Alyaksandr Lukashenka has pursued what his supporters call a “multi-vector” foreign policy, one that balanced his ties with Moscow by improved relations with the West. But in recent weeks and especially at the CIS summit in Dushanbe, the Belarusian leader appears to have scrapped that position and adopted a completely pro-Russian one.

Valery Karbalevich of Radio Liberty’s Belarusian Service argues that Lukashenka’s latest moves mean Moscow has demanded that Minsk display more support for Moscow in its conflict with the West and Ukraine as a condition for receiving additional Russian assistance (svaboda.org/a/29516203.html in Belarusian; charter97.org/ru/news/2018/10/1/307299/ in Russian.)

But the Belarusian commentator says that in his view, it is too soon to draw such conditions. Lukashenka has a long history of moving in one direction for a time and then moving in quite another later. Thus, his pro-Moscow stance now could soon be followed by pro-Western moves particularly if he sees a benefit in taking them.

And while Karbalevich does not address this possibility in his article, there is also the chance that Lukashenka is adopting a pro-Russian stance precisely to defend his own country and his own position. If he can show Moscow that he is prepared to be loyal in the extreme, the Kremlin will have fewer reasons to push for the annexation of Belarus by Russia.

To the extent that the Belarusian leader is following that logic, his pro-Moscow remarks and actions in recent weeks may be the best defense of Belarus and himself he can put up against increasing Russian pressure on his regime.

Why did the US military have a vertical-take-off F-35B launched from an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean make an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan?

Nobody’s mentioning several things about this Pentagon-touted first-ever US military “combat use” of the most expensive and supposedly sophisticated fighter-bomber ever produced at a current price of over $115 million per plane for the B model.

The first point is why it happened at all. The plane is not actually meant to be a ground attack aircraft. Designed as a fighter to fly at Mach 1.6 speed and to be invisible to enemy radar, which of course the Taliban fighters (whose top speed is a few miles per hour) in Afghanistan don’t even have, it is meant to be a sixth-generation fighter intended to assure US forces of air superiority against an advanced enemy with similar planes. The Taliban of course have zero planes or even anti-aircraft weapons. They are about as primitive an enemy as the US has ever confronted since the days of  Gen. Armstrong Custer (who as we know had problems even then).  As Pentagon critic Chuck Spinney notes, “This attack on the Taliban could have been much better handled by an A-10 Warthog ground attack plane.”

The particular model B version of the F-35 used in this particular attack was specifically designed to suit requirements of the US Marine Corps, which wanted a jet that could take off and land vertically,  presumably to be able to support Marine forces by operating from a small clearing in the jungle, on a beach, or on a small section of road or parking lot. Doing that, as opposed to taking off from a runway, burns through an inordinate amount of jet fuel so unless the plane is refueled in the air, it cannot fly very far or carry much ordnance, or both, but loading up on fuel in flight makes both the plane and the lumbering aerial tanker vulnerable to attack, which  makes a joke of the stealth aspect of the plane.

Worse yet, Spinney says that the exhaust from the F-35B’s powerful jet engines, necessary to lift its entire weight off the ground, is so hot that it “explodes concrete.”  He says it cannot simply land or take off on a beach, a favorite traditional Marine location, or on the ground in a clearing.

Because of this ill-thought-out complication, he says the Pentagon and its contractor, Lockheed Martin, have developed a 100-foot-diameter ceramic pad that has to accompany the plant to be set down on such locations where it operates from, in order for the F-35B to safely make any vertical take-off or landing (VTOL) maneuver. “The only place I know of that they have any of those ceramic pads,” he laughs, “is in a test site near Yuma, Arizona.  I don’t know how they plan to deliver them in battle to sites in the jungle.”

Spinney says that since the F-35B would ruin the tarmac of any ordinary military airstrip, the only place it can actually do a VTOL maneuver is on an aircraft carrier, but even then, he says, special measures have to be taken so that the ship’s metal deck doesn’t get melted and damaged.

So why did the Pentagon pull this stunt of sending into actual battle a plane that is actually still in development and not ready for prime time?

“It’s budget time,” says a chuckling Spinney. “The 2019 fiscal year budget was just signed by the President, so now the Pentagon’s gearing up to present its FY 2020 budget proposal to Congress.”

It’s a budget that will set a spending record and the Pentagon will as part of the process will have to explain the latest costs of its unprecedentedly expensive F-35 Joint Strike Force fighter, which already at almost $1.5 trillion dollars, has made it the most expensive weapon ever produced by mankind. Congress will also have to deal with the fact that the Air Force has discovered that the costs of operation and maintenance of its new toy are rising so rapidly, according to Lockheed Martin, that this  main customer for the plane is considering having to slash its order by a third.

One of the things the Pentagon will have to explain is why they took such a high-performance plan and, at great cost, added weapons like rockets with fragmentation warheads to it to make it capable of ground-attack missions for which it is uniquely unsuited, the real reason of course being that it doesn’t really have any enemies it is likely to confront in the sky so they have to give it something else to do — like this initial mission against the Taliban.

That, of course, is an old story with the Pentagon. As cost overruns on deliberately under-estimated new projects inevitably mount — generally as with the F-35, after a new weapon has been pushed prematurely into production and after deliveries of problematic units have already begun, making it too late to cancel but far costlier to retrofix — the Pentagon responds by cutting back on the number of units ordered. But since these programs are all written on a cost-plus basis, reducing orders just means the Pentagon pays the same price, but get fewer planes for its (our) money.

