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The Marshall Plan Isn’t The Success Story You Think it Is – OpEd

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By Ryan McMaken*

To this day, the Marshall Plan, that enormous government program for foreign aid and wealth redistribution, is still held up as a model of good government planning, and of the benefits of forcibly redistributing the taxpayers’ money.

In American politics, this opinion has nearly risen to the level of gospel truth. For example, while domestic welfare programs are often met with derision from American conservatives, the Marshall Plan, which is founded on the same ideological foundation as the American welfare states, receives almost universal approval from Americans left and right.

Thus, it is not surprising that politicians and pundits continue to invoke the Marshall plan to push for more modern day programs based on the idea that if governments spread around the wealth, then prosperity will naturally result.

Tuesday in Europe, for example, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani invoked the Marshall plan to push for more EU spending programs in Africa designed to attract wealth there via sweetheart deals between European regimes and African contractors. Many of those firms, of course, are likely to be European-owned. And the scheme is reminiscent of the Marshall Plan. so it’s sure to be a success!

Not coincidentally, Tajani delivered his remarks on the 71st anniversary of Secretary of State George Marshall’s June 5, 1947 speech calling for what became the Marshall Plan. He outlined the plan to flood Europe with government welfare checks in order to help Europe overcome the fact that much of the continent’s capital had been destroyed in World War II.

The money spent totaled over 100 billion dollars in today’s dollars. And given that the American economy was but a small fraction of what it is today, this was an enormous sum.

The rhetoric behind the idea was nothing new. In 1947, it was routine to claim that government spending of the New Deal and World War II had ended the poverty of the Great Depression. That’s not the reality, of course. As economic historian Robert Higgs has shown, the New Deal made the Depression worse . Nor did World War II end the Depression . But at the time, this was a common misperception.

So, if redistributing the wealth worked so well to end poverty in the 1930s, why not do it all again in post-war Europe?

Moreover, it was a winning political strategy for President Truman. As noted by Charles Mee in his book The Marshall Plan:

[Truman needed] some large program that would let him recapture the initiative, something big enough to enable him to gather in all the traditional factions of the Democratic Party and also some middle-of-the-road Republicans, and at the same time, something that would hamper the Republican phalanx.

So, the US government set to work funneling taxpayer dollars to both foreign regimes and to American corporations who could leverage their political influence with foreign regimes to get some of that money.

But here’s the rub. There’s not actually evidence that this worked.

As Thomas Woods notes in this lecture on foreign aid, it’s easy to see why the Marshall Plan has the reputation it does. After all, the Marshall Plan was implemented in the late forties, and during that time, the economies of Western Europe greatly recovered.

But this is a case of mere correlation being woefully insufficient to prove causation.

After all, as Woods further notes:

  • “Britain received twice as much aid as West Germany did, but economic growth in Britain dramatically lagged behind that of the Germans.”
  • “France, [West] Germany, and Italy began their economic recoveries before they started getting Marshall Aid.”
  • “Austria and Greece received a lot of Marshall Aid, per capita, and yet their economic recovery only got under way as Marshall aid was being phased out.”

Woods concludes “given this, I think its increasingly plausible to suggest perhaps the Marshall plan was not responsible for the recovery…what was responsible for the recovery? Well, the return to market economies after the war … there were tremendous wartime economic controls, in all these countries and with the end of the war came the end of those controls.”

And with that came economic prosperity. After all, the German Economic Miracle was based on ending the economic controls of the Nazi-era.

D.W. Mackenzie writes:

Marshall Plan aid consisted of only a tiny percentage of German GDP. Also, the money that West Germany paid in reparations offset Marshall Plan aid. West Germany received military defense from the U.S. and England, but paid substantial fees for this service. The German Economic Miracle began with a radical program of privatization and deregulation, beginning in 1948. This ended the regulatory controls and elaborate tax system imposed by Hitler and his National Socialists.

Foreign aid had, at best, minimal influence on the West German revival. A free and nondemocratic Germany experienced a strong recovery.

At the same time, in the United Kingdom, politicians were busy at work attempting to continue wartime economic controls into peacetime . Government planning won the war, the thinking went, so why not continue with government controls in order to “win the peace”? Not surprisingly, German economic growth quickly began to outpace British growth where the economy continued to be mired in government planning.

But, given that the UK received more Marshall aid than West Germany, we shouldn’t be surprised that government grew more in the UK. As Woods notes “the way the Marshall plan was set up, for every dollar that you got in Marshall plan assistance, the government of the recipient country had to increase government expenditures by one dollar.”

That is, the Marshall Plan mandated that governments grow in relation to a country’s GDP as a condition of receiving aid.

But, when it comes to real economic recovery, the same principles applied in Europe as applied in the United States. Where we saw large amounts of economic growth after the war — in the United States, for instance — growth was connected to large declines in government spending and the repeal of many government controls from the war years.

Nor is Germany the only example. Mackenzie continues:

Hong Kong rebuilt with minimal governmental interference.1 This resulted in rapid economic development and a steadily rising standard of living for the people of Hong Kong. This progress benefited not only highly skilled upper income workers, but also low paid unskilled workers.

Japan also experienced great success due to a relative lack of governmental interference.2 Low taxes and high savings rates translated into strong economic growth in postwar Japan. Once again, foreign aid and intervention were too small to have accounted for this success. Japan did not need massive intervention to recover…

Nevertheless, politicians who speak out against welfare at home sing its praises internationally. George W. Bush, for example, routinely extolled the benefits of the Marshall Plan when calling for ever more foreign aid for Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US had recently bombed into rubble in many areas.

Of course, few would argue that the post-war record in Iraq and Afghanistan is anything to brag about today. And indeed, foreign aid in general — of which the Marshall Plan is the modern progenitor — is no success story. 

But that failure isn’t nearly enough to destroy the Marshall Plan myth that endures.

There is, however, another component of the Marshall plan, and that is, as Hal Brands contends today, the necessity of “the deft use of economic tools for geopolitical gain.” That is, the Marshall plan should be seen less as a tool of economic policy, and more as a tool of foreign and geopolitical strategy.

In this respect then, the idea of the Marshall Plan is really to buy loyalty from foreign regimes and to execute public relations upon foreign populations. But there’s a problem here too. Given that the Marshall Plan didn’t actually improve the European economy — and given that the plan required the additional fleecing of the American taxpayer — why not implement a plan to actually helps to both build goodwill and improve economic growth at the same time?

This, of course, could have been achieved by the adoption of unilateral free trade on the part of the Americans. While it’s true that the Marshall Plan was part of a strategy to increase trade among European states, and trade in general, the tools used were the same that we see today: managed trade deals controlled by states and built upon an edifice of international bureaucracy. By necessity, plans like this always involved central planning to the extent that government planners pick winners and losers by designing trade agreements.

Unilateral free trade, however, offered — and still offers — a true laissez-faire solution. Imagine moreover, how the post-war world offered an excellent opportunity in this regard. The Japanese and European economies had been temporarily destroyed by the war. The US, meanwhile, was in an excellent position to offer — through markets — both capital and American consumers to the globe. Faced with free and open access to American markets, and with American firms prepared to invest capital overseas, the US had the chance to build greater cultural and economic ties with its former enemies and longtime allies in both Europe and Asia. The US need not even ask these foreign regimes to reciprocate. Opening up American markets to these foreign regimes would have made sense both geopolitically and economically. It would have offered American consumers access to less expensive goods, while also building new trade opportunity for foreign entrepreneurs. No redistribution schemes were necessary. All that was needed was for the US regime to embrace true, free, and open trade.

Politically speaking, this might even have been an easier sell than usual. Most industrialized foreign economies had been destroyed in the war, and the US was in a position to dominate the global economy. Was it really necessary to protect American markets anymore? The answer is always no, of course, but the case could have possible been made more forcefully at that time than ever before.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Guided by bad economics, and bad ideologies, the US was simply not prepared to embrace true free trade or free economies of any kind. The chosen path was one that afforded governments the chance to continue to control and direct markets, and to decide who gets what and when. That’s always been a pretty hard deal for governments to give up.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source
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This article was published by the MISES Institute.

Notes:

1. See Rabushka, Alvin. 1979. Hong Kong, a Study in Economic Freedom. University of Chicago Press.<

2. Henderson, David. 1993. The Myth of Miti The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics.


Israel Mulls “Massively Expanding Presence’ In Golan Heights

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Israel’s Deputy Minister Michael Oren said on Wednesday, June 6 that his government is mulling the idea of massively expanding their presence inside the Golan Heights region, Al-Masdar says, citing Arutz Sheva.

