NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is on a 300-million-mile trip to Mars to study for the first time what lies deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet. InSight launched at 7:05 a.m. EDT (4:05 am PDT) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

“The United States continues to lead the way to Mars with this next exciting mission to study the Red Planet’s core and geological processes,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “I want to congratulate all the teams from NASA and our international partners who made this accomplishment possible. As we continue to gain momentum in our work to send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, missions like InSight are going to prove invaluable.”

First reports indicate the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that carried InSight into space was seen as far south as Carlsbad, California, and as far east as Oracle, Arizona. One person recorded video of the launch from a private aircraft flying along the California coast.

Riding the Centaur second stage of the rocket, the spacecraft reached orbit 13 minutes and 16 seconds after launch. Seventy-nine minutes later, the Centaur ignited a second time, sending InSight on a trajectory towards the Red Planet. InSight separated from the Centaur 14 minutes later – 93 minutes after launch – and contacted the spacecraft via NASA’s Deep Space Network at 8:41 a.m. EDT (5:41 PDT).

“The Kennedy Space Center and ULA teams gave us a great ride today and started InSight on our six-and-a-half-month journey to Mars,” said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “We’ve received positive indication the InSight spacecraft is in good health and we are all excited to be going to Mars once again to do groundbreaking science.”

With its successful launch, NASA’s InSight team now is focusing on the six-month voyage. During the cruise phase of the mission, engineers will check out the spacecraft’s subsystems and science instruments, making sure its solar arrays and antenna are oriented properly, tracking its trajectory and performing maneuvers to keep it on course.

InSight is scheduled to land on the Red Planet around 3 p.m. EST Nov. 26, where it will conduct science operations until Nov. 24, 2020, which equates to one year and 40 days on Mars, or nearly two Earth years.

“Scientists have been dreaming about doing seismology on Mars for years. In my case, I had that dream 40 years ago as a graduate student, and now that shared dream has been lofted through the clouds and into reality,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL.

The InSight lander will probe and collect data on marsquakes, heat flow from the planet’s interior and the way the planet wobbles, to help scientists understand what makes Mars tick and the processes that shaped the four rocky planets of our inner solar system.

“InSight will not only teach us about Mars, it will enhance our understanding of formation of other rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon, and thousands of planets around other stars,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. “InSight connects science and technology with a diverse team of JPL-led international and commercial partners.”

Previous missions to Mars investigated the surface history of the Red Planet by examining features like canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil, but no one has attempted to investigate the planet’s earliest evolution, which can only be found by looking far below the surface.

“InSight will help us unlock the mysteries of Mars in a new way, by not just studying the surface of the planet, but by looking deep inside to help us learn about the earliest building blocks of the planet,” said JPL Director Michael Watkins.

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. NASA’s Launch Services Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch service acquisition, integration, analysis, and launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is NASA’s launch service provider.

A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument.

Introduction

Russia’s political development has been mixed since the fall of Soviet Union in 1991. An optimistic burst of activity in the early 1990s pushed the country from Soviet rule toward a greater emphasis on individual rights, but the country is now widely considered to be under authoritarian rule, or at least to be moving decisively toward centralization. At best, Russia can be seen as a “hybrid regime” or “competitive authoritarianism” that blends in some elements of electoral democracy.

Russia’s trajectory since 1991 is one in which a democratizing moment has been followed by a return to more centralized power and decision making by a closed set of economic and political elites (Dickovick and Eastwood, 2015: 533). However, the central argument of this study is that the current Russian order is not participatory, democratic, and liberal enough due to personalization and centralization of political and economic powers by the executive body. As a result, the Russian political culture is struggling to construct a democratic fabric for the citizens based on equality, justice, rule of law, freedom, separation of powers, and egalitarian distribution. Institutional reform or re-design in the executive body, especially in the chief executive, would be a great initiative in order to visualize as well as build a democratic and liberal Russian order.

Russian Political Culture and Authoritarianism: Personalism and Centralization in Russian Politics

Historical Legacy of Russian Authoritarianism: Peter the Great, Russia’s first modern ruler, attempted to forcibly modernize the country imposing reforms i.e. “Table of Ranks” on his society centrally in the late seventeenth century. After a long period of Russian authoritarianism, the exile of Tsar due to the Russian Revolution of 1917 created a short-lived space for participatory decision-making model under the leadership of Lenin. But after the death of Lenin, the top leaders engaged in a struggle to establish their supremacy over the Bolshevik party as well as over the statecraft. By 1929, Stalin had consolidated his authority purging numerous alleged opponent, often using “show trials” and forced confessions.

From the Cold War to the disintegration of Soviet Union marked several autocratic events damaging the democratic fabric of the Russian Federation. In order to evaluate the changing face of the Russian leadership, four classifications of government could be outlined from the October Revolution of 1917 to the present.

William Zimmerman, a research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and writer of the latest book Ruling Russia: Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin, explains these categories as something akin to a spectrum between democracy and totalitarianism, with varying degrees of authoritarianism between the two extremes. His major contribution to this concept is his focus on the size of the “electorate”, the group able to choose and remove leaders, as a defining characteristic that differentiates between various forms of authoritarianism. For example, the Soviet Union never deviated far from full authoritarianism, because even during the years of Gorbachev’s “glasnost,” leadership was effectively selected by a small group, and structures remained in place to ensure that the leadership would not be ejected. He continues his analysis through the fall of the Soviet Union and into the present, determining that much of Yeltsin’s regime fell under “competitive authoritarianism,” a state closer to democracy than totalitarianism. By the presidential election of 2008, however, the government under Putin had returned to full authoritarianism, because through media control, barriers to competition, and fraud, the power of choice was in the hands of very few (Gerber).

Putinian Model of Russian Authoritarianism: Putin’s United Russia party dominates Russian politics, occupying a majority of seats in the Duma, Russia’s parliament. Effectively able to pass any law, Putin has progressively undermined civil liberties and slowly consolidated power in the hands of the central government.

Using a variety of aggressive tactics such as intimidation and slander to silence domestic opposition and solidify his office, Putin has managed to remain in power for over 18 years. His allies have even rewritten the constitution to allow Putin to run for a third (now fourth), extended term as president (Marsh, 2015). Under Putin, Russia has reasserted control over its traditional spheres of influence in the following ways: 1) solidify his own power base; 2) centralize authority; 3) strengthen the state; 4) curb the influence of the business leaders or “oligarchs” who might oppose him and his allies; and 5) resume a more assertive foreign policy (Dickovick and Eastwood, 2015: 530). Due to Putin’s authoritarian activities like revealing the government’s selective targeting of political opponents for prosecution, current Russia is often described as “hybrid” or “competitive authoritarianism” or “managed democracy”.

Personalization of Political Regimes and Dysfunctional Institutions: As a semi-presidential system, both president and prime minister have considerable powers. But in reality, the prime minister is playing a decisive role in the decision-making process of Russia initiating a regime of political personalization. As a result, informal and backstage exercise of power was fundamental here and Putin’s personal authority seems more important than formal powers.

Ideological Roots of Russian Competitive Authoritarianism: The roots of “competitive authoritarianism”, called by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, lie in the Cold War competition between the Leninist one-party state and free market liberal democracy. With the triumph of the Soviet Union and the United States in World War II, the two leading examples of these models competed for dominance. After years of economic distortion, political repression and stagnating standards of living, however, the Leninist one-party state began to lose the war of ideas. This ideological erosion drew from diverse sources- from images of sparkling American kitchens to underground human rights movements. The rot eventually spread to the Soviet Union, where the collapse of the Communist Party caused the Soviet Union to fracture into its constituent republics.

With the ideological collapse of the Leninist one-party state, liberal democracy was now widely perceived to be the best system for political and economic modernization.

Seeing the “writing on the Berlin wall,” political elites realized that they needed to appear “liberal” to hold on to power. But these elites refused to accept the concrete effects of liberal, pluralistic politics, including the real possibility of losing power.

As a result, they developed intricate systems of “faking” liberal democratic politics in order to legitimize their rule with the appearance of liberal democracy while maintaining their monopoly on power. Levitsky and Way describe this new system as one where “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which fraud, civil liberties violations, and abuse of state and media resources so skew the playing field that the regime cannot be labeled democratic” (Partlett, 2012).

Hybrid Political Culture: Russia’s longstanding conflict with liberalism and modernization provided a hybrid political system to the statehood. Personalization of political and economic authority also framed an autocratic decision-making system. Also, rampant corruption by the political and economic elites heavily destroyed the culture of economic liberalization, rule of law and democratization in Russia.

As if to compensate for the high degree of political apathy in domestic policy, a majority of Russians show a certain loyalty to the authorities on foreign policy. This phenomenon can be explained by the following reasons: In Russia, the support systems never developed that would have allowed individuals to become relatively independent of the state; the authorities consider any kind of protest to be revolutionary; instead of the actual vulnerability of the individual to the arbitrary actions of the authorities, propaganda offers Russians the illusion of self-importance, which lends passion to geopolitics; an emphasis on consolidating society in the face of a military threat (Kirilova, 2018).

Command Political Economy: State was responsible for major decisions about investment, production targets, and the social organization of economic life. Due to the “shock therapy” strategy of Russian privatization and the political and economic corruption, the statecraft failed to provide sufficient incentive to entrepreneurial activity and encourages a culture of dependency. All these state guided political economic activities initiated the rise of high rates of alcoholism and drug addiction, a very low birth rate, ethnic tensions and fragile judicial system.

Privatization of the 1990s certainly improved economic efficiency but also created the vast inequality that damaged public perceptions about the program. In this sense, the question whether privatization was on the whole beneficial remains highly contentious. Economic and political power in Russia is still intimately intertwined. Although the oligarchs have been blamed for much of Russia’s troubles, they did not directly slow down the country’s economic growth.

On the contrary, oligarch-owned companies are responsible for much of the dramatic increase in output in recent years. The situation in Russia today demonstrates that, in a sense, perception is stronger than reality. Although the economy is in order (GDP per capita increased from 22% of the US level in 2000 to 35% in 2012) and living standards are on the rise, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) remains very low. In fact, capital outflow now stands at about 7% of GDP. That is a stunning figure, given high oil prices, abundant investment opportunities, and the nearly moribund US and European economies, which are the main recipients of Russia’s fleeing capital (Aven, 2013).

Oligarchic Regime and Centralization of Power: The strongest lasting image of the current centralized system of Russia is probably the dysfunctional transfer of economic power and a corrupt network of “oligarchs” and oil and natural gas mafias in which the state developed only weak institutions and lacked a rule of law. The moves to sideline those oligarchs who were critical to Putin’s rule have been part and parcel of a broader centralization of power and control. Putin has reduced the role of parliament, and increased state control over the media.