So now the Pentagon is going all out to promote its epic trillion-dollar boondoggle. What better way to do that than to send one of the planes into battle and get some exciting video footage for an ever-enthusiastic national news media?

They’ll have to work hard at the publicity campaign though. Within a day of this glorious battle sortie in Afghanistan, another F-35B crashed in South Carolina destroying the  $115 million aircraft. The pilot, we’re told, safely ejected from this first reported total loss of an F-35, and is being examined in a hospital for injuries.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Aerospace Force released the photos of the sites used by terrorists that it annihilated in a recent missile and drone attacks inside Syria.

The IRGC Aerospace Force on Tuesday released the images its pilotless aircraft have taken from the ground zero during the recent missile and drone strike against the positions of terrorists in Syria.

On early Monday morning, the IRGC fired six mid-range ballistic missiles at the bases of Takfiri terrorists in an area east of the Euphrates in Syria in retaliation for a recent terror attack in Iran’s southwestern city of Ahvaz.

Following the missile strike, the IRGC flew seven combat drones and bombed the positions and strongholds used for accommodating and supporting the terrorists.

Commenting on the photos of the target zone, IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said the eastern parts of the Euphrates and the bases of Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group are fully supported by the US forces and have a specific position.

The US Secret Service has confirmed that a “suspicious” envelope was sent to the White House and addressed to President Donald Trump, following reports of two letters testing positive for ricin being intercepted at the Pentagon.

“The envelope was not received at the White House, nor did it ever enter the White House,” the Secret Service said on Tuesday afternoon. They offered no further details, adding only that they were “working jointly with our law enforcement partners to fully investigate this matter.”

Citing a law enforcement source, CNN reported that the letter contained a suspicious substance believed to be ricin, the same toxin detected on Monday in two pieces of mail sent to the Pentagon and addressed to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson. However, that report remains unconfirmed.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Pentagon confirmed that the mail was intercepted on Monday when it tested positive for ricin. The mail facility was quarantined and the FBI invited to investigate.

Ricin is a highly toxic substance extracted from castor beans, and has figured prominently as a bioweapon in a number of foiled terrorist plots.

A team of scientists has created a device which allows human beings to cooperate while playing a game using only their thoughts. While the technology is still in its infancy, the potential applications are astounding.

“We present BrainNet which, to our knowledge, is the first multi-person non-invasive direct brain-to-brain interface for collaborative problem solving,” the joint team from the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University wrote in a pre-publication release.

The three-way neural connection, called BrainNet, operates using two devices: two electroencephalograms (EEGs) transmit the ‘senders’ instructions to the ‘receiver’ who wears a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Using these devices the three participants could share their thoughts and cooperate to play a Tetris-style video game together, as one. Hardly a mind-bending task but the technology is still in development.

The two ‘senders’ were connected to the EEGs and asked to play a Tetris-style game and decide whether each new block needed to be rotated or not. Their decisions were then sent to the ‘receiver’ via the TMS cap.

The ‘senders’ could also relay feedback about whether the receiver had understood the telepathic instructions correctly or not.

In turn, ‘Receivers’ were also able to make judgement calls, based entirely on brain communications, as to which of the senders was more reliable. Across five different trios the researchers managed to elicit an average accuracy of 81 percent.

While the current system is limited to one ‘bit’ or flash of data at a time, all new technology has to start somewhere; humanity has come a long way from decoding a series of taps in morse code to instant worldwide voice, video and data communication to anywhere on the planet where both sender and receive have a decent enough internet connection.

The team has not yet managed to create ‘The Matrix,’ however: The system is slow, not entirely reliable and is awaiting peer review, but it’s a start and could eventually connect entire networks of people across the web.

Roshydromet, the Russian government’s environmental monitoring agency, says in a new 900-page report that global warming is melting the permafrost in the country’s Arctic regions and putting key infrastructure there, including buildings, military facilities, roads, and oil and gas pipelines.

The full text of the detailed report which documents these threats is available online at mnr.gov.ru/upload/iblock/4c6/ГосДоклад_B4_2017.pdf. It has been summarized today by Barents Observer journalist Atle Staalesen (thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic-ecology/2018/10/place-russias-arctic-coast-has-most-dramatic-climate-change).

According to the report, last year was the third warmest ever recorded, and only 0.1 degrees centigrade lower than the record warmest year, 2011. The further north and west in the Russian North one travels, the greater the increase in temperatures. The Arctic has warmed significantly and ice cover has declined, although not to the record low of September 2012.

The permafrost which underlies the entire region is melting at record rates, approximately 10 centimeters over the last year. But in some places, like Nadym, an oil-producing center, the decline in the depth of permafrost is as much as 38 centimeters. And in the city of Norilsk, the permafrost has continued to melt at ever more rapid rates.

The consequences for Russia of this warming are certain to be dramatic, the government report says. All infrastructure is at risk of collapse as ice in the soil melts, land subsides and shifts, and sinkholes open. Some buildings and pipelines may collapse, putting human habitation and the extraction and export of oil and gas at risk.

And this will have national security implications as well, the report continues, because as Staalesen puts it, “among the objects most in danger are [military] buildings and coastal installations along the shores of the Arctic.”

(RFE/RL) — The head of Russia’s space agency has suggested that the tiny hole discovered in the International Space Station (ISS) was made deliberately, citing an expert commission investigating the issue.

Dmitry Rogozin’s remarks, made in an interview broadcast on October 1, deepened the mystery behind the hole that caused a small, brief drop in oxygen levels in the orbiting station in late August.

With space exploration being one of the few remaining areas where Moscow and Washington continue to cooperate, Russian and U.S. officials have sought to downplay any suspicions about the ISS incident.

