The possibility of moving the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will be considered by December 2018. The relevant statement by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared on the official website of the country’s government on October 16.

“The Australian Government has today made a number of important announcements in support of Australia’s interests in the Middle East and our continuing support for a durable and resilient two-state solution. As a package, these announcements reinforce our commitment to efforts towards resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, further strengthen our valuable relationship with Israel, and will review Australia’s policy in relation to Iran’s nuclear program,” says the joint media statement by Australian Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

According to the politicians, the government will consider this issue, “while acknowledging East Jerusalem as the expected capital of a future Palestinian state.”

Moreover, they stressed that “any decision will be subject to a rigorous assessment of the potential impact of such a move on our broader national interests.”

Commenting on the government statement, Clive Williams from the Australian National University said that the positive decision on the transfer of the embassy seems unlikely.

“It seems to have been a ‘thought bubble’ by a new and inexperienced prime minister, probably intended to influence the Wentworth by-election where there are many Jewish voters,” he told PenzaNews.

In his opinion, the statement was also presumably intended to impress US President Donald Trump “since none of other Australia’s close allies seems to be contemplating such an irrational move.”

“This ‘thought bubble’ seems to have only pleased the Jewish lobby in Australia. Most Australians think it is a dumb idea. The Scott Morrison government is hanging by a thread and could well be out of office before anything could be progressed anyway. Such a move also seems to be out of step with departmental advice and former high ranking civil servants’ views. The lack of public support for the Scott Morrison government was demonstrated by the government’s loss in the Wentworth by-election,” Clive Williams explained.

Ian Cook from Murdoch University shared the view that this idea arose in an attempt to attract Jewish electorate.

“Raising the possibility of moving the embassy made some sense in the context. The policy hadn’t been raised seriously before Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, raised it during the by-election. And all the Prime Minister said was that he was open to the idea, which is not a strong position on his part. I expect the issue will go away now that the by-election is over,” the analyst suggested.

Meanwhile, this was definitely an idea that had been put into Scott Morrison’s head by the US move, he said.

“The Indonesian government was quick to react to the suggestion and suggest that it would review its relationship with Australia. So the regional backlash amongst Muslim countries was immediate. But other Muslim counties countries would have to review their relationship with Australia if the embassy was moved,” Ian Cook said.

“I really think this issue will fade quickly. There are not enough Jewish voters in other electorates to make this an issue that is worth fighting for in the upcoming federal election,” the expert added.

In turn, Pal Steigan, Norwegian politician, publisher, writer, independent entrepreneur in the field of culture and information technology, called the government statement the result of Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“Few other issues are so important and sensitive in the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a hard blow against the Palestinians and in away the end product of the infamous Oslo accord. The world has betrayed the Palestinians and Australia as a US puppet is following suit,” the politician said.

According to him, the decision to move the embassy would function as a provocation.

“Middle Eastern and North African states have protested the proposal from PM Scott Morrison and so has Australia’s neighbour Indonesia. It does not meet the interests of Australia and only pursues the interests of Zionism and US-imperialism,” Pal Steigan noted.

“Being a Norwegian it is important for me to underline that the Oslo accord and the whole ‘Oslo process’ has been a sham and a treason against the Palestinian people. It is a shame for our country and for the world,” he added.

Meanwhile, Independent International Analyst Tinashe Chuchu suggested that Australia’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will enrage Palestine and its allies.

“Those who sympathize Palestine also include some of the members of the Australian parliament who strongly believe in a two-state solution,” the expert explained.

According to him, the voiced position goes against decades of talk about a two-state solution which has always been the US position supported by its Western allies.

“Australia […] could face serious backlash with this position as it was evident of the violence that erupted after US President Donald Trump had suggested that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. However, it should be said that there has been conflict between Palestine and Israel for decades and Australia’s position is not going to either cause significant harm or benefit to the region. It is yet to be seen but America’s position was, is and possibly will continue to remain as the most relevant party involved in this situation between the two nations,” Tinashe Chuchu said.

Meanwhile, Fernand Kartheiser, Luxembourg Parliament member for the Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR), noted that the transfer of embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a recognition of a fact that Jerusalem is de facto and de jure the capital of Israel.

“Such a transfer has to be done under certain conditions, as the US has shown, in order not to prejudge discussions on the final status of the eastern part of the city,” the politician said.

Given the importance of the US in the Middle East, as elsewhere, the American influence seems obvious, he added.

“Slowly, a growing number of States envisage such a transfer which, over time, might become normality. The overall importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be reevaluated. It is by far not the biggest problem in the contemporary Middle East and the transfer of Embassies to Jerusalem, if operated under certain legal conditions, is not going to change the situation in any notable way. Some international organizations, such as the UN, should reconsider their anti-Israel bias. We witness widespread Human Rights violations by some Arabic Governments or authorities, including most recently the Palestinian authority and the Government of Saudi Arabia,” Fernand Kartheiser added.

In turn, Anton Friesen, Member of the foreign affairs committee and the committee on humanitarian assistance and human rights of the German Parliament, also noted that there were inner political reasons behind this idea.

“Of course, Australia is also a staunch US-ally, so the US decision in fact might be another reason for the deliberations of Australian government. But we will see if Australia is really going to do it, behind its election rhetoric,” the politician said.

At the same time, according to him, the governments of Arab countries may be uttering anti-Israeli-rhetorics, but in are nevertheless cooperating with Israel.

