He means well, it seems, but how is he going to deliver on the deluge of changes he says are imminent for his kingdom to usher into the 21st century?

By Anchal Vohra

On a whirlwind tour in the United States, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohamad bin Salman or MbS as he is nicknamed, is spouting headline worthy comments at a pace much faster than the time needed to make sense of them. He means well, it seems, but how is he going to deliver on the deluge of changes he says are imminent for his kingdom to usher into 21^stcentury?

The 32-year-old king-to-be is setting the news agenda by sharing one detail an interview of a social and economic revolution in Saudi Arabia. You can’t but welcome his views as a promising development, especially since the Kingdom, thus far, has been tolerated by a large part of the world for its oil and criticised widely for exporting a stringent form of Islam emerging out of the teachings of Ibn abd al-Wahhab, the religious ally of the founder of the monarchy.

His statement which effectively eases the norm to wear a black loosely fitted garment covering the women from head to toe called abaya or even a black head cover, quickly made an impression on the Americans. Even those who are skeptical of his intentions across the world could do more than hope he is sincere.

In an interview to the news show 60 minutes at CBS, he said, “The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of sharia: that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men,” and added, “This, however, does not particularly specify a black abaya or a black head cover. The decision is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear.”

Although optimistic of a better future for half of Saudi Arabia’s population, this is at best the prince’s interpretation. The real implementers of Sharia law in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are the clerics on the ground and they may still choose to implement it in the way they choose. The ideas of Wahhabism are deeply ingrained in Saudi society and will make it very difficult for the women to unveil. MbS was also evasive on the guardianship laws under which several restrictions are imposed on a woman’s independence wherein she is forced to rely on a man’s approval to work, travel and much more.

MbS continues to guard the ideals of Wahhabism, but assures eradication of terrorism. Conveniently though, it is the anti-monarchy Muslim brotherhood group that is his top priority to tackle and not those who emerged out of the Saudi funding and Wahhabi ideology.

His most eye-grabbing headline was, of course, on Israel and Palestine.

In an interview to The Atlantic, MbS said that his kingdom recognises the right of the Israelis to a homeland.

He said, “I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.” In a way, such a clearly worded backing of an Israeli state by the de facto leader of the Sunni world, is significant, but a closer look suggests that MbS’ comments are non-committal and do not specify what formula is he precisely referring to when he talks about peace. In the interview, he added, “We have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

In 2002, the Arab League endorsed the Saudi-led Arab peace initiative which called for normalisation of ties between the Arabs and Israel by resolving the Palestinian issue. The initiative, also known as the ‘Saudi Initiative’, suggests the Israelis withdraw from territories occupied by Israel in the six-day war in 1967, including east Jerusalem and give millions of Palestinians rendered homeless since 1948 the right to return home.

But, MbS’ recent statements do not clarify if that is indeed what the monarchy continues to propose. According to The New York Times, PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas met the crown prince two weeks after Jared Kushner’s night-long discussions with the heir late last year. The paper reported that Abbas was offered a massively diluted version of the 2002 offer. On the table was a Palestinian state but without the right to return and noncontiguous parts of the West Bank. The sovereignty of the Palestinians over areas under them would also be limited.

The idea has been received with consternation from the stakeholders in Palestine. If correctly reported, the proposition calls for a status quo for the Palestinians living under Israel’s iron grip in a walled territory but with the tag of a state.

Perhaps the idea is to eventually convince the rivaling Fatah and Hamas to settle for a little more, but not what they finally seek — returning to pre-1967 borders and resettling Palestinian peoples on their homeland.

MbS’ calculations are shrewd and based on what he perceives to be in Saudi interest. Obsessed with the growth of Iran in Syria and its success in forming an arc of influence all the way from Tehran, through Iraq and Syria, to the Mediterranean in Lebanon, MbS is out to undermine Iranian power, so that the Sunni Saudis maintain an upper hand over the Shite Iran in the Islamic world.

Saudi Vision 2030 which aims at broadening from an oil based economy also plays a huge role in the prince opting for an image makeover for his kingdom. To achieve its ambitions, Riyadh would need large investments from America and while the corporates often push the social realities such as the kingdom being a corrupt, ruthless and authoritarian monarchy, the American people are unlikely to give their sanction unless the Saudi society at least appears to care about human rights.

Winning American support to take on Iran means manipulating the deal for Palestinians and MbS seems happy to do it. Even though officially little is forthcoming when confirmations are sought on the specifics of his plan, one indisputable step in the rapprochement with Israel has recently taken flight, curiously on Indian wings.

MbS’ peace plan and India

Air India’s flight AI 139 flew through the Arabian air space to Tel Aviv and charted the course of history. The Indian airline has become the first carrier to navigate the Saudi skies and reach Muslim world’s arch enemy — Israel.

Every year, 60,000 Israelis travel to India, a lucrative destination for businessmen and popular with young soldiers looking for a break from incessant conflict and the constant need to be on guard. The traffic from India grew too as nearly the same number of Indians visited Israel last year. New Delhi and Tel Aviv have had diplomatic ties for a quarter of a century but the visit of Narendra Modi in 2017 became the first ever by an Indian premier, tilting India’s policy in Israel’s favour. AI 139’s journey on 22 March is wrapped in the harmless expansion of bilateral business even though the carrier was lifting the burden of possible peace between the Arabs and the Jews.

It is the first visible and undeniable move confirming Saudi intentions towards Israel and has far reaching regional and global consequences. Reports that the Saudis, along with the UAE, were keen on opening up to Israel in order to take on Iran started appearing mid last year, around the same time as the Indian PM walked barefoot on the shores of the Mediterranean, emphatically gesticulating supposedly significant matters to his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. During the visit, Modi and Netanyahu announced a direct flight between the two countries but at that stage, it wasn’t revealed it would fly through Saudi Arabia.

The quiet diplomacy between India, Israel and Saudi Arabia has done what was once unthinkable between the strongest Sunni monarchy and the Jewish state.

India is a clever choice to conduct the affair subtly for several reasons. Right at the top of it is it’s friendliness with all the warring sides. Saudis, Iranians, Israelis, and the Palestinians enjoy a trusting relationship with New Delhi. Second, even though the ruling dispensation in India is displaying cosiness with the US and its allies, it has stuck to its principled stand on Palestine. Seven months after Israel, PM Modi stopped by in Palestine to assuage Palestinian concerns. He reaffirmed India’s support for the two-state solution [though without enumerating if the borders must be pre-1967].

Iran could create trouble for India, but there is no sign of it just yet.

Syed Mohamad Marandi, a professor at the Tehran University and a frequent face on TV channels presenting Iran’s views, says that Iran and India’s ties have solid foundations and an Indian airline using Saudi air space to fly to Tel Aviv won’t make a dent in the understanding between the two countries. Having said so, he emphasised how Iran prefers India to walk the path of Mahatma Gandhi.

“India is still associated with Gandhi and it might lose its soft power if it changes its course,” said Marandi via encrypted communications from Iran. In a 30-minute conversation, he repeated the name of Gandhi 15 times evidently to caution the Indian policy makers from trying too many changes and asserting themselves as policy makers in a troubled West Asia. Strolling away from the set path of non-alignment, according to Marandi, will have a cost in the longer term if not immediately.

Nonetheless, he worded his warning cautiously. Marandi did not seem to think the Indian act of defiance to the resistance to Israel and displaying bonhomie towards the Saudis and the Jewish will invite Iranian anger just yet. India, after all, is one of the biggest buyers of Iranian oil in the world.

For now, it seems Air India can fearlessly spread its wings above a region torn apart by war and riddled with rivalries but as India expresses a desire to play a political role in the region, even if under the cover of trade, it must seek concessions from the Saudis. Apart from minor cooperation on intelligence, Delhi can assert itself and ask the Saudis to clean up the jihadi mess in South Asia by stopping the inflow of extremist literature in the region.

The Prince apparently agrees that the task to spread of the word of god [for him it should mean through a Wahhabi lens] has been accomplished and hence there is no need to carry on the Saudi project of spreading Wahhabism.

India must exhort the prince to end financial support to unsavory organisations and exercise leverage on Pakistan to stop sheltering Jihadis of all hues.

In a welcome move for the Germans, in August 2016, the Saudis shut down a madrassa in Bonn called the King Fahd Academy. It was investigated for links with Al Qaeda and upon German insistence the Saudis cut off the funding to the school.

Will the benevolent prince pay such favours to South Asia? Saudi patrons have rampantly funded terror groups disguising as charity organisations in Pakistan and paid for the extremist madrassas churning out terrorists in the region. MbS calls it the past, when the Americans and the Saudis fought Russia’s communism in Afghanistan by using Pakistan’s territory to manufacture jihadi fighters. The Russians have left long ago, but terrorism has stayed. Should not the prince expand his vision of peace to South Asia?

After the cameras turn away, the prince needs to show the world more than a superficial change at home and prove his mettle in the region. So far, Mohammad bin Salman’s reported peace plan for the Palestinians is far from palatable. The man hasn’t yet uttered a word on what he intends on doing to make up for the chaos unleashed in South Asia.

If Yemen is the test of his abilities, the world must lessen its expectations.