However, at least one Russian newspaper quoted anonymous Russian officials as suggesting an American astronaut was to blame.

Rogozin, who heads the Russian space agency Roskosmos, said in an interview on state-run television that an expert commission had wrapped up its initial findings.

“The first commission has already concluded its work. It has factually reached the conclusion that rules out any manufacturing defect, which is important for finding out the truth,” he said.

“The version that now remains is it was a deliberate act, and a second commission will determine where this occurred,” Rogozin added.

NASA officials have said they are waiting for a final report from their Russian counterparts before making any conclusions.

Last month, the current ISS commander, American Drew Feustel, pointedly pushed back against the insinuation that any of the crew was responsible.

In his interview, Rogozin also said there were problems in the relationship between Roskosmos and NASA — something he blamed on anti-Russian sentiment.

“Problems with NASA, of course, have appeared, but not through the fault of NASA, but through the fault of those American circles outside of NASA,” he said.

Rogozin said people he knows at the U.S. space agency had told him they are under pressure from what he called “rabid Russophobes.”

The Roskosmos chief asserted that if U.S.-Russian cooperation ended, it would be problematic for NASA.

Following the grounding of the U.S. space-shuttle fleet, Russian rockets became the only way to get equipment and personnel to the ISS.

On other issues, Rogozin said Roskosmos was exploring building a joint research station on the Moon with China.

Dana Nessel, a candidate for Attorney General of Michigan, is an activist attorney who has a dangerous record of attacking religious liberty and trashing the religious beliefs of those who disagree with her.

Catholics have been among Nessel’s favorite targets. In 2015, the Michigan legislature passed a bill to protect the religious freedom of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies, assuring that they wouldn’t be forced to choose between their values and their mission to find homes for children. The bill was supported by the Michigan Catholic Conference.

“If you are a proponent of this type of bill,” Nessel fumed, “you honestly have to concede that you just dislike gay people more than you care about the needs of foster care kids.” When the bill passed, she declared it “a victory for the hate mongers.”

Now, Nessel is promising that if she becomes Michigan’s Attorney General she will refuse to defend this religious freedom law against a pending challenge by the ACLU. She will, in short, place her own ideological biases ahead of the will of Michigan’s duly elected state representatives.

Nessel has also attacked the right of Catholic institutions, such as Catholic schools, to require that employees be faithful to Catholic teaching. “If the definition is ‘violating Catholic precepts’ then you better be consistent about it,” she said, “and it has to remain within the confines of federal and state law.” In other words, let the government dictate the Catholic Church’s employment policies.

Back in 2014, before the U.S. Supreme Court mandated that all states legalize gay marriage, a coalition of religious groups in Michigan—including the Michigan Catholic Conference—filed legal briefs supporting the state’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. Nessel trashed all these people of faith as “a radical fringe” engaged in “the demagoguery of hate.”

There is indeed a hatred and bigotry evident here. But it is not emanating from Catholics or other religious believers. It is coming from Dana Nessel, who in her ideological extremism smears the Catholic Church and people of faith, and works to deny them their First Amendment right to religious freedom.

By Suadad Al-Salhy

The veteran secular Kurdish politician Barham Salih was elected on Tuesday as Iraq’s next president.

Salih, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), faced a challenge from Fuad Hussein of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). But Hussein withdrew from the second round of voting in parliament on Tuesday.

His first act in the role was to assign Adel Abdul Mahdi, a veteran Shiite politician and former vice president, to form a government.

The selection of the president is the second step in forming a government and is usually the easiest because the two main Kurdish parties decided on a single candidate in advance.

The post of president is allocated to the Kurds under a 2005 agreement with Shiite and Sunni political forces.

But the failure of the PUK and the KDP to agree on a candidate turned the process into the latest political crisis to hit Baghdad since May elections.

Salih, 60, a senior PUK member, is considered a moderate. He studied at British universities and holds a PhD in data and statistics. He has occupied many regional and federal positions of government over the last 20 years.

For the first time since 2003 Tuesday’s parliamentary session witnessed a break from reaching a political consensus to appoint the main positions of government.

MPs were allowed by the heads of the main alliances to vote freely for whichever candidate they wanted, deputies told Arab News.

The session was attended by 301 MPs for the first time since 2003 and 19 candidates stood for the post of president.

Salih won 219 votes in the decisive second round, while Hussein won 22.

The president is mostly a ceremonial position and does not have executive powers. But many hope Barham will play a key role in improving relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish region and between the Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite blocs in parliament.

By Frank Kane*

The decision to delay the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco was a positive development for Saudi Arabia, one of the Kingdom’s leading financial advisers said yesterday.

Carmen Haddad, CEO of the Saudi business of American banking giant Citi, told a conference in Dubai that a takeover by Aramco of SABIC, the industrial conglomerate owned by the Public Investment Fund (PF), was a more rational option.

“The Aramco postponement is a benefit for the country, and the acquisition of SABIC makes more sense,” Haddad told the Citi Middle East Media Summit.

Citi last year resumed investment banking operations in Saudi Arabia after a 13 year absence, and has since moved into a prominent role advising the government on its privatization program. Citi is reported to be one of the banking advisers on the Aramco-SABIC deal, though Haddad declined to comment on that.

She mounted a stong defense of the Kingdom’s record in achieving some important goals of the Vision 2030 strategy so far. “The PIF is on track. It is making investments in important areas like electric car companies and other areas.

“In financial markets, we have seen significant structural changes at the Tadawul and the Capital Markets Authority that have encouraged foreign investors,” she added.