“In my personal view, Jerusalem should be recognized as Israel’s capital. There never will be a common Israeli-Palestinian state, because Israel then would be in danger because of the Palestinian demographics. A two-state-solution seems also out of reach. Instead, the Gaza strip should be given back to Egypt and the West Bank should be – besides Jerusalem – reintegrated into Jordan. These states are rather Israel-friendly and have good neighbourly relations with the state of Israel,” Anton Friesen added.

Meanwhile, Mark Beeson from the University of Western Australia agreed with the opinion that the move of the embassy won’t happen in the near future.

In his opinion, the statement was not related to the decision of the United States, but does not meet the national interests of Australia either.

“It’s interesting that the ‘national interest’ came second to political survival for the Coalition government and its one seat majority in the parliament,” the analyst said.

However, from his point of view, the relocation of the Australian embassy may have negative implications on Australian relations with Arab countries.

“The Indonesians are very unhappy and it will confirm the impression that Australia is pro-US or pro-Israel and unsympathetic, if not hostile, toward Palestine and the Arab world. All this is a bit depressing and counter-productive and not good for domestic or foreign policy,” Mark Beeson concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/65744-2018

By Nargis Kassenova*

(FPRI) — Over three years ago, in May 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that they would co-develop their Eurasian integration projects, the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the China-led Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), now repackaged as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In press statements, President Putin noted that the two sides “seek ultimately to reach a new level of partnership that will create a common economic space across the entire Eurasian continent,” while President Xi emphasized that they “will work towards greater mutual openness, coordinate our development strategies and deepen and interweave our interests for the good of both countries and peoples.” Thus, judging by the official rhetoric, we were witnessing the dawn of a new era of the “integration of integrations.” To a more skeptical observer, these statements seemed to indicate only that Moscow and Beijing had found a way to accommodate their interests in Eurasia, not that cooperation would lead to much in terms of substance.

Quick Linkages with China

Encouraged by this development, Central Asian states embarked on formalizing their own agreements with China, linking national development strategies to the BRI. Kazakhstan, a founding member of the EAEU, pioneered the trend. In December 2015, the Kazakh and Chinese prime ministers announced that their countries would develop a plan for linking the then-SREB and Kazakhstan’s “Nurly Zhol” economic development plan. The core of the policy, launched by President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2014, was to build domestic infrastructure. It featured three priorities: transport infrastructure, energy, and manufacturing. While transport and energy infrastructure had been core to Kazakhstan-China cooperation, the joint development of the manufacturing sector is a recent trend. The Chinese and Kazakh governments quickly assembled the plan, which came into effect in August 2016. They also developed a special program to transfer industrial capacity from China to Kazakhstan that initially included 51 projects worth around $26-27 billion, ranging from the chemical industry and transportation infrastructure to agribusiness and information technology. In September 2018, a new agreement was reached on the joint implementation of 11 projects worth $1.9 billion.

Kyrgyzstan, another Central Asian state that is a member of the EAEU, officially supported the linkage between the EAEU and the BRI and started thinking of ways to benefit from it. In May 2017, then-President Almazbek Atambayev expressed his country’s interest in becoming a link in the Digital Silk Road to connect Europe and Asia and connecting it to the country’s National Program of Digital Transformation, “Taza Koom.” New President Sooranbai Zheenbekov, who took office in 2017, has shown more interest in working with China in the field of “green tech” and proposed to create in Kyrgyzstan a Chinese electric car plant targeting Central Asia and Eurasian Economic Union as the main markets.

Non-EAEU member-states Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have proposed their own plans to cooperate with China’s BRI as well. The main goals of the “National Development Strategy of the Republic of Tajikistan till 2030” (adopted in 2016), such as energy security, becoming a transit country, and food security, fully align with already well-developed areas of China-Tajikistan cooperation. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan is also eager to align its “Strategy of actions in five priority directions of development of Uzbekistan for 2017-21.” In a joint statement made by President Xi and President Mirziyoyev in May 2017, the two sides promised to strengthen cooperation in the context of BRI in trade, investment, finance, transport and communication, agriculture, industrial parks, and others. Reportedly, during President Mirziyoyev’s visit to Beijing, China and Uzbekistan signed dozens of deals worth $23 billion, including a $1.2 billion project on the production of synthetic liquid fuel at the country’s largest gas refinery complex Shurtan and a $3 billion deal on the development of the hydropower sector and modernization of water pumping stations.

Slow Developments between EAEU and BRI

In the meantime, in contrast to the fast pace of alignment of strategies between China and Central Asian states, the linking of the EAEU and BRI has been proceeding slowly with no substantive results yet. In March 2017, the Eurasian Economic Commission prepared a list of 39 priority projects to support the linkage, including building new roads, modernizing existing ones, creating logistics centers, and developing transport hubs. The list is not available to the public, but according to public officials, the Western Europe-Western China motorway, Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway, and China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway are among these projects.

The construction of the Western Europe-Western China motorway, which is supposed to stretch from the Yellow Sea to the Baltic Sea and connect China, Kazakhstan, and Russia, started in 2009. The sections in China and Kazakhstan have been completed already. The section in Russia is taking time. Its likelihood of being built increased after Putin included it on a list of priority projects in May 2018. Other projects are even further away from completion. The Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway and China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan projects are at the stage of difficult negotiations and lack of clarity on financing and feasibility. It is also not clear what role the Eurasian Economic Commission can play in their implementation.