Institutionalizing Political Culture and the Future Russian Order: Deepening the State Reformation

From the above analysis it clear that the current Russian political order is nothing but a shadow of the historical development of political management, longstanding authoritarianism and one leader dominated public and corporate system. The crises of democratization, political participation, freedom of conscience and press, liberalism, rule of law, institutionalization, just power transfer system, the strong judiciary is a resultant of the expanding executive influence in current Russia.

History provides huge evidence that the executive of the Russian statehood sometimes tried to uphold the democratic norms but most of the times backed the authoritarian order. As institutional reform is inevitable for the Russian statecraft, reforming the executive would alter as well as change the Russian narrow political culture for the following reasons:

The culture of liberalism in Russia is not practiced effectively due to the entrenched centralization. Always the chief executive played a decisive role in every sphere of decisions. So re-distribution of power following an institutional re-arrangement would be a vital footstep towards democratic culture for future Russia.

The honeymoon between the political and economic elites also strengthen the executive body where informal institutions and personalities played a key role in nation’s every progress. This relationship provides an invisible support to the chief executive to expand his authoritative order. So, a clear division and distribution between these elite groups might be a milestone for Russia’s future democratization.

Lack of Intra-party democracy, freedom of speech and press, functional parliament, free and fair elections, strong political opposition and rule of law provided an unseen legitimacy to Putin in exercising unlimited power upon these institutions and citizens. So, curbing the unlimited power of the executive body would expand the space for a liberal Russia in near future.

Popular participation, popular control, and popular sovereignty would a curbing point for reforming the Russian statehood where chief executive might have to behave democratically to consolidate his political regime providing an expanding space for the Russian political culture.

Conclusion

The prevalence of personalism in Russian politics is a clear demonstration of how political development and political institutions interact initiating a culture of authoritarianism. All the institutional arrangements are strengthening the illiberal hands of the chief executive. Similarly, the legislature has been reshaped in a way that facilitates central control, while the structure of executive facilitates personalism. In a nutshell, the various features of Russian politics work together to create a top-down system where democratic culture is undermining by the executive.

*Abu Sufian Shamrat, M.S.S. in Political Science, is a researcher in Bangladesh. Shamrat is the highest gold medal awardee in the history of Dhaka University convocations. He writes on political, social, global, as well as strategic issues in the leading national and international dailies and journals. He can be reached at: shamrat08du@yahoo.com

Bibliography
Aven, Denis, 2013, ‘Russia’s Economic Transition: Challenges, Results and Overhang’, Yale Economic Review, April 2, http://www.yaleeconomicreview.org/archives/380
Dickovick, J. Tyler, and Eastwood, Jonathan, 2015, Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases, London: Oxford University Press
Gerber, Arielle, ‘Many Shades of the Russian Authoritarianism’, Institute of Modern Russia, https://imrussia.org/en/book-reviews/2169-many-shades-of-the-russian-authoritarianism
Kirilova, Kseniya, 2018, ‘Features of Russian Political Culture and Expectations’, Global Geopolitics, January 26, http://globalgeopolitics.net/2018/01/26/features-of-russian-political-culture-and-expectations/
Marsh, Denali, 2015, ‘Putin’s new authoritarian Russia’, The Global State, February 6, http://theglobalstate.com/main-current-events/putins-new-authoritarian-russia/
Partlett, William, 2012, ‘Can Russia Keep Faking Democracy?’, Brookings, May 22, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/can-russia-keep-faking-democracy/
Zimmerman, William, 2014, Ruling Russia: Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin, New Jersey: Princeton University Press

After the Hirak i (uprising) of the Rif and that of Zagora and recent the one of Jerada, the needy of Morocco are resorting to another form of civilian resistance to fight those who, literally “own the country,” and, ultimately, hit them where it hurts the most: their businesses, pockets, gains and political standing.

The prices of consumer goods have been going up at an alarming rate in the last five years while the salaries have not increased a bit, in the least. As a result, the grassroots are the most hit in their tiny budgets. They are living in total squalor with no hope of improvement in sight for the time being.

The government is unable to scrap the remaining subsidies of such foodstuffs as: bread, oil, sugar and butane, for fear to face a popular uprising, is resorting to dirty tricks such as increasing prices of other products including petrol.

Two Moroccos, Two Different Speeds

In the past, right after independence, there were three social classes in the country: upper class, middle class and lower class.ii Today things have changed tremendously, there are only two classes left, miles apart from each other: the very rich made of the Makhzeniii families, military top brass, co-opted politicians and nouveaux riches, who made their wealth from corruption and embezzlement, and on the opposite side, the class of survivalists comprising the old middle class, the poor and very poor. As a matter of fact, since the beginning of the third millennium, Morocco has duly split into two Moroccos, cruising at different speeds:

The Morocco of the Golden Triangle, is made partly of the colonial Maroc Utile (Useful Morocco) which has extended in territory lately. It starts in Tangier and goes all the way to Laayoune, on a north to south axis, and from Casablanca to Fes, on a west to east axis, and beyond is rural hinterland and the Amazigh mountains where poverty reigns extreme: no decent infrastructure, very high illiteracy, no means of subsistence and rampant poverty and despair. In the past these regions used to survive thanks to employment in Europe, but since the mid 80s of the last century Europe closed its frontiers to migration and people of these regions have fallen into total squalor: no jobs for the adults and no future for their young siblings.

The Morocco of Despair is made of the hinterland and the periphery. It comprises the Amazigh/Berber mountains, the plateaus, the semi-arid and arid areas. In these areas people live off the land when the land is generous in humid years. In years of drought, they live off remittances of their families living in Europe. As for those who do not have this possibility they migrate to big cities with the elusive hope to find a job and survive and end up living in squalid conditions in slums in the belts of poverty. The successive governments since independence in 1956 have been unable to devise development programs to improve the lives of the people.

Official Morocco encourages foreign direct investment, but in the Golden Triangle only, not out of malice but only because of lack of adequate infrastructure in the periphery and this perpetuates the despair in this part of the country endlessly and makes the colonial Maroc Inutile (Useless Morocco) still useless, today, and forgotten when it comes to government action plans.

Moroccan Favelas iv

Actually, inside the Golden Triangle not everything is golden and is glistening with sparkling luster, when it comes to the life of all of the population. Almost every Moroccan city has its own belt of poverty made of people who migrated decades ago from the countryside, at the height of the drought cycle of the last century, with the hope to improve their economic lot, but instead they live in utter poverty and are easily recruited by Islamists to carry out terrorist attacks in Morocco, as was the case in Casablanca in 2003 and highlighted in the excellent film of Nabil Ayouch, “Horses of God”v or elsewhere and and join ISIS as cannon fodder.

Most big cities of Morocco of the Golden Triangle have their Favelas that mass produce pickpockets, drug peddlers, muggers, thieves, prostitutes, etc., as well as cheap labor, would be terrorists and Islamist fighters. In these Favelas the living conditions are terrible. The families are big and live in super crowded and unhealthy dwellings where sleeping is done in shifts due to the scarcity of rooms and beds, also. Nobody does die of hunger there yet because the main staple foods are still subsidized by the government, but if the latter gives in to the pressure of the World Bank, a popular revolution will ensue, no doubt.

In these poverty belts the common investment is café business and there are so many of these. Poor people often joke by saying that in the poor quarters “between a café and a café, there is a café,” meaning there is no serious infrastructure. These cafés are crowded all day by unemployed youth seeking escapist solutions to their predicament by chatting on their smart phones, watching soccer games on satellite television, smoking hashish or talking to their friends and most importantly waiting for Godot.

During the Arab Spring, the Moroccan social movement 20 Février denounced, in mammoth demonstrations, all the scourges of modern Morocco i.e. corruption, nepotism, embezzlement, patriarchy, tribalism and called on the monarchy, which is respected and seen as a symbol of stability, to become a true constitutional monarchy through the adoption of incremental democracy. Realizing the strength of this popular uprising, the monarch revamped the Constitution in 2011 and triggered the devolution of power process that was interrupted after the demise of the Arab Spring and the waning of the Islamist renaissance.

The ensuing general elections brought the Islamists of the Parti de la Justice et du Développement -PJD- to power with no real executive power in perspective because the Moroccan electoral system does not allow strong parties but parties that have to resort to coalition government arrangement to rule. Thus, the political scene is fragmented and makes of the monarchy the only credible power in presence and the only arbitration institution in the country.

Thus, the Islamists ruled for a full term of five years but were unable to download neither the new constitution nor their electoral platform and instead they had their share of power abuse and sex scandals like other secular parties. The Head of Government Benkirane spent the five years squabbling with the opposition parties instead of realizing the programs of his party’s electoral platform. As a result, the Islamists lost in popularity vis-à-vis the general public that espoused wholeheartedly their policies and objectives in the past.

However, in 2016, in spite of general public displeasure with their performance, yet they won more seats (125 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, a gain of 18 seats compared to the 2011 elections) in the general elections, but, on the other hand, lost the support of the Makhzen because they could not form a coalition government for almost six months due to the intransigence of the opposition. This was somewhat blamed on Benkirane’s pig-headedness, but in reality the establishment realizing that the strength of the Islamists is waning worldwide they wanted to impose their own man i.e. the rich businessman Akhennouch, a close friend of the monarch and his joker card to curtail Islamists’ influence and potency.

The rich of Morocco have always had access to the Makhzen and its privileges in return for blind allegiance and unquestionable support. Akhennouch and all the rich of the country are automatically allies of the monarchy and are locked into “scratch my back, I will scratch yours” equation with it.

The Electronic Hirak

The establishment does not seem to show any signs of wanting to solve the field Hiraks of the country peacefully, instead it is putting to trial all the militants and might even condemn some of them to the death penalty to preserve its hiba (loftiness) and state standing.

In the face of the intransigence of the establishment and as a further manifestation of the Arab Spring, the Moroccan poor people launched the electronic Hirak, boycotting the products of two super rich Moroccan rentiers and allies of the establishment: Akhennouch’s dairy products (Lait Centrale, Danone, etc. and gas at the pump of Afriquia) and related derivatives, as well as Meriem Bensaleh’s popular mineral water (Sidi Ali).

In this regard, Safae Kasraoui states forcefully in Morocco World News that:vi

“Baraka criticized the exorbitant prices of hydrocarbons, “which have reached a maximum that citizens can no longer stand.”

While several officials called the campaign a weak plot, Baraka said that “the important thing is not to know who is behind the campaign, but rather to understand the message conveyed” through the campaign.

The official said that the campaign reflects the suffering of citizens due to the high cost of living.