“We’ve been settling the Golan for more than 50 years now, but there are just 22,000 Israeli citizens there,” Oren stated.

“The Golan is an inseparable part of the character of the State of Israel, and we must develop the area,” he said on the 51st anniversary of Israel’s victory during the 1967 Six Days War.

According to Oren, expanding Israel’s presence in the occupied Golan Heights is not only a moral issue, but also, a security one, as he accuses Iran of purposely displacing the local Sunni population.

“This is not just a demographic or moral issue, but a serious security threat. Iran is working to replace the local Sunni population with Shi’ite forces [on the Syrian side of the Golan], and to establish itself militarily in Syria in order to turn the Golan into a new front with Israel. We have a window of time that is critical to take advantage of – our presence there is important to the security of the State of Israel, the Middle East, and the world,” he added.

Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six Days War; they would later annex the region 1981.

In response to Israel’s refusal to hand back the Golan Heights, the United Nations passed Resolution 497, which recognized the region as a part of Syria.

While Israel claims just 22,000 citizens in the occupied Golan Heights, the remaining population is Syrian Druze, who refuse to accept Israeli citizenship.

Social Media Images Of Culture Can Predict Economic Trends In Cities

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The rise and prosperity of a city neighborhood is not predicated on economic capital alone — the presence of a vibrant arts, music and science culture is equally important. So says a groundbreaking study published in Frontiers in Physics, in which researchers used social media images of cultural events in London and New York City to create a model that can predict neighborhoods where residents enjoy a high level of wellbeing — and even anticipate gentrification by 5 years. With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, the model could help policymakers ensure human wellbeing in dense urban settings.

“Culture has many benefits to an individual: it opens our minds to new emotional experiences and enriches our lives,” said Dr. Daniele Quercia, Department Head Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK. “We’ve known for decades that this ‘cultural capital’ plays a huge role in a person’s success. Our new model shows the same correlation for neighborhoods and cities, with those neighborhoods experiencing the greatest growth having high cultural capital. So, for every city or school district debating whether to invest in arts programs or technology centers, the answer should be a resounding ‘Yes!'”

The term cultural capital was first coined by French sociologist Dr. Pierre Bourdieu in the late 1970s, as a way of understanding how a person’s knowledge, cultural interests, degrees and exposure to creative pursuits – including travel, art and technological innovation — are forms of ‘wealth’ that individuals bring to the ‘social marketplace,’ their personal relationships, and their communities. Bourdieu demonstrated that people with similar cultural capital tend to associate with each other, rather than going outside these bounds to build relationships. These relationships attract people of like mind and grow neighborhoods and societies.

While Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital as applied to individuals produced fascinating snapshots of social function, the concept has potentially profound applications when applied to cities and neighborhoods. This motived Quercia and colleagues Dr. Desislava Hristova, from the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Luca M. Aiello, also from Nokia Bell Labs, to find a way to track how cultural capital plays out in urban areas.

The researchers accessed millions of Flickr images taken by people attending cultural events in London and in New York City over ten years. The events included festivals, libraries, cinema, art exhibitions, musical performances, technological demos, handicraft artisans, restaurants, museums, newspaper stands and theater. The team organized the images, which all had GPS tags indicating the place and time taken, into 25 categories. They also cleaned the data to adjust for outliers, accounting for issues such as many museums not allowing photos of exhibits and different generations gravitating to different choices.

“We were able to see that the presence of culture is directly tied to the growth of certain neighborhoods, rising home values and median income. Our model can even predict gentrification within five years,” said Quercia. “This could help city planners and councils think through interventions to prevent people from being displaced as a result of gentrification.”

“We already have data from wearable technology showing that both the 2016 US presidential election and 2016 Brexit referendum greatly impacted people’s sleep and even heart rates,” added Aiello. “Information on cultural consumption could similarly be used to track the impacts of large-scale change.”

The model does have a couple of limitations. First, it only works for world-class cities, such as London, New York or perhaps Tokyo, where the penetration rates of social media are sufficiently high. The approach also does not work for populations that are not tech savvy as it depends on the independent use of technology and software by people to capture authentic images of what moves them.

The model also does not explain what causes gentrification — namely, which occurs first: increasing cultural offerings that reorient social identity and thus, capital, or people seeking more cultural capital as they climb the economic ladder. Somewhere in this complex equation is the as-yet unknown artist/chef looking for an affordable studio/kitchen who inspires a clientele and a new generation of artists/chefs.

Even so, the insights generated by this and other models could help people to successfully live in dense urban settings – an increasingly relevant issue. The United Nations estimates that 54 percent of the world’s population lived in urban environments in 2014 and predicts the figure to rise to 69 percent by 2050.

“Next, we want to measure the relative health of communities, looking at the availability of healthy food, farmer’s markets, sports, parks, beautiful architecture and so forth,” said Quercia. “By overlaying different maps upon each other, we can create a vertically integrated map showing how exposures to different influences can accurately reflect a neighborhood’s sense of wellbeing.”

Much Of High Seas Fishing Industry Would Be Unprofitable Without Government Subsidies

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As much as 54 percent of the high seas fishing industry would be unprofitable at its current scale without large government subsidies, according to a new study by researchers from the National Geographic Society; the University of California, Santa Barbara; Global Fishing Watch; the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia; and the University of Western Australia. The research, published in the open-access journal Science Advances, found that the global cost of fishing in the high seas ranged between $6.2 billion and $8 billion USD in 2014. Profits from this activity range between a loss of $364 million and a profit of $1.4 billion USD.

The high seas — marine waters beyond national jurisdiction — cover 64 percent of the ocean’s surface and are dominated by a small number of fishing countries, which reap most of the benefits of fishing this internationally shared area. While the environmental impacts of fishing on the high seas are well studied, a high level of secrecy around distant-water fishing had previously precluded reliable estimates of the economic costs and benefits of high seas fishing. However, newly compiled satellite data and machine learning have revealed a far more accurate picture of fishing effort across the globe at the level of individual vessels.

“The reason most fleets continue to operate in the high seas is that they receive government subsidies. Without subsidies and the forced labor some of them are known for, fishing would be unprofitable in over half of the high seas fishing grounds,” said Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and lead author of the study.

Using Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) and Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS), the researchers were able to track the individual behavior, fishing activity and other characteristics of 3,620 vessels in near-real time. Combining this information with the global catch data from the University of British Columbia’s Sea Around Us project, the team was then able to determine how much effort the vessels expended, how large their catch was, and how much profit the catch generated.

“Satellite technology, computing power, and machine learning are rapidly transforming our ability to monitor and understand human activity at sea. This unprecedented level of transparency provided by Global Fishing Watch not only creates new research avenues but, more importantly, opens the door to exciting opportunities to improve how we manage and protect our oceans,” said Juan Mayorga, marine data scientist for Pristine Seas.

The researchers estimated that fishing is taking place for almost 10 million hours each year across 132 million square kilometers (57 percent) of the high seas. They identified fishing hotspots near Peru, Argentina, and Japan, which were dominated by Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean squid fishing fleets. Deep-sea bottom trawling in the northwest Atlantic between the United States and Canada off Georges Bank and in the northeast Atlantic is also prevalent, as are activities by tuna fleets in the central and western Pacific. Overall, catches range around 4.4 million tons a year.

“In many parts of the high seas, subsidies are propping up fishing activity to levels far beyond what would otherwise be economically rational. This implies that through targeted subsidy reforms, we could save taxpayers money, rebuild fish stocks, and eventually lead to higher value, lower volume fisheries,” said Christopher Costello.

The paper also hints at the possibility of individual fishing companies catching more than they report to fisheries agencies, hence making more money than they claim while still pushing governments for subsidies.

“Even though some high seas fisheries are profitable, squid fishing and deep bottom trawling would not make sense without the subsidies. Governments are throwing massive amounts of taxpayer money into a destructive industry,” said Sala, founder and leader of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project.

Furthermore, the research finds that beyond subsidies, unfair labor compensation or no compensation at all are key cost-reducing factors in long-distance fishing.

India: Indigenous People Defy State To Open Bank

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By Bijay Kumar Minj

Indigenous people in a Christian stronghold have established their own bank in defiance of India’s Jharkhand state government.

Hundreds of people gathered in Khunti district headquarters on June 3 to launch the Bank of Gram Sabha, named after the term for their village council.

Community leader Joseph Purty handled the paperwork for about 100 people who opened new accounts.

Purty told members of the media that an important aim of the new bank is to further the advancement of tribal people.