In May 2018, EAEU member-states signed an agreement on trade and economic cooperation with China. It reaffirms the World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments by the states and establishes procedures for more transparency with regard to each other’s trade regulation measures and policies (tariffs, technical regulations, phytosanitary norms, assessment procedures, etc.). The agreement does not introduce any preferential trade arrangements (i.e., lower tariffs). It specifies that any WTO agreements and bilateral agreements between EAEU member-states and China that provide a more favorable regime than in the agreement have priority. This agreement would allow member-states to pursue their own arrangements with China. In fact, Kazakhstan has been already actively working with China on coordination of technical regulations and phytosanitary norms.

Such shallow progress in linking the EAEU and BRI indicates that its function is mostly rhetorical, signaling the intention of Russia and China to accommodate each other’s ambitions in Central Asia. Russia, lacking resources and with limited geostrategic options due to its quarrels with the West, finds itself in a particularly difficult situation. Moscow does not seem to be convinced of the benefits of linking its weakened project, the Eurasian Economic Union, with China’s powerful march to Eurasia. Perhaps revealingly, the Russian word used for “linking” in the documents, sopryazhenie, has the same root as the verb “to hitch,” bringing to mind the famous lines from Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Poltava”: “You cannot hitch a trembling doe and a horse up to a single carriage.”[1] Russia, in other words, realizes that the BRI and EAEU are very different animals. The link is political rather than practical.

Geopolitical complexities in the co-existence of two different integration projects contribute to tensions inside the EAEU. Russian officials continuously warn other EAEU member-states that they should be more cautious with China and that they would be better off negotiating with China in the framework of the EAEU—which Russia dominates. But this advice largely falls on disinterested ears. China’s financial clout and infrastructure-building capacity are irresistible for investment-hungry Central Asian states. They have to be mindful of Russia’s sensitivities, but Moscow cannot offer them much in terms of modernization. These tensions are unlikely to amount to an open conflict since all the actors try to tread softly. The “horse” of the BRI will continue to push connectivity across the Eurasian landmass, and Central Asian states will hope for the best while pursuing co-development with their giant eastern neighbor.

About the author:
*Nargis Kassenova is a Senior Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. Kassenova is an Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies of KIMEP University based in Almaty (Kazakhstan).

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] The original is: “В одну тележку впрячь не можно / Коня и трепетную лань»

By Harsh V. Pant

We live in strange times. While discussions about ‘global disorder’ mostly pertain to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for challenging the established liberal order and institutional frameworks, there is another side to this as well, reflected in the way authoritarian states are now more empowered than ever to challenge norms that the world was taking for granted until recently.

Empowered states

Last month, the Interpol chief and Chinese Vice-Minister for Public Security, Meng Hongwei, vanished after taking a flight to China from France. Beijing later revealed that Mr. Meng had been detained and was being investigated for corruption. His wife has denied these allegations and has made a public appeal for his safety, suggesting that even her life could be under threat.

Mr. Meng is the latest high-ranking official to fall victim to sweeping anti-corruption measures under Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi’s presidency has seen more than 1.5 million officials being punished as part of an expanding crackdown on graft in public office. He remains focussed on an extraordinary concentration of power in his own hands, underscoring the supremacy of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at every level. Central to ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, which is China’s new official political doctrine, is the idea that fealty to the party is no longer a choice but a duty, much like what it was in the Mao era. Mr. Xi enhanced his powers further this year by forming a National Supervisory Commission, which has sweeping powers to investigate not only CPC members but also state-owned companies, hospitals, schools and even sports teams.

China’s record of disappearing human rights activists and political dissidents is quite extraordinary by global standards, but under Mr. Xi, it has taken an altogether new dimension. In July, Fan Bingbing, one of China’s most well-known actresses, vanished for three months only to resurface with a statement in which she not only apologised for evading taxes but also underscored her loyalty to the CPC.

Saudi Arabia has gone a step forward in the Jamal Khashoggi case. The prominent journalist and vocal critic of the Saudi Arabian government was murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul last month. After denying any wrongdoing for days, Saudi Arabian officials finally blamed his death on a “rogue operation”. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that the murder was executed by people who operated “outside the scope of their authority.” He called the killing a “tremendous mistake” that was worsened by the “attempt to try to cover [it] up”. He insisted that the action had not been ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a line that no one is willing to buy.

Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is called, was seen by many in the West as the great hope in Saudi Arabia. His reforms included lifting the ban on women driving, reintroducing public entertainment and curbing the power of the unpopular religious police. His ambitious undertaking to wean the country off its dependence on oil income by building a $500 billion futuristic city in the desert was hailed by many, but his political instincts remain as autocratic as his predecessors: he locked up dozens of princes and business figures last year in a luxury hotel on charges of corruption and even detained Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and allegedly forced him to resign on television.

Then there’s Russia, which turns its own political killings of Kremlin critics into something of an art form. Killings outside Russia of those accused of “extremism” were even given legal sanction by the Russian Parliament in 2006. According to various estimates, Russia is suspected to have organised the killings of at least 15 people on British soil alone over the past two decades. The poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal earlier this year was a state-sponsored Russian assassination attempt.