Several Moroccan celebrities have also expressed their support and solidarity with the online boycott campaign in protest of the rise in commodity prices, including Moroccan divas Asmae Lamnawar, Latifa Raafat, Saida Caharf, and Najat Aatabou.”

So far, the boycott using primarily Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp is a total success because Akhennouch, hit hard in his wallet, came out publicly calling such an action an act of treason. Nevertheless, the grassroots angered by his attitude will certainly be tempted to include other products of his business in the popular boycott to punish him severely and bring down the prices of foodstuffs on the eve of Ramadan, a month of monster consumption.

The electronic Hirak will certainly strengthen the Islamists and their government led by al-Othmani, emasculated since its formation by the heavy weight politician Akhennouch. Parallel to that, the chances of the latter leading the next non-Islamist government are now nil and this will, undoubtedly, disappoint the establishment that was banking on him to reduce the influence of the Islamists especially after the miserable failure of the palace party Parti de l’Authenticité et de la Modernité led by Ilyas Omari. This electronic uprising might even in the long run bring down other politicians close to the palace.

Who Is Behind This Electronic Hirak?

This uprising calls itself, a spontaneous movement but in reality it is not. It is more likely that the PJD is behind it in the person of Benkirane who, holds a grudge against the establishment for booting him out the government. It is a well-known fact that one of the strengths of PJD is its electronic army known as al-kataib electroniya able to shape the public opinion through WhatsApp and the social media using the partaji ya mouwatin (share o citizen the message) successful scheme.

On this particular point, Zoubida Senoussi writes in Morocco World News:vii

“While some believe that this campaign comes as a direct result of denouncing the high cost of living–especially ahead of Ramadan, which witnesses a high peak consumption demands of dairy products–others opposed the boycott, asserting that this call is essentially a settlement of political accounts rather than an outburst of popular anger.

Moroccan media outlets, such as the Arabic daily Al Ahdath Al-Maghribiya, claimed that this campaign, which will run for over a month, is facade for a deeper political manipulation, orchestrated by what they have termed an “electronic army” close to Abdelilah Benkirane, former head of the Moroccan government and former Secretary General of the Justice and Development Party (PJD).”

But, all in all, the electronic boycott has gained, as of now, total independence from political parties and is becoming a political Tsunami rejecting peacefully and anonymously government agenda and establishment strategic plans.

Final word

The Arab Spring has turned sour and violent in Yemen, Syria and Libya lately and dissipated the dream of democracy of the majority of the Arabs. Will the Moroccan electronic uprising resuscitate the moribund Arab Spring and breathe life into it all over the region and offer the poor a new tool and means to make their voice heard?

Only time will show, for sure.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter: @Ayurinu

Endnotes:
i. Hirak : uprising in Arabic language (from the Arabic root HRK meaning to move to contest.) It was used for the first time in the popular disobedience movement in the northern Moroccan city of Alhoceima (Rif region) and it has become since a standard term used to refer to any popular and peaceful contestation
ii. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2014/09/139649/spilling-the-beans-it-is-not-about-what-you-know-but-who-you-know/
iii. Makhzen: traditional and feudal-like system of governance in Morocco
iv. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela
v. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2369047/
vi. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/04/245371/boycott-reflects-suffering-of-citizens-nizar-baraka/
vii. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/04/245107/campaign-sidiali-commodity-morocco/

A Johns Hopkins study found that physicians who use stigmatizing language in their patients’ medical records may affect the care those patients get for years to come.

When doctors read notes and descriptions from previous medical visits, says the study, published in the May edition of The Journal of General Internal Medicine, the language in those notes may play a role in how that patient is treated, as well as how aggressively the patient’s pain is managed.

Mary Catherine Beach, M.D., M.P.H., designed the study to determine whether the language and descriptions used in patient records can perpetuate bias among physicians. More than 400 physicians-in-training — medical students and residents — were presented with one of two vignettes about a hypothetical patient, a 28-year-old man with sickle cell disease and chronic hip pain.

While the vignettes contained medically identical information, one used neutral language to describe the patient and his condition, while the other vignette contained nonessential language that implied various value judgements.

Beach and her research colleagues found that physicians-in-training who read the stigmatizing patient chart notes were significantly more likely to have a negative attitude toward the patient than those who read the chart containing more neutral language.

And not only did their attitudes change — so did their treatment plans. Those physicians-in-training who had read the stigmatizing chart note decided to treat the patient’s pain less aggressively.

Every clinician encounter with a patient is documented in a chart note. Symptoms, patient history, vital signs, test results, clinicians’ assessments and treatment plans are all part of the medical record.

“This record may be the only source of information a new clinician has about some patients,” says Beach. “We have to question the assumption that the medical record always represents an objective space.”

The study’s participants were introduced to the hypothetical Mr. R., an African-American man whose condition necessitates the use of a wheelchair. Both vignettes begin with Mr. R. visiting the hospital emergency department with a painful condition known as a vaso-occlusive crisis, common among patients with sickle cell disease. Among the standard treatments for this condition are opioids to treat pain and oxygen to combat the effects of sickled red blood cells’ inability to oxygenate organs.

Examples of the differing notes on the hypothetical patient:

Examples of the differing notes on the hypothetical patient:

• “He has about 8-10 pain crises a year, for which he typically requires opioid pain medication in the ED.”
• “He is narcotic dependent and in our ED frequently.”

• “He spent yesterday afternoon with friends and wheeled himself around more than usual, which caused dehydration due to the heat.”
• “Yesterday afternoon, he was hanging out with friends outside McDonald’s where he wheeled himself around more than usual and got dehydrated due to the heat.”

• “The pain is not alleviated by his home pain medication regimen.”
• “The pain has not been helped by any of the narcotic medications he says he has already taken.”

• “He is in obvious distress.”
• “He appears to be in distress.”

• “His girlfriend is by his side but will need to go home soon.”
• “His girlfriend is lying on the bed with shoes on and requests a bus token to go home.”

Even physicians-in-training who recognized the language as stigmatizing were more likely to form more negative opinions about the patient and to treat that patient’s pain less aggressively.

“There is growing evidence that the language used to communicate in health care reflects and influences clinician attitudes toward their patients,” says Anna Goddu, a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine student who co-authored the study. “Medical records are an important and overlooked pathway by which bias may be propagated from one clinician to another, further entrenching health care disparities.”

Goddu and her co-authors are encouraged by one particular result of the study.

“When prompted, the participants seemed able to reflect on how the words used in the chart notes communicated respect and empathy for the patient,” she says. “To us, this seems like a promising point of intervention.”

Beach adds that, in the study, medical residents had more negative attitudes than medical students toward the hypothetical patient.

“Attitudes seem to become more negative as trainees progress,” she says. “It may be that trainees are influenced by negative attitudes and behaviors among their peers and seniors in the clinical setting.”

Participants who identified as black or African-American generally had more positive attitudes toward the patient.

“That affirms what some other studies have shown,” says Beach, “specifically, that African-American clinicians have more positive attitudes toward patients with sickle cell disease.”

Goddu says that, while the topic deserves more research, she hopes this study opens some eyes.

“I hope our study makes clinicians think twice before including certain, nonessential points about a patient’s history or demeanor in the medical record,” she says.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged that any decision to keep the 2015 nuclear deal running without the US should be conditional on “practical guarantees” from the three European parties to the JCPOA.

In comments during a visit to the Farhangian University in Tehran on Wednesday, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iranian administration officials are faced with a “tough test” of safeguarding the Iranian nation’s dignity in dealing with the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

As regards the administration’s decision to consider saving the nuclear deal with the three European parties -France, Britain and Germany-, the Leader voiced distrust of the Europeans, stressing that any plan to maintain the deal must come with practical guarantees.

Without practical and definite assurance, it is impossible to keep the deal going, because the Europeans are likely to follow the US’s lead, Ayatollah Khamenei warned.

The Leader then hit back at the US president for his “silly and cheap” comments on Iran that included more than 10 lies, saying Trump “made a damn mistake” threatening the Iranian establishment and nation.

The US withdrawal from the nuclear deal indicates that Iran’s nuclear program was not the issue, as Washington is now using other pretexts such as Iran’s missile power or regional influence, Imam Khamenei added.

“Today, their (US’s) concerns are about our presence in our own region and our missile program. (But) even if we agree to their demands, the issue will not be resolved; they will raise another subject,” the Leader said.

“The real reason behind the US opposition towards the Islamic Republic’s establishment is the fact that (before the Islamic Revolution) the US had complete dominance over our country but their hands were cut off from Iran (with the victory of the Islamic Revolution),” Ayatollah Khamenei went on to say.

In a speech from the White House on Tuesday night, Trump accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and seeking nukes before announcing the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord.

Following the controversial decision, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran weighs plans to remain in the agreement with the other five parties, namely Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, provided that the remaining JCPOA parties ensure its full benefits for Iran.

In an open session of the Iranian Parliament on Wednesday morning, a number of lawmakers set fire to the JCPOA and to the US flag in a symbolic gesture of protest.

By Jorge Valero

(EurActiv) — US President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal represents his third strike against the European economy in half a year and will add more volatility in an already difficult period.

As EU institutions are debating whether Europe’s economic growth is nearing the end of the cycle after years of robust recovery, Trump’s announcement has fuelled oil prices and increased the uncertainty for European companies doing business with Iran.

The decision came amid a trade dispute between the US and other large economies, including the EU and China, and followed the fiscal stimulus passed by Washington last autumn, seen as a potential risk on this side of the Atlantic.

The European Commission expected last week the eurozone economy to grow 2.3% this year and 2% in 2019. But in contrast with previous forecasts, the Commission did not review upwards the figure. The Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, noted the “slowdown” of the output but said the growth remained “robust”.

In its forecast, the Commission strongly revised upwards the oil prices (Brent) to an average of $67.7 per barrel in 2018 and $63.9 in 2019, a 21.5% and 16.8% increase compared to its November forecast.

Above the reference

But rumours about a potential breakdown of the Iran deal and additional geopolitical turbulence, especially political instability in Venezuela, have sent Brent crude prices above the Commission’s reference price since early April. On Wednesday (9 May), prices went up by 2.81% to reach $76.

Analysts expect oil prices to remain at this level or higher in the coming months.

The Commission declined to estimate what could be the impact of higher oil prices on the European economy or its labour market.

“The Spring Forecast, published last week, notes that oil prices have been quite volatile in the first quarter of 2018 and that the current volatility is likely to persist in 2018, as uncertainties about the oil price outlook have increased,” a Commission spokesperson said.

But EU countries struggling to balance their public accounts have crunched the numbers in a worsened scenario in their draft budgetary plans sent to the Commission this spring.