And tribal representatives said it would help protect their land and culture against encroachment by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state administration.

India’s national constitution provides for indigenous groups in so-called “scheduled areas” to be able to develop, consistent with their own customs and administrative systems, without state government interference.

Anabel Benjamin Bara, a teacher at the state’s Jesuit-managed Xavier School of Management, said this means the village council only has to report on development projects to the state governor, who is a national representative.

He believes the state government opposed formation of the Bank of Gram Sabha because it would strengthen indigenous rights to manage tribal land and resources.

The state government has asked tribal people not to conduct a ritual called Pathhalgari to demarcate indigenous land with stones erected in the name of their forefathers.

Bara said the ritual effectively defined their “scheduled area” in the face of proposed government works projects linked to mining and other commercial interests.

Some people have been arrested in the past for conducting Pathhalgari rituals, according to local media reports.

Most Catholic leaders in Khunti diocese declined to comment on the stone-laying development, fearing they could be accused of supporting socially disruptive anti-government activities.

Bishop Emmanuel Kerketta, of Jashpur Diocese in neighboring Chhattisgarh state, told ucanews.com that the church had nothing to do with the Pathhalgari land rights issue.

Father Vincent Ekka, who heads the department of tribal studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, welcomed the new tribal bank as a way to save money and use it sensibly while enhancing indigenous rights.

Indigenous people constitute some 16 percent of the 32 million people in Jharkhand. The state has about one million Christians, or 4.3 per cent of the population, almost all of them tribal, which is almost double the national percentage.

Of the 532,000 people in Khunti district, 25 percent are estimated to be Christians.

California’s Other Gold: Sea Urchins

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Sea urchin roe is an acquired taste. Served as sushi, uni — the Japanese word for this delicacy — is actually the reproductive organ of the sea urchin.

One of the most highly valued coastal fisheries in California is the red sea urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus), found in the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Baja California. Red sea urchins are sold to processors who determine the price of each uni batch based on its quality — a function of its size, shape, texture and color (usually orange to yellow).

As a part of her doctoral dissertation at UC Santa Barbara, marine ecologist Sarah Teck explored how sea urchin quality could be quantified and used to predict fishermen’s behavior. She and her colleagues found that understanding the local dynamics of this fished resource can make management strategy evaluation and planning more effective. The findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.

“Our work quantifies some of the rich information that sea urchin fishermen have known for years about this valuable resource,” said Teck,who is currently a UC MEXUS-CONACYT postdoctoral fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Ensenada, Mexico.

Over a three-year period, Teck examined more than 2,500 specimens from sea urchin fishermen working throughout the seasons in the Santa Barbara Channel. Using California Department of Fish and Wildlife data, the researchers identified a predictable pattern: When the quality of uni improved, fishermen got better prices, so they fished more. The scientists also documented patterns of fishing across the seascape.

Numerous factors determine the behavior of fishermen collecting these organisms from the wild, including weather and seasonal supply and demand. However, the study found that a significant predictor of sea urchin fishermen’s behavior stems from the animal’s seasonal reproductive cycle.

“We always knew that sea urchin fishermen follow the ‘gold’ — and fish more when the product is better,” Teck explained. “But we were surprised to find that the organism’s reproductive cycle explained such a large percentage — between 69 and 92 percent — of the variability in catch, price, effort and value within the industry.”

Sea urchin divers respond to the resource quality — in this case, the timing of the reproductive cycle. In the northern Channel Islands, when quality is higher (in the fall and early winter), their product is worth more money, so divers harvest larger quantities. However, the study also provided evidence that the sea urchins’ reproductive cycle in Southern California differs significantly from published patterns in the north, where statewide fishing regulations initially were developed.

According to Teck, recent shifts in the marine environment — such as extreme warming events, sea urchin disease outbreaks and kelp loss in certain areas — likely have played a significant role in the recent 46 percent reduction in sea urchin catch statewide.

“Although the general patterns from our data may be considered common knowledge within the sea urchin industry, we have identified a method to predict the performance of the fishery based on a simple measure that can be used for management purposes,” Teck said. “An adaptive management scheme applied on a smaller spatial scale may be more effective — especially given the extreme and rapid ecological and environmental changes that have occurred in the region in recent years.”

Mobile Health Technology Can Potentially Transform How Patients Manage Heart Disease Risk

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Mobile health technology has the potential to transform the way we prevent and manage heart disease, but there are unanswered questions about how to optimize this technology and maintain engagement with patients, according to a review of randomized clinical trials published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Recently, mobile health (mHealth) technology has been the focus of increasing interest as a means to improve the delivery of cardiovascular prevention targeting a combination of modifiable risk factors. which account for the majority of global risk factors for cardiovascular disease – in a scalable and affordable way.

According to lead investigator Clara Chow, MBBS, FRACP, PhD, Professor of Medicine, University of Sydney, Program Director, Community Based Cardiac Services, Westmead Hospital, and Professorial Fellow, The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia, “mHealth interventions are a novel, exciting, and expanding field in medicine that will potentially transform healthcare delivery by improving access to treatments that would otherwise require frequent clinic or hospital visits. There are already an overwhelming number of cardiovascular mHealth options available to consumers. However, the utility of applications to improve health outcomes has been poorly evaluated. There is limited research evidence for their effectiveness in modifying objective measures of health, and app development and provision are largely unregulated.”

In this study, investigators review the evidence on mHealth interventions for simultaneous multiple risk factor reduction in both primary and secondary prevention settings, using smartphone applications (apps) and text messaging (short messaging service – or SMS).

In the primary setting investigators found only a few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that assessed mHealth approaches using text messaging and could not identify any RCTs assessing the effect of mHealth smartphone apps on total cardiovascular risk.

The largest primary prevention text messaging study was an RCT conducted in China of a 12-month intervention comprising text messaging and phone calls performed among 589 Chinese workers who had been allocated to receive an annual medical examination, who were without cardiovascular disease, and between 45 and 75 years of age.

The intervention group received personalized text messages targeting lifestyle measures to reduce cardiovascular disease risk (frequency determined by risk assessment) in addition to a computerized risk evaluation, an initial 15-minute face-to-face risk counselling session, follow-up phone calls, an educational handbook, and a medical examination. Electronic health prescription software was developed to prescribe the program to the intervention group. The control group received only the annual medical examination and report detailing their results.

At 12 months, there was a significantly lower mean 10-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score in the intervention group compared to the control group. However, there was no significant reduction in the mean cardiovascular disease risk at 12 months compared to baseline for the intervention group. The investigators concluded that the study was underpowered to detect differences in overall 10-year CVD risk, despite showing significant differences in the individual components of the risk score. Systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index were all significantly lower at 12 months compared to baseline in the intervention versus controls.

There have been several mHealth interventions designed to deliver secondary prevention to patients with cardiovascular disease and which target multiple risk factors simultaneously. Investigators evaluated the approach and the results of trials using text messages: TEXT ME and Text4Heart.

After six months, the TEXT ME trial, the largest secondary prevention texting study, provided objective evidence that text message support for heart attack survivors could improve key health risk factors of cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, exercise, diet, and smoking. Patients who received TEXT ME were more than twice as likely to reach guideline targets in their risk factors. The TEXT ME messages provided advice, motivation, and support on diet, quitting smoking, exercise, and general heart health.

By contrast the intervention group in the Text4Heart trial received one message per day that decreased to five messages each week from week 13. The study identified positive effects of adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors at three months but not at six months, raising the question about the durability of mHealth interventions, as well as the optimal frequency of text messages.

Another two-month single-blind RCT of 203 patients with prior acute coronary syndrome evaluated personalized text messages based on cardiovascular data sent via mobile phone. The intervention group was significantly more likely to have an improved cardiovascular risk profile than the control group.

The investigators also evaluated the results of three RCTs for secondary prevention using smartphone apps. They generally found no or small improvements in cardiovascular risk factors but concluded that the small trial sizes meant they were unlikely to be powered to detect small improvements in cardiovascular risk factors. They suggest that there is potential for reducing health service utilization and hospitalization, but that further research is required to clarify this.

“mHealth has great potential to prevent heart disease, but there are unanswered questions about how to optimize it and maintain engagement with patients,” commented lead author Harry Klimis, MBBS, University of Sydney, Department of Cardiology, Westmead Hospital, and The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia. “Select studies such as TEXT ME, show that mHealth can improve overall heart disease risk. However, our goal needs to be high quality and effective mHealth interventions. Importantly, future mHealth producers should collaborate with clinicians and regulatory agencies to ensure the interventions are safe and effective and outcome measures standardized.”