A core challenge facing the advancement of a regional financial safety net in recent years has been an absence of leadership. Without such clear regional leadership, the future advancement of such a safety net — Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) – would be modest at best.

By Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit*

After the Asian financial crisis, East Asia witnessed regional financial cooperation that has never seen before. The countries’ realisation of their economic vulnerabilities coupled with a strong aversion towards International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s assistance during the crisis tempted the policymakers to seek regional “self-help” mechanisms.

The result was the ASEAN+3 financial cooperation process set up in 2000, which established regional financial governance architectures including the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM). Its purpose is to provide short-term liquidity assistance through a network of currency swaps in case of balance-of-payments difficulties.

CMIM: Arrested Development

The CMIM has since evolved. For example, the size of the fund was raised to US$240 billion in 2014. Its IMF de-linked portion, which allows the members to borrow up to a certain percentage of its maximum drawing amount without being put under an IMF programme, increased to 30 percent in 2014.

Moreover, the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) — CMIM’s surveillance arm — was transformed into an international organisation in 2014. However, its continued development seemed to have been arrested. Neither the size nor the de-linked portion has been expanded since 2014. With its current size of $240 billion, the entity can at best assist a few small-to-medium economies in crisis times.

The current IMF de-linked portion requires a member desiring to draw on more than 30 percent of its maximum borrowing amount to sign onto IMF’s structural assistance programmes. This could jeopardise CMIM’s objective of disbursing financial support in a timely fashion because getting the Fund’s agreement may take time.

Furthermore, critics worry that AMRO and its activities may not be able to completely break free from international politics. This is mainly because AMRO’s activities are overseen by the Executive Level Decision-Making Body (ELDMB) comprising ASEAN+3 deputy finance ministries and deputy central bank governors.

Lack of Leadership?

The little progress in recent years has partly been caused by a lack of leadership in the ASEAN+3 financial cooperation process. Leadership is needed to realise international collaboration. Certain states must take a lead in not only championing ideas but also persuading or pressuring the others to get on board. Regarding financial regionalism, the key question is: “Which ASEAN+3 parties would provide leadership?”

The three possible scenarios below are derived from the CMIM weighted voting system. Illustratively, CMIM decisions on executive issues (e.g. financial support disbursement) are governed by a two-thirds supermajority voting system. As far as voting powers are concerned, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), and the ten ASEAN nations hold equal votes of 28.41. Thus, leadership by them is explored.

Also, South Korea’s leadership is scrutinised because despite having 14.77 votes, the state possesses power to cast a determining vote when China, Japan, and ASEAN vote on lending decisions differently. For instance, suppose the ten ASEAN countries and China (or Japan) vote to activate lending while Japan (or China) votes against it. Their combined votes constitute only 56.82 (28.41+28.41), which is under the two-thirds supermajority threshold.

To pass this threshold, these states must court Seoul to vote in their favour. Under these circumstances, South Korea becomes a veto power in effect.

Three Scenarios of Leadership

By China-Japan

The first scenario suggests a China-Japan co-leadership. This is more likely than leadership provided by either Beijing or Tokyo due to the power rivalry between them. Also, both countries are likely to have an incentive to co-lead as they are potential lenders and are the biggest CMIM contributors.

Nevertheless, such scenario is unlikely as Beijing and Tokyo are still playing their contestation game. Instead of working together to beef up CMIM, both have established their own separate bilateral currency swap networks within the region via the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Japan respectively. Therefore, the extent to which Beijing and Tokyo could move beyond their rivalry to jointly lead ASEAN+3 process remains to be seen.

By South Korea

Another scenario is South Korean leadership. Compared to China and Japan, proposals tabled by Seoul is likely to be more well-received by ASEAN participants. It is because unlike the former, South Korea is perceived as a neutral actor with no geopolitical aspirations. Concerning CMIM, the state has never attempted to build up its own bilateral currency arrangement networks which could undermine the mechanism’s development. However, the chances of Beijing and Tokyo accepting Seoul’s leadership are less clear.

By Southeast Asia

Alternatively, Southeast Asian nations might provide leadership. Despite being lesser powers when compared to their Northeast Asian peers, these states showed that they could bargain as a bloc to increase their clout at several international fora such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

However, this leadership faces certain obstacles. For example, ASEAN parties are potential CMIM borrowers. Such position might erode their influence over the future development of CMIM vis-a-vis their Northeast Asian neighbours which are the likely lenders to this scheme.

In sum, a core challenge facing the advancement of a regional financial safety net in recent years has been leadership, or the lack of it. However, paths for ASEAN+3 stakeholders to play a leading role are confronted with challenges. While Beijing and Tokyo are less likely to jointly lead, the probability of South Korea and ASEAN providing leadership is doubtful. With such a leadership void, the future advancement of CMIM can at best be modest.

*Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit is Deputy Head & Assistant Professor at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

(RFE/RL) — The European Union has called on Hungary to help defend the bloc’s values after right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed a landslide victory in the country’s general elections, setting him up for a third consecutive term.

“The EU is a union of democracies and values,” European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said on April 9, adding that the defense of these values was a “common duty of all member states, without exception.”

Brussels has repeatedly clashed with Orban over his anti-immigration policies and rejection of the EU’s refugee-resettlement program, as well as his clampdown on civil-society groups.

Schinas said commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will write to Orban later in the day to congratulate him on his “clear victory” and that he would call him on April 10 to discuss “issues of common interest.”

With most of the ballots counted, his Fidesz party won almost half of the vote, according to election authorities. Turnout was higher than expected, at a near-record 69.3 percent.

The preliminary results show Fidesz will get the 133 seats in the 199-seat parliament needed for a two-thirds majority, allowing it to push through constitutional changes.

The party won two-thirds victories at both previous elections.

The radical nationalist Jobbik party was in second place with 20 percent of the vote, while a Socialist-led coalition took 12.2 percent. Leaders of the two parties resigned in light of the result.

“Dear friends, there’s a big battle behind us, we secured a historic victory — we got a chance, we created a chance for us to defend Hungary,” Orban told supporters late on April 8 after preliminary results were released.

Polish officials welcomed his election victory, with Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski, who is Warsaw’s envoy to the EU, calling it a confirmation of Central Europe’s “emancipation policy.”

Both the Polish and Hungarian governments share similar visions that involve keeping out migrants and handing over fewer powers to the EU.

A German government spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Orban and called for cooperation despite differences.

“It is quite obvious that there are also controversial issues in our cooperation, the different stances in migration policy come to mind,” Steffen Seibert told reporters.

Orban, who is 56 and also served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.

Over the past years, his administration has presided over strong economic growth, while expanding control over the media and, through allies in the business sector, gaining influence over the banking, energy, construction, and tourism sectors.

Some critics also accuse Orban of being too accommodating to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On April 9, Fidesz parliamentary spokesman Janos Halasz said that one of the first laws to be passed by the new parliament could be legislation that would make it harder for nongovernmental organizations working with migrants and asylum seekers to continue their activities in Hungary

The proposed legislation, dubbed Stop Soros by the government before the elections, is part of Orban’s campaign targeting U.S.-Hungarian billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom he accuses of meddling in Hungarian politics and leading the liberal opposition.

Speakers at the late Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s tribute, organised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation at Constitution Hill, have described her as a selfless struggle hero.

Madikizela-Mandela passed away on Monday, 2 April at Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, after a long illness, that saw her being in and out of hospital since the start of the year.

Madikizela-Mandela was one of many liberation activists who were arrested and incarcerated at the Constitution Hill prison complex during apartheid.

Former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told mourners on Monday that Mam’ Winnie understood the struggle for the poor.

“She lived for others. She lived a selfless life,” said Manuel, adding that Madikizela-Mandela was a unifying force in adversity.

Public Service and Administration Minister Ayanda Dlodlo said Mam’ Winnie was brave and she embraced the role of protecting the poor. “We learnt a lot about the struggle from Mama.”

Energy Minister Jeff Radebe told mourners that he had a special relationship with Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as she was a beacon of hope. The Minister said the 10-day mourning period declared by President Ramaphosa was an appropriate gesture for a giant of the struggle.

Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said the passing of Mama Madikizela-Mandela was not just a loss to the Mandela family but to the whole country.

“We have lost a brave leader, a loving mother and a grandmother,” he said.

Zondo said Madikizela-Mandela kept the struggle going during the darkest times.

“She made sure that apartheid was defeated. She spoke her mind,” he said, highlighting the role Madikizela-Mandela played in the community.

Zondo used the occasion to urge people to play their role in fighting corruption. “The Judiciary will continue to play its role. We must all play our role,” he said.

Struggling to contain her emotions, Ndileka Mandela told mourners that the passing of Mama took them by surprise. She thanked all South Africans and people from all over the world for supporting the family.

“We want her to be buried in dignity,” she said.

Graca Machel, the wife of former President Mandela, said it was early days and that they were “processing the pain”.

Dignitaries, who attended the service, included musician Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Madiba’s long-time friend George Bizos, among others.

The memorial service honouring the life and times of Mam’ Winnie will take place at Orlando Stadium on Wednesday and the funeral service will be held at the same venue on Saturday

US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis welcomed the emir of Qatar to the Pentagon Monday for a meeting to reaffirm the strategic security partnership between the U.S. and Qatar.