The Spanish government estimated that if the barrel price grew to 75$, it could result in a -0.7% decrease of the GDP and 150.000 job losses. If the oil prices stabilise around $82, the Spanish economy could lose 3.8% of GDP over the 2018-2021 period and 550.000 jobs would disappear.

This is the third decision taken by Trump since last autumn that is threatening the global economy, in particular, the European expansion.

Moscovici warned last week that Washington’s fiscal stimulus and Trump’s protectionism represented a “dangerous nexus”.

Moreover, the Commission warned in its forecast that if the global value chain is disrupted because of the trade conflict, the European expansion could be thrown “off track”.

Protecting European firms

European companies will also be impacted by Trump’s Iran decision, as they will have six months to cease all activities with Iran or face US sanctions.

“US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately,” said the new ambassador to Berlin, Richard Grenell, on Twitter.

It remains to be seen how the US will apply the sanctions and what mechanisms the Europeans could set up to protect their firms.

US Secretary of Treasure, Steve Mnuchin, said the US Administration would pursue action under primary and secondary sanctions authorities, so European firms with investments or operations in the US could be hit if they maintain their links with Iran.

Airbus, Siemens, Peugeot-Citroen, Renault, Total, Eni, Danieli are among the companies affected.
Federica Mogherini

“At this moment it is not easy to quantify the possible economic impact of the US withdrawal on European business activity,” said Emma Marcegaglia, the president of BusinessEurope, the largest EU business association.

Marcegaglia said companies need “legal clarity”, but expected the EU institutions and European governments to help the European businesses deal with “the uncertainty and its negative consequences”.

The Commission said that it is working on plans to protect “the interests of the European companies”.

The nuclear deal “is not a bilateral agreement and it is not in the hands of any single country to terminate it unilaterally,” the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement.

Cornelius Adebahr, a fellow at Carnegie Europe, told Bloomberg that the EU could establish euro-denominated credit lines and clearing-houses that can green-light legitimate business with Iran.

Vulnerability

For Grégory Claeys, a research fellow at Bruegel, the impact of higher oil prices could be limited, as the euro will be higher than expected. “The two effects could compensate thanks to a strong euro,” he told EURACTIV.

But he warned of the “fragility” of the European expansion. The EU’s economy is “very vulnerable”, given its dependency on external demand, the internal demand is “still suffering, he said.

The diminishing vigour of the European output sparked a debate in the ECB and in the European Commission on whether the bloc is nearing the end of the expansion cycle.

However, both institutions concluded that the “loss of momentum” in the economic activity was due primarily to temporary factors.

The European Union (EU) deeply regrets the announcement by US President Trump to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The JCPOA, unanimously endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, is a key element of the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture and is crucial for the security of the region.

As long as Iran continues to implement its nuclear related commitments, as it has been doing so far and has been confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 10 consecutive reports, the EU will remain committed to the continued full and effective implementation of the nuclear deal.

The lifting of nuclear related sanctions is an essential part of the agreement. The EU has repeatedly stressed that the sanctions lifting has a positive impact on trade and economic relations with Iran. The EU stresses its commitment to ensuring that this can continue to be delivered.

The JCPOA is the culmination of 12 years of diplomacy which has been working and delivering on its main goal. The EU is determined to work with the international community to preserve it.

An international collaboration of scientists, led by the University of Leicester, has investigated Earth’s climate over half a billion years ago by combining climate models and chemical analyses of fossil shells about 1mm long.

The research, published in Science Advances, suggests that early animals diversified within a climate similar to that in which the dinosaurs lived.

This interval in time is known for the ‘Cambrian explosion’, the time during which representatives of most of the major animal groups first appear in the fossil record. These include the first animals to produce shells, and it is these shelly fossils that the scientists used.

Scientists have long thought that the early Cambrian Period was probably a greenhouse interval in Earth’s climate history, a time when there were no permanent polar ice sheets.

Until now, however, scientists have only had a sense of what the Cambrian climate was like because of the types of rock that were deposited at this time – while it has long been believed that the climate was warm, specific details have largely remained a mystery.

Data from the tiny fossil shells, and data from new climate model runs, show that high latitude (~65 °S) sea temperatures were in excess of 20 °C. This seems very hot, but it is similar to more recent, better understood, greenhouse climates like that of the Late Cretaceous Period.

Thomas Hearing, a PhD student from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, explained: “Because scientists cannot directly measure sea temperatures from half a billion years ago, they have to use proxy data – these are measurable quantities that respond in a predictable way to changing climate variables like temperature. In this study, we used oxygen isotope ratios, which is a commonly used palaeothermometer.

“We then used acid to extract fossils about 1mm long from blocks of limestone from Shropshire, UK, dated to between 515 – 510 million years old. Careful examination of these tiny fossils revealed that some of them have exceptionally well-preserved shell chemistry which has not changed since they grew on the Cambrian sea floor.”

Dr Tom Harvey, from the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, added: “Many marine animals incorporate chemical traces of seawater into their shells as they grow. That chemical signature is often lost over geological time, so it’s remarkable that we can identify it in such ancient fossils.”

Analyses of the oxygen isotopes of these fossils suggested very warm temperatures for high latitude seas (~65 °S), probably between 20 °C to 25 °C.

To see if these were feasible sea temperatures, the scientists then ran climate model simulations for the early Cambrian. The climate model simulations also suggest that Earth’s climate was in a ‘typical’ greenhouse state, with temperatures similar to more recent, and better understood, greenhouse intervals in Earth’s climate history, like the late Mesozoic and early Cenozoic eras.

Ultimately, these findings help to expand our knowledge of the early animals of the period and the environment in which they lived.

Thomas Hearing said: “We hope that this approach can be used by other researchers to build up a clearer picture of ancient climates where conventional climate proxy data are not available.”

The research was carried out as an international collaboration involving scientists from the University of Leicester (UK), British Geological Survey (BGS; UK), and CEREGE (France). This collaboration brought together expertise in geochemistry, palaeontology and climate modelling to tackle this longstanding problem.

The scientists have co-authored an open access (publicly available) paper in the journal Science Advances.

By Sven Milekic

Croatian Vice-Prime Minister and Economy Minister Martina Dalic on Wednesday dismissed media allegations that she using her position to benefit her friends and business associates in the process of passing a law on the state management of ailing private company Agrokor.

Agrokor, the biggest Croatian private company, employing around 40,000 in the country, fell into financial problems at the beginning of 2017. In April last year, the parliament passed a special law to bring in a 15-month extraordinary state management of the company, to stop it going bankrupt and save jobs.

Earlier on Wednesday, news website Index published leaked emails containing pieces of correspondence between Dalic and various consultants, lawyers and brokers who later became members of the state extraordinary management of Agrokor, or whose companies made lucrative deals with Agrokor.

Dalic told regional N1 TV that she thinks she “didn’t do anything illegal”.

While testifying before a parliamentary committee in February, Dalic said that she was the main author of the law, but had taken opinions from consultants, lawyers and experts outside of state institutions.

When asked about this on Wednesday, Dalic said that there was no secrecy in the process, and the final result was that the company was saved. She said that it was her obligation to make the contacts with the consultants, lawyers and brokers.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic also dismissed the allegations of wrongdoing, claiming that “everything was done for the benefit of the Croatian economy”. He added that Dalic still has his trust.

Screenshots of emails published by Index allegedly show that Dalic used her private account while communicating with people who were later involved in the work of the state management in Agrokor.

Some of the companies later got lucrative agreements with the new Agrokor management, while one of them, Ante Ramljak, was named the extraordinary state manager.

Index also alleged that no contract was signed with any of these people in order to conceal the whole process.

Dalic said on Wednesday that the consultants, lawyers and brokers were not paid because they agreed to give their suggestions and advice for free.

The leaked emails may affect the process of reaching a settlement between all Agrokor’s creditors – suppliers, banks and bondholders – by July 10, when the 15-month state management will end.

The opposition in parliament described the emails as a scandal that should lead to snap elections.

Gordan Maras, an MP from the Social Democratic Party, SDP, called the whole issue “shocking”, claiming that Dalic worked on the draft of the law along with her friends and acquaintances.

“I call on the state attorney to step into action immediately, while the prime minister should remove the minister [Dalic] who has compromised him and the whole state,” Maras said.

The opposition has already tried to oust Dalic for her role in the process of drafting the law on Agrokor. However, it did not manage to gather enough votes to remove her in a non-confidence vote in April.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee responsible for the centenary celebrations for struggle icons Tata Nelson Mandela and Mama Albertina Sisulu has called on South Africans and the international community to participate in the various activities that have been put together in their honour.

The IMC has, as part of the centenary celebrations, also announced the launch of #MandelaFridays, an initiative aimed at promoting active citizenry among South Africans to carry out activities of philanthropy, charity, education and heritage throughout the year to mark 100 years since the birth of the former statesman.

Similarly, South Africans have been urged to celebrate the memory of Albertina Sisulu as the “Woman of fortitude”, who lived her life serving South Africa with dignity and integrity.

Minister Jeff Radebe, who chairs the IMC, said 2018 marks 100 years since the birth of the two struggle icons.

The IMC was established in August 2017 to plan the centenary celebrations.

“Government calls on all South Africans and the international community to join in the centenary celebrations in their workplaces, schools, churches and civic organisations as we reflect on the immense contribution these icons and global figures bequeathed our fledgling democracy.

“Ours is to build on the foundations they laid,” he said.

The Minister said the 100 year anniversary of Mandela’s birth was an opportunity for citizens to recommit themselves to the principles he lived by and build the nation that was envisioned at the advent of democracy.

He said citizens are urged to commemorate the Mandela centenary through social activism every Friday on #MandelaFridays.

Citizens can also foster a love for education and make it fashionable by buying a book for a child.

South Africans could also:

• help a needy learner by getting them a school uniform.
• host lectures, seminars and round-table discussions about Madiba’s values;
• visit orphanages to offer assistance and play with the children
• organise tours for the youth and elders to visit heritage sites and help promote tourism;
• organising or hosting sports tournaments in honour of Madiba and donating the proceeds from such activities to non-profit organisations.

Several activities will be held throughout the year to commemorate the centenary of the former President, including 16th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, to be addressed by former US President Barack Obama on 17 July 2018.

Vanderkoof Dam is to be renamed after Madiba, an event that is planned for September.

Remembering Mama Sisulu

The Minister said there were also activities planned for Mama Sisulu, who had dedicated her life to nurturing and protecting children.

“She was committed to good quality education, insisting that the youth put education first even during their quest for a democratic, free, non-sexist and non-violent South Africa.