Discovered Formula For Preventing Alzheimer’s?

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A combination of sleep, exercise and alcohol could help prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists have discovered that a good night’s sleep, increasing heart rate through exercise and 25ml of wine per day can help stimulate the brain’s own cleaning system, The Independent reports.

Previous studies have shown that Alzheimer’s disease is associated with the toxic build-up of proteins in the brain, which causes the neuron cells to die.

Studies are now focusing on the link between the brain’s self-cleaning, known as the glymphatic system, and the formation of proteins that leads to the cell death linked to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Ian Harrison, from University College London, told the Cheltenham Science Festival that research was now focusing on finding ways of preventing the glymphatic system from failing.

He said studies on the cerebrospinal fluid of mice had shown that a combination of sleep, exercise and alcohol stimulated the brain’s self-cleaning.

“A paper came out a couple of years ago where the researchers studied the brains of mice when they are asleep and mice when they are awake,” he said.

“What the researchers did was inject a dye into the cerebrospinal fluid and see where it goes.

“In the mice that were awake, that cerebrospinal fluid starts to go into the brain but only resides on the surface and doesn’t go deep into the brain tissue.

“In the same animal when it fell asleep, that cerebrospinal fluid goes far deeper into the brain.

“When they quantified this in the animals that were asleep, this glymphatic system was far more active – 60% more active than in the animals that were awake.

“This is good evidence that the glymphatic system is active during sleep. If that is anything to go by we should all be sleeping a lot more than we are.

“That kind of makes sense because, if you think about it, when your brain is active during the day these brain cells are going to be actively producing all these waste products, so it is only at night when our brain switches off that it has the chance to switch on our glymphatic system and get rid of all these waste products.”

Dr Harrison said there were comparable results with exercise.

“In the sedentary animals, the cerebrospinal fluid penetrates the brain but when the animals have voluntary access to exercise there is massive increase in the amount of lymphatic function,” he said.

“The research has postulated that it is the increase in heart rate that drives this cerebrospinal fluid into the brain.”

They also treated mice with low-level, intermediate and high-level doses of alcohol for 30 days and looked at the impact upon the glymphatic function.

He said that with low-level doses of alcohol – the equivalent of a third of a unit a day – there was a 30% to 40% increase in the brain’s self-cleaning but a corresponding reduction following exposure to both intermediate and high-levels of alcohol.

“So 25ml of wine could actually increase your glymphatic system, according to this mouse study,” Dr Harrison said.

“But the intermediate dose of one unit of alcohol – a small dose of wine – suggests that if the mouse data can be extrapolated the lymphatic system can be lowered.

“So, sleep more, exercise and, as the data suggests, you can have a drink, but only a third of a unit of wine per day.”


Salt Lake’s Light Rail Trains Are Air Quality Sleuths

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The light rail network in the Salt Lake City area already does a lot to improve air quality – its three lines move more than 67,000 people a day along 45 miles of track, saving countless car trips and sparing the air tons upon tons of petroleum-powered pollutants.

But for the last four years, the trains, operated by the Utah Transit Authority have done even more: They’ve become air-sniffing sleuths, mapping out where and when different pollutants are present along the trains’ route. University of Utah scientists recently published the findings of their ongoing study in Atmospheric Environment.

The TRAX project is the only known transit-based mobile air quality network in North America. Some results are unsurprising, such as spikes of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, byproducts of gasoline combustion, at street intersections. But the sensors also found methane emissions patterns that didn’t correlate to daytime working hours, suggesting possible fugitive methane leaks.

“Our results suggest,” the authors write, “air pollution and greenhouse gas emission monitoring and exposure assessment could be greatly enhanced by deploying instruments on public transit systems in urban centers worldwide.”

Belarus: If Poland Invites US Military, We Will Invite The Russians – OpEd

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Russia has no presence on Poland’s eastern border with Belarus but inviting in the Americans may bring it there

Poland has been asking for the US to set up a permanent military base on its soil. It has even offered Washington up to $2 billion to set it up. That has not gone unnoticed in neighboring Belarus which was at one point named an “Outpost of Tyranny” by George W. Bush, and has been a target of US and EU sanctions which also fund its pro-opposition NGOs.

On a visit in Brussels the Belarusian Foreign Minister told reporters the US setting up a military base in neighboring Poland would prompt Minsk to reconsider its stance on permanent Russian military presence in Belarus:

Vladimir Makei, in Brussels to press a case for expanded cooperation with the European Union, told reporters that Minsk wanted to reduce tensions in the region and maintain good relations with the West and with its former rulers in Moscow. It felt a U.S. base in Poland would increase regional “mistrust”.

Asked if Polish proposals to host a U.S. base amid fears of Russian aggression could prompt Belarus to revise its rejection of any Russian base, Makei said: “I think there will be some reaction to this intention to deploy a new military air base.

“Nothing is impossible … As of today … we are not going to deploy new foreign military bases on the territory of Belarus because we would like to contribute to security in our region and we don’t want to be a troublemaker.

“So we are not going to deploy right now new military bases. But looking to the future we should take into account the future steps which will be taken by our neighbors.”

In other words Belarus has a symmetrical deal for the Poles: you don’t invite in the Americans who threaten us, and we won’t invite in the Russians who will protect us, but whom you think threaten you.

Ironically, Poland says it needs the US base to protect it from Russia, but excluding in the small Russian exclave of Kaliningrad which borders a stretch of northern Poland, there is no Russian military presence for hundreds and hundreds of miles beyond Poland. Ironically it is exactly inviting in the Americans which may bring the Russians to Poland’s eastern border with Belarus.

World Less Peaceful Today Than At Any Time In Last Decade: Report

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The 12th edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) report, produced by the international think-tank the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), revealed that the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the last decade.

The 2018 GPI reveals a world in which the tensions, conflicts, and crises that emerged in the last decade remain unresolved, resulting in a g radual, sustained fall in peacefulness. The largest contributors to the deterioration in the last year were the escalations in both interstate and internal armed conflicts, rise in political terror and reduced commitment to UN peacekeeping. Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq and Somalia are the least peaceful countries whilst Iceland, New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmark are the most peaceful countries.

The GPI is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. The report covers 99.7 percent of the world’s population and uses 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources to compile the index. These indicators are grouped into three key domains: ‘ongoing conflict’, ‘safety and security’, and ‘militarisation’. All three domains deteriorated over the last year.

Despite retaining its position as the most peaceful region in the world, Europe deteriorated for the third successive year. For the first time in the history of the index, a Western European country experienced one of the five largest deteriorations with Spain falling 10 places in the rankings to 30th, owing to internal political tensions and an increase in the impact of terrorism. In the last decade, 61 per cent of the countries in Europe deteroriated, due to higher levels of political instability, increased impact from terrorism, and increased perceptions of criminality. No single Nordic country is more peaceful now than in 2008.

Steve Killelea, Founder and Executive Chairman of the IEP, said: “We have progressed on many fronts in the last decade but reaching greater peacefulness in the world has remained elusive. The challenge is borne out in our research which shows that it is much harder to build peace than it is to destroy it. This partly explains why countries at the bottom of the index remain trapped in prolonged conflict. Ongoing conflicts such as those in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan have, in the past decade, contributed towards a significant rise in battlefield deaths, a surging refugee population and an increase in terrorism.

“Europe, the most peaceful region, has also suffered with 23 of the 36 countries deteriorating in peace in the last year, which is predominately the result of increasing political tensions and deteriorating relations between countries.”

Surprisingly, the indicator with the largest improvement last year was military expenditure as a portion of GDP, with 88 countries spending less and 44 spending more. Average country military expenditure as a percentage of GDP has continued its decade long decline, with 102 countries spending less. Three of the five Scandinavian countries are amongst the largest weapons exporters when measured as a percentage of GDP.

The economic impact of violence on the global economy in 2017 was $14.8 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. This figure is equivalent to 12.4 per cent of the world’s economic activity (gross world product), or $1,988 for every person. The economic impact of violence increased by 2 per cent during 2017 due to increases in the cost of conflict and internal security expenditures, with the largest increases being in security spending occurring in China, Russia and South Africa.

This year’s report also finds that highly peaceful countries also have considerable economic advantages over the least peaceful countries: inflation rates are nearly three times higher in low peace economies, interest rates were found to be over twice as high and foreign direct investment was nearly half.