Gasping for breath

As Western liberal states get mired in their own domestic problems and start focussing inwards, authoritarian states like these are brazenly challenging long-held global norms, even creating new ones by the sheer force of raw power. The idea once held so dear by global liberal elites that economic and technological globalisation would undermine authoritarian systems by empowering the individual is being challenged as authoritarian states are now using the same forces to their own advantage. The long arm of the state is getting longer. No wonder the liberal order is gasping for breath.

This article originally appeared in The Hindu.

President Xi Jinping’s visit to Manila this month marks another turning point in Philippines-China relations. The Chinese leader will be coming from Papua New Guinea where he will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. The visit is expected to raise bilateral relations to a new high and caps two years of warming ties oriented towards dispute management, confidence-building, and expansion of economic, security and people-to-people connections. Signaling the importance attached to the visit, Beijing dispatched Foreign Minister Wang Yi to meet high-level Philippine officials in late October, ahead of Xi’s arrival. China recently extended grants for infrastructure, law enforcement and humanitarian aid projects and inaugurated a new consulate in President Duterte’s hometown in Davao. Bolstering cooperation in areas of convergence, astute handling of disputes, and broadening security cooperation will be key for a successful visit.

Expanding Economic Convergence

China became the Philippines’ largest trade partner in 2016, second biggest foreign tourism market with the fastest growth in 2018 and was the biggest driver behind the Philippine construction boom in the past two years. China’s purchases of local agricultural products have also increased as it works to address the trade deficit and become the country’s largest goods importer. At the upcoming meeting, Duterte may push for greater market access for Philippine agricultural and electronic goods in China.

To sustain tourist arrivals, both sides are expected to open more direct flights and establish new routes to less subscribed Philippine tourist destinations. The fact that tourism figures continued to surge despite the six-month closure of the country’s most famous tourist island, Boracay, suggests that other destinations are rapidly becoming attractive to outsiders, including Chinese tourists, too.

As China sheds its industrial overcapacity and emerges as a major outbound investor, the Philippines can position itself to absorb Chinese capital. Sound political relations can serve as a good platform for this. Rebuilding its aging infrastructure and reforming its tax policy may provide the Philippines with a competitive edge in attracting outgoing Chinese enterprises reeling from the effects of increasing wages in the mainland and an intensifying trade war with the U.S. In turn, Chinese investment, trade and tourism can deliver jobs, more affordable consumer goods, knowledge and technology transfer – a beneficial multiplier effect for local economies.

As China celebrates its 40th year of reform and opening up, the Philippines could also take inspiration from China’s success in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty in a generation and the attainment of its United Nations Millennium Development Goals as early as 2015. Addressing the socioeconomic divide is important as the second most populous Southeast Asian nation is set to barge into upper middle income country status next year. Manila may also look to China’s contribution in addressing climate change by becoming the world’s largest producer of renewable energy as a model. As the Philippines continues to fight poverty and the adverse effects of climate change, lessons from a fellow developing country like China will be valuable. Cooperation in harnessing the country’s hydro, wind and solar power potential can provide green, sustainable forms of energy to meet the country’s growing demand.

Prospects for synergy in connectivity are also bright: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Philippines’ Build, Build, Build program have complementary goals. Several billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure projects were signed during Duterte’s 2016 state visit to Beijing; the Philippine leader also participated in the 2017 Belt and Road Forum. However, delays and setbacks continue to haunt local projects. Hence, both sides are expected to hold frank discussions on the problems confronting project implementation. Key measures for success will be boosting capacity to conduct project preparation and feasibility studies, enhancing due diligence and risk mitigation, increasing Philippine local content (e.g. labor, supplies), vetting contractors from both sides and improving the regulatory and oversight environment to ensure adherence to agreed standards and compliance with relevant Philippine laws. Duterte understands the transformative impact of greater connectivity in terms of addressing traffic and logistical bottlenecks, spurring countryside development and bolstering inter-island linkages, given the Philippines’ archipelagic geography. This provides much of the context for his friendlier attitude towards his big, northern neighbor.

Keeping the Sea Calm

In the contested South China Sea, Duterte and Xi are expected to affirm their shared position – that territorial and maritime disputes do not constitute the sum total of their two countries’ relations and need not be a defining feature. Likewise, both leaders are expected to emphasize the importance of good neighborly relations and the maintenance of regional stability. To this end, both leaders will continue to give full play to established bilateral and regional dispute management mechanisms and confidence building measures. These include the Bilateral Consultation Mechanism, Joint Coast Guard Committee for Maritime Cooperation, MFA hotline communications, Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea and ASEAN-China Code of Conduct negotiations. This said, both sides may reiterate their respective “red lines.”

Moreover, while a joint petroleum exploration project may not begin before the year ends, a framework could possibly be agreed upon by both leaders during the visit. The controversy generated by the proposed undertaking is likely to push the Philippine side to bargain hard for a 60/40 revenue-sharing framework. A clause saying that a deal shall not jeopardize the position and claims of contracting parties is also likely.

Duterte is also expected to touch on the issue of fishing access in the West Philippine Sea to allow for regular fishing activities unhampered by threat or intimidation. Both sides may also agree to provide assistance or refuge to fishers in distress, such as during inclement weather. The two sides may also commit to work with other littoral states to promote sustainable fishing and the conservation of marine biodiversity, prohibit destructive fishing techniques and practices and agree on seasonal fishing bans to allow the natural replenishment cycle of the sea’s dwindling fishing stocks.