“Given the current scourge of violence against women and children, let us be men and women of courage to speak out, seek help and support the vulnerable,” said Minister Radebe.

Some of the events planned to commemorate the struggle icon include a special broadcast of the South African Love Story documentary of Albertina and Walter Sisulu during the month of May on SABC. The documentary is a touching, real-life exploration of one of South Africa’s most celebrated couples.

A special orchid, named after Ma Sisulu, will be unveiled on 19 May. The orchid was first discovered in Gauteng in 1918, and last observed in 1956.

A Big Debate Showcase, scheduled for June, will be held to focus on intergenerational dialogue on South African History. The dialogue will include the #FeesMustFall leadership talk about South Africa’s history, as well as the history of civil rights movements, feminism, and women who have been marginalised.

In August 2018, the IMC will help the Sisulu family track down the living participants of the 1956 Women’s March in a bid to package and share their stories and perspectives of the 1956 Women’s March.

In October, the Mama Sisulu Centenary Month will be officially launched where several activities, including the celebration of Albertina Sisulu at the Orlando West Anglican Church, will take place. The packed programme will also see the Albertina Sisulu biography being launched, as well as a memorial lecture in her honour taking place.

Encouraged by Vladimir Putin’s drive to end obligatory instruction in non-Russian languages in the republics, Russian nationalist activists in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Buryatia are now pressing for the abolition of the non-Russian republics whose existence, they say, acts to “proliferate nationalism.”

Their call takes the form of an open letter to the Duma which is considering a law banning any required study of non-Russian languages as well as to the Russian ministry of education. They present themselves as speaking for themselves and their fellow Russians in the republics, but there is a more ominous possibility.

What their call may represent is the opening salvo in a Kremlin campaign to do away with the republics, something Putin has indicated he favors, by highlighting support within the republics for that idea and thus setting the stage for referendums on the matter as the Russian constitution and laws require.

If that is the case, it will be not only language over which Russians and non-Russians will be fighting in the coming months but also the existence of the non-Russian republics which form a key element of what is left of federalism in Russia and whose abolition would open the way to an even more centralized unitary state.

The authors of the appeal include Mikhail Shcheglov, head of the Society of Russian Culture of Tatarstan, Eduard Nosov of the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Russian-Speaking Parents and Students in Tatarstan, Viktor Afanasyev of the Union of Ethnic Russians of Bashkortostan, and I. Gneusheva of the Movement for the Voluntary Study of Buryat.

Not surprisingly, they focus on arguments in favor of making the study of non-Russian languages entirely voluntary while keeping Russian and Russian literature as compulsory (idelreal.org/a/противники-обязательных-уроков-родного-языка-из-казани-уфы-и-улан-удэ-предложили-ликвидировать-национальные-республики-россии/29214866.html).

But in the key passage, these Russian nationalists call for Moscow to take up the issue of the liquidation of the non-Russian republics within Russia: Non-Russians shouldn’t have more rights than the ethnic Russian majority does, and the latter has no special status at all. Hence, the non-Russians must lose their status so everyone will be equal.

Dear Mr. Cook:

Last week, you announced the largest single stock buyback in corporate history, amounting to $100 billion.  Probably no more than you and two other Apple executives made this decision prior to receiving the expected rubber stamp from your congenial board of directors.  Your company’s owners – Apple stockholders– were neither consulted nor asked for their approval.

Executive compensation packages rely on stock buybacks.  (See The CEO Pay Machine by Steve Clifford, a former CEO who has served on corporate compensation committees.)  From 2005 to 2016, stock buybacks by the S&P 500 totaled $5 trillion – equal to half of net income and twice as much as paid to shareholders in dividends.  By the end of 2018, this figure will grow to well over $6 trillion.  The owners of these companies – the shareholders – were not asked by management for their approval.  After all, it is their big money, notwithstanding the out-of-control reliance on the “business judgment rule.”  Were they given the clear choice between stock buybacks or dividends, most shareholders would have preferred receiving this surplus in cash dividends now.

With your $100 billion announcement, you are telling shareholders, your company’s owners, without a detailed explanation regarding other options, that this is the best you can do to advance their interests.  This is short-term nonsense, except for its positive impact on executive compensation metrics.

Studies have shown that stock buybacks are just one variable in a large matrix of variables – internal and external to the company – that shape stock price and they are a weak variable at that.  (See attached list of studies).  You can examine major company stock buybacks for yourself (e.g., Cisco and Walmart) and see the accuracy of that observation.  Cisco, after huge buybacks and much greater profits and size, has its stock about one-half of its March 2000 value.

It is the better part of prudence and foresight for you to pursue two courses of action.  First, suspend the $100 billion decision or its implementation.  Second, enter into a professional, detailed exchange with your shareholders – institutional and individual – explaining why you do not think there are better uses long term and short term for their $100 billion. Receive their considered feedback all in public for other interested parties to be informed and educated.

You also owe it to less-favored taxpayers in America who don’t have the offshore repatriation tax reduction demands that Apple and other companies regularly pursue.  As Larry Fink, Chairman of the giant Blackrock investment firm wrote in his February 2018 letter to CEOs, “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.  Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.”  (See attached).

In that context of proper expectations, here are some issues you can address in ways that would receive positive public reactions:

1. For less than 2 percent of your $100 billion buyback, or $2 billion, you could award a full year’s pay bonus to the 350,000 Foxconn workers who build your iPhones.  Think of the economic relief and happiness that gesture would produce.  These workers sweat for your immense wealth in difficult workplace conditions, unable to afford the Apple phones they manufacture for your company’s massive profits.
2. You can invest in research and development on ways you can diminish the effects of your company’s toxic supply chain that stretches from the dangerous mines in Africa to the hazardous solid waste disposal when users discard them.  Many serious illnesses, fatalities, and injuries associated with manufacturing your products can be prevented.
3. With your reported reflective bent, you can make the case for reducing some of the collateral damage from excessive iPhone use by youngsters that comes with a sedentary life of obesity – now at risk-laden epidemic levels. Apple could invest in needed neighborhood recreational facilities all over the country.
4. Of course, you could always cut your prices for consumers. In the 1960s and ‘70s, such profit margins as Apple’s would have been an antitrust signal of possible monopolistic practices or market collusion.
5. Then there are the conventional applications of a cash-rich company to consider: productive new investments, raising employee salaries and pensions, improving hiring practices, and workforce training and consumer services.

Finally, it is unconscionable that the federal government decided to give Apple a huge tax windfall for repatriating its cash from abroad, while it refused to adequately fund the annual budgets of four critical agencies. The egregious examples of these budget inadequacies are the Center for Disease Control ($7 billion), the World Health Organization ($4.4 billion), the Environmental Protection Agency ($8 billion), and the IRS,  whose strapped budget made it unable to attempt to collect $450 billion in uncollected taxes (it currently has a budget of only $11.5 billion).

Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith called attention to the problems associated with concentration of private wealth and public deprivation over 60 years ago. 

The concentration of corporate power in ever-fewer hands, with expanding immunities and privileges denied “real persons,” continues to rise on matters of gravity to the American people.  Conservatives call these privileges “Statism,” or “crony capitalism,” that has enormous influence over government dispensations.  Mr. Fink’s cautions are worth pondering in more reflective formal settings.

The undersigned is not the only Apple shareholder who believes that stock buybacks, in contrast with other superior options, should be fully discussed with shareholders and then submitted to a binding shareholders’ vote.  You will be hearing from others.  Put your $100 billion stock buyback decision on hold.

I look forward to your thoughtful response.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

I listened and watched as Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, held up photos of Syrian children killed by chemical weapons deployed by Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad. “Only a monster targets civilians and then ensures that there are no ambulances to transfer the wounded, no hospitals to save their lives, no doctors or medicine to ease their pain,” Haley declared with self-righteous indignation during a meeting of the UN Security Council in April.

At the same time, Israel was also killing children at the border of the Gaza Strip, where nearly two million Palestinian civilians suffer under an oppressive embargo enforced by the heavily armed Israeli military. Israelis have repeatedly refused to permit the Palestinian civilians they have seriously injured to pass through checkpoints to get hospital care.

Since the anniversary of Land Day on March 30, Palestinians have protested along the Gaza border while Israeli snipers used high-powered, telescopic automatic weapons to kill more than 50 civilians. But Haley’s indignation and moral outrage changed last week, when addressing Palestinian protests against the Israelis. Instead of denouncing the killing of the Palestinians, Haley accused the protesters of “using Palestinian children as cannon fodder.”

While no Israelis have been wounded or killed during the “violent Palestinian protests,” dozens of Palestinians including several journalists have died as a direct result of Israeli military sniper fire. Nearly 6,800 Palestinians have been injured in the Israeli violence and 24 have had limbs amputated.

Clearly for Haley, it’s all about politics. Haley can only get away with this hypocrisy because she has the backing of the biased mainstream American and Israeli news media, which highlight stories of Syria’s chemical attacks while minimizing Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

The US and Israeli media bias against Palestinians is consistent across the board, at every level. It was evident last week, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas convened a rare meeting of the Palestinian National Council. Abbas hoped he could energize the divisive body to help augment opposition to President Donald Trump’s plans to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In what some described as a rambling 90-minute speech, Abbas urged PNC members to wake from their slumber and come together as a strong voice of moral indignation. The American and Israeli news media ignored the issues Abbas tried to raise, but jumped on his brief comments that steered off the message of Palestinian unity and criticized the failings of Jewish leaders.

Abbas’ 90 seconds of comments on Jews deserved to be criticized. He asserted Jews were victims not because of their religious beliefs, but because of the economic power they wielded behind the scenes in the countries where they lived. Why even go there? It is no different than the Americans and Israelis who take the actions of a few Muslims and demonize the entire Islamic world.

It was bewildering and symptomatic of Abbas’ failings as a leader. But it was also symptomatic of the pro-Israeli media’s bias. No US or Israeli media paid any attention to Abbas or the PNC until he said something they could use to undermine him or portray Palestinians in a negative light. They even exaggerated Abbas’ comments, asserting he denied the Holocaust, which is not true. But truth does not matter to these biased media outlets when it comes to demonizing Palestinians or defending Israel.

Abbas has repeatedly denounced Holocaust denial, describing the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, as “the most heinous crime in history.”

He rightly offered an apology, saying: “If people were offended by my statement in front of the PNC, especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them.”

Despite his failings, Abbas showed he has more character than Haley, whose outrageous lies about the Palestinians are incomparable. You will never hear Israelis or American officials like Haley apologize for their immoral rhetoric. You will never see the mainstream US or Israeli news media apologize or correct their unprofessional and biased reporting on Palestine.