Killelea, commented: “The long-term economic benefits that flow from peace are of particular interest in this year’s report. Countries with the highest levels of peace averaged an additional two percentage points on their GDP growth rates over the last sixy years compared to the least peaceful countries. If we review the economic benefits of peace over the past decade, countries that improved in peace had GDP growth rates almost seven times higher than countries that decreased in peace. These are truly remarkable figures and underscore the economic benefits of peace.”

The US score continued to decline, driven by increased political instability, despite reductions in the impact from terrorism and militarisation. The US is now one of the seven G20 members amongst the 50 least peaceful countries in the world, along with Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey and Russia.

Six of the nine regions of the world deteriorated in peacefulness with the four most peaceful regions, Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and South America, all deteriorating too.

Regional overview:

The Middle East and North Africa remained the world’s least peaceful region in 2018, despite a slight improvement in its score – the result of improvements in Iraq and Syria due to the diminishing reach of ISIL. Qatar experienced the single largest deterioration in peacefulness, as the political and economic boycott placed on it by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain led to deteriorations in relations with neighbouring countries, and political instability.

The broad trend in Europe has been a convergence in peace with the most peaceful, predominately those in Western Europe, declining in peacefulness, while those with weaker scores, many of them in Eastern Europe, improving.

The Asia-Pacific region’s peacefulness deteriorated, with 11 countries falling while eight improved. Mynanmar had the biggest deterioration, falling 15 places. Australia had the second largest deterioration due to higher levels of incarceration and higher levels of militarisation.

In North America, the level of peacefulness in the United States has declined for the second consecutive year and is now at the worst level of any time since 2012. Canada suffered a deterioration in its terrorism impact rating after the Quebec City and Edmonton attacks.

Russia and Eurasia remained in seventh place despite a slight deterioration in the overall score. The Ukraine, the Kyrgyz Republic and Moldova improved their scores while nine other countres deteriorated. Russia had the second largest deterioration after Armenia.

The biggest challenge to peace in Central America and the Caribbean is crime and corruption. For the last eight years, the region has had the worst scores in the index for homicide rate, violent crime, and perceptions of criminality.

South America continues its struggle with lawlessness. The most significant riser in the region was Argentina, followed by Brazil and Colombia.

The inequality of peace in South Asia continued to widen over the year, with the least peaceful nations – Afghanistan and Pakistan – continuing their decline, while the most peaceful – Bhutan and Sri Lanka – continued to improve.

Sub-Saharan Africa was home to four of the five largest improvements in peacefulness, the Gambia, Liberia, Burundi, Senegal. Peacefulness in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continued to deteriorate, affecting the country’s prospects for weathering crises like the ongoing Ebola epidemic.

Macedonia: Ousted PM Gruevski Awaits Four Trial Verdicts

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By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Macedonia’s former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski is appealing against his recent two-year jail sentence but is also awaiting court rulings in four more ongoing cases against him.

The recent two-year sentence handed down to Nikola Gruevski Macedonia’s former conservative Prime Minister and ex-leader of the right-wing VMRO DPMNE party – for involvement in the illicit secret purchase of a luxury Mercedes – is not the end of his judicial troubles.

Gruevski currently faces criminal charges in four more cases, three of which have already gone to trial.

Apart from the Mercedes case, codenamed ‘Tank’, the Special Prosecution, SJO – in charge of investigating allegations of high-level crime – also indicted Gruevski in the cases codenamed ‘Titanic”, ‘TNT”, ‘Traektorija’ (‘Trajectory’) and ‘Shamari’ (‘Slapping’).

In all of these cases, Gruevski’s defence insists he is innocent. Gruevski has repeated on many occasions that he sees the trials as politically motivated by the current Social Democrats-led government.

In the first case, codenamed ‘Titanic’, seen by judicial experts as the most complex, the SJO indicted Gruevski and other top-ranking VMRO DPMNE officials for allegedly masterminding electoral fraud in 2013.

In this case, Gruevski is charged on three counts: criminal association, for which he is faces a jail sentence from one to five years; misuse of assets during an election campaign, for which the lowest sentence is five years, and violation of the freedom of voters, for which the minimum jail sentence is three years.

In the second case, codenamed ‘TNT’, the SJO has indicted Gruevski for misuse of office, for which the maximum sentence is three years in jail.

In this case, he is suspected of ordering the demolition of a building that was being constructed by his former political ally, Fijat Canovski, as an act of political retaliation after Canovski’s small party, the Party for European Future, PEI, quit the former ruling coalition led by Gruevski.

In the third case, codenamed ‘Traektorija’, Gruevski is indicted for exerting unlawful influence, which could bring a jail sentence of one to three years.

In this case, the SJO has indicted Gruevski and several of his associates who are believed to have broken the Public Procurement Law by awarding a 570-million-euro contract to construct two highway stretches to a preferred Chinese construction company.

In the fourth case, dubbed ‘Shamari’, Gruevski is already on trial, accused of ordering an attack on an opposition mayor and his municipality HQ in 2013. He is indicted for inciting a criminal act against public order, for which the sentence runs from six months to five years in jail.

Gruevski also remains the main suspect in at least one other large and complex investigation that the SJO launched in May last year under the codename ‘Talir’ (‘Silver Coin’).

In this case, Gruevski and ten other VMRO DPMNE members are suspected of illegally financing the former ruling party through money-laundering.

All of these cases stem from the content of illegal wiretaps that the former opposition Social Democrats released in batches during 2015.

The airing of these secretly-recorded tapes of officials’ conversations, along with the then opposition’s claims that they originated from within the secret police – and that Gruevski had orchestrated the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people – created a deep political crisis.

After 11 years in government, Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE party was ousted from power in May last year.
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Russians Have Three Serious Misconceptions About 1993 Constitution And Its Implications – OpEd

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Twenty-five years ago this week, Boris Yeltsin convened a constitutional convention in Moscow which produced a draft that was then ratified by referendum after “a small civil war” took place in which Yeltsin crushed “the Khasbulatov parliament,” Sergey Shelin says.

Because of that congeries of events, the Rosbalt commentator continues, most “thinking” Russians continue to have three serious misconceptions about the Constitution and its consequences, misconceptions that get in the way of focusing on the real political problems of Russia today (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/06/05/1708432.html).

First of all, he says, many believe to this day that “the deputies of 1993 led by Khasbulatov and Rutskoy, even though they weren’t bearers of the idea of progress, were all the same fighters for democracy, while the supporters of Yeltsin, albeit possibly more advanced, brought authoritarianism” to Russia.

Second, according to Shelin, many think that “the existing Constitution, composed by Yeltsinites and liberals who came to his service gave the first and succeeding Russian presidents unlimited power. And third, they think that “our present-day regime systematically violates this Constitution” and the rights, freedoms and democratic principles listed therein.

“All three of these theses,” Shelin argues, “are incorrect.” When the Soviet Union fell, both Yeltsin and the deputies both “instinctively sought to restore” the kind of power vertical that had existed in Soviet times. “They sincerely did not understand that the rights of the bosses could be limited or even more divided.”

Those things might have to be tolerated for a time but not for long. What the fight in the early 1990s was about, a fight in which the Constitution was used by one side as a weapon, was not about such values but rather about who would structure the power vertical, the president or the parliament. That led to the events of October 1993.

Both sides in this fight sounded equally committed to democracy – “in that revolutionary atmosphere, to proclaim anything else would have been simply impossible” – “but both the one side and the other “understood that any constitutional provision, if you have power in your hands, is easily redefined and turned to your use.”

Moreover, both sides aspired to control the power vertical and at the same time neither wanted to face the voters lest the other mobilize the population against them, Shelin argues. Yeltsin got the upper hand both by convening a Constitutional Convention and by his referendum on elections, remembered for its “yes, yes, no, yes” required outcome.

The Constitution was and is remarkably democratic, but it is also subject to the kind of interpretations that those who believed a power vertical was necessary as was the case on both sides of the 1993 debate. Thus, the Constitution did not make Russia an autocracy: longstanding political values simply resurfaced to make it so.

And in formal terms, Shelin argues, even Putin observes the Constitution but uses it for his purposes rather than anyone else’s. Again, that is not the fault of the document, of Yeltsin or of Khasbulatov. That is a problem of a deeply ingrained Russian political tradition on how the state should be run.

Italy And The EU: Brussels Must Start Thinking Outside The Box – Analysis

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What the relations will be between the EU and one of its founding members will unravel in the coming days. It is high time that Brussels starts thinking outside its own box to look for new ways of dialogue with its citizens.