Haddad said that real progress had also been made on the social side of the Vision 2030 strategy, with the decision to allow women to drive and the limitations placed on the powers of the religious police.

She thought there was still work to be done on the planned privatization program, though she expected progress soon on the plans to sell off government holdings in airports, water companies and other utilities. Enabling smaller and medium-sized enterprises also need more work, she said.

Haddad said she was impressed by the measures toward greater transparency taken by the Saudi ministry of finance, and by the recent budget measures intended to stimulate economic growth next year.

“In Vision 2030 there is a co-ordination of policy that has not been seen before. Today we are in an environment where there is rational spending. The removal of subsidies was painful, but why subsidize people who do not need it? For those who do, there is the Citizens Account,” she said.

*Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai.  Twitter: @frankkanedubai

By Hadi Azmi

Malaysian immigration officials on Tuesday said they plan to extradite a Syrian who spent seven months at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 after refusing to return to his home country over fears he would be forced to join the military.

Hassan Al Kontar, 37, who spent 209 days at the airport’s departure area, was detained by police on Monday.

Immigration Director General Mustafar Ali said Hassan will be handed over to his department after police finished questioning the Syrian national.

“Flight passengers with boarding passes at the boarding area are supposed to get on their flights. But this man did not do so,” Mustafar told reporters at the immigration headquarters on Tuesday. “So he is in a forbidden zone, therefore the authorities had to take the necessary action.”

“We will communicate with the Syrian embassy to facilitate his deportation to his home country,” Mustafar said.

Police chief Zulkifli Adamshah told BenarNews that Hassan was detained after failing to produce a valid travel document and has been remanded for 14 days. If charged and convicted, Hassan could face a five-year prison sentence, a fine of 10,000 ringgit (U.S. $2,418) and a maximum six strokes of a cane.

Describing himself as a pacifist, Hassan said he worked in the United Arab Emirates beginning in 2006 and decided to stay there illegally because of the 2011 Syrian conflict after the Syrian embassy declined to renew his passport.

He was deported in January 2017 to Malaysia where Syrians enjoy visa-free entry and stayed after his three-month tourist visa expired.

Hassan said he has remained at KLIA2 since March 7 after trying to board a flight to Ecuador, another visa-free country, but was denied by the Turkish Airlines. He later tried to travel to Cambodia, but was barred by authorities in Phnom Penh.

Groups offered help

In a video posted to his Twitter account on March 23, Hassan said he felt “lonely, rejected, and unwanted.”

“I lost all my money, almost $2,300 on non-refundable ticket, so here I am,” Hassan said, adding that human rights groups were not helping.

“I cannot blame anyone. I can only blame us as Syrians,” he said. “This is what we did to ourselves, keep fighting with each other.”

Rights groups in Malaysia challenged Hassan’s claim that he was not getting help and said he purposefully declined their efforts in hope of scoring better offers including being able to go to Canada.

On April 10, former British Columbia journalist Laurie Cooper offered to help Hassan by starting a crowd source funding effort and to write to the Canadian immigration minister to expedite a temporary resident permit.

Lilianne Fan, founder of the non-governmental organization Geutanyoe Foundation, told BenarNews that her agency decided to drop efforts to aid Hassan after he repeatedly rejected assistance from the Malaysian government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“There are many more much more vulnerable refugee cases that we felt deserve our assistance,” said Fan.

Despite her comment, Fan urged the government to not deport Hassan to Syria as it would be against the principle of not forcing refugees to return to a country where they could be subjected to persecution.

In a Twitter posting on Sept. 1, Hassan denied the comments by the rights groups, saying “I am not rejecting slightly suitable offers from UNHCR as they claimed.”

Catholic priests in the Australian state of Tasmania could face jail time if they fail to report sexual abuse disclosed during the sacrament of confession, ABC news (Australia) has reported.

Draft legislation put forth by the government of the island would make mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse a criminal matter for religious leaders. Many public sector workers already face fines if they fail to report suspected abuse, according to ABC.

The Tasmanian proposal comes amid various attempts by authorities throughout Australia to mandate the breaking of the confessional seal to report cases of child sex abuse, and pushback from Catholics in the country.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse released a report in December 2017 that included 409 recommendations aimed at curbing child sex abuse in the country. The Royal Commission recommended to all Australian states that their laws governing child abuse reporting “should not exempt persons in religious ministry from being required to report knowledge or suspicions formed, in whole or in part, on the basis of information disclosed in or in connection with a religious confession.”

The Australian bishops’ conference on Aug. 31 responded positively to nearly all of the Royal Commission’s recommendations, but defended the confessional seal.

Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart, the Tasmanian capital, argued that “perpetrators of [sexual abuse] very rarely seek out confession and if mandatory reporting of confessions were required they would almost certainly not confess,” as quoted by The Australian.

The Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly in Canberra passed a law in June requiring religious groups to report any allegations, offences or convictions of child abuse within 30 days. The state of South Australia adopted a similar law, mandating a fine for failing to report abuse, which took effect this week.

Should the proposed legislation pass, Tasmania will become the second Australian state to change their laws based on the Royal Commission’s guidelines.

In July, the attorney general of Victoria declined to accept the royal commission’s recommendentation that it require priests to break the confessional seal to report cases of child sex abuse.

The Code of Canon Law states that “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.” A priest who intentionally violates the seal incurs an automatic excommunication.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “every priest who hears confessions is bound under severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him,” due to the “delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons.”