Broadening Security Cooperation

Other functional areas of cooperation, including security, could also be raised. China’s support in the fight against militants in Marawi and in the city’s post-conflict reconstruction is appreciated. China’s donation for drug rehabilitation facilities, drug detection equipment and information-sharing, which led to the biggest drug bust in Philippine history last May, was also received well in the Philippines. Counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and efforts to combat trafficking, cyber and financial crimes represent new frontiers for non-traditional security cooperation. Information sharing and cooperation in busting financial and logistical networks of international terrorism provides a good platform for cross-border cooperation. Organized criminal groups can exploit relaxed immigration policies, such as visa upon arrival arrangements aimed to attract more tourists and investors, as well as a more open gaming environment to migrate or expand their operations in the Philippines. This raises the salience of bilateral police and law enforcement coordination.

Overtures to enhance defense ties started with the 2017 goodwill visit of Chinese naval vessels, and continued this year with stops by a Chinese research ship and an aircraft for refurbishment and refueling. Nevertheless, China remains a latecomer in the Philippines already long-running security cooperation with the U.S. and like-minded partners Australia and Japan. Such decades-old cooperation is anchored on familiarity and increasing inter-operability. China’s increasing visibility is also raising some eyebrows. Longstanding cooperation with the U.S. and disputes in the West Philippine Sea will continue to constrain cooperation with China, especially in the realm of traditional security.

This article was published at China-US Focus

Exercise in childhood has been shown to promote long-lasting health and can counteract the risk of developing diabetes that comes from having an obese father.

That’s according to new research published in The Journal of Physiology. Insulin is a hormone that controls blood sugar levels and people with low insulin sensitivity do not respond to insulin as well as normal, which results in blood sugars levels increasing. This can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Children of fathers with a high-fat diet or who are obese are more likely to have low insulin sensitivity. This new research indicates that exercise early in life reverses the negative effect of this low insulin sensitivity in adulthood for children and therefore can counteract the risk of diabetes.

The study conducted by Victoria University, Melbourne, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, involved breeding obese male rats with healthy female rats. Their offspring underwent exercise training for only 4 weeks after weaning and then were assessed as adults in terms of responsiveness to glucose and insulin, skeletal muscle function and pancreas structure.

The offspring of obese fathers had reduced whole body and skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity and reduced insulin secretion. Early exercise in these offspring prevented in adulthood the negative effects caused by a high-fat diet in their fathers. It is important to note early exercise did not have any positive effects on their pancreas. This was very interesting as the group had previously shown that rats born small for gestational age, like humans, had pancreas problems as adults but in this case, early life exercise in the rats prevented the pancreatic problems.

The study is limited in that the researchers did not determine at which age the alterations in the health status of the individual begins and when these changes take place. This would help to determine optimal periods during childhood when preventive interventions should be introduced.

The researchers plan to look at which genes are switched on and off to determine the relationship between paternal diet and offspring exercise, as well as how exercise and paternal diet can affect the offspring’s physiology. They also plan to examine if similar effects occur in larger mammals that have developmental rates more similar to humans.

Dr Filippe Falcão-Tebas, the first author, and Professor Glenn McConell, the senior author on the study, commented on the findings ‘Obesity due to a high-fat diet in the father can have a negative effect on the metabolism of their offspring. Our study showed that exercise only in early life of the offspring can have long-lasting beneficial effects on their health by normalizing their muscle insulin sensitivity in adulthood. Further work needs to be carried out including understanding what genes are switched on and off to cause these changes’.

Singing may provide benefits beyond improving respiratory and swallow control in people with Parkinson’s disease, according to new data from Iowa State University researchers.

The results from the pilot study revealed improvements in mood and motor symptoms, as well as reduced physiological indicators of stress. Elizabeth Stegemöller, an assistant professor of kinesiology, cautions this is preliminary data, but says the improvements among singing participants are similar to benefits of taking medication. She presented the work at the Society for Neuroscience 2018 conference.

“We see the improvement every week when they leave singing group. It’s almost like they have a little pep in their step. We know they’re feeling better and their mood is elevated,” Stegemöller said. “Some of the symptoms that are improving, such as finger tapping and the gait, don’t always readily respond to medication, but with singing they’re improving.”

Stegemöller, Elizabeth “Birdie” Shirtcliff, an associate professor in human development family studies; and Andrew Zaman, a graduate student in kinesiology, measured heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels for 17 participants in a therapeutic singing group. Participants also reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, happiness and anger. Data was collected prior to and following a one-hour singing session.

This is one of the first studies to look at how singing affects heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol in people with Parkinson’s disease. All three levels were reduced, but Stegemöller says with the preliminary data the measures did not reach statistical significance. There were no significant differences in happiness or anger after class. However, participants were less anxious and sad.

Why does singing work?

The results are encouraging, but researchers still have a big question to tackle: what is the mechanism leading to these behavioral changes? They are now analyzing blood samples to measure levels of oxytocin (a hormone related to bonding), changes in inflammation (an indicator of the progression of the disease) and neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to compensate for injury or disease) to determine if these factors can explain the benefits of singing.

“Part of the reason cortisol is going down could be because the singing participants feel positive and less stress in the act of singing with others in the group. This suggests we can look at the bonding hormone, oxytocin,” Shirtcliff said. “We’re also looking at heart rate and heart rate variability, which can tell us how calm and physiologically relaxed the individual is after singing.”