In a statement summarizing the meeting, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said Mattis and Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani discussed mutual security interests, including the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

“They also discussed the Gulf Cooperation Council and the importance of de-escalating tensions so all U.S. partners in the region can work together to ensure regional security and stability,” White said.

Both affirmed their shared commitment to continued security cooperation, she added.

By Air Force Tech. Sgt. Chuck Broadway

Mining the advantages of artificial intelligence is in the best interest of national security, a senior Pentagon official said Monday at the New America Future of War Conference.

Michael D. Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, spoke about the involvement in artificial intelligence in the future of warfare.

The conference was part of the Future of War project between New America and Arizona State University, which brought together leaders from the Defense Department, academia, journalism and private industry to explore issues concerning international security and defense.

While conventional warfare remains an integral part of national defense, Griffin said, there is room to expand defense strategy, and adding artificial intelligence to that strategy is vital.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that there are many dimensions of national security,” he said. “We have to add a new one without losing any others. This is a discipline that we have to add on.”

Staying Ahead of Adversaries

Griffin said that given the desires of different nations to prevail over others, cyberattacks and artificial intelligence will naturally occur as nations seek for new ways to conquer their adversaries. He said the United States must stay ahead of its adversaries in the newly developed realm of artificial intelligence.

“We don’t have a mature adult in front of us in [artificial intelligence]; we have an infant,” he said. “But we can conclude that there might be some real advantages, and we can’t let others be the only one to mine those advantages.”

According to information outlined in the National Defense Strategy, Griffin said, he feels the United States can modernize in more than 10 areas of national security, including artificial intelligence, to remain prepared for the future of war in the cyber realm.

“In an advanced society, the number of different ways to be vulnerable increases greatly,” he said. “Artificial intelligence and cyber and some of these newer realms offer possibilities to our adversaries to do that. We must see to it that we cannot be surprised.”

By James Bovard*

Someone once defined metaphysics as searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there. For the last 35 years in Washington, I have been searching for rational government policies. And, like that black cat, I’m starting to doubt that it is actually there.

But what I find on a regular basis is the notion that “Washington knows best.” The arrogance of policymakers is stunning – and it continues regardless of how many debacles they uncork.

Federal policies are far more irrational, wasteful, and oppressive than they are usually portrayed. Leviathan has been greatly aided by a mainstream media that often utterly fails to understand the programs or interventions – and is accustomed to being spoonfed by politicians and government flacks.

I had been sniping in DC at federal agencies for a couple years before the day I picked up my Washington Post one morning in early 1983 and saw a banner headline announcing that the feds were planning to shut down 78 million acres of farmland that year.

Here was a mystery – because everyone knew that Ronald Reagan was a champion of free enterprise. I couldn’t help suspecting that there was a story here.

Now, keep in mind – federal farm programs had started 50 years before – in response to market failure. FDR’s Brain trust decided that there was something intrinsic in markets for crops that prevented them from working. FDR’s Agriculture Secretary said that a farm dictator was needed to fix the problem. The primary evidence that markets had failed was that crop prices were not as high as politicians thought they should be. So the feds intervened to fix it. And since it worked out well for politicians, they kept fixing it every year for the next half century.

By early 1983, farm programs were a total trainwreck. In 1981, Congress passed a farm bill to govern agriculture for the next four years. Five year plans worked out fine for Stalin, so why not a four year plan to control US farmers?

But Congress got a few details wrong. Congress expected inflation to keep roaring along so price supports for major crops rose each year. The Federal Reserve hit the brakes on the money supply and inflation slowed faster than almost anybody but Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell expected.

By late 1982, the United States had huge grain surpluses and exports were plummeting because federal price supports made American crops uncompetitive on world markets. Farmers could earn more by dumping their harvest on USDA instead of selling it in the marketplace. Farm program costs quickly doubled and USDA was stuck with the largest government-owned crop surpluses in history.

So the Reagan administration launched the Payment in Kind program to counteract the boneheaded signals sent by other farm programs. PIK gave farmers $25 billion worth of surplus crops to sway them to idle their land – in addition to $50 billion in other handouts that year. [Subsidies converted to current $s] The 78 million acres that were shut down was more than double the entire land mass of Alabama – or the entire states of Ohio, Indiana, and much of Illinois.

The previous year, I had read several good books on the history and follies of agricultural policy – including one by Bill Peterson, a friend of mine who I’m happy to see was honored by a special panel at AERC. I started writing about this farm shutdown and eventually snagged an assignment from Readers Digest – which meant that I no longer had to go to the pawn shop to pay rent. But that’s another story.

Politicians thought PIK was great because farmers were the salt of the earth and bombarding them with handouts was like subsidizing American virtue. But almost nobody in DC cared about the collateral damage this program inflicted. Shutting down all that farmland wiped out a quarter million jobs for farm laborers and farm-related businesses at a time when the nation was struggling to recover from the worst recession since World War Two. Across the Midwest, hundreds of fertilizer, farm-equipment, and seed dealers had to close shop because PIK cut their sales by up to 50 percent. And the cutback in harvests – combined with a drought that Washington failed to forecast – spurred a spike in feedgrain prices that bankrupted vast numbers of unsubsidized poultry, cattle, and pork producers.

But USDA Secretary Block proclaimed PIK “the most successful farm program in history.” Since I was writing a piece for a large circulation magazine, his staff grudgingly allowed me to interview him. .

Block was a West Point graduate and a successful hog farmer who once described himself as “a country boy on loan to the Department of Agriculture.” I thought of telling him I was just a “country boy on loan to Reader’s Digest” but I kept my mouth shut.

Block was affable and stayed friendly despite my edgy questions. When I pushed Block on why the feds were shutting down so many acres, Block stressed the need “to avoid starving farmers off the land.” But farmers were worth ten times more than other Americans, and that didn’t explain why many farmers were paid triple by the feds for not planting, compared to what they could have harvested from a crop.

Block said PIK was necessary because the “federal government must move toward a more market-oriented agricultural policy.” I asked then how come Reagan signed that bill in late 1982 boosting crop price supports even higher, thereby making farmers more dependent on the government?

Block was puzzled and he denied that any such law had been passed. His portly press secretary sitting by his right hand squirmed as if someone had just broken wind, leaned towards Block, and said softly: “I think he is referring to the provisions in last September’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.” Block shrugged. I paused, expecting an answer – and then realized that I might not hear anything until the cows come home.

The contradictions in the policy never seemed to register with Block. Maybe that was why he was nominated for the job.

PIK didn’t make a lick of sense but it became the prototype for the rest of the 1980s. USDA kept paying farmers to idle more than 70 million acres – as federal policymaker continued to have one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. It was easier for politicians to shut down American agriculture than to untangle self-defeating federal farm policies. There were endless surpluses of subsidized crops because politicians decided that market-clearing prices were a luxury that America could not afford – at least an election time.

Between the start of the Reagan administration and 1995, consumers and taxpayers have been forced to pay more than $370 billion for handouts for farmers. For the same amount of money, the federal government could have bought all the farmland in 41 states.

Obviously, something had to change. So in 1996, the Republican Congress pass the Freedom to Farm Act – a law that was loudly hailed by conservative Washington think tanks and some conservative editorial pages. That bill was very popular with reformers because it ended subsidies. Or so it said. Actually, it replaced old-fashioned handouts with “market transition payments.” The Freedom to Farm act actually tripled subsidies compared to what farmers would have received under prior law. Wheat farmers got 50 times more in subsidies for their 1996 crop than they would have received if Congress had merely extended existing farm programs. “Market transition payments” were popular with farmers, so Congress extended them and eventually dropped any pretense of ending subsidies.

Congress is now working on a new farm bill to cover the next four years handouts. The odds of budgetary decency breaking out are slim and none – and “Slim just left town,” as Dan Rather liked to say. But the perennial failures of farm programs remain one of the starkest reminders of why Washington’s power and spending needs to be radically slashed across the board.

About the author:
*James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

The US dollar is so important in today’s economy for three main reasons: the huge amount of petrodollars; the use of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the decision taken by US President Nixon in 1971 to end the dollar convertibility into gold.

The US currency is still a large part of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the IMF’s “paper money”.

A share ranging between 41% and 46% depending on the periods.

Petrodollarsemerged when Henry Kissinger dealt with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, after “Black September” in Jordan.

The agreement was simple. Saudi Arabia had to accept only dollars as payments for the oil it sold, but was forced to invest that huge amount of US currency only in the US financial channels while, in return, the United States placed Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC neighbouring countries under its own military protection.

Hence the turning of the dollar into a world currency, considering the importance and extent of the oil market. Not to mention that this large amount of dollars circulating in the world definitely marginalized gold and later convinced the FED that the demand for dollars in the world washuge and unstoppable.

An unlimited amount of liquidity that kept various US industrial sectors alive but, above all, guaranteed huge financial markets such as the derivatives – markets based on the structural surplus of US liquidity.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States always thought about world’s hegemony and, above all, imagined to oppose the already active Eurasian union between China, Iran and Russia – the worst nightmare for US decision-makers – both at military and financial levels.

As early as those years, following Brzezinsky’s policy line, the US analysts warned against the unification of Eurasia – to be absolutely prevented – and against the subsequent reunification of Eurasia with the Eurasian peninsula, to be avoided even with a war.