Fr. Michael Whelan, a parish priest at St. Patrick’s Church in Sydney, was quoted in local news in June as saying that he, along with other priests, would be “willing to go to jail” rather than break the seal of confession. When asked if the Church was above the law, Whelan said “absolutely not” and said he would only be protecting religious freedom.

Clerics are not the only critics of the new legislation. Andrew Wall, a member of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, said forcing priests to break the seal of confession oversteps an individual’s “freedom of association, freedom of expression and freedom of religious rights.”

On September 8, The New York Times carried a story with a provocative headline: “Trump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers”. The journalists Ernesto Londoño and Nicholas Casey spoke to 11 current and former United States officials and Venezuelan commanders. These people told the journalists that they had been involved in conversations with the Donald Trump administration about regime change in Venezuela. In August 2017, Trump had bragged that the U.S. had a “military option” for Venezuela. This statement, these men told the reporters, “encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington”.

In February this year, then U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people.” This was an invitation for a military coup in Venezuela.

The language Tillerson used has a long history inside the U.S. State Department. It is the logic used since 1954, when the U.S. government overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz. The theory was known as “military modernisation”, the idea being that in a former colonial country the only modern and efficient institution is the military. The U.S. government used this theory of military modernisation to defend its support of countries littered with military rulers—Ayub Khan in Pakistan (1958), Castelo Branco in Brazil (1964) and René Barrientos in Bolivia (1964).

The ideas that germinated from the conversations between the U.S. officials and the Venezuelans were for a small group of Venezuelan officers to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelans had no clear plot. They wanted encrypted radios and hoped that “the Americans would offer guidance or ideas”.

On August 4 this year, during the 81st anniversary celebrations of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, an attack took place against Maduro. Two drones—with C4 explosives on them—were driven over the parade and were being directed to strike Maduro. The clumsy, but dangerous, attempt failed. The Venezuelan government arrested 40 people, including a retired colonel (Oswaldo Garcia) and a parliamentarian (Julio Borges). On September 8, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Jorge Arreaza, noted that the coup plotters had met with U.S. officials. That the attack on Maduro failed is cold comfort. That there are plots afoot is what is worrisome.

Everything about Hugo Chávez bothered the U.S. government. That he was a socialist who won an election to govern a country with one of the largest oil reserves irked Washington. It also bothered the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump that the policy of Chávez was to demonstrate in practical terms the importance of regional cooperation rather than surrender to the policies of mostly U.S.-based multinational corporations. Chávez had to go. There were no two ways about it.

Means to undermine Chávez were tried from his accession to the presidency in 1999; not one day went by without plots being hatched and tried out. The most spectacular attempt to unseat Chávez came in 2002, when Venezuelan military officials seized power. Chávez surrendered to them in an act of political courage. But he did not have to wait long in their custody. Mass protests engulfed the country and the military had to back off. Their allies in the U.S. could not have their way.

Not long after this coup attempt, the U.S. State Department set up the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), linked to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) bureaucracy. Four years later, after the agenda of the OTI had been solidified, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield wrote to Washington about its five-point plan:

1. Strengthening Democratic Institutions.

2. Penetrating Chávez’s Political Base.

3. Dividing Chavismo.

4. Protecting Vital U.S. Business.

5. Isolating Chávez Internationally.

In the decade since Brownfield wrote this note, each of them has been developed by the U.S. government and its Venezuelan allies methodically. To protect U.S. business interests is the key issue here. John Caulfield, the leading U.S. diplomat in Venezuela in 2009, noted that Chávez had used petrodollars to make Venezuela “an active and intractable U.S. competitor in the region”.

This was unforgivable—neither could Venezuela be allowed to lead an independent bloc of oil-producing countries (including to revitalise the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC) nor could it be allowed to create a bloc of Latin American states that opposed U.S. interference (by the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, or ALBA). The 2009 coup in Honduras against the government of Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Chávez, was a direct shot across the bow. But it was not enough. Chávez and his revolution had to be taken down at home.

Aiding the fractious right wing

The U.S. government and the Venezuelan oligarchy carefully funded institutions inside Venezuela that gave off the appearance of democracy. These are groups that are controlled fully by the oligarchy, but nonetheless are clothed in the style of democratic institutions. The U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute have worked closely to train leaders to run both political parties and civil society organisations. One of the key tasks of the U.S. officials involved in this aspect of “strengthening democratic institutions” was to unify the fractious Venezuelan right wing. Conversations with U.S. State Department officials over the past decade reveal that they have been frustrated by the bickering and petty ambition inside the oligarchy, whose factions are eager to ingratiate themselves to the U.S. rather than to build popular support amongst the Venezuelan people.

Through the Pan-American Development Foundation, the U.S. government has allocated funds to work inside Venezuela to cultivate very specific non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs concentrate their work on the problems of crime, press freedom, judicial independence, and women’s and human rights. Their work has been to document the rise of crime to the harassment of journalists with pointillist focus—exaggerate each individual incident rather than provide the context for their occurrence.

The point of this work is not to appeal to the West, where there is already a disposition to hate the Bolivarian experiment, but to sow dissension amongst the key classes that continue to support Chávez. Brownfield wrote that the U.S. support of these groups was intended to “shine a flashlight into the dark corners of the revolution, to collect and document information and make it public”. But the point was not to merely distribute information. It was to package it in such a way as to erase the legitimacy of the Venezuelan experiment. Nothing was out of bounds. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the OTI would enter the drains of Venezuela, flashlights ablaze, and report every detail of what they found—and then, if there was not enough dirt down there, would exaggerate and manufacture evidence.