The research builds upon the team’s previous findings that singing is an effective treatment to improve respiratory control and the muscles used for swallowing in people with Parkinson’s disease. The prevalence of Parkinson’s disease is expected to double over the next 20 years. ISU researchers say therapeutic singing has the potential to provide an accessible and affordable treatment option to improve motor symptoms, stress and quality of life for people with Parkinson’s disease.

For the first time, a team of astronomers has observed several pairs of galaxies in the final stages of merging together into single, larger galaxies. Peering through thick walls of gas and dust surrounding the merging galaxies’ messy cores, the research team captured pairs of supermassive black holes–each of which once occupied the center of one of the two original smaller galaxies–drawing closer together before they coalescence into one giant black hole.

Led by University of Maryland alumnus Michael Koss (M.S. ’07, Ph.D. ’11, astronomy), a research scientist at Eureka Scientific, Inc., with contributions from UMD astronomers, the team surveyed hundreds of nearby galaxies using imagery from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble observations represent more than 20 years’ worth of images from the telescope’s lengthy archive. The team described their findings in a research paper published in the journal Nature.

“Seeing the pairs of merging galaxy nuclei associated with these huge black holes so close together was pretty amazing,” Koss said. “In our study, we see two galaxy nuclei right when the images were taken. You can’t argue with it; it’s a very ‘clean’ result, which doesn’t rely on interpretation.”

The high-resolution images also provide a close-up preview of a phenomenon that astronomers suspect was more common in the early universe, when galaxy mergers were more frequent. When the black holes finally do collide, they will unleash powerful energy in the form of gravitational waves–ripples in space-time recently detected for the first time by the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.

The images also presage what will likely happen in a few billion years, when our Milky Way galaxy merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Both galaxies host supermassive black holes at their center, which will eventually smash together and merge into one larger black hole.

The team was inspired by a Hubble image of two interacting galaxies collectively called NGC 6240, which later served as a prototype for the study. The team first searched for visually obscured, active black holes by sifting through 10 years’ worth of X-ray data from the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) aboard NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

“The advantage to using Swift’s BAT is that it observes high-energy, ‘hard’ X-rays,” said study co-author Richard Mushotzky, a professor of astronomy at UMD and a fellow of the Joint Space-Science Institute (JSI). “These X-rays penetrate through the thick clouds of dust and gas that surround active galaxies, allowing the BAT to see things that are literally invisible in other wavelengths.”

The researchers then combed through the Hubble archive, zeroing in on the merging galaxies they spotted in the X-ray data. They then used the Keck telescope’s super-sharp, near-infrared vision to observe a larger sample of the X-ray-producing black holes not found in the Hubble archive.

The team targeted galaxies located an average of 330 million light-years from Earth–relatively close by in cosmic terms. Many of the galaxies are similar in size to the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. In total, the team analyzed 96 galaxies observed with the Keck telescope and 385 galaxies from the Hubble archive.

Their results suggest that more than 17 percent of these galaxies host a pair of black holes at their center, which are locked in the late stages of spiraling ever closer together before merging into a single, ultra-massive black hole. The researchers were surprised to find such a high fraction of late-stage mergers, because most simulations suggest that black hole pairs spend very little time in this phase.

To check their results, the researchers compared the survey galaxies with a control group of 176 other galaxies from the Hubble archive that lack actively growing black holes. In this group, only about one percent of the surveyed galaxies were suspected to host pairs of black holes in the later stages of merging together.

This last step helped the researchers confirm that the luminous galactic cores found in their census of dusty interacting galaxies are indeed a signature of rapidly-growing black hole pairs headed for a collision. According to the researchers, this finding is consistent with theoretical predictions, but until now, had not been verified by direct observations.

“People had conducted studies to look for these close interacting black holes before, but what really enabled this particular study were the X-rays that can break through the cocoon of dust,” explained Koss. “We also looked a bit farther in the universe so that we could survey a larger volume of space, giving us a greater chance of finding more luminous, rapidly-growing black holes.”

It is not easy to find galactic nuclei so close together. Most prior observations of merging galaxies have caught the coalescing black holes at earlier stages, when they were about 10 times farther away. The late stage of the merger process is so elusive because the interacting galaxies are encased in dense dust and gas, requiring very high-resolution observations that can see through the clouds and pinpoint the two merging nuclei.

“Computer simulations of galaxy smashups show us that black holes grow fastest during the final stages of mergers, near the time when the black holes interact, and that’s what we have found in our survey,” said Laura Blecha, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Florida and a co-author of the study. Blecha was a JSI Prize Postdoctoral Fellow in the UMD Department of Astronomy prior to joining UF’s faculty in 2017. “The fact that black holes grow faster and faster as mergers progress tells us galaxy encounters are really important for our understanding of how these objects got to be so monstrously big.”

Future infrared telescopes such as NASA’s highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), slated for launch in 2021, will provide an even better view of mergers in dusty, heavily obscured galaxies. For nearby black hole pairs, JWST should also be capable of measuring the masses, growth rates and other physical parameters for each black hole.

“There might be other objects that we missed. Even with Hubble, many nearby galaxies at low redshift cannot be resolved–the two nuclei just merge into one,” said study co-author Sylvain Veilleux, a professor of astronomy at UMD and a JSI Fellow. “With JWST’s higher angular resolution and sensitivity to the infrared, which can pass through the dusty cores of these galaxies, searches for these nearby objects should be easy to do. Also with JWST, we will be able to push toward larger distances, to see objects at higher redshift. With these observations, we can begin to explore the fraction of objects that are merging in the youngest, most distant regions of the universe–which should be fairly frequent.”