At that time, the three aforementioned Statesstill conducted their business in dollars: China wanted to keep on becoming the “world factory”; Russia had run out of steam and wasnear breaking point; Iran had to inevitably adapt to the rest of Sunni OPEC.

With Putin’s rise to power, Russia’s de-dollarization began immediately.

The share of dollar reserves declinedyear after year, while Putin proposed new oil contracts.

Since last year, for example, dollars cannot be used in ports.

In the case of Iran, the sanction regime – in particular – has favoured the discovery of means other than the dollar for international settlements.

The operations and signs of the de-dollarization continued.

The war in Iraq against Saddam Hussein was also a fight against the Rais who wanted to start selling his oil barrels in euros, while the war in Afghanistan wasviewed by China as part of the ongoing overall encirclement of its territory.

Hence the importance of the Belt and Road Initiative. Also the war in Afghanistan was an attempt to stop the Eurasian project of economic and commercial (as well as political) union between Russia, Iran and China.

As further sanction, the United States has removed Iran from the SWIFT network, the well-known world interbank transfer system, which is also a private company.

Iran, however, has immediately joined the Chinese CIPS, a recent network, similar to SWIFT, with which it is already fully connected.

Basically China’s idea is to create an international currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights and freely expendable on world markets, in lieu of the US dollar, so as to avoid “the dangerous fluctuations stemming from the US currency and the uncertainties on its real value “- just to quote the Governor of the Chinese central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, who will soon be replaced by Yi Gang.

In the meantime, Russia and China are acquiring significant amounts of gold.

In recent years China has bought gold to the tune of at least 1842.6 tons, but the international index could be distorted, as many transactions on the Shanghai Gold Exchange are Over the Counter (OTC) and hence are not reported.

Again according to official data, so far Russia is supposed to have reached 1857.7 tons.

Both countries have so far bought 10% of the gold available in the world.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has already accepted payments in yuan for the oil sold to China, which is its largest customer. This is a turning point. If Saudi Arabia gives in, sooner or later all OPEC countries will follow suit.

In many cases, India and Russia have already traded with Iran by accepting oil in exchange for primary goods and commodities.

China has also opened a credit line with Iran amounting to as many as 10 billion euros, with a view to gettingaround sanctions.

It is also assumed that North Korea uses cryptocurrencies to buy oil from China.

As devastated as its economy is, Venezuela no longer sells its oil in dollars – and it is worth recalling it can boast the largest world reserves known to date.

Furthermore, China will buy gas and oil from Russia in yuan, with Russia being able to convert yuan into gold directly on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.

Keynes’ “tribal residue” takes its revenge.

So far the agreements for trade in their respective currencies were signed between China and Kazakhstan (on December 14, 2014),between China and South Africa (on April 10, 2015) and between Russia and India (on May 26, 2015) while, at the end of November 2015, the Russian central bank included the yuan into the list of currencies that can be accepted as reserves. On November 3, 2016 an agreement was signed between Turkey and Russia for the exchange of their currencies and in October 2017 a similar agreement was reached between Turkey and Iran.

For financial institutions, the de-dollarization continued with the establishment of the BRICS Fund worth 100 billion dollars (on July 16, 2014) and with the establishment – on January 16, 2016 – of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), made up of 57 member countries, including Italy, which automatically caused the US anger.

In May 2015 the Russian-Chinese Investment Bank was created, followed in July 2015 by the opening of the new bank for the development of BRICS, based in Shanghai. In November 2015, however, Iran approved the establishment of a bank together with Russia.

It is worth underlining that in April 2015 the Russian national credit card system was opened, dealing also with small currency transfers.

It is also worth recalling the Duma law on de-offshorization of November 18, 2014, i.e. the legislation obliging the Russian companiesresident abroad to pay taxes directly to the Russian Treasury.

The above mentioned Chinese CIPS started operating in October 2015, while in March 2017 Russia implemented a system similar to SWIFT (interacting with the Chinese one).

The issue is complex because with fracking, the United States has become the first oil producer – hence there is less need to keep the huge amount of petrodollars. This happens while a natural oil and gas shale deposit has just been discovered, off the coast of Bahrain, with reserves of 80 billion oil barrels and 4 trillion cubic meters of gas.

The United States does no longer buy oil and gas because it does not need them, but China is increasingly the best global buyer.

Apart from the stability of gas and oil prices, which should be guaranteed in the coming years, China and its allies should be ever more able to select between the supply and, certainly, between the countries which accept the non-oil bilateral exchange with China and payments in yuan or gold.

Still today, the US GDP accounts for 22% of world’s GDP, while 80% of international payments are made in dollars.

Hence the United States receives goods from abroad always at comparatively very low prices, while the massive demand for dollars from the rest of the world allows to refinance the US public debt at very low costs.

This is the economic and political core of the issue.

In fact, the Russian government held a specific meeting on de-dollarization in spring 2014.

This is another fact to be highlighted. It is a political operation that appears to be a financial one, often in contrast with the “volatility” of current markets, but its core is strategic and geopolitical.

In theory, the de-dollarization regards three specific issues: payments, the real economy issue and ultimately the financial issue, namely the financial contracts denominated in dollars.

In the first case, China will tend to eliminate every transaction denominated in US dollars by third countries and to removesettlement mechanisms involving the dollar and operating in its neighbouring areas.

In the second case, the dollar transactions will be – and are already – largely prohibited for individuals.

In the third case, the share of foreign contracts denominated in yuan is now equal to 40% and strong acceleration will be recorded in 2018.

The oil futures denominated in yuan are now booming. The first attempt was made in 1993, when China opened its stock exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai.

China itself closed operations two years later, due to market instability and to the yuan weakness.

Two other things have changed since then: in 2016 the yuan was admitted as a currency making up the IMF Special Drawing Rights and in 2017 China overtook the United States as the world’s largest oil importer.

Hence, thanks to the oil futures denominated in yuan, China is reducing its dependence on the dollar and, in the meantime, it is supporting its oil imports, as well as promoting the use of the yuan globally and expanding its presence in the world.

Russia has done the same.

Therefore the United States is about to be ousted as world’s currency due to its continuous series of wars and military failures (former President Cossiga always told me: “The United States is always on the warpath and up in arms, but then it is not able to get out of it”) and, like everyone else, it shall pay for its public debt, which is huge and will be ever more its problem, not ours.

Here it is worth recalling what the US Treasury Secretary,John Connally, said to his European counterparts during a meeting in 1971: “The dollar is our currency, but your problem”.

Obviously, in relation to all these issues which also concern primarily the euro, the European Union is silent and sleepy.

About the author:
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

By Michael Lelyveld

China is claiming significant progress in its battle against smog despite an increase in coal consumption for the first time in four years.

In an upbeat assessment on March 17, the official Xinhua news agency reported a sharp drop in sales of the ubiquitous face masks that city dwellers have worn to keep deadly small particles known as PM2.5 out of their lungs.

According to the report, the bad news for mask makers is due to good news for air quality, “as some Chinese cities enjoyed the clearest winter sky in five years thanks to sustained pollution control efforts.”

In its broad survey of 338 cities, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) found that average PM2.5 density in 2017 fell 6.5 percent from a year earlier to 43 micrograms per cubic meter.

The decline exceeded the six-percent decrease in PM2.5 concentrations that the MEP reported for 2016.

Li Ganjie, now minister of ecological environment in the reorganized government, noted even lower readings in January of 34 micrograms per cubic meter in Beijing, the best since 2013.

Xinhua also cited positive findings by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, highlighted by The New York Times. In a recent opinion piece, institute director Michael Greenstone concluded that “China is winning” its war on pollution “at (a) record pace.”

The reports of progress in the past year may be all the more remarkable in light of government economic and energy indicators associated with smog, nearly all of which rose at faster rates in 2017.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s gross domestic product climbed 6.9 percent, overshooting the government’s 6.5-percent target and accelerating from a year earlier for the first time since 2010.

Total energy consumption rose 2.9 percent, more than double the 1.4-percent increase reported for 2016.

Coal consumption edged up 0.4 percent in 2017, compared with a year-earlier drop of 4.7 percent.

Consumption of crude oil jumped 5.2 percent, compared with a 1.3-percent increase in 2016, as estimated by S&P Global Platts energy news.

Meanwhile, use of natural gas soared 15 percent, slightly less than the 17.4-percent gain in 2016 due to shortages of the cleaner-burning fuel. The increase in gas had been expected to reduce coal burning, but consumption of both fuels rose last year.

If the official figures are correct, China may have pulled off an unlikely feat last year by cutting smog while expanding the economy and energy consumption at a faster rate at the same time.

A different view

But a Greenpeace East Asia report in January offered a different view of last year’s events.

The environmental watchdog found vastly uneven results among cities and provinces that reported data at the time of the study.

Beijing, Tianjin and 26 nearby cities made an impressive 33.1-percent improvement in PM2.5 levels late last year as a result of a winter “action plan.”

But the more distant provinces of Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Guangdong suffered PM2.5 increases ranging from 4 percent to 10.4 percent in 2017, Greenpeace said.

In the fourth quarter, PM2.5 readings plunged by a dramatic 53.8 percent in Beijing alone.

