maoists near Dokari Ghati under the Narayanpatna Police limits in the Koraput District of Odisha. SF personnel seized a cache of arms and ammunition from the location of the encounter.

On March 1, 2018, at least 10 CPI-Maoist cadres, including six women, and one Greyhounds constable were killed in an encounter near Pujarikanker, along the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border, in the Bijapur District of Chhattisgarh. SFs recovered one AK-47, one SLR [Self Loading Rifle], two single bore rifles, five INSAS [Indian Small Arms System] assault rifles, one .303 rifle, one pistol, three claymore mines, six rocket bombs, two solar plates, seven kit bags, a Sony radio, empty cartridges, live ammunition of different calibre, and INR 41,000 in cash from the encounter site.

On February 26, 2018, four CPI-Maoist cadres – identified as ‘sub-zonal commander’ Rakesh Bhuiyan, Lallu Yadav, Rinki and Ruby – were killed in an encounter with SFs in the Lalaghati-Naudiha area of the Palamu District of Jharkhand. SFs recovered two SLRs, five magazines and 219 bullets from the spot.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 41 Naxalites [Left Wing Extremists, LWEs] have been killed by the SFs during the current year, 2018 (data till March 31). During the corresponding period of 2017, SFs had eliminated 53 Naxalites. Through 2017, SFs had killed 149 Naxalites in addition to 244 killed in 2016.

According to data released by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA), SFs arrested 1,888 Naxalites in 2017 as against 1,840 arrests in 2016. In 2018, as on March 15, 2018, the number of arrests stood at 395. Since March 16, 2018, according to SATP data, another 46 Naxalites have been arrested (data till March 31).

Through 2017, SFs recovered 591 arms from the Maoists, in addition to the 800 recovered in 2016, according to the UMHA data. During the current year, as on March 15, 2018, the number of such recoveries had stood at 155.

The mounting pressure on the Naxalites has resulted in a large number of surrenders over the past few years. According to UMHA data, at least 685 Naxalites surrender through 2017 in addition to 1,442 surrenders in 2016. During the current year, as on March 15, 2018, the number of surrenders was 78. Since March 16, 2018, on SATP data, another 79 Naxalites have surrendered (data till March 31).

Continuing SFs’ successes on the ground further improved the security situation through 2017. The trend of declining overall fatalities, on year on year basis, in Left Wing Extremism-related violence, established since 2011, though significantly reversed in 2016 and 2013, was re-established in 2017. According to the data released by UMHA, a total of 399 people (188 civilians, 75 SF personnel and 136 Naxalites) were killed in such violence through 2017, as against 500 fatalities (213 civilians, 65 SF personnel and 222 Naxalites) recorded in 2016. During the current year, as on March 15, the total number of such fatalities stood at 82 (24 civilians, 24 SF personnel and 34 Naxalites) as against 105 such fatalities (39 civilians, 29 SF personnel and 37 Naxalites) reported during the corresponding period of 2017.

Total fatalities in 2017, according to the SATP database, were 332 (109 civilians, 74 SF personnel and 149 Naxalites), as against 433 recorded in 2016 (123 civilians, 66 SF personnel and 244 Naxalites). In the current year 89 such fatalities (23 civilians, 25 SF personnel and 41 Naxalites) have been reported so far (data till March 30, 2018), as against 117 (33 civilians, 31 SF personnel and 53 Naxalites) reported during the corresponding period of 2016.

According to UMHA data, the number of civilian fatalities (188) recorded through 2017 was the second lowest in this category since 1999. A previous low of 171 was recorded in 2015. The maximum number of civilians killed in such violence, 720, was in 2010.

Though the number of fatalities among SFs increased from 65 in 2016 to 75 in 2017, according to UMHA data, the number of attacks on the Police (including landmine attacks) declined from 111 in 2016 to 84 in 2017, the lowest recorded since 2009. According to the SATP data, as against 41 incidents of killing of SFs recorded in 2016, there were 26 such incidents in 2017.

The number of Districts from where fatalities were reported declined from 42 in 2016 to 40 in 2017, according to SATP data. Civilian fatalities were reported from 33 Districts in 2017, as against 35 in 2016. Similarly, SF fatalities were reported from 12 Districts in 2017, as against 18 in 2016. The overall spread of Naxalite violence recorded a decline through 2017, with the number of Naxalism-affected Districts dropping from 104 in 13 States in 2016, to 100 districts in 12 States in 2017, based on SATP data. According to the UMHA, the number of districts from where violence was reported was 58 in 2017. No comparative data is available for year 2016. The number of total affected districts, according to the last official estimate released on July 18, 2017, was 106, including 35 worst-affected districts.

On March 17, 2017, though, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh reportedly told the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) that the number of Naxalite-affected Districts in the country had fallen to 68 from 106, the UMHA told the Lok Sabha on July 18, 2017, that 106 Districts in 10 Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected States continued to be covered under the Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme for the purpose of reimbursement of expenditure incurred by State Governments on counter-LWE operations. The inclusion/ exclusion of districts under the SRE scheme is based on their violence profile and other parameters and is a continuous process.

The number of major attacks (involving three or more fatalities) also declined from 33 in 2016 to 19 in 2017, according to SATP data. Of these 19 major incidents in 2017, 12 were initiated by SFs, resulting in the death of 52 Naxalites and six SF personnel. The Naxalites initiated five incidents, resulting in the killing of 52 persons: 45 SF personnel, six civilians, and one Naxalite. Two major incidents of internecine clashes resulted in the death of 10 Naxalites. The Naxalites had initiated 10 major incidents in 2016, resulting in 49 deaths: 19 civilians, 27 SF personnel and three LWEs.