In the first study of its kind, published in the Annals of Tourism Research, academics from the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford have examined how Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) may have a substantial impact on the future of urban tourism.

When we think of automated vehicles it seems to be a topic that sits firmly in science fiction, from cars with character in The Love Bug (1969) and Knight Rider (1982) to more recent practical representations in Minority Report (2002). However, according to the new research by Professor Scott Cohen (University of Surrey) and Dr Debbie Hopkins (University of Oxford), AVs may be spotted on our roads as soon 2025 and could lead to far-reaching impacts on urban tourism.

The conceptual paper entitled Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism imagines the impact of AVs in future urban tourism and focuses on the pros and cons of these impacts with regards to the transformation of urban space, the rise of autonomous taxis, and changes to city sightseeing and hospitality in the urban night.

Potential benefits include reduced traffic congestion and emissions, improved foreign car hire processes, reduced parking requirements and cheaper taxi fares. AVs may impact other industries in radical ways too, such as Amsterdam’s Red Light District, which could become operated out of moving AVs, and restaurants and hotels may encounter new competition in the form of AV dining cars and passengers sleeping in their moving vehicles.

AVs are also the subject of many concerns. More time spent in cars on longer journeys could facilitate greater urban sprawl and increase car dependency. AVs may reduce demand for train travel, coach tours, public transport and driven taxis – all resulting in future job losses. The potential for terrorism facilitated by AVs also raises genuine security fears.

Professor Cohen, Head of Tourism and Transport at Surrey’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, said: “This groundbreaking study will benefit urban planners, policy makers and the tourism and hospitality industries, who will face a range of threats and opportunities as AVs begin to reach the mass market in the coming decade.

“The visitor economy will be gradually transformed if AVs become fully automated and mainstream, leading to a future where hordes of small AVs could congest urban attractions, hop-on hop-off city bus tours may go out of business altogether, motorways between cities could fill at night with slow-moving AVs carrying sleeping occupants and commercial sex in moving AVs becomes a growing phenomenon.”

The paper calls for future work that provides context-specific analyses that may reveal alternative ways of thinking about AVs for urban tourism. Its release coincides this week with the World Travel Market and European Tourism Day on 7 November and acts as a timely reminder of the rising importance and significance of AVs in tourism to industry and policy makers.

African-American job candidates are more likely to receive lower salaries in hiring negotiations when racially biased evaluators believe they have negotiated too much, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

The findings could help explain the serious wage gap faced by African-Americans, said lead study author Morela Hernandez, PhD, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia. College-educated African-American men earn roughly 80 percent of the hourly wages of college-educated white men, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Racially biased people often believe negative stereotypes that characterize African-American job seekers as less qualified or motivated than white applicants,” Hernandez said. “Those stereotypes can have serious repercussions for African-Americans who choose to negotiate their starting salaries.”

The study, which the authors say is the first to examine this issue empirically, was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. In one experiment conducted online, 272 participants (57 percent male; 73 percent white, 10 percent African-American, 7 percent Asian-American, 6 percent Hispanic and 3 percent other) were randomly assigned to view one of two resumes that differed only in the photo of a male African-American or white male job applicant. All participants were asked to estimate the likelihood that the job seeker would negotiate his salary offer, and then they completed a survey about their own beliefs relating to racial bias.

More racially biased participants expected that the African-American applicant would negotiate less, an effect that wasn’t found with less biased participants. The study analyzed the effects of racial bias on African-American job seekers and negotiators, not the prevalence of racial bias based on the race of the participants. The study did not examine whether white participants displayed more racial bias than participants of other races or whether the impact of racial bias was more extreme for white participants than those of other races.

A second experiment included 144 working adults (72 percent female; 50 percent white, 27 percent African-American, 14 percent Asian-American, 6 percent Hispanic and 2 percent other) along with 74 undergraduate college students (78 percent female; 21 percent white, 22 percent African-American, 20 percent Hispanic, 27 percent Asian-American and 10 percent other). In each group, participants were randomly assigned to be a job candidate or hiring evaluator, with each pair given 15 minutes for a face-to-face negotiation over a salary with a range of $82,000 to $90,000.

White and African-American job candidates negotiated roughly the same amount, but racially biased hiring evaluators believed both male and female African-American job applicants had negotiated more than their white counterparts. “This finding reveals how our brains can see something that isn’t in fact there and how racial bias can distort reality,” Hernandez said.

Each time an African-American job applicant was perceived to have made another offer or counteroffer, he or she received, on average, $300 less in starting salary. A third experiment conducted online also simulated salary negotiations and had similar results.

Racial bias in salary negotiations for African-American employees can have detrimental effects for their employers, including employee distrust and increased turnover, the study noted. Employers should design protocols with objective criteria for hiring negotiations, and hiring managers need to be aware of how their own racial bias may affect hiring decisions, Hernandez said.

A warmer, drier climate is expected is increase the likelihood of larger-scale forest disturbances such as wildfires, insect outbreaks, disease and drought, according to a new study co-authored by a Portland State University professor.