By Stefania Benaglia

On 4 March, Italians were called to vote for the country’s general elections. No party gained sufficient votes to form the government. However, two clear winners emerged: the web-based protest, populist and untested at a national level — 5 Star Movement (M5S from the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle) — and the far-right Northern League, that campaigned on a stridently “Italians First” platform.

After three months of negotiations, and one week charged with unexpected twists, a prime minister has been appointed. Giuseppe Conte, a lawyer and university professor, was previously unknown in the political landscape.

In accordance to the Constitutional procedures, the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, gave Mr. Conte the mandate to form the new government on 23 May. On 26 May, Mr. Conte presented to Mr. Mattarella the list of ministers to form his Cabinet. The president decided to veto Mr. Conte’s proposal because the M5S and the League insisted in having Mr. Paolo Savona — a 81 year-old economist, who holds the key position of Minister of Economy, and is an open critic of the Euro.

The reasons for his veto were well-grounded. Appointment of a controversial figure as Mr. Savona, who, as Minister of Economy — calling for a Plan B to leave the Euro — would have sent the wrong signal to markets and EU institutions. It is a risky move, since the Italian economy that has huge public debt, could have been exposed to speculative attacks. In addition, the possibility of exiting the Euro was not discussed during the electoral campaigns. It is therefore inappropriate to sneak-in from the backdoor, such fundamental issue, without an explicit mandate expressed in the electoral contest.

This institutional crisis created multiple scenarios: President Mattarella chose to appoint a “technical” government — i.e. a government composed by appointed experts without political affiliation, with the only purpose of bridging new elections. The President thereafter mandated Mr. Carlo Cottarelli, a widely-known economist, who has also been previously instructed to rationalise public spending.

Such prospect revitalised the M5S-League coalition and possibly their sense of duty. Faced with the perspective of losing the chance of ruling the country, they agreed on a new list of ministers during which Mr. Savona was moved to the less critical, but still meaningful, Ministry of EU Affairs. Mr. Mattarella, proving once more his respect of Constitutional correctness, gave the mandate to Mr. Conte. The outcome is, however, a rather Jugaad government, given the lack of underlying strategy of the parties that support it — and their history more as “opposition” parties.

Why did M5S and League win? 

Italians voted for those who claimed to represent the voice of ordinary people — the populists. They also voted to oust leaders of the previous governments, no matter that the new leaders seem to be less prepared than the old ones. On paper, the new parliament is made of less skilled and possibly less efficient members.

As in most political campaigns, a number of promises (mostly unrealistic) have been made. The issues that gathered the most support are:

Stricter immigration law

Europe’s migration crisis brought hundreds and thousands of people to the Italian shores. Most came to Europe with a plan to head to northern countries — such as Germany or Sweden — but got stuck in Italy because of EU regulations that state that migrants will have to stay in the country where they are first fingerprinted. Italians are resenting the lack of EU support on this issue. Moreover, the lack of cooperation at the EU level on migration is proving that the absence of a well-planned and structured immigration and integration policy is shaking up its own democracies. Simply “closing borders” is not the answer to such a complex and inevitable challenge, if only for geographical reasons.

In any case, should the Italian government succeed in adopting stricter immigration laws, it will turn Italy into an unattractive country for skilled labour — which, on the contrary is actually needed.

Universal basic income

The promise for universal basic income ensured it a landslide victory in south Italy. It is the poorest part of the country, where unemployment among youth peaks at 50%.

Coalition parties abdicated their efforts to energise the ailing economy. Their plan for fiscal reforms proposed the introduction of a flat tax system and lowering of retirement age. These reforms would prove very expensive for the Italian treasury, and no member of the M5S-League coalition has suggested any credible idea on how to pay for such reforms.

Unfortunately, real challenges remained undealt with: worryingly negative demographic trend (both given by lack of policies supporting families, and by the continuous emigration of young and educated people), approaching the 4.0 economy, and reforming parliamentary system (the latter attempted-reform failed ignominiously, costing millions of votes to the previously ruling, centre-left wing Democratic Party).

New relations between Rome and Brussels? 

A key issue for the new government is its relations with the European Union. It is still too early to tell how this relationship will unfold. The M5S-League coalition agreement doesn’t call for pulling out of either the European Union or the Euro, but it makes a vague call for renegotiating Italy’s ties within the European Union. Proposing policies and putting them into action, however, are two different things. Yet, the new government, may use the threat of unilateral action, such as ignoring EU fiscal rules, to force Brussels to negotiate softer deficit targets. This will be a risky game not only for Italy, but also for Brussels.

What the relations will be between the EU and one of its founding members will unravel in the coming days. It is high time that Brussels starts thinking outside its own box to look for new ways of dialogue with its citizens. Prejudice among European member states — especially along the north-south cleavage — and towards the EU institutions, is undoubtedly growing, and exacerbating differences and fostering opposition in the national public opinion.

Italy is the last EU country where populists and EU-skeptical parties have gained resounding electoral victories. Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, it is crucial that this isn’t taken lightly.

Astronauts Safely In Orbit Following Launch To International Space Station

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Three crew members are on their way to the International Space Station after launching Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency), and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos is scheduled to dock to the space station’s Rassvet module at 9:07 a.m. Friday, June 8.

The arrival of Auñón-Chancellor, Gerst and Prokopyev will restore the station to six crew members. They will join Expedition 56 commander Drew Feustel and flight engineers Ricky Arnold of NASA and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos. The crew will spend more than five months conducting about 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.

Feustel, Arnold and Artemyev are scheduled to remain aboard the station until October, while Auñón-Chancellor, Gerst and Prokopyev are slated to return to Earth in December.

This crew continues the long-term increase in crew size on the U.S. segment from three to four, allowing NASA to maximize time dedicated to research on the space station. Highlights of upcoming investigations include a new facility to study ultra-cold quantum gases, the first commercial European facility to conduct microgravity research, and a system that uses surface forces to accomplish liquid-liquid separation.

For more than 17 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space. A global endeavor, more than 230 people from 18 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 2,400 research investigations from researchers in more than 103 countries.


Israel Scores Painful Own Goal In Run-Up To The World Cup – Analysis

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Argentina’s cancellation of a friendly against Israel because of Israeli attempts to exploit the match politically is likely to reverberate far beyond the world of soccer and spotlights the risks of Israeli efforts to persuade the international community to recognize Jerusalem as its capital.

The Argentinian decision suggests that despite the fact several countries, including East European nations, are debating whether to follow US President Donald J. Trump’s decision earlier this year to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state and move the US embassy to the city, Israel is likely to find it difficult to capitalize on the US move in ways that convincingly project widespread international support.

Even worse, the decision illustrates that efforts to force recognition could backfire.

The Argentinian move has buoyed the grassroots Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to isolate Israel in non-violent defense of Palestinian rights after Israel has made countering the movement one of its top foreign policy objectives.

“The cancellation of Israel’s ‘friendly’ match with Argentina is a boost to the Red Card Israel campaign, which has called on FIFA to expel Israel – as it expelled apartheid South Africa – due to its violations against Palestinian football and its disregard for FIFA statutes,” BDS said in a statement.

The cancellation is BDS’s greatest success to date. Before that, it had only persuaded a small number of artists and organizations to boycott Israel.

An online campaign late last year convinced New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde to cancel a planned concert in Israel. She followed other artists who have cancelled performances, including Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill and Gorillaz.

The Argentinian decision has prompted concern that it could become the model for similar efforts in the future. One immediate target could be Israel’s scheduled hosting next year of the Eurovision song contest.

Argentina decided to cancel the match in the run-up to this month’s World Cup in Russia after Israel insisted on moving it from the Mediterranean port city of Haifa, home to Israel’s best stadium, to Jerusalem as part of the Jewish state’s 70th anniversary celebrations. Tickets for the Jerusalem match had sold out quickly.

The Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and Argentinian media said the decision was in response to a series of unidentified “threats and provocations” against star player Lionel Messi and his wife.

“Since they announced they would play against Israel, various terror groups have been sending messages and letters to players on the Argentina national team and their relatives, including clear threats to hurt them and their families. These included video clips of dead children,” said hard-line Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, whom many hold responsible for Israel’s public relations fiasco.

Ms. Regev was referring to video clips that had been circulated by the Islamic State, including pictures of Mr. Messi in an orange jumpsuit and ones that insinuated his beheading. A Palestinian campaign against playing the match in Jerusalem involved images of Mr. Messi’s white and sky-blue striped jersey stained with red paint resembling blood and threats to burn Messi posters.

The Palestine Football Federation (PFF) had early called on its Argentinian counterpart to cancel the match because of the move to Jerusalem, which it described as a violation of world soccer body FIFA’s principle of a separation of sports and politics.