They should, but will never, acknowledge that Israel’s misconduct borders on being a war crime. The killing of innocent civilians in Palestine is no less inhumane, immoral and heinous than the killings in Syria. But don’t expect Haley, Israel or the mainstream news media to get that right.

By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh*

The world was watching closely as President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. The US government, during the Obama administration, and the Iranian regime were the two most important players among the P5+1, or E3+3, which helped seal the nuclear agreement. The other signatories of the nuclear pact are Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

There appears to be a considerable of amount of misinformation about the US decision, what actions can be taken legally, and what the corresponding implications and consequences are. It is crucial to point out there are three distinct processes to pay attention to: The first one is linked to certification of the nuclear deal; the second category is related to the subject of issuing a material breach report; and the third is associated with the president’s power to waive the re-imposition of US sanctions against Tehran.

Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act — a bill that was passed by the US Congress in May 2015 — the US president must issue or decline a certification for the Iran nuclear deal every 90 days in order to notify Congress of Tehran’s compliance with the JCPOA. Moreover, instead of certifying or decertifying the nuclear deal, the president has another option, which is to issue a material breach report. To do so, the president would have to provide a breach report to Congress. If the president does not certify the deal or if he submits a breach report to Congress, this will trigger a 60-day window within which Congress will have time to introduce and pass legislation to re-impose US nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.

Congress has the choice of whether to re-impose some or all of the sanctions that were lifted due to the nuclear accord. The legislation must be introduced by the majority or minority leader in the Senate and House of Representatives, and such legislation would be processed on expedited terms. If Congress does not pass any legislation in the 60-day window, the nuclear deal will remain intact in spite of the fact the president has decertified it or submitted a material breach report to Congress. This scenario is exactly what happened in mid-January, when Trump declined to certify the nuclear deal. However, Congress was reluctant to introduce and pass legislation during the 60-day window. As a result, Iran continued enjoying all the fruits of the US sanctions relief.

The third category is tied to the power of the US president to sign a waiver for re-imposing US primary and secondary sanctions against Iran every three months. The president’s latest decision to pull out of the nuclear deal is directly linked to this category.

In other words, Tuesday’s decision was significant due to the notion that Trump is not waiving the US sanctions against Iran.

What sanctions will be re-imposed after the US has pulled out of the nuclear deal? To put it simply, primary sanctions are designed to punish US persons or institutions that deal with the sanctioned party (the Iran regime or specific Iranian individuals and organizations). Secondary sanctions widen the scope of the punishment by targeting Iran’s industries, including oil and banking, as well as foreign entities that deal with the sanctioned entity. European countries continued to do business with Iran after the US decertified the nuclear deal in January because Trump signed a waiver to continue suspending US sanctions against Tehran. However, foreign companies now face a significant risk in continuing doing business with the Iranian regime.

What is the next step now that Trump has abandoned the nuclear deal? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will work together to re-impose the sanctions on Iran.

The US Treasury will not re-impose economic sanctions immediately. Instead, there exists a 90-day and 180-day window period. On Aug. 6, some of the sanctions will be re-imposed, and on Nov. 6 the rest of the sanctions, which were lifted in 2015 due to the nuclear agreement, will be reactivated.

This wind-down period is likely designed to give time to foreign companies and corporations to leave Iran’s market and halt their dealings with the country. If they don’t, they will face the consequences of the US sanctions.

It is worth noting that another differentiation to make here is between the US sanctions on the one hand, and the UN Security Council sanctions on the other. The primary and secondary sanctions were unilateral US actions that were lifted by the Obama administration to appease Tehran and get the nuclear deal over the finishing line. The UN’s four rounds of sanctions against Iran, which were also lifted thanks to the nuclear agreement and would be re-imposed if Iran does not comply with the JCPOA, were reached by consensus among the five permanent members of the Security Council.

In technical terms, the US decision to leave the nuclear deal and re-impose primary and secondary sanctions does not mean that the UN Security Council’s sanctions will automatically snap back. Other members of the nuclear deal can decide to keep the JCPOA, continue doing business with Iran, and face the negative consequences. Since the president has declined to waive the US sanctions, the Trump administration still has two options: Trump can continue declining to waive all the sanctions, or he can decide to re-impose some of the sanctions. For example, he could re-impose sanctions against Iran’s banking system, and later re-impose sanctions related to its oil and aviation sectors.

Finally, The US decision to pull out of the nuclear deal, as well as the re-imposition of US primary and secondary sanctions against Iran, will create significant challenges for the Iranian regime and its state apparatuses to do business with foreign corporations. Large corporations and foreign firms ought to be extremely cautious of conducting any business with Iran because they will run the risk of losing their business with the US.

• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

By Dylan Pahman*

First it happened to Toys ‘R’ Us, but we did nothing (except complain).

Now it may be happening to Barnes & Noble, and we will do nothing again. (Nothing except complain, that is. We’ll definitely do that again.)

Yes, to start what will likely be weeks if not months of complaining about another big box mega-corporation struggling to stay in the black, David Leonhardt of the New York Times yesterday pleaded that we (meaning government regulators) “Save Barnes & Noble!”

He writes:

The company’s leaders claim that they have a turnaround plan, based on smaller, more appealing stores focused on books, and I hope the plan works. It’s depressing to imagine that more than 600 Barnes & Noble stores might simply disappear — as already happened with Borders, in 2011. But the death of Barnes & Noble is now plausible.

At first glance, this seems like a classic story of business disruption. Barnes & Noble and Borders were once so imposing that they served as the model for the evil corporation trying to crush independent bookstores in the 1998 movie “You’ve Got Mail.” Then the world changed. The old leaders couldn’t keep up. Such is capitalism.

Except that’s not anywhere near the full story.

Leonhardt is self-aware enough to realize that he’s defending a mega-corporation once unfairly cast as a one-dimensional, possibly-a-monopoly, evil empire, but he apparently is not able to imagine that in a decade or two people may be writing op-eds titled, “Save Amazon!”

Instead, says Leonhardt, “The full story revolves around government policy — in particular, Washington’s leniency, under both parties, toward technology giants that have come to resemble monopolies.”

I appreciate that he has hedged his language here. Saying Amazon has “come to resemble” a monopoly gets around having to know what a real monopoly actually is and when it is actually economically harmful.

A real monopoly is when a single supplier is the only one in a given market. Real monopolies are harmful, as the economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out decades ago, only when markets are also closed, i.e. when there are so many artificial barriers to entry that new competition could not possibly enter the market to challenge the monopoly.

As the economist Israel Kirzner put it, “[T]he necessary and sufficient condition for competition to exist without obstacle is complete freedom of entry into all kinds of market activity.”

So, first of all, does Amazon have no other competitors? A quick Google (or Yahoo! or Bing) search easily finds several alternate online booksellers. Note that competitors need not be anywhere near as big as Amazon. They only need to exist, i.e. be profitable, in the same market.

Furthermore, every local book store (the ones that survived the Great Barnes & Noble Terror of 1998, that is) competes with Amazon. They may not be as visible, but if they can make a profit, then they compete.

As for newcomers into the market, if the regulatory environment is truly “lenient” then anyone with enough capital and a better business model should be able to break in and compete as well.

The situation is actually even more complex, however. Comparing Amazon to Barnes & Noble isn’t exactly apples to apples. They do compete, but Amazon doesn’t just sell books themselves. Their website is also a platform for other, smaller sellers. Indeed, just last week I purchased a used book through Amazon from a bookstore of unknown size and location, likely a store that, without an online platform like Amazon, never would have enjoyed my business.

So even if Barnes & Noble is losing to Amazon, even then it would not be losing just to Amazon. It would also be losing to the very Mom and Pop stores people once feared it would crush.

I began by saying that people will likely complain but do nothing. I certainly hope so, at least. Despite Leonhardt’s objections, this really is “a classic story of business disruption.” So long as we keep the regulators out of it, that’s what it will be. Leonhardt would rather that Amazon were more like “Standard Oil and AT&T.” I like Amazon and want to keep liking Amazon, so I don’t.

In fact, Leonhardt even admits that, deep down, he likes Amazon, too: “Like many people, I am a frequent and usually satisfied Amazon customer.” One would expect that he then go on to advocate a call to action, asking others to follow his example in sacrificially cancelling their Amazon Prime memberships and flooding Barnes & Noble with their business.

But he doesn’t. He’d rather that, against the wishes of consumers like himself who are “usually satisfied” (4 out of 5 stars?) with Amazon, the government step in, break them up, and tell them and others how to do business — and thus that they tell consumers where and how they can and can’t do business, too.

I’m reminded of a few months ago when I explained to my six year-old son that Toys ‘R’ Us was closing forever. He was sad and didn’t want them to close. I explained that they couldn’t compete with Amazon inter alia, but that when a big company like Toys ‘R’ Us goes out of business, it is actually a sign that a market is healthy, because the big corporation wasn’t protected from failure by special government privilege. Naturally, my explanation did nothing to relieve his feelings that a great injustice had occurred. But, I added, it means Toys ‘R’ Us will have some great sales! That helped a little.

So we went to Toys ‘R’ Us and looked for a motorized wooden train he had been wanting. When we couldn’t find any, my son said, “That’s okay. We can just order it in the mail.”

So we did. Instead of trying to convince him to settle for some other toy — or no toy — my wife and I were able to order the exact train he had wanted at a great price.

Now, I know that some people at Toys ‘R’ Us stores lost their jobs. I’m not saying that isn’t important. But the people who work for Amazon are important too. And, for that matter, so is my son.

It is easy, as Frédéric Bastiat warned, to fret about what is seen and to overlook what is unseen. People see Amazon as big and scary and successful, and they see Toys ‘R’ Us or Barnes & Noble as shrinking, tired, and defeated. But what they don’t see are all the people whose cost of living has decreased due to Amazon, whose selection of products to meet their wants and needs has improved, nor all the small businesses who sell items on platforms like Amazon, nor all the people working for Amazon to support their families.

Amazon is not a monopoly, just as Barnes & Noble wasn’t. Rather, it is big and successful because it is doing a better job providing a service for millions of “usually satisfied” consumers every day. If it is to be broken up, I only wish it would be due to other companies better serving those millions of consumers, rather than by some bureaucrats who don’t care whether the result of their monopoly-busting would get a 1-star rating from the consumers they claim to protect. In practice, such regulation tends to close markets to the dynamism of competition that pushes even the big and successful to continue to outdo themselves in producing quality products and services.

Now that would be a loss well worth our complaints.