But during the first three quarters of last year, average PM2.5 rose 6 percent from a year earlier in Beijing and selected cities, while in industrialized Hebei and Shanxi provinces, concentrations climbed 13 percent and 23 percent respectively, the study said.

The numbers suggest that the government pushed stimulus policies to boost the economy before this year’s key political meetings.

At the same time, it ordered steel production cutbacks and winter coal bans for heating in 28 northern cities as part of an all-out effort to clear the skies in Beijing.

The campaign appears to have shifted coal-burning and smog-causing production to parts of the country where air quality was a lower political priority.

Despite the winter restrictions on production in the northern region, China’s overall output of crude steel jumped 5.7 percent last year after slow growth of 1.2 percent in 2016.

Even in the 28 northern cities, the anti-smog push was only partially successful as gas shortages and unfinished distribution projects forced the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to allow coal-fired heating to resume in December after widespread complaints.

Last year, China’s coal production rose 3.2 percent, reversing a 9.4-percent decline in 2016.

Although the 338-city survey shows progress in lowering PM2.5 concentrations, the average levels remain 72 percent higher than guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

Still, the survey suggests that China’s smog-control efforts have been working. The government credits tougher inspections and environmental enforcement.

At a press conference during China’s recent legislative sessions, Minister Li said that more than 20,000 individuals had been “held accountable” for environmental infractions in the past two years.

Full of tricks

Among the most serious violations, inspectors in January found that officials in Jiangxi and Henan provinces and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region had used mist cannons to spray air pollution monitoring sensors and report lower readings.

The falsification may shake confidence in some provincial air quality data, although the full extent of the fraud is unclear.

On March 30, Ministry of Ecology and Environment spokesman Liu Youbin said inspectors found the water spray trick was used on nine monitoring stations in seven cities located in six provincial-level regions.

An undisclosed number of officials were dismissed or demoted for the falsification while others received warnings, the official English-language China Daily said.

But stricter enforcement of pollution controls at coal- fired power plants could help to explain how China reduced smog despite higher coal consumption.

“Technical measures taken on the stacks of thermal power plants and other industrial plants can significantly reduce pollutant emissions, and this pollution can decline as coal use rises,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at National University of Singapore.

Another explanation is more favorable weather conditions, which are beyond the government’s ability to control.

“Weather in the form of strong northerly winds can make a great difference by dispersing the pollution rapidly,” said Andrews-Speed by email.

In its study, Greenpeace said the fourth-quarter decline in PM2.5 among the 28 northern cities was due to favorable weather and the anti-pollution action plan “in roughly equal parts.”

A heavy smog attack late last month served as a reminder that the wind can also cause severe problems.

On March 28, Beijing monitors reported PM2.5 levels up to 193 micrograms per cubic meter, prompting an orange alert, the second-highest level of warning.

Officials blamed wind-blown dust from Mongolia for spreading smog over a wide area.

Although sandstorms were cited, environmental officials said that heavy industry also played a part as the winter cutbacks on production ended.

The National Joint Research Center on Air Pollution Causes and Control said that “many of the companies whose production was restricted have resumed normal operations, resulting in an obvious increase in air pollutants from industrial sources,” China Daily reported.

Andrews-Speed said that the differing viewpoints of Greenpeace and the government on the PM2.5 data may both be valid.

“Xinhua takes a national average, which has declined,” he said. “Greenpeace identifies a few regions where it has gotten worse.”

But the unpredictable contribution of weather conditions to last year’s positive results may raise concerns that the improvement will not be repeatable if China continues to increase coal consumption in 2018.

In the first two months of this year, coal production rose 5.7 percent, according to NBS data, outpacing the 2017 growth rate and suggesting continued robust demand.

Thermal power production through February was also up 9.8 percent, more than double the growth rate of 2017.

The rising rates may be a sign that the government believes that China can “have it all” — high economic growth and production with blue skies and pollution control.

By Dr. Theodore Karasik*

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has concluded his two-day testimony in front of the US Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, leaving a bad taste in all our mouths. Zuckerberg, expertly prepared for his testimony, illustrated that Facebook is an intelligence haul for all types of foreign state actors, non-state actors and illicit crime without admitting the fact. Intelligence appears to be a key word in this episode.

The hearings are focusing on Facebook, its advertising policy, its blocking policy, and the scandal over the Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Under questioning, Zuckerberg said Facebook users have “complete control” of the majority of their data. Selling data on 87 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica in 2015 was outrageous, illegal and a violation of privacy rights — it was also totally lacking in common sense and intelligence.

Russia is accused of opening fake accounts with platforms including Facebook to manipulate opinions ahead of the 2016 election. Robert Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of 13 Russians accused of election interference mentions Facebook’s role. The Facebook CEO claimed the social media platform is constantly battling “people in Russia whose job is to try to exploit our system… This is an arms race.” Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook cannot guarantee its users their privacy or prevent the appearance of fake news or misleading ads. That’s not smart, as Zuckerberg vows support for “affirmative consent” from Facebook users.

Most Facebook users are intelligent enough to see how their data is being used, as the company’s algorithm picks up likes and dislikes as well as other clicks on the social media platform. This awareness by users appeared before the 2016 US presidential campaign. Corporate attempts to improve the Facebook experience by adding other features to draw out more background on individuals became a regular feature. No wonder potential employers and criminals examine a user’s Facebook page for nuggets of information.

Millions of Facebook users closed their accounts when the news of the selling of personal data to Cambridge Analytica broke. Yet some have returned because, in today’s age, communication and social networks are an important part of being interconnected with the world and family and friends.

Intelligence gathering on Facebook is not new. In 2012, studies showed that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a host of other social networking platforms were increasingly viewed by intelligence agencies as invaluable channels of information acquisition. But social media is not solely an intelligence gathering tool, as it is also used for propaganda purposes, including the creation of fake identities in support of covert operations. Moreover, social networking can be manipulated to do three things: Reflect opinion trends and channel mass political action; provide actionable tactical intelligence; and enable highly effective — yet highly controversial — security operations against targeted groups.

The point is that the social media sphere is still in its embryonic state. The advent of Facebook and other platforms without self-regulation illustrates a naivety about how the world really works. Regulations on advertising may help. The Honest Ads Act in Congress would require companies like Facebook to keep a public file of all ads bought on their platform by groups spending more than $500, as well as track when the advertisements appeared and how many people saw them. The proposed rule would also require online platforms to “make reasonable efforts” to ensure that foreign nationals aren’t buying ads to influence elections. Other regulations may be on their way to limit Facebook.

To be sure, there is a difference between social media intelligence and social media monitoring. There is a vast amount of data being generated by social networks every single day. Many companies monitor the data for information that impacts them; for example the number of mentions or the sentiment toward their brand. Social media monitoring is absolutely essential for brands, big and small. This data is collected from social network sites via a feed known as an application programming interface (called an API for short). By itself, this data doesn’t represent social media intelligence. But, once the data is analyzed for trends, the intelligence collection threshold is crossed. Information is power, as we all know.

Overall, Facebook and Zuckerberg are the tip of the iceberg of a bigger issue of how social media plays a role in users’ lives and how those lives are being manipulated by a host of actors, from Facebook to other actors with hostile intent in cyberspace and in today’s society. In addition, it is imperative that the management of Facebook and other social media platforms fully understand the data that is being collected on the user, where the fine line between social media monitoring and intelligence gathering becomes a gray area. Being alert to your cyber-profile helps protect individuals from Facebook’s steep learning curve and lack of intelligence about how the real world works.

• Dr. Theodore Karasik is a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics in Washington, D.C. 

Despite the panic and hysteria in the media, Aleksandr Golts and Pavel Zolotaryev say, the Russian and American military commands in Syria continue to cooperate to ensure that any attack by one side against Syrian targets will not lead to the loss of life by soldiers of the other country.

Their judgment came in a Current Time television program today hosted by Timur Olevsky (currenttime.tv/a/29159844.html).

Zolotaryev, deputy director of the Moscow Institute of the USA and Canada and a retired major general, says that “American military personnel who constantly coordinate their actions with the Russians just as the Russians do with the Americans on the territory of Syria have taken all measures” so that any American strike will not inflict casualties among Russians.”

Only if the Russian forces confirm that there are no Russian soldiers present at a place the Americans intend to attack will the US forces go ahead, Zolotaryev says. And conversely, only if American forces confirm that there are no US soldiers present at a place the Russians intend to attack will Russian forces go ahead.

The level of cooperation between the two militaries is sufficiently developed because “both sides understand” the importance of doing so given the risks, he continues. Consequently, “here there is no basis for excessive agitation or panic.” But if that were violated at some point, it could mean war.

Golts observes that “if there were an exchange of strikes, this would already be a war.” Olevsky suggested that “all normal people” do not want a war, to which the military observer responds “I very much would like that to be the case” and that any new American action would be as some have been in the past, a demonstration of US power rather than something more.

But a real danger could arise if the Americans seek to destroy the anti-aircraft installations in Syria. “I have no certainty,” he says, “that in such a massive strike, they would distinguish between Russian anti-aircraft installations and Syrian ones.”

Zolotaryev, however, says that the Americans know exactly whose is which and therefore that problem won’t arise because the Russian commanders know that the Americans know and wouldn’t mislead them to create a conflict. If a Russian installation were attacked, Russian forces would respond by attacking the place from which the US attack was launched.