PFF president Jibril Rajoub also urged Palestinian fans to burn pictures of Messi and replicas of his shirt if he played in the match in Jerusalem.

“He’s a big symbol so we are going to target him personally, and we call on all to burn his picture and his shirt and to abandon him. We still hope that Messi will not come,” Mr Rajoub said after talks with Argentinian diplomats based in the West Bank city of Ramallah prior to the cancellation.

It was FIFA’s ban on political interference in soccer that persuaded Argentine President Mauricio Macri to reject a request by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to pre-empt the cancellation of the match.

The Israeli failure to have the match played in Jerusalem strengthens not only the BDS movement.

It also boosts Mr. Rajoub’s so far unsuccessful effort to persuade FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to impose sanctions against Israel because of the Israeli settlements in occupied territory and travel restrictions on Palestinian players and other allegedly security-related measures that hinder the development of Palestinian soccer.

Mr. Rajoub and liberal Israeli newspaper put responsibility for the soccer fiasco at the doorstep of Ms. Regev.

“She’s the main culprit for legitimizing Argentina’s decision not to come… Beyond squandering millions in taxpayer money, in forcing the game to move to Jerusalem, Regev displayed gross intervention… If the game had stayed in Haifa, it would have happened… There’s a saying that a thousand wise men can’t rescue a coin thrown into a well by a fool…. All it takes is one fool to burn down a forest,” said Haaretz reporter Uzi Dann in an article entitled, Who Needs BDS: Israel Scores Spectacular Own Goal in Argentina Soccer Fiasco

“Instead of soccer, Miri Regev wanted politics and she got politics… It’s a great farce that gives immense momentum to the BDS campaign against Israel”, added Itzik Shmuli, a centre-left member of the Israeli parliament.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin appeared to echo the sentiment by saying that “the politicization of the Argentinean move worries me greatly” even if he blamed the Argentinians for involving politics by cancelling the match.

Assertions by Israeli officials that the Argentinian decision had handed a victory to terrorism may go down well with hard-line public opinion in Israel as well as supporters of Israel across the globe but is unlikely to help Israel forge bridges to opponents of its policies or facilitate its efforts to get a broader international buy-in of its insistence that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state.

Israeli opposition leader Avi Gabbay pinpointed the potential fall-out of the cancellation of the match when he warned on Twitter: “We just absorbed a shot in the face. This is not just sports. This, unfortunately, could start an international tsunami.”

Afghanistan: Digging Deeper – OpEd

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Here in Kabul in early June, outside the home of several Afghan Peace Volunteers, a large drilling machine is parked on what was once a lovely garden. To this now muddy patch, workers will soon arrive for another noisy, dusty day of digging for water. The well dried up a week ago. As of today, the household has no water.

Across Kabul, numerous households face similar water shortages. With an average annual rainfall of just fourteen inches, Kabul’s water table has been falling each year. The current population, estimated around 4.5 million, is expected to reach 9 million by 2050. The estimated groundwater potential is enough to supply only 2 million inhabitants with water.

Alarming reports say that drought now afflicts twenty-one of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces.

Rural families in drought-stricken areas watch their crops fail and their livestock die of dehydration. In desperation, they flee to urban areas, including Kabul, where they often must live in squalid, sprawling refugee camps. In the city, an already inadequate sewage and sanitation system, battered by years of war, cannot support the soaring population rise.

Droughts in other countries have led to violent clashes and civil wars. It’s difficult to imagine that Afghanistan, already burdened by forty years of war, will escape eventual water wars.

The most sophisticated and heavily armed warring party in Afghanistan is the U.S. military. Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on non-military aid to Afghanistan, the United States has done little to improve Afghanistan’s infrastructure or alleviate its alarming water crisis. President Donald Trump’s interest in what’s happening under the ground in Afghanistan is focused exclusively on the U.S. capacity to extract Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, estimated to be worth trillions of dollars.

Ordinary Afghans could be forgiven for feeling paralyzed and defeated by controlling elites who ignore their most basic human needs. Yet every day, Afghan communities reject continued war and call for peace.

On May 13, a single-file procession of Pashto men started off on a 400-mile trek along dusty roads from Helmand to Kabul, to call for the Afghan government and the warring parties to end the war.

The participants are asking the Afghan government and militants to stop fighting. They are walking during Ramadan, the month when observant Muslims fast from food and water between sunrise and sundown, becoming ever more mindful of people who lack water and food.

During the past three weeks, throngs of people in cities and towns along their route have shown solidarity with the walkers.

My young Afghan friends show steady resilience in the face of war and destitution. They are growing up with a keen sense of the importance of water for life and the essential need to share resources. They also know the importance of resisting those who menace people with military might.

In this unpredictable time, I can’t help but wonder at Afghan people, scarred by war, facing drought and impoverishment, digging deep into their rich cultural and historical resources to take a lead in efforts to abolish war and build a better world.

A version of this article initially appeared in The Progressive.

The Post-War Order Is Over – OpEd

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By Victor Davis Hanson

The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart. Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire.

Donald Trump’s presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo. Much of the world now already operates on premises that have little to do with official post-war institutions, customs, and traditions, which, however once successful, belong now to a bygone age.

Take the idea of a Western Turkey, “linchpin of NATO southeastern flank” — an idea about as enduring as the “indomitable” French Army of 1939. For over a decade Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insidiously destroyed Turkey’s once pro-Western and largely secular traditions; he could not have done so without at least majority popular support.

Empirically speaking, neo-Ottoman Turkey is a NATO ally in name only. By any standard of behavior — Ankara just withdrew its ambassador from the U.S. — Turkey is a de facto enemy of the United States. It supports radical Islamic movements, is increasingly hostile to U.S. allies such as Greece, the Kurds, and Israel, and opposes almost every foreign-policy initiative that Washington has adopted over the last decade. At some point, some child is going to scream that the emperor has no clothes: Just because Turkey says it is a NATO ally does not mean that it is, much less that it will be one in the future.

Instead, Turkey is analogous to Pakistan, a country whose occasional usefulness to the U.S. does not suggest that it is either an ally or even usually friendly.

There is nothing much left of the old canard that only by appeasing China’s mercantilism can there be a new affluent Chinese middle class that will then inevitably adopt democracy and then will partner with the West and become a model global nation. China is by design a chronic international trade cheater. Trade violations have been its road to affluence. And it seeks to use its cash as leverage to re-create something like the old imperial Japanese Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. U.S. trade appeasement of Beijing over the last decades no more brought stability to Asia than did nodding to Tokyo in the 1930s.

There is also nothing sacred about the European Union. It certainly is not the blueprint for any continental-wide democratic civilization — any more than Bonaparte’s rigged “continental system” (to which the EU is on occasion strangely and favorably compared to by its proponents). The often-crude imposition of a democratic socialism, pacifism, and multiculturalism, under the auspices of anti-democratic elites, from the Atlantic to the Russian border, is spreading, not curbing, chaos. The EU utopian mindset has altered European demography, immigration policy, energy production, and defense. The result is that there are already four sorts of antithetical EUs: a renegade and departing United Kingdom, an estranged Eastern European bloc worried over open borders, an insolvent South bitter over front-line illegal immigration and fiscal austerity, and the old core of Western Europe (a euphemism now for German hegemony).

After all, as Anis Bajrektarevic claims in his ‘Europe of Sarajevo 100 years later’ – there is no one, but 5 Europes: “… Atlantic Europe is a political powerhouse, Central Europe is an economic powerhouse, Russophone Europe is an energy powerhouse, Scandinavian Europe is all of that a bit, and Eastern Europe is none of it.”

As for Germany, it is no longer the “new” model West Germany of the post-war order, but a familiar old Germany that now pushes around its neighbors on matters of illegal immigration, financial bailouts, Brexit, Russian energy, and NATO contributions, much as it used to seek to expand Prussia and the Sudetenland. German unification now channels more the spirit of 1871 than of 1989. Call the new German attitude “Prussian postmodernism” — a sort of green and politically correct intimidation. Likewise, in terms of the treatment of German Jews, Germany seems more back in the pre-war than in the post-war world.

As far as the U.S., Germany has redefined its post-war relationship with America on something like the following three assumptions: 1) Germany’ right to renege on its promise to spend 2 percent of its GDP on defense in order to meet its NATO promises is not negotiable; 2) its annual $65 billion surplus with the U.S. is not negotiable; 3) its world-record-busting account surplus of $280 billion is not negotiable. Corollaries to the above assumptions are Germany’s insistence that NATO in its traditional form is immutable and that the present “free” trade system is inviolable.