About the author:
*Dylan Pahman is a research fellow at the Acton Institute, where he serves as managing editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality. He has a Master’s of Theological Studies in historical theology with a concentration in early Church studies from Calvin Theological Seminary. He is also a layman of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Jayshree Sengupta

The dollar is becoming more expensive and those who are planning to go abroad this summer must be prepared to dish out more rupees for buying dollars or Euros to meet their holiday expenses. This will pinch many pockets whose budgets are limited. Similarly, those who are sending money to their children abroad for studies will also have to pay more rupees for each dollar. On the other hand, people receiving dollars from abroad will feel good because they will get more rupees.

From a year ago to date, at around Rs 66.82 to a dollar, the rupee has depreciated by 4.18 per cent against the US dollar and from being the best performing currency it has become the worst performing currency in Asia.

The reason is an obvious one — the dollar is gaining strength on news of a robust economic recovery in the US. The dollar index that measures its strength against major global currencies has risen by 1.7 per cent to 92.03 in the month of April 2018. This trend is likely to continue in the future months when joblessness in the US is reduced further and GDP growth rises steadily sans inflation.

There has been an outflow of FIIs (Foreign Institutional Investment) from the Indian market which is linked to the rupee’s growing weakness and the dollar’s strength as well as many other factors related to the corporate performance of companies in India. Only recently the corporate earnings have started showing stable higher earnings.

The Reserve Bank of India has already started to intervene in the forex markets to counteract the outflow and correct the volatility in the rupee’s value. This is evident from its reserves which have declined by $2.5 billion to $423.58 billion.  It has tried with some success to bring stability in the market by injecting dollars, and the rupee has somewhat stabilized but according to experts, the rupee is bound to slide more and get closer to Rs 70 per dollar.

A weak rupee will actually help exports because the dollar prices of Indian exportable goods will become lower which will increase the competitiveness of Indian products. Low interest rates, currently not favoured by the RBI and weak currency are good for manufacturing growth and exports. It is good for our services exports and farmers also. But for infrastructure companies specially power companies which import a lot of equipment, a weak currency is not a boon as import costs will go up. Also those exports with significant import content as in the case of gems and jewellery will not do well as their cost will go up. India imports its huge gold requirements (700 to 800 tons) and raw semi- precious stones and pearls for its jewellery trade.

Foreign equity investors on the other hand would welcome a strong currency and low interest rates as it will increase the profits of companies and therefore the returns will be higher in dollar terms. For most people however, a strong rupee is a sign of national economic strength. It indicates to them a healthy economy.

Thus the main point in favour of a weak rupee is the improvement of international competitiveness of Indian exports. According to the Economic Survey 2018, manufacturing industry has not made great strides reflected in the declining manufacturing export-GDP ratio and manufacturing trade balance. ‘Make in India’ initiative has also suffered due to the low competitiveness of manufactures in global markets.

Indian economy’s competitiveness according to the Economic Survey has had to contend with real effective exchange rate appreciation of about 21 per cent since 2014 which means India’s exports have suffered and imports have flourished.  This is because of the problem of ‘trilemma’ that a country faces which has an open capital account, an independent monetary policy and an exchange rate objective.

India has an independent monetary policy and an exchange rate objective and an open capital account. Hence it is facing the policy trilemma. Foreign institutional investments are allowed into India and their outflow from India is not controlled and policy makers can do little about it even though this is affecting the exchange rate.

When the rupee was appreciating against the dollar, there was a huge inflow of FIIs which was not controlled. But since February 2018, FIIs worth RS 12491.36 Crore invested in equities left India and Rs. 2771.36 crore invested in debt instruments flowed out.

Many FIIs have not totally gone away from the Indian market and are waiting to see if the economy is recovering fast enough and whether the rise in oil prices is affecting the Current Account Deficit because India imports 70 per cent of its oil needs. India’s current account deficit which is slated to be 1.7 per cent of the GDP this fiscal year can get inflated, putting pressure on the rupee.  Similarly the fiscal deficit can get higher and stoke inflation which will lead to higher interest rates, not favoured by FIIs due to their adverse impact on industrial growth.

In general, FIIs are staying away from Emerging Markets. But in India’s case the forthcoming General elections are also creating volatility. It would be better if FIIs knew for sure that there would be a stable government at the centre in 2019 and continuation of the same economic policies.

In all likelihood India will have an open capital account in the future as it attracts foreign savings which provides additional funds for investment which will help growth.  Also, the government, in all probability, will also not intervene much in the forex market because a lower rupee will help export performance.

But a weaker currency will lead to further outflow of FIIs. In the likely scenario of US raising its interest rates, there will be a further outflow towards the US bond market.

Hopefully, the export performance will improve because the rupee has also depreciated against the Yuan by 13 per cent in the last one year and an increase in price competitiveness vis-à-vis China will reduce the huge trade deficit of $51 billion which may help in correcting the rupee’s slide. In any case, India needs to have a robust manufacturing growth to make the government’s ‘Make in India’ successful and create jobs.  Hence the rupee’s slight fall is welcome.

(This article originally appeared in The Tribune)

By Sayli Mankikar

Many of Asia’s megacities like Yokohama, Jakarta and Mumbai are facing the heat of uncontrolled rural⎯urban migration and exploding population which is putting pressure on its infrastructure and environment. Several solutions have been discussed, but the uncontrolled ever⎯increasing population only makes every move seem inadequate. China, however, has decided to tackle this differently, by taking some result⎯oriented, yet, debatable steps, in redistributing its urban population, causing Shanghai and Beijing’s population to plunge in 2017.

Over the past five⎯months, beginning mid⎯November 2017, the municipal governments of Beijing and Shanghai, the two biggest megacities in the world, are on a demolition spree. They are trying to cap and redistribute city populations by bringing down illegal houses and unregistered commercial establishments in central areas to address the problem of ‘Chéngshì Bìng’ (big city disease).

These wave of demolitions in the name of ‘crackdown on illegal housing and safety’ was kicked off following a fire at Xinjiancun in the crowded central Beijing district that killed 19 people in November 2017. In China, every person has a residency permit or a hukou attached to his birthplace. The migrants are being stripped off their habitats and livelihoods overnight for lack of a hukou which meant living without any social security and services in urban areas.

The action is swift and decisive — the migrants are put on short demolition notices or are the city without any notice. The targets of such eviction are generally the once unskilled migrants in their late fifties, who, along with their families, inhabited these cities at the hilt of globalisation and economic reforms of the early 1990s. All of them are going back to their homes in rural China.

The Beijing local government has held job fairs for those who have lost their jobs where factories and warehouses have been shut down. Since November last year, about 1,800 jobs have been offered to those displaced. It has also offered assistance for those workers returning to their hometown, through building subsidised rental housing. But ultimately, the migrants have to fend for themselves, away from the cities that sustained them and their families.

According to a Reuters report, Beijing will mow down at least 40 million square metres, or 15.44 square miles, of illegal structures, amounting roughly to an area of 28 of London’s Hyde Parks, and shut 500 manufacturing firms in 2018. This will give way to modern structured public housing and commercial projects, to be occupied by residents with legal urban permits. It will “ensure zero increase of such structures” acting mayor Chen Jining had said in the Beijing annual work report in January 2018.

It was during my Mandarin class last year that I came across the term Chéngshì Bìng. When my teacher told me that the literal translation of it was ‘big city illness’, I really wondered what it meant. For us in India, it would probably translate into a health epidemic like the swine flu virus. But as it mostly is with China and its peculiar interpretations, the definition and understanding of the term loosely translates as a disease arising when a megacity (read: Beijing and Shanghai in the current context) becomes plagued with environmental pollution, traffic congestion and a shortage of public services, including education and medical care.

Officially, the government wants Beijing to cap its population at 23 million by 2020, while Shanghai will have to cap its population at 25 million by 2035. China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) also showed that resident population of Beijing had swelled by 59 percent in the past decade and that of Shanghai had increased by 50 percent. NBS also projects that the number of rural migrant workers increased by 2.4 percent to 268.94 million in 2017 alone, and accounted for 19.76 percent of the country’s population.

The question that arises here is whether this mode adopted by the Chinese to trim their exploding cities is the right and only way ahead? Is this in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of having inclusive, sustainable, resilient and safe cities?

There are two opposing thoughts to this argument.

The first is the government version, which bats for redistribution of population for safety and security. The Beijing government launched a 40⎯day “special operation” targeting structures with fire code and building safety violations post the fire at Xinjiancun in November 2017. A communique issued by the government in December 2017 claimed that such “redistribution” was necessary to ensure “the lives and safety of the people.” It refuted the argument that this operation was to drive out the ‘low⎯end population’ calling it as irresponsible and baseless. The communique explained that although the migrant population choose these places to work and live in, they do not understand the dangers of living in such dense urban ghettos.

Xu Lin, the director of the China Center of Urban Development, while talking to China.org.cn, justified this thought. He said that high quality growth requires high quality urbanisation and many important issues — including disorderly expansion and inefficient use of urban space — need to be resolved.

The PRC’s 13th five⎯year plan (2016⎯20) makes it clear that it is not against migrants per se. It wants to replace the old lot with the upwardly mobile, aspirational and new generation workers. The government is now redefining who the new urban residency permits should be issued to in Beijing, Shanghai and other such megacities in China. It spells out preference to “rural students moving up to the next level of education in an urban area, armed forces personnel settling in an urban area, people who have lived in an urban area for at least five years and have moved their families with them, and new generation migrant workers.” It also talks of linking professional and technical titles and skill levels with the granting of residency in large cities.

The 2018 China government work report too supports this. It explains how redistribution of urban population will step up its efforts to supply public⎯rental housing in urban areas for eligible first⎯time migrant workers. It plans to build 5.8 million units in cities across China in 2018.

However, just about four years ago, China’s National New⎯type Urbanisation Plan (2014⎯2020) had no mention of capping the country’s urban population as state policy. On the contrary, it focussed on policies that would effectively trigger off the process of reverse migration. The plan noted that the 260 million migrant workers in the cities were putting increasingly unmanageable pressures on employment opportunities and healthcare.

Xu Xinagping, the then Vice⎯Minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) had stated how the urbanisation in China had reached a crucial stage. “We must find a new way out,” he had said. The new way adopted by China according to the plan was to document and check official household registrations (hukou’s) of permanent urban residents and those staying in cities with rural hukou’s. Many of those not having permanent jobs and official hukou’s slowly started moving out, but many clung on to the city life, albeit without any social security.

But since then and especially after the incident of November 2017, this approach has changed — if you cannot manage the population, then you “redistribute” (read: evict) it. Official figures given out by NBS shows that the approach is working. The population of Beijing dropped by 22,000 to 21.7 million from 2016 to 2017, a decline of 0.1 per cent. This came after a 59 per cent surge in Beijing’s population between 2000 and 2016. Meanwhile, Shanghai’s population dropped by 13,700 to 24.18 million.