The study, published Oct. 19 in the journal Nature Communications, sought to provide a more complete snapshot of disturbances in the world’s temperate forests by quantifying the size, shape and prevalence of disturbances and understanding their drivers.

The researchers analyzed 50 protected areas like national parks as well as their immediate surroundings, allowing them to compare disturbances inside protected areas that are more climate-related from those just outside that would also be impacted by human land use.

The study found that while many temperate forests are dominated by small-scale disturbance events — driven largely by windstorms and cooler, wetter conditions — there was also a strong link between high disturbance activity and warmer and drier-than-average climate conditions. Andrés Holz, a co-author and geography professor in PSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said this suggests that with a warming climate, disturbances are expected to become larger and more severe in some temperate forests including the western U.S.

“Under the warmer conditions we have been seeing, it is likely that we’re going to see a higher probability of areas that tend to have very big disturbances,” he said.

Among the study’s findings:

Areas with low disturbance activity were largely associated with windstorms under cooler, rainy conditions, while areas with large disturbance activity were largely associated with wildfires, bark beetle outbreaks and drought under warmer, drier conditions.

In the majority of landscapes outside protected areas, disturbance patches were generally larger and less complex in shape than in protected areas. For example, man-made disturbances like logging are simpler in shape than the path a wildfire, storm or insect outbreak might take inside a protected area. But in landscapes affected by large-scale fires or outbreaks, the size and complexity of what happens inside and outside the protected areas are more comparable.

“Climate change is mimicking the footprint of disturbances in protected areas to what we are doing through land-use change outside of protected areas,” Holz said. “Under warmer conditions, we might see more similarities between protected areas and their surroundings in some temperate forests globally.”

The Moroccan health care system remains highly fragmented and still suffers from outstanding deficiencies that impacts a large population of Moroccans nationwide. In the last two speeches delivered by King Mohammed VI (Throne Day and Opening of Parliament) he urged the government to speed up the reform of the whole health sector in response to the demands of the Moroccans. So today, King Mohammed VI received both the Prime Minister and Minister of Health in order to brief him on the first immediate actions that the government is willing to undertake to remediate the existing deficiencies and to assess the implementation of (RAMED) the Medical Insurance Regime for The Economically Disadvantaged that came into effect in November 2008 and then generalized in the whole country in 2012.

Despite the constant growth of its beneficiaries, the RAMED program still encounters several constraints and shortcomings that limit its effectiveness and its ability to meet the needs of targeted categories, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Moreover, despite the efforts made, citizens continue to suffer from the many limitations of the current national health system, particularly in terms of imbalance in the provision of care at the territorial level, the quality of the service provided as well as medical and paramedical supervision.

Undoubtedly, the government needs to deploy more efforts to improve the quality of the whole health care system by introducing good governance, improving quality services and motivating the health workforce. So far, the health system, predominantly state owned, is totally fragmented and requires an immediate restructuring of the the legislative and regulatory framework not mentioning poor medical infrastructure. The revamp is part of an effort to broaden access to treatment in a country where more than 80 percent of the population lacks private insurance. This leaves many people relying on a public system with too few doctors and dilapidated hospitals and clinics.

It is true that the shortage of human resources in the health sector contributes to the almost absence of quality services in Moroccan hospitals. Therefore, an immediate strategy needs to be elaborated to overcome this shortage and provide qualified and motivated health workforce to answer the needs of the population.

The inefficiency and ineffectiveness of this key social sector has been exhaustively debated in Moroccan parliament and people are looking forward to the government to taking immediate concrete actions and leave aside the politicized discourse that will not contribute to the evolution of the health care system in Morocco.

By Shebonti Ray Dadwal*

A global rise of nationalist and populist tendencies has not only given anti-migrant, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and racist tendencies a new lease on life, but opened the door to alliances between groups that once would have had nothing to do with one another.

Developments in Israel, Indonesia and Germany suggest renewed nationalism and populism is in some cases redefining how states perceive concepts of national interest and purpose and how religious and ethnic communities seek to shield themselves against discrimination, persecution and/or extremism.

The redefinition was no more evident than when Israel, founded as a safe haven for Jews irrespective of creed, sect or political belief, sided against its own ambassador with authoritarian Hungarian President Victor Orban, a proponent of Christianity rather than multi-culturalism as the glue of European society, in denouncing billionaire left-wing philanthropist George Soros, a survivor of the Holocaust.

In doing so, Israel, founded on the belief that Jews needed a state to shield themselves against discrimination and persecution rooted in anti-Semitic prejudice and racism that has been endemic in Christian culture, sided not only with a Christian nationalist leader in Hungary but with a global right-wing trend that sees Mr. Soros as the mastermind of a globalist movement, determined to subvert the established order and dilute the white, Christian nature of societies through immigration.

Israel’s acknowledgement of the redefinition of its raison d’etre came in response to a Facebook posting by Yossi Amrani, the Jewish state’s representative in Hungary. Responding to anti-immigration billboards depicting a smiling Mr. Soros with the slogan, ‘Let’s not let Soros have the last laugh,’ Mr. Amrani, backed by Hungarian Jewish leaders, warned that they evoked “sad memories, but also sow hatred and fear.”

Israel’s foreign ministry, days before a visit to Hungary by prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, rather than taking a firm stand on rising anti-Semitism, effectively defined the Jewish state’s interest as joining Mr. Orban in denouncing a Jew.

As a result, Israel, despite seeing itself as the fulfilment of