Regime Change 2.0

On September 11, The New York Times published an editorial with a perplexing title, “Stay Out of Venezuela, Mr. Trump”. Did this mean that the U.S. liberal elite no longer had the appetite for regime change? The subtitle of the article quickly disabuses the reader of any such illusions: “President Maduro has to Go, but an American Backed Coup is not the Answer”. Regime change by a military coup is disdained, but other means are to be encouraged. What are these other means? More sanctions on Venezuela, more pain for the Venezuelan people. This pressure is expected to release emotions against the Maduro government and drive the people to take to the streets.

One avenue to go after Maduro is to draw in the United Nations into the U.S. strategy. The Trump administration has asked the U.N. Security Council to isolate Venezuela’s elected leadership by setting in motion money-laundering investigations and by preventing it from accessing international financial networks. It is clear that these investigations are part of an old road map, that is, to bring the U.N. into the conversation about Venezuela, to establish U.N. sanctions against Venezuela, to put more and more pressure on the government and then to call for some kind of U.N.-sanctioned operations to overthrow the government. This is an old series of developments, already experienced by Iraq, then Iran, North Korea and Syria. Venezuela was always in the queue for such treatment.

Long March of the Campesinos (Farmers)

Conditions inside Venezuela are not easy, with the economy in various stages of crisis. Venezuela has not been able to exit the trap of rent-dependent capitalism—the rents being what it was able to collect for the export of oil. What the Bolivarian revolution has been able to do is to increase social welfare for the public and to generate new kinds of institutions to deliver resources to the hardest hit among the people. But it has not been able to shift the organisation of the economy and of society.

The working class and peasantry inside Venezuela have reacted with maturity to the deepening crisis. Over the past year, there have been strikes by electrical workers and nurses, protests by retired people who live in declining government pensions, and a march of the peasants. Each of these protests against the government has been on the premise that it opposes regime change and it defends the Bolivarian revolution, but it has demands to make on the government and on society that cannot be muffled.

On July 12 this year, a hundred farmers set off from the city of Guanare (Portuguesa State) for Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. They marched for over a month across the country and then met Maduro in an emotional meeting (broadcast live on television). “During the past three years, the crisis has become critical because of the lack of food,” said Usmary Enrique of the Platform of the Struggling Farmers (Plataforma de Luchas Campesinas). “It is ridiculous that we import food when we could produce it,” he said.

Maduro promised to take their complaints seriously. A month later, the farmers went on hunger strike until Maduro focussed attention on their revised agrarian policy. Maduro passed an order against land evictions and warned against the use of violence against farmers. Tensions between small farmers and the Venezuelan government are genuine and serious. But there is no expectation that farmers would join a platform set up by the U.S. government for regime change. They do not see the U.S. government or the Venezuelan oligarchy as allies.

The new trade agreement with Canada that the Trump administration announced this week has rules on drugs patents and related protections which are likely to cost the jobs of U.S. manufacturing workers. The deal includes a number of provisions that are explicitly designed to raise drug prices in Canada.

These provisions include a requirement of a period of ten years of marketing exclusivity for biotech drugs before a biosimilar is allowed to enter the market. The deal also requires Canada to grant a period of exclusivity for existing drugs when new uses are developed. In addition, it requires that the period of patent monopoly be extended beyond 20 years when there have been “unreasonable” delays in the granting of the patent.

The intended purpose of these provisions is clearly to make Canada pay more money to U.S. drug companies. Insofar as it acheives this result, it will mean that the United States has a larger surplus on intellectual products. That would imply a larger trade deficit in manufactured goods, and therefore less employment in U.S. manufacturing.

A basic accounting identity in economics is that the overall U.S. trade deficit is equal to the gap between domestic savings and domestic investment. This identity means that if this domestic balance is not changed, the overall trade deficit is not changed.

When the U.S. economy is below its potential level of output, a lower trade deficit can lead to more employment and income, which typically also leads to more domestic savings. However, economists typically analyze trade as though the economy is always at or near its potential level of output. If this is the case, the trade deficit is fixed by the balance of domestic investment and savings. In that case, if the trade surplus rises in one area, like intellectual products, then the trade deficit must rise to offset this increase in other areas, like manufactured goods.

The mechanism through which this would occur is, other things equal, more licensing payments to Pfizer, Merck, and other U.S. companies for their drugs will mean a rise in the value of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar. If the U.S. dollar increases in price relative to Canada’s dollar, it makes goods and services produced in the United States relatively less competitive, leading to a larger trade deficit in areas other than prescription drugs.

This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis met with French President Emmanuel Macron and Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly Tuesday in Paris to reaffirm the long-standing defense relationship between the United States and France.

In a statement, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said Mattis thanked Macron and Parly for their leadership and contributions to the fight against terror in the Levant and Sahel.

“Both nations agreed NATO remains the cornerstone of European military security.” White said.

After meeting with the French leaders, Mattis traveled to Brussels, where he will attend a conference of NATO defense ministers.

The number of recorded unemployed at the State Public Employment Services (Spanish acronym: SEPE) rose in September by 20,441 on the previous month. This figure is lower than September 2017, which recorded an increase of 27,858 people.

In seasonally-adjusted terms, unemployment fell by 19,398 people. Compared with September 2017, unemployment has fallen by 207,673 people, a year-on-year reduction of 6.09%.

This means that the total figure for recorded unemployment now stands at 3,202,509.

Unemployment among men stands at 1,313,151, a rise of 6,157 (0.47%) on August, while unemployment among women stands at 1,889,358, a rise of 14,284 (0.76%). In year-on-year terms, unemployment among men has fallen by 126,314 (8.78%) and among women by 81,359 (4.13%).