Meanwhile, UMHA data also indicated that the number of overall Naxalism-linked incidents which had been declining since 2010, came down further in 2017: 2,258 incidents in 2009; 2,213 in 2010; 1,760 in 2011; 1,415 in 2012; 1,136 in 2013, 1,091 in 2014; 1,089 in 2015; 1,048 in 2016; 908 in 2017; and 178 in 2018, up to March 15, 218.

On March 24, 2018, speaking on the occasion of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)’s 79th Raising Day, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, thus stated:

Maoism has become a serious challenge… but because of the gallant and determined action of the CRPF and other Forces, these incidents have come down drastically. I can say that the LWE problem in the country has entered its last leg…

Earlier, on March 21, 2018, Rao Inderjit Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Planning and Minister of State in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, reiterated in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) that “the Government of India has a strategy and action plan to deal with the problem of Maoist insurgency with balanced and holistic multi-pronged interventions in the areas of security & development”. He elaborated:

MHA [UMHA] is supporting the State Governments extensively by way of Central Armed Police Force, Helicopter support, India Reserve Battalions etc. As part of capacity building of the State Police Forces, funds are being provided under different schemes including Security Related Expenditure (SRE), Modernisation of Police Forces (MPF) and Special Infrastructure Scheme (SIS). Training assistance and intelligence sharing is also being carried out… Development interventions are made through provision of resources and focused implementation of schemes of the various Ministries of the Government of India that supplements the State initiatives. These include Centrally Sponsored Schemes as well as Central Sector Scheme. Several important initiatives have been undertaken for development of LWE areas. These initiatives include, Road Requirement Plan (RRP-I), Road Connectivity Project for LWE Affected Areas (RRP-II), Mobile tower connectivity, Financial inclusion…

While these measures have, indeed, helped in the fight against the Maoist menace, existing shortcomings in these declared measures continue to create impediments to the process of bringing the problem to a conclusive end. For instance, the fund released [LINK: DOCUMENT] for modernizing State Police Forces (in 10 Maoist-affected States) under the Modernisation of Police Forces (MPF) scheme has declined considerably over the past four Financial Years (FY): INR 6376.4 million (2014-15); INR 3147.8 million (2015-16); INR 2020.1 million (2015-16); INR 1453.0 (2017-18). The States covered under this program include: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

Stark deficits are noticeable in some of the worst afflicted States. According to the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D), as on January 1, 2017, there were at least 126 Police Stations in Chhattisgarh, the worst Naxalism-affected State, which did not have a vehicle. Similarly, the second worst affected State, Jharkhand, had 23 such Police stations. The number of Police Stations without telephones in these two States was 23 and 64, respectively.

Moreover, large vacancies persist in the State Police Forces. According to BPR&D data, as on January 1, 2017, there were a total of 538,237 vacant posts in State Police Forces. In 2016, the number of vacant posts was 549,025. Though the number of sanctioned posts, against which the vacancies existed, were increased from 2,280,691 in 2016 to 2,464,484 in 2017, projected populations have increased by an estimated 14.8 million. The number of vacancies in the apex Indian Police Service (IPS) was 938, as on January 1, 2017. Moreover, the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), which have been increasingly used in fight against the Naxalites, also continue to witness huge vacancies: 110,081 vacant posts as on January 1, 2017, against a sanctioned strength of 1,154,393 (actual strength: 1,044,312).

The Maoists are certainly losing their influence across the country. What was once envisaged as a ‘tactical retreat’ has transformed into sustained strategic reverses. The Naxalites, however, still remain a significant threat, retaining the wherewithal to carry out sporadic ‘spectacular attacks’ targeting SFs. There is urgent need to sustain, indeed, heighten pressure at this stage, and consolidate the gains secured at the cost of enormous SF sacrifices by addressing long neglected issues of civil administration, development and welfare. As long as gross deficits of governance persist, the potential for a revival of conflict – under the existing LWE banners, or in new guise – will endure.

* Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 458 points down, as Beijing slapped tariffs on US imports in retaliation for US steel and aluminum tariffs and President Donald Trump blasted online retail giant Amazon.

On Monday, Beijing imposed a 15 percent duty on 127 US products, as well as a 25 percent tariff on pork, in retaliation for Trump’s recent tariffs on Chinese exports.

“China and the United States are the world’s two biggest economies, and cooperation is the only correct choice,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said announcing the tariffs, adding that it hoped the US would rescind its tariff decision “as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile, Amazon Inc. shares took a nearly 6 percent dive after Trump continued criticizing the company. On Friday, the president blasted Amazon for not paying federal taxes and benefiting from cheap US Postal Service shipping rates. “This will be changed,” he tweeted on Monday.

Trump also said the Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, should register as a lobbyist. The newspaper has been unwaveringly critical of Trump since the 2016 election campaign.

(RFE/RL) — A top Kremlin adviser says U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Russian leader Vladimir Putin to visit the White House.

Yury Ushakov told Russian news agencies on April 2 that Trump extended the invitation during a phone call last month in which the U.S. leader congratulated Putin on his victory in the widely criticized presidential election.

In a statement, Trump administration spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the White House had been one of several venues discussed in the March 20 call.

“As the President himself confirmed on March 20, hours after his last call with President Putin, the two had discussed a bilateral meeting in the ‘not-too-distant future’ at a number of potential venues, including the White House,” Sanders said. “We have nothing further to add at this time.”

The call generated controversy after press reports revealed that Trump’s aides advised him not to congratulate Putin, given the disputed nature of the Russian vote, held two days earlier.

Trump, however, went ahead and congratulated Putin anyway.

The phone call was followed six days later by the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from the United States in response to the poisoning of an former Russian double agent in Britain. That has helped send U.S.-Russian relations to lows not seen since the Cold War.