Soon, some naïf is going to reexamine German–American relations and exclaim “there is no there.”

The post-war energy norm ended about ten years ago. The U.S. by next year will be the world’s largest producer of natural gas, oil, and coal — at a time of real progress in all types of hybrid engines. Israel does not need the Middle East’s — or anyone else’s — oil or natural gas. The Persian Gulf is now mostly a strategic concern of Iran and its archrival Gulf monarchies selling their oil to China and Europe, neither of which so far has the naval power to protect the precarious fonts of its energy interests.

The Palestinian issue of the last 75 years is ossified. If the millions of persons displaced in Europe and the Middle East between 1946 and 1950 — at about the same time as Palestinians left present-day Israel —were not considered “refugees” for decades, then Palestinians can hardly be singular sufferers. Perpetual victimhood is not a basis for a national agenda, much less a blank check for endless, virtue-signaling Western aid. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was simply an iconic recognition of what has been true for nearly a decade.

The West Bank’s rich Arab patrons now fear Iran more than they do Israel. The next Middle East war will be between Israel and Iran, not the Palestinians and their Arab sponsors and Tel Aviv — and the Sunni Arab world will be rooting for Israel to defeat Islamic Iran.

Even nuclear proliferation no longer quite follows the post-war boilerplate of the anxious West clamoring for non-proliferation, rogue regimes getting nukes with a wink and nod of either the Chinese or Russians, and then the world assuming “once a nuclear nation, always a nuclear nation.”

Instead, if there is a next round of proliferation, it will likely be among democratic nations — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — to counter the failure of Western nations, the U.N., and international associations to stop proliferation by the unhinged. They will seek deterrence against regimes that were nuclearized and supported by Russia and China in the past. Likewise, it is not written in stone that North Korea or Iran will always have nuclear weapons, given their isolated economies’ vulnerability to sanctions and blockades, their international unpopularity, and the costs that will be imposed upon their stealthy patrons.

Finally, we’re seeing the end of the old truism that the U.S. was either psychologically or economically so strong that it could easily take on the burdens of global leadership — taking trade hits for newly ascendant capitalist nations that ignored trade rules, subsidizing the Continental defense of an affluent Europe, rubber-stamping international institutions on the premise that they adhered to Western liberalism and tolerance, and opening its borders either to assuage guilt or to recalibrate a supposedly culpable demography.

Historic forces have made post-war thinking obsolete and thereby left many reactionary “experts” wedded to the past and in denial about the often-dangerous reality before their eyes. Worse is the autopilot railing for the nth time that Donald Trump threatens the post-war order, undermines NATO, is clueless about the EU, or ignores the sophisticated institutions that hold the world together.

About the only metaphor that works is that Trump threw a pebble at a global glass house. But that is not a morality tale about the power of pebbles, but rather about the easy shattering of cracked glass.

 

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

Ralph Nader: Slogan Voters The Road To Political Masochism – OpEd

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Nearly a year and a half into his presidency, Donald Trump continues to hold his base and maintain an approval rating of around 40% – close to the same percentage he polled at just after his inauguration.  Let’s try to figure out why.

It can’t be because he lies as a matter of daily routine.  It can’t be because he’s giving away our store to big business – engaging in crony capitalism, creating more tax loopholes for corporations, shredding corporate crime enforcement, knowingly exposing Americans to more toxic pollution, committing more business fraud, adding more hazards to the workplace, cutting access to health insurance, and thereby making America dread again.

It can’t be because he’s taking your tax dollars away from repairing your infrastructure back home – schools, public transit, bridges, highways, airports, power grids, drinking water systems, etc., and pouring money into the bloated Pentagon budget beyond what even the Generals requested.  (The huge “infrastructure project”  he promised has yet to be proposed to Congress.)

It can’t be because he is soiling our society’s moral and ethical fabric and breaking the Golden Rule.  (Trump is a peerless Oval Office bully, lashing out against the weak, powerless and defenseless.)

It can’t be because he is openly holding onto his business interests and enriching himself from foreign vendors in unconstitutional ways, violating the Emoluments Clause (cases challenging his personal gains while in office are now in federal court).

Maybe it is because he is expediently against a woman’s right to choose and common-sense gun regulation, selects corporatist judges, and keeps saying he loves his country (what politician doesn’t?).

President Trump’s words and deeds have not changed the minds of 40 percent of people polled.  What else is going on here?

One answer is Slogan Voters.  I’ve spoken to  many people who are still for Trump despite all of his lies and misdeeds.  They don’t pay much attention to politics.  When they do, they reveal themselves as Slogan Voters.  They are content with Trump’s rhetoric and rarely look beneath the surface at the details.  That is, they are not bothered by being fact-deprived in political matters.

Here is what they tell me:  They hate Hillary.  They like Trump.  They repeat the three slogans:  Make America Great Again, Drain the Swamp, and Lock Her Up!  Over and over again.

When I politely ask whether they are specifically aware of what Trump and his heads of departments and agencies are doing, they draw a blank. They explain that President Trump is shaking up Washington and draining the swamp.  They believe that’s the reason why he generates such an uproar from the swamp-dwellers.  In a bizarre way, the more outrageously false and nutty Trump’s tweets and actions are, the more these people feel that all the outrage is because he is draining the swamp and the swamp is lashing back at him.

Slogan Voters stress their belief in self-made men and women.  They are often college-educated.  They are not seen as bigots by their co-workers.  They believe if you fail at something, it’s your own fault.

They agree there are bad things going on in government, but it’s not Trump’s fault.  Their reaction to bad things that are openly, brazenly, and admittedly Trump’s fault  – such as shutting down a consumer agency designed to stop Wall Street and the financial/credit industry from cheating you, crashing the economy,  or crippling environmental health protections —  is:  It’s all part of draining the swamp.

Trump has become homeostatic — whatever goes around, comes around to his advantage for the Slogan Voters.  Evidence against Trump is turned around to justify Trump.  More than anyone else, Trump has understood this and fed these strange conclusions by inattentive minds.

What would the eminent philosopher of science, Aldous Huxley, think now?  He said in 1927:  “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  But they do for Trump and his Slogan Voters.  He creates his own web of delusion, and his supporters say he is draining the swamp and making America great again.

It wouldn’t matter a whit were they to receive critical articles, books, DVDs, or even Trump’s own self-contradictory words and record through the years. Recall his boastful sugarcoating as his giant casinos went bankrupt while he profitably escaped their draining impacts on others (e.g. the employees and unpaid contractors he hired to build them).

Unless someone comes up with a secret key to awaken the minds of Trump’s Slogan Voters, the best response is to draw some of the more than 100 million eligible non-voters to the polls for the crucial November elections.  There are far more than enough votes to surpass the choices of the Trump Slogan Voters for the Congressional races.

One thing you have to credit these Slogan Voters for:  THEY VOTE!!

Yeah, “Making America Great Again, Drain the Swamp, and Lock Her Up!”

Robert Reich: The Unconstitutional Census Power Grab – OpEd

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The Trump administration’s decision to alter the 2020 Census to ask people if they are American citizens is an unconstitutional power grab that would hurt many disadvantaged Americans. It must be stopped.

The U.S. Constitution calls for “actual enumeration” of the total population for an explicit purpose:  To count the residents – not just citizens, residents – of every state to properly allocate congressional representatives to the states based on population.

Asking whether someone is a citizen could cause some immigrants — not just non-citizens, but also those with family members or close friends who aren’t citizens — not to respond for fear that they or their loved ones would be deported. In the current climate of fear, this isn’t an irrational response.

The result would be a systemic undercounting of immigrant communities – with two grossly unfair results.

First, these communities and the states they’re in would get less federal aide. Census data is used in over 132 programs nationwide to allocate over $675 billion each year.

An undercount would deprive many immigrant communities and their states of the health care, education and assistance they need and are entitled to.

Second, these communities and the states they’re in would have fewer representatives in Congress. The Census count determines the distribution of congressional seats among states. Under the Constitution, these seats depend on the total number of people residing in the state, not just citizens.

Which is the real reason for this move by the Trump administration. It’s no secret that immigrants with the right to vote tend to vote for Democrats. So undercounting neighborhoods that are heavily Latino or Asian would mean fewer Democratic members of Congress.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says the citizenship question is necessary in order to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. Baloney. The Trump administration has shown zero interest in the Voting Rights Act. It has even defended voter suppression laws in court.

This is nothing but a Republican power grab orchestrated by the White House. Tell your members of Congress, it must be stopped.

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