Unemployment among young people under the age of 25 rose by 22,765 (9.45%) on the previous month, but fell by 2,324 among those aged 25 or over (0.08%).

In terms of Training and Apprenticeship Contracts, the State Public Employment Services were notified of a total of 2,527 registered in the month of September. This figure has gradually been declining in the months of September over the last three years.

Recorded unemployment rose in 11 autonomous regions, particularly in Andalusia (up 12,021), Extremadura (up 3,640) and Asturias (up 2,269), while it fell in the six remaining regions, particularly in Castile-La Mancha (down 5,196) and the Canary Islands (down 1,587).

By sector of economic activity, recorded unemployment fell in the agricultural and fisheries sector by 8,437 (down 5.68%), in the construction sector by 7,427 (down 2.66%) and in the industrial sector by 2,415 (down 0.86%). In contrast, it rose in the services sector by 28,945 (up 1.32%) and among first-time job-seekers by 9,775 (up 3.51%).

The multi-pronged national framework to tackle the spread of malicious content online, as proposed by the Select Committee on Online Falsehoods, is commendable. However, challenges in implementation remain.

By Stephanie Neubronner*

The recommendations by the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods were aimed at five broad areas. These are: disrupting the spread of online falsehoods; cultivating an informed public; strengthening social cohesion and trust; encouraging fact-checking; and addressing the threats such falsehoods pose to Singapore’s sovereignty and national security.

The recommendations addressed a broad range of issues to prepare the Singaporean populace to handle current and future concerns. New laws, public education, strengthening journalism skills and promoting fact-checking were identified as some of the measures Singapore could adopt in combating the threat of deliberate online falsehoods.

How Far Should Government Be Involved?

The Select Committee acknowledged that a multi-pronged calibrated approach is necessary. This highlights the significance of the threat deliberate online falsehoods pose, and emphasises Singapore’s proactive stance in mitigating these issues.

However, besides having strong government-led directives to guard against deliberate online falsehoods, innovative and ground-up campaigns need to be encouraged. Trust in such processes is crucial to ensuring Singapore’s future as an open society.

Swift action was also emphasised as important in preventing the spread of malicious intent online. To this end, the parliamentary Select Committee recognised the need for new laws as well as a variation of approaches to tackle the phenomenon of disinformation and its spread online.

Yet, it remains unclear what a deliberate online falsehood meant and what it entailed. The difficulty in classifying deliberate online falsehoods will be a key challenge to tackle when implementing legislative measures.

In particular, safeguards need to be put in place to ensure legitimate speech is not censored. Likewise, when legal intervention should be implemented, the extent of governmental intervention, as well as the speed at which legislation can be executed, needs to be deliberated further.

Leaving these decisions entirely up to the judiciary to decipher might not be the best way forward. Moreover, permitting the Singapore government greater control to single-handedly disrupt the spread of online falsehoods, which could extend to taking down content and blocking access, could be viewed as being heavy-handed.

Striking a Balance

The Select Committee asserted that the proposed laws to tackle deliberate online falsehoods should not over-reach or gag free speech. This is noteworthy. There is a need to strike a balance between extending government influence to mitigate the spread of deliberate online falsehoods and limiting the effect it will have on the expression of viewpoints. This will require commitment from both the government and the general public.

Additionally, citizens should not be made to feel as if they are constantly being monitored and surveilled. This is important in preventing the erosion of trust and the preservation of personal privacies.

Moreover, to safeguard democratic processes, personal freedom in relation to public interests need to be weighed. For a relationship of trust to prevail, partnerships between the public, civil society, the government, social media platforms and media organisations are necessary.

The Select Committee also suggested the formation of a fact-checking coalition. This could support the goal of tackling online falsehoods. Being able to verify information across different entities and industries will be helpful. Valuable resources and expertise can then be utilised more effectively.

Society must be encouraged to gradually realise and demand only accurate and reliable information. Ground-up initiatives must be established towards this end.

However, the extent to which the government will be involved in this process is still unclear. In the Select Committee’s report, it was noted that as compared to countries where independent fact-checking coalitions existed, trust in Singapore’s institutions was high. The government’s involvement could also contribute additional resources to support the fact-checking coalition’s work.

It is important that sufficient independence be accorded to such an initiative. Singaporeans need to appreciate the importance of fact checking. Overbearing attempts at tackling the threat posed by deliberate online falsehoods could result in additional challenges that Singapore will need to negotiate going forward.

Motivating Individuals to Take Action

Trust in public institutions and amongst people and their communities was cited as key in preventing disinformation from exploiting social fissures and vulnerabilities. Having entirely top-down initiatives may also backfire; these may not convince the public that adequate safeguards have been put in place. Transparency, as well as openness of policy and governance, is crucial and must be safeguarded.

Furthermore, no one entity should have to bear the weight of responsibility and deter deliberate online falsehoods themselves. This is especially so when looking at the complications Facebook, for example, has encountered when moderating content on its platforms.

Recently, Facebook removed a post by the Anne Frank Centre for Mutual Respect, citing nude images of children as having violated its community standards. Facebook’s removal of the image suggested its support of Holocaust denial causes and disregarded the importance of learning from history.

Additionally, this incident was not the first time Facebook blocked an iconic image with questionable content that had historical significance. In 2016, the platform removed a photo depicting a naked nine-year-old girl fleeing a napalm strike during the Vietnam War.