The other argument is against pushing those migrants out of cities, who were harbingers of China’s rapid progress through the 1990s. There is resentment against the way they are being abruptly stripped off their habitats and livelihoods for the lack of a hukou.

Li Jianmin, professor of demographics at Nankai University in Tianjin, while talking to Financial Times argues that Beijing, like every city, needs people of all kinds. All humans are equal and should be respected. Driving people out of the city is not going to be effective in the long⎯run and may cause social unrest.

While both Beijing and Shanghai are aiming at getting a young and upwardly⎯mobile population, these dystopian urbanscapes have some problems. There will be an ageing population that needs help, but unfortunately, the cleaners, nannies, maids, drivers and people in smaller jobs are being ousted, making life difficult and unaffordable, for those who remain such jobs will come at a premium. The younger generation will pay several times to stay in new age condos which will have replaced the traditional terraced homes in the traditional Hutongs (courtyard residences). And finally, shrunken cities will have economic implications — residents will pay more for every service.

Could China have looked at this ‘big city disease’ differently or dealt with it in an equitable way? Contrasting to China, Indian cities like Mumbai which have a huge poor migrant population living in slums, has adopted a policy of integration. This is a more humane approach and it support the ecosystem of the city where the social fabric of the city in kept intact. But ultimately, there needs to be a realistic assessment, like China, on how far a city can grow, how big it can get, and what is economically sustainable.

There are no tools to plan specifically for migration in urban planning. But, as a short⎯term measure, there could be redistribution of resources and a cap on use of water and other important essentials. An affordable housing plan can be worked out, which can be used for rehousing migrants, like it has been accounted for in the Mumbai development plan (DP). Creation of new cities and census towns too can give way to new urban areas to settle such populations in.

In the long⎯term, new cities can adopt a ‘decentralised urbanisation’ approach, where stronger linkages between urban and rural areas should be drawn up. The two areas can co⎯evolve leading to a loss of traditional distinctions between them. Strong linkages which push equitable flow of resources can ensure maximum economic and social benefits to people in the rural areas, thus keeping them away from cities.

China is a country in a hurry, and it has made its choice. It chose a different path, which is unconventional, to deal with its ‘big city disease’. But the perils of an unequal society can create a bigger monster which it should not ignore.

By Dr. Andrea Galli*

By Carol Rollie Flynn*

(FPRI) — Early in my career as a CIA case officer, a grizzled Chief of Station once cautioned that my job required an unusual blend of social dexterity to navigate receptions and dinner parties and the steel spine necessary to call in a B-52 strike when needed. It was ultimately a matter of making the right choices in varied, often stressful, high stakes situations with limited, often contradictory, information, while under uncertain, often pressing, time constraints. Few have this skill and fewer still have demonstrated it time and again over decades while retaining their honor, integrity, and respect of their peers. Gina Haspel is such a person–she has consistently made the right choices under trying circumstances throughout her 33 years of service and she is the right choice for CIA Director.

I worked with Gina for more than twenty years at the Agency. Others might opine from the outside with the benefit of hindsight and through the lens of partisan politics, but I would like to offer the perspective of a colleague who was with her in the trenches during a number of challenging times. Unlike many of the recent directors, Gina is a seasoned veteran in the arcane world of the Directorate of Operations, the DO. Not since William Colby has there been a nominee for Director with more experience in clandestine overseas operations. Like Colby, Gina has deep experience in overseas espionage operations, the quintessential–and most risky–element of the CIA’s mission. Foreign espionage is the heart and soul of the CIA and it is these clandestine operations that produce the critical intelligence that our President and senior policymakers rely upon to make sound foreign policy decisions. It is also these very foreign clandestine operations that have been the source of much controversy surrounding the CIA since its creation in 1947.

Ms. Haspel’s nomination has raised important questions about whether a CIA officer, who rose through the ranks, carried out and led operations overseas, and knows firsthand the potential legal and ethical dilemmas inherent in foreign espionage operations, can ever be approved by our increasingly polarized Senate. It is ironic that many of the Senators who will be passing judgment on Ms. Haspel were briefed on the interrogation program and posed no objections in the aftermath of 9/11. Ms. Haspel, because of her intimate knowledge of one of the CIA’s most controversial, yet legal at the time, programs, understands more than most the need for caution in making risk versus gain choices in situations that test conventional notions of legality and ethics. A student of history would also note that many of the directors who have led the CIA into some of its most controversial operations have not been career CIA officers, but rather outsiders who lacked the perspective and caution of a career officer. Given her experience and expertise, it is much more likely that Gina will make better choices, particularly in important cases, than someone who has never been through the wars and might be beholden to a particular political base.

The controversy over Ms. Haspel’s nomination also raises questions about the responsibility and culpability of our civil servants who carry out legally authorized programs that may at some future point be deemed unlawful or inconsistent with mainstream views. Ms. Haspel was not an architect of the interrogation program, but rather a mid-level civil servant carrying out policies designed by others and approved by the lawyers in the Justice Department. At the time, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and well-grounded fears of a second wave of attacks, public sentiment supported the War on Terror and policymakers at the time looked to the CIA to use every tool at its disposal to prevent another calamity. Few would defend this program today, but I suggest that it is unfair for civil servants, such as Ms. Haspel, to be judged ex post facto for carrying out what were lawful orders at a time of national emergency. (I further suggest the Gina is as responsible as anyone in government for ensuring that another 9/11-like attack did not occur.)

On a personal note, I have known Gina for a long time. She is the perfect blend about which my grizzled Chief of Station mused–socially adept while being smart, tough and honorable–and fully capable of calling in the B-52s if necessary, but savvy and humane enough to avoid such a choice if at all possible. She also commands both the respect and affection of those in the Agency and throughout the Intelligence Community. At a recent conference with a large number of CIA officers in attendance, the mention of Ms. Haspel’s name by one of the speakers prompted spontaneous cheers from the audience (the only name to do so).

Much has also been made of Ms. Haspel’s gender, a fact that would be irrelevant were it not for the fact that she is the first woman nominated to lead the CIA. As a fellow female during that time, I can attest to the fact that her star rose within the CIA because she was the best, not only because of her intellect, consummate professionalism, and hard work, but because of her personal warmth, integrity, and leadership skills.

In short, Gina is the right choice to be the CIA Director.

About the author:
*Carol Rollie Flynn, a Senior Fellow in the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Insittute, is the founder and managing principal of Singa Consulting.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

It was a victory, but it could hardly count as a truly revolutionary one. Grizzled, aged but formidably stirring, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister, is set to form government as the world’s oldest elected leader. His Pakatan Harapan coalition ventured past the 112 seat threshold required to form government, while a weary Barisan Nasional limped through with 79.

Shocks were registered some four hours after voting closed. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai, head of the Malaysian Chinese Association, fell to Wong Tack of PKR. Then came the caretaker health minister S. Subramaniam. The ballot box slaughter would continue for the ruling party through the night.

This election result is only surprising if one considers the seemingly immutable nature of BN’s rule, which has lasted six decades and resisted change with studied fanaticism. Prime Minister Najib Rajak had thrown everything bar the kitchen sink at this election, enacting laws to curb the reporting of “fake news” and holding the election at an inconvenient time of the week, but even those actions could not conceal the rot that had set in.

The decay was such as to give Najib international notoriety, featuring the alleged misappropriation of funds from the state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Mahathir, hardly a squeaky clean figure himself, took this as his cue to return to Malaysian politics, this time under the aegis of a new party, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia.

Barisan Nasional was very much a beast Mahathir understood, having lead it for 22 years. He was its stalwart and steward before retiring. As prime minister, he pursued a modernisation agenda at some cost while also poking international rivals with vigour. “Asian values” remained a favourite theme of his, fashioned to outwit advocates of greater civil liberties.

At times, it seemed that the wily politician was right. He took considerable and understandable umbrage at the efforts of such figures as former US Vice President Al Gore to insist on his ouster in the wake of student protests against his ruthless treatment of former deputy Anwar Ibrahim. “Citizens who gain democracy,” proclaimed Gore before some thousand business leaders on a visit to Malaysia in November 1998, “also gain the opportunity and the obligation to root out corruption and cronyism.”

Such statements of sanctimonious interference merely served to shore up Mahathir’s authority. “If the attempt [to oust him] had succeeded,” penned Eiichi Furukuwa in 1999, “it would have strengthened and expanded the power of the Islamic radicals and exacerbated conflicts with the Chinese community, leading to possible Kosovo-type ethnic conflict in Malaysia.”

Economically, Mahathir was a dark sheep. He refused, much to the surprise of common wisdom at the time, to accept the orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund clique in the wake of a financial crisis that burned through various Asian economies in the late 1990s. Capital controls on global investors were put in place, a heresy that enraged such currency speculators as George Soros, deemed by the then prime minister as one of various “unscrupulous profiteers” engaged in an “unnecessary, unproductive and immoral” trade. Currency trading, argued Mahathir, “should be made illegal.” Soros preferred to think of it as unstoppable. Mahathir, it seemed, won through on that one.

As part of his political kit, Mahathir nurses a fair number of conspiracy theories that are amply consumed in certain constituencies. His address before the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003 held in Kuala Lumpur is still held up as an exemplar of anti-Semitic outrage. “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be a defeated by a few million Jews,” he explained to the applauding delegates. “There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack.”

Themes of extermination and subjugation featured in an address that would have found easy room in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy.”

He was also its crudest of weapons when required, manipulating ethnic insensibilities and political weaknesses for reasons of political survival. His 1970 publication The Malay Dilemma advanced the cause of ethnic Malays in the face of their more productive Chinese counterparts, an assertion of ownership and blood purity that seemed, at best, anachronistic. Malaysia’s ethnic composition – Malay, Chinese and Indian – has never been the rosy one recounted in state propaganda, but Mahathir managed to place himself, if somewhat falsely, above the fray as a unifying voice tempering violent Islamic tendencies.

He always remained the foundational pugilist, banishing opponents and anointing successors in a semi-autocratic style that won him fame. His understanding of politics is such that he will even promise enemies relief and rehabilitation if required, the most notable of this being his courting of his jailed rival Anwar.

Even now the agreement Mahathir supposedly hammered out with Anwar looks shaky and unsure, sketched in the heat of political expediency. It must involve the securing of a royal pardon, then a by-election victory to enable the former deputy prime minister to assume the reins of power from his nemesis. Yet even at the age of 92, Mahathir’s political instinct is animal like and impossible to contain. The shock here was not his victory but the lack of variety and options in Malaysian politics that might count as reform. The mummy, albeit in different wrapping, has returned.