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Progress has been made in the Greece-Macedonia name talks, both countries’ Foreign Ministers said after a meeting in the Macedonian town of Ohrid, but the hardest issues remain to be solved.

Thursday’s talks on the long-standing bilateral name dispute between Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov and his Greek counterpart Nikos Kotzias resulted in progress, but as things move forward, the hardest issues remain to be solved last.

Dimitrov said that the third round of his talks with Kotzias went in open and sincere atmosphere, adding that for the first time they have discussed the time frame of implementation of a possible agreement.

“We talked about all the issues and the differences over the name dispute. On some of these issues there is a progress, as they are ripe, on some there are still differences” Dimitrov told a joint press conference with Kotzias in Ohrid.

“For the first time we talked about the time frame and the steps that need to be done, if a solution is reached and needs to be implemented. This was a conversation without outwitting, with great understanding of the needs of the other,” Dimitrov added.

On his part Kotzias said that the hardest issues are still not overcome.

“As we move closer and solve our problems, fewer topics remain to be solved, however these are the hardest ones” Kotzias said.

He also confirmed that progress has been made, expressing hope that the hardest issues will be overcome as well.

This has been the third round of talks between the two Foreign Ministers in the past month. The two ministers discussed the name issue twice in late March, first at a meeting in Skopje and then in Vienna.

The name dispute centres on Greece’s insistence that use of the word ‘Macedonia’ implies a territorial claim to the northern Greek province of the same name.

As a result of the unresolved dispute, Greece blocked Macedonia’s NATO membership in 2008. It has also blocked the start of Macedonia’s EU accession talks, despite several positive annual reports from the European Commission on the country’s progress.

In the absence of official information from the talks, media outlets in Greece and Macedonia have been speculating that some of the key issues, such as a new composite name for Macedonia with a geographical qualifier, have already been agreed.

The name ‘Upper Macedonia’ is being mentioned as one of the most viable options.

However, speculation has suggested that the key stumbling block remains the scope of the new name’s use.

While Greece says the new compromised name must be put into the Macedonian constitution as an additional guarantee, Macedonia prefers a solution that would apply only for international use.

Apart from the ministerial talks, another parallel meeting took place in Ohrid between the two countries work groups who are tasked to prepare a bilateral friendship agreement.

Dimitrov informed that the groups managed to align a draft document that, among many other things, should address Greece’s fears of Macedonian irredentism towards its own northern province that is also called Macedonia.

Both ministers are set to meet again in Thessaloniki, Greece in May 3 and 4.

By Andrei Lankov

It is widely known that the North Korean regime goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the majority of North Koreans from learning too much about the situation abroad and the lives of people in other countries. Unless they belong to a tiny elite, North Koreans cannot travel overseas freely, cannot read newspapers and magazines from foreign countries, and cannot listen to foreign broadcasts. The Internet, a symbol of our information age, is banned in North Korea as well.

All these restrictions are relatively well known. However, the North Korean regime does not merely isolate North Koreans from the outside world, but also seeks to isolate them from North Korea’s own past. Common North Koreans have virtually no opportunity to learn about North Korean history.

If you visit a North Korean library now, you will not be able to see the official newspapers (such as, say, Rodong Sinmun) published in the 1970s and 1980s – unless you have a proper security clearance, of course. Most books, published before the early 1990s, are also kept under strict control, in the special sections of larger libraries where only trusted people with formal security clearances are allowed to peruse such texts.

This isolation, closely resembling the famous Orwellian dystopia of 1984, looks somewhat bizarre, but it is actually easy to understand. The authorities believe that North Koreans need to know only what their government allows them to know about their country’s past. Of course, this permissible vision of history is only remotely related to what actually happened and can be described as largely an invention of North Korean propagandists.

Admittedly, many other countries and political regimes use history as a handmaiden of propaganda and indoctrination. However, in most cases the people still had at least a theoretical chance to learn real history. They could read books representing alternative views or even access primary materials on such topics. However, North Koreans do not have such opportunities.

Let’s take just one example. Had North Koreans been allowed to read official newspapers from the 1950s, then they would know that at the time Kim Il Sung was always presented as merely one of many of North Korea’s leaders. Apart from him, the newspapers mentioned other leaders – like, say, Kim Du-bong, Pak Hon-young or Pak Chang-ok. All of them were eventually purged, after being accused of treason and espionage. However, in the old newspapers, one can see that Kim Il Sung himself praised these people, calling them ‘outstanding revolutionaries’.

If North Koreans find out about this, they may suspect that these alleged ‘traitors’ were actually victims of political quarrels, not spies. This is indeed the case, but the North Korean government does not want its people to have such dangerous ideas and see Kim Il Sung not as a heaven-sent genius, but merely a successful and crafty politician who outmaneuvered his rivals to get supreme power.

Foreign policy can also look confusing to a North Korean if he or she is allowed to read old books and newspapers.

Until the late 1950s, North Korea claimed that in 1945 Korea was liberated by the Soviet troops, while Kim Il Sung’s forces were seldom if ever mentioned. Of course, in those days the official media praised the Soviet Union at the time and described it as a ‘liberator’. In the early 1960s, the line changed: the North Korean media began to criticize the Soviet Union and praise China, while references to the Soviets’ role in liberation all but disappeared. From the late 1960s, it was claimed that the country was liberated by the glorious fighters of Kim Il Sung who allegedly defeated the Japanese Empire more or less single-handedly. This claim survived for decades, but the praise for China disappeared quite soon.

If ordinary North Koreans are allowed to know this, many of them will not believe the official history created by the North Korean propagandists to reinforce the regime. That is exactly the reason why North Korean authorities are trying to control the past. If history is kept under lock and key, it is easier for the government to control people.

By Jhumur Deb

A British Rohingya man has been charged with helping the al-Qaeda extremist group build its base in the Indian sub-continent, according to a charge sheet drawn up by India’s top counter terror agency.

Suspect Samiun Rahman, 28, fought for al-Qaeda in Syria, then travelled to Bangladesh and India to recruit people to fight against alleged atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims by Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said in a charge sheet made public on Wednesday.

Rahman served three years in prison in Bangladesh on related charges there before entering India in July 2017. He was arrested in New Delhi in September last year.

“After detailed investigation of Rahman’s online chats on several mobile applications and documents recovered from his laptop, it was revealed that he fought against the Syrian army from an al-Qaeda base in Syria. He was then sent to Bangladesh due to his knowledge of the local language and was assigned the task of establishing an al-Qaeda base in the Indian sub-continent,” the NIA alleged.

Rahman had served time in a London jail for a traffic violation before his first trip to Syria, the charge sheet said.

“After his release, he went to Syria for the first time to help refugees and returned to London after almost two months. In 2013, he again went to Syria and subsequently, after establishing contact with an al-Qaeda operative, he traveled to Bangladesh to radicalize youths,” the NIA said.

India and Bangladesh are al-Qaeda’s prime targets for recruitment and terrorist plots besides the United States and Israel, Rahman told investigators, according to the charge sheet.

Al-Qaeda was trying to tap potential recruits in several states, particularly the disputed Muslim-majority region of Indian Kashmir, it added.

Rahman was arrested in India’s capital last year on suspicion of being involved in terrorist activities after he allegedly crossed into Indian territory from Bangladesh illegally, according to the charge sheet, accessed by BenarNews.

It added he was planning to enter Myanmar through Mizoram, a bordering northeastern Indian state.

He had been imprisoned in Bangladesh, from October 2014 till April 2017, for terrorism-related activities before moving his base to India, according to the NIA document.

Southeastern Bangladesh is home to refugee camps housing some 1 million Rohingya who have fled various cycles of violence over the years in the neighboring Myanmar state of Rakhine. The charge-sheet did not indicate whether Rahman spent any time in those refugee camps.

“He entered India through the Beenapole border [crossing] in West Bengal without valid documents in July 2017,” it said.

Indian plans to deport Rohingya

The charge sheet against Rahman has come at a time when India’s Hindu nationalist government is planning to deport some 40,000 members of the stateless and mostly Muslim minority group from Myanmar who have settled in India. The government has said it has evidence to link Rohingya refugees with terrorist outfits that pose a threat to national security.

“[The] Rohingya presence in the country has serious national security ramifications. There is [a] serious possibility of eruption of violence against Buddhists who are Indian citizens and who stay on Indian soil by radicalized Rohingyas,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said in an affidavit filed by the Supreme Court, which is hearing the ongoing case.

Rohingya refugees living in India said the NIA charge sheet against Rahman was possibly a ploy by Indian security agencies to make the government’s case for the deportation of the displaced community stronger.

“Why were the charges filed so many months after his arrest, and that too made public just days before the Supreme Court is set to rule on the case? And all the charges that have been filed against Rahman seem very similar to the Indian government’s stance. It seems like a well-planned plot to get the court to rule in favor of the government,” Mohammed Salim, a camp leader at a Rohingya refugee settlement in Delhi, told BenarNews.

However, security analysts said the NIA was an independent probe agency and that the government did not interfere with its investigations.

“It is true that the Rohingya are a deprived and potentially violent lot. There is every possible chance that any fundamentalist group, be it al-Qaeda or Islamic State, will try to cash in on the sentiments and India’s and Bangladesh’s porous borders with Myanmar, to recruit members of the community,” G.M. Srivastava, an Assam-based security analyst, told BenarNews.

Rohit Wadhwaney in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Scientists have long known that steep mountain ranges can draw carbon dioxide (CO₂) out of the atmosphere–as erosion exposes new rock, it also starts a chemical reaction between minerals on hill slopes and CO₂ in the air, “weathering” the rock and using CO₂ to produce carbonate minerals like calcite.

A new study led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, has turned this idea on its head. In paper released on April 12th in the journal Science, the scientists announced that the erosion process can also be a source of new CO₂ gas, and can release it back into the atmosphere far faster than it’s being absorbed into newly-exposed rock.

“This goes against a long-standing hypothesis that more mountains mean more erosion and weathering, which means an added reduction of CO₂. It turns out it’s much more complicated than that,” said Jordon Hemingway, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and lead author on the paper.

The source of this extra CO₂ isn’t entirely geological. Instead, it’s the byproduct of tiny microbes in mountain soils that “eat” ancient sources of organic carbon that are trapped in the rock. As the microbes metabolize these minerals, they spew out carbon dioxide.

The researchers came to this realization after studying one of the most erosion-prone mountain chains in the world–the central range of Taiwan. This steep-sided range is pummeled by more than three major typhoons each year, each of which mechanically erode the soil and rock through heavy rains and winds.

Hemingway and his colleagues examined samples of soil, bedrock, and river sediments from the central range, looking for telltale signs of organic carbon in the rock. What they found there surprised them.

“At the very bottom of the soil profile, you have basically unweathered rock. As soon as you hit the base of the soil, layer, though, you see rock that’s loose but not yet fully broken down, and at this point the organic carbon present in the bedrock seems to disappear entirely,” noted Hemingway. At that point in the soil, the team also noticed an increase in lipids that are known to come from bacteria, he adds.

“We don’t yet know exactly which bacteria are doing this–that would require genomics, metagenomics, and other microbiological tools that we didn’t use in this study. But that’s the next step for this research,” said WHOI marine geochemist Valier Galy, senior author and Hemingway’s advisor in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program.

The group is quick to note that the total level of CO₂ released by these microbes isn’t severe enough to have any immediate impact on climate change–instead, these processes take place on geologic timescales. The WHOI team’s research may lead to a better understanding of how mountain-based (or “lithospheric”) carbon cycles actually work, which could help generate clues to how CO₂ has been regulated since the Earth itself formed.

“Looking backwards, we’re most interested in how these processes managed to keep the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere more or less stable over millions of years. It allowed Earth to have the climate and conditions it’s had–one that has promoted the development of complex life forms,” said Hemingway. “Throughout our Earth’s history, CO₂ has wobbled over time, but has remained in that stable zone. This is just an update of the mechanism of geological processes that allows that to happen,” he added.

Norovirus — the highly contagious gastrointestinal illness best known for spreading rapidly on cruise chips, in nursing homes, schools and other densely populated spaces — kills an estimated 200,000 people annually, mostly in the developing world. There’s no treatment or vaccine to prevent the illness, and scientists have understood little about how the infection gets started.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown, in mice, that the virus infects a rare type of intestinal cell called a tuft cell, so named because each cell sports a cluster of hairlike extensions on its surface. While tuft cells are few in number, the scientists’ findings indicate that once the virus strikes, such cells multiply the virus quickly and set off severe infections.

The research, published April 12 in Science, suggests that targeting tuft cells with a vaccine or a drug may be a viable strategy for preventing or treating norovirus infections.

“Norovirus is one of the deadliest human pathogens that we know the least about,” said first author Craig B. Wilen, MD, PhD, an instructor in pathology and immunology. “Of the viruses worldwide for which there are no antiviral drugs or vaccines, norovirus arguably kills the most people. This study provides a therapeutic avenue to explore.”

Norovirus causes severe vomiting and diarrhea that can develop suddenly. The virus is shed in the feces and vomit — sometimes for months after symptoms resolve — and spreads through people-to-people contact, by touching contaminated surfaces and then the mouth, or eating food contaminated with the virus.

Human norovirus can’t be grown easily in a lab, and for this reason, the researchers choose to study it in mice.

“We were most surprised that the virus infects such a rare cell type and that even with so few cells infected, the infections can be intense and easily transmitted,”Wilen said. “In a single mouse, for example, maybe 100 cells will be infected, which is very few compared with other viruses such as the flu.”

Tuft cells are a type of epithelial cell that protrudes into the intestine. They also are known to detect parasitic and worm infections in the gut and trigger an immune response. Such infections can make norovirus infections worse and may explain why people in the developing world – where intestinal parasites and worm infections are more common – also are more likely to die of norovirus.

But, until now, scientists didn’t understand how norovirus could be linked to intestinal parasite and worm infections. The new study indicates that such infections in the mice cause the number of tuft cells to increase by five- to tenfold, leading the norovirus to replicate more efficiently.

Treating the mice with a powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic cocktail decreased the number of tuft cells and the risk of norovirus infection. But, Wilen cautioned, the antibiotics used in the study would not be practical to give to patients because they would deplete gut microbes that keep the body healthy. Still, the finding points to gut bacteria’s role in facilitating norovirus infection.

The researchers, including Herbert W. “Skip” Virgin, MD, PhD, now at Vir Biotechnology, also noted that noroviruses tucked inside tuft cells are effectively hidden from the immune system, which could explain why some people continue to shed virus long after they are no longer sick. These “healthy carriers” are thought to be the source of norovirus outbreaks, so understanding how the virus evades detection in such people could lead to better ways to prevent outbreaks.

“This raises important questions about whether human norovirus infects tuft cells and whether people who have chronic norovirus infections and continue to shed the virus long after infection do so because the virus remains hidden in tuft cells,” Wilen said. “If that’s the case, targeting tuft cells may be an important strategy to eradicate the virus.”

When the President of the United States forgets that he is no longer running the set of The Apprentice, with its faux callousness and elevated brutality, he can prove devastating to certain stocks.  Even in the land of the plutocrat and the capitalist, a bad word can signal the plummeting of value.  What is so unnerving about such a phenomenon is that it comes from the White House, a place normally inclined to worship the machinations of the US corporation and the sweet musings of Mammon.

Donald Trump’s verbal bashing of Amazon has been launched on a few fronts.  One was a rather personal target in the form of the company’s overlord Jeff Bezos. Rather idiosyncratically, Trump insisted the United States Postal Service had been fashioned as something of a “Delivery Boy” thereby short changing US customers. Amazon, he proclaimed, would pay.

At the end of March, he claimed that the “US Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon.  That amounts to billions of dollars.”  On April 5, while making remarks on Air Force One, he explained to reporters how, “The Post Office is not doing well on Amazon, that I can tell you.  But we’re going to see what happens.”

True to form, he combined a range of grievances in one blustering tweet.  “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

Speculation was not far behind about another connection tying Bezos to Trump’s ire.  Move over the postal link, and focus, instead, on The Washington Post, which was acquired by Bezos in 2013 ending 80 years of control by the Graham family.  The paper has been rather terrier like in pursuing Trump, while Trump has been keen to leave no turn un-stoned on the part of the publication.

On April 8, Trump called the publication “far more fiction than fact. Story after story is made up garbage – more like a poorly written novel than good reporting.  Always quoting sources (not names), many of which don’t exist.”

The paper has been given that most splintered of accolades by the President: “The Fake News Washington Post” and deemed a lobbying extension of the Bezos empire. “Amazon is not just on an even playing field. They have a tremendous lobbying effort, in addition to having the Washington Post, which is, as far as I’m concerned, another lobbyist.”

In of itself, as is the nature of Trumpist insight, it should never be presumed that the wealthy owner of a paper would not use it as an outlet of self-directed opinion and favour.  The injudicious term here – lobbying – may well be something of a stretch, an elastic novelty, but the course of history has been influenced by many an irritatingly influential paper mogul.

William Randolph Hearst has a fairly flavoured notoriety on this point (“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”), not to mention a certain Australian-turned US citizen Rupert Murdoch, who has made everybody else’s business his own from hacking phones to influencing the rise and fall of governments.  Such paper and digital empires fuse the politics of the moment with the prejudices of the magnate. Bums, tits and readers duly translate into election victories and wars.

Publisher Frederick Ryan Jr, however, claims that Bezos is no tyrant over the publishing schedule.  “Jeff has never intervened in a story.  He’s never critiqued a story. He’s not directed or proposed editorials or endorsements.”  A man in a hurry, indeed.

Not all of Trump’s blows fail to find their target. On the issue of tax-avoidance, Amazon remains both tarnished and a master.  It has exploited regulatory loopholes with an eagle-eyed professionalism. It courted US states on the subject of establishing a second headquarters, fielding the sorts of offers that would have made any tax officer scream blue murder (or theft).  In 2017, the company paid no US income tax upon $5.6 billion in domestic profits.  This was occasioned by a windfall of $789 million accrued from tax changes.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has been particularly keen in keeping an eye on Amazon’s tax performance, noting that over five previous years, Amazon forked out a humble tax rate of a mere 11.4 percent.  Other retail organisations showed either less accountancy acumen or more principle in paying rates between 35 percent and 40 percent.

A wonder, then, that Trump did not thank Amazon for being such a sterling role model in undermining the US tax system, given his own previous self-congratulatory remarks praising a certain genius in evading the tax man. But if Trump can do it, no one else can, or should.

In current practice, TrumpStore.com has given its own little nod to the practices of Amazon, collecting sales taxes in a mere two states – Louisiana and Florida.  A Trump Organization spokesperson felt obliged to note that, “Trumpstore.com has always, and will always continue to collect, report, and remit sales taxes in jurisdictions where it has an obligation to do so.”

The ongoing result of Trump’s Amazonian lashing has proven costly.  Talking about level playing fields is fine nonsense with a sprinkling of populism – Trump is genetically programmed against equality – but those in finance markets see it with differently tinted glasses.  The moment Twitter-in-Chief started his demonic magic, shares fell by almost 6 percent.  It was a round of devastation costing the company $53 billion.  Few tears, however, were shed.  Even fewer will be shed for Bezos.

A new paper has called for an end to the term ‘healthy obesity’, due to it being misleading and flawed. The focus should instead be on conducting more in-depth research to understand causes and consequences of varying health among people with the same BMI.

The term ‘healthy obesity’ was first used in the 1980’s to describe obese individuals who were apparently healthy — for example they didn’t suffer with hypertension or diabetes.

Dr William Johnson, from the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University, emphasizes in the journal Annals of Human Biology that the construct of ‘healthy obesity’ is limited. This is because categorizing a population using cut-offs (e.g., BMI > 30 kg/m2 and blood pressure < 140/90 mmHg) results in some normal weight and obese individuals being labelled ‘healthy’, when there are obviously health differences between the two groups.

However, Dr Johnson does acknowledge that there are health differences between obese individuals with the same BMI and explains that there should be further investigation into contributing factors such as being obese for longer, adverse early life events, and smoking during adolescence. Such research would explain why one person has a disease or dies, while another with the same BMI (or waist circumference) is fine. Dr Johnson explains, “It is undeniable that obesity is bad for health, but there are clearly differences between individuals in the extent to which it is bad.”

“While the concept of healthy obesity is crude and problematic and may best be laid to rest, there is great opportunity for human biological investigation of the levels, causes, and consequences of heterogeneity in health among people with the same BMI.”

“While epidemiology has revealed many of the life course processes and exposures that lead to a given disease, we know relatively little about the things that occur across someone’s life that lead to them having a heart attack, for example, while their friend with the same BMI is fine. Existing birth cohort studies have the data necessary to improve knowledge on this topic.” Johnson suggests.

With obesity at epidemic levels worldwide, such research could inform the development of more stratified disease prevention and intervention efforts targeted at individuals who have the highest risk.

The rate of inflation in auto insurance slowed sharply in March to 0.3 percent.

A 2.8 percent drop in energy prices pushed the overall CPI down by 0.1 percent for the month, leaving it 2.4 percent above its year ago level. The core index increased 0.2 percent for the second consecutive month. It now stands 2.1 percent above its year-ago level, although taking the average of the last three months (January–March) compared with the prior three months (October–December), gives an annualized rate of 3.0 percent.

Housing continues to be, by far, the biggest factor adding any substantial price pressure in the index. The shelter component rose 0.4 percent and is now up 3.3 percent over the last year. The core index excluding shelter has risen just 1.2 percent over the last year.

There continues to be considerable variation across cities in the pace of rental inflation, with the West Coast cities being the bulk of the inflation story. Rental inflation is slowing in some formerly hot markets. For example, owners’ equivalent rent of primary residences has increased by 2.4 percent in New York over the last year and just 1.7 percent in Washington, DC. By contrast, it is up by 3.7 percent in San Francisco, 4.0 percent in Boston, 4.7 percent in Los Angeles, and 6.1 percent in Seattle.

There is rising dispersion in rental inflation rates as the cost of rental housing more rapidly increases in some cities.

Inflation in the other traditional problem areas remains well under control. Prescription drug prices fell 0.2 percent in March, the third consecutive decline. They are up just 1.9 percent over the last year. (It is important to remember that this just captures the price increases for drugs already on the market. It does not pick up the prices of new drugs coming on the market.) The price of medical care services rose 0.5 percent in March, but that is after being unchanged in February. Over the last year, medical care service prices have increased 2.1 percent.

College tuition prices fell 0.2 percent in March after being flat in February. They have increased by 1.7 percent over the last year. Even inflation in auto insurance has slowed, with prices rising just 0.3 percent for the month, although they are still up 8.9 percent over the last year. After rent, this component has been, by far, the biggest contributor to inflation over the last year.

There were some anomalous factors pushing inflation lower in March. Apparel prices fell 0.6 percent, but this followed rises of 1.7 percent in January and 1.5 percent in February. Over the year, apparel prices are up 0.3 percent. Tobacco prices fell 0.2 percent in March. This is not likely to be repeated in future months. Over the year, they are up 5.9 percent.

After rising through the fall, both new and used car prices seem to be on a downward track again. New vehicle prices were flat in March, but this after a 0.5 percent drop in February. They are down 1.2 percent over the last year. Used vehicle prices fell by 0.3 percent for the second consecutive month. They are up 0.4 percent over the last year.

Airline fares rose 0.6 percent for the second consecutive month. This is most likely a response to higher fuel prices. For the year they are still down by 5.7 percent.

On the whole, there is basically no evidence of any acceleration of inflation in the CPI, in spite of the relatively low unemployment rate. The only place where there is some evidence of inflationary pressure is in rents, and this is in a relatively limited number of markets. The inflation rate in pretty much every other sector seems to be stable or trending downward.

There is some modest evidence of inflation pressures at earlier stages of production. The overall index for final demand rose by 0.3 percent in March, while the core index increased by 0.4 percent. However, we have seen increases of this size in the past and they did not lead to an acceleration of inflation in the CPI, so there is little reason to see these increases as a basis for higher consumer inflation in the future. In short, inflation looks to be low and stable for the immediate future.

On March 7, the European Parliament held a conference devoted to biosecurity as well as Europe’s readiness to counter biological weapon attacks. At the event there was a Bulgarian investigative journalist and Middle East correspondent Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who conducted an investigation into the activity of America’s secret biological laboratories. According to Dilyana, under the guise of medical centers, these labs develop biological weapon in 25 countries all over the world.

During the conference, D. Gaytandzhieva tried to find out why in the countries where American laboratories are located, infection outbreaks have increased dramatically, and why the researches inside these laboratories are classified. First, Dilyana turned to U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kadlec.

One would think that such important issues fit to stated topic and are even supported by evidence that Gaytandzhieva presented to participants of the conference in the form of a weighty brochure. However, Mr. Kadlec literally squeezed out a few words and couldn’t give a clear answer. This is very strange for a person who has dedicated his whole life to biological threats’ counteracting. The contributor was rescued by Hilde Vautsman, a member of the European Parliament and the organizer of the event, saying that “This is not the place for discussion of such topics.” So if not in the European Parliament, then where is the place for such discussions?

Moreover, after the event the U.S. delegation did not let Dilyana into the elevator when she tried to get answers to her “inconvenient” questions.

If you read the Gaytandzhieva’s report you can understand why Mr. Kadlec was so confused. The report provides evidence that the employees of American biological laboratories develop weapon and conduct tests on humans, deliberately infecting local population.

These institutions are funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), worth $2.1 billion. Official goals are the development of viruses’ detection capabilities as well as their rapid neutralization.

In Ukraine, the DTRA has 11 biological laboratories. However, the Ukrainian officials have no control over these institutions, so they close their eyes to any actions of the United States and help it to hide any information and suppress people’s indignation. According to the bilateral agreement, local authorities are not allowed to disclose “confidential information” on the American program, while the Pentagon has full access to Ukraine’s state secrets.

D. Gaytandzhieva showed a number of documents in evidence.

It is noteworthy that the emergence of these laboratories coincide with several outbreaks of serious infection diseases in the country, such as Hepatitis A, Cholera, Botulism and Swine Influenza. This led to a large number of deaths among the local population in the areas where American laboratories were located. Only in 2016, 364 people died in Ukraine from an unknown modification of the influenza virus.

Pentagon also opened its laboratories in Georgia (country). There is the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center on the territory of Georgia that allegedly studies biological agents (Anthrax and Tularemia), viral diseases, and also collects biological samples for its future experiments. In 2014, the Center was equipped with special equipment for breeding and studying insects that may become disease carriers. By a strange coincidence, after a while there were cases of the appearance of rash after a mosquito bite. The thing is, such diseases are not typical for Georgia.

The report also provides evidence that the Pentagon develops various technologies for dissemination biological weapons by explosives and aerosol dispensers. In 2017, Chechnya residents reported on a drone spreading white powder along the Georgian border. Neither the Georgian border service, nor the American staff commented on what had happened.

Unfortunately, the report made by Bulgarian journalist didn’t attract much attention. In case of a massive use of combat viruses, developed and tested in the U.S. laboratories, the population of some regions may face a great danger, the consequences of which are hard to imagine.

* Bogdan Gavrilyuk is from Ukraine and works at a chemical waste destruction plant, in the security department.