The limitations social media platforms have in combating disinformation online highlight the importance of individuals contributing to this effort. A well-informed public that is able to promote a culture of fact checking is however, not yet present in Singapore.

Protecting the Market Place of Ideas

The drive to address online falsehoods should not give rise to concerns that a “market place of ideas” is being stifled. Indeed it should continue to flourish in Singapore. For this, society must have confidence in individuals to make the right decisions.

The public will thus need to be critically literate, possess the relevant skills to discern truth from falsities, and also practise peer surveillance.

Legislative action will take time to take effect, while fact checking is not without its limitations. As such it will be through peer monitoring and surveillance initiatives that netizens can call out inappropriate actions and information, and highlight them to the authorities so that appropriate corrective steps can be executed in a timely manner. Such processes will help avert disinformation from going viral.

Individuals will need to be brought into the process of national discussions and contribute to the implementation of the recommendations made by the parliamentary Select Committee. Such a process will also help to accommodate the changing needs of society.

A Long-term Endeavour

The Singapore government has announced its in-principle acceptance of the recommendations of the Select Committee on Online Falsehoods. While the proposed recommendations will still be debated in parliament, measures to mitigate potential challenges should be addressed now.

Greater scrutiny of these recommendations should be carried out to ensure a balanced approach is adopted. As there is no “silver bullet” to tackling the threat posed by deliberate online falsehoods, solutions will take “generations” to properly implement.

The pressing question that now needs answering is this: Will Singapore be able to sustain its defences and resist the threat of deliberate online falsehoods while the recommendations are being put in place?

*Stephanie Neubronner PhD is a Research Fellow with the National Security Studies Programme, a constituent research unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Quebec provincial police have recovered 19 paintings done by renowned Canadian-Armenian artist Armand Tatossian, which were stolen over a decade ago, CBC reports.

When Mary Tatossian came across a painting online done by her late brother, renowned Canadian artist Armand Tatossian, she was shocked.

That’s because the painting had been stolen over a decade ago.

Quebec provincial police, Sûreté du Québec, have recovered more than a dozen paintings by Armand Tatossian that were stolen from a storage locker in Vaudreuil Dorion, a suburb of Montreal.

Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Audrey-Anne Bilodeau told As It Happens that a 51-year-old man was arrested on Sept. 20. He has since been released, and is expected to be charged with theft and possession of stolen goods.

Mary says the paintings were from the family’s collection, which also included pieces by their grandfather, great-grandfather, and their father as well.

“So, you know, there are some paintings that were made before the [Armenian] genocide, 1915, that my grandparents and great-grandparents had brought with them,” she said.

Undoubtedly, Morocco has the potential to benefit from its young population. However, what is lacking nowadays is a coordinated strategy to give Moroccan youth employable skills. There is absolutely a major need for a more coordinated planning for the production of a skilled workforce required for economic growth.

Vocational training centers in Morocco offer non-formal trainings beyond the formal educational system under the Ministry of Education. As such, the qualification needs of disadvantaged persons can be fulfilled very flexibly. However what is missing is an institutional framework to organize, articulate, integrate, regulate and ensure the quality of training interventions and programs to suit demands and needs of potential employers.

Therefore, Morocco is in need to diversify and develop jobs and modernize pedagogical methods. To reach this ambitious goal King Mohammed VI presided over a meeting to task members of the government to elaborate a strategy to upgrade vocational training.

The meeting is in line with the implementation of the priorities and measures set by the monarch, especially in the Speeches on the Throne Day and Aug. 20. It mirrors the unwavering royal solicitude for the sector of vocational training as a strategic lever and a promising means to prepare youth for employment and professional integration.

In fact, in his speech dated Aug. 20, the King drew attention anew to the issue of youth employment, in relation mainly to the issue of balance between training and employment.

During the session, the King was informed about the propositions and measures to be taken by the concerned departments relating to the implementation of the royal instructions. They are mainly the restructuring of vocational training sectors, the creation of a new generation of training centers for young people, the systematisation of early guidance counseling to vocational sectors, the development of work-linked training, the learning of languages, as well as the promotion of youth entrepreneurship in their fields of competence.

The Sovereign gave his instructions for the development of new trainings in promising sectors and businesses, while upgrading training in the so-called traditional jobs, which remain the main providers of jobs for young people such as the sectors of industry, services, construction, agriculture, fisheries, water, energy and handicraft.

In this regard, King Mohammed VI has particularly emphasized the need to further develop the vocational training offer, by adopting new standards of quality, notably in the hotel and tourism sector so as to boost and back up the vital growth of this strategic sector.

The Royal attention also focused on vocational training in the health sector, including paramedical professions and health technicians, particularly in maintenance and repair of medical equipment where there is a real potential for jobs.

The sovereign has given his instructions to develop short-term skills trainings of about four months, integrating language and technical modules for people with experience in the informal sector, with a view to give them the opportunity to gain access to the formal sector and enhance their know-how and abilities.

At the end of this meeting, the Sovereign gave his instructions so that this committee, which is chaired by the head of government, elaborates and submits within three weeks a program of specific projects and measures for immediate application which will be financed notably with the participation of Hassan II Fund.

On this occasion, the committee will also present the progress of preparations for the National Meeting on Employment and Training scheduled before the end of the year.

Morocco is in need of a comprehensive approach in vocational training that will offer recipes for revamping the vocational system by making it demand-driven, and is inspired by international best practices for creation of skilled workforce on the basis of competence, rather than curricula-based training to face potential challenges for low‐skilled workers brought by skill‐biased technological changes and labour market conditions, which define the correlation between low‐skilled workers, employers and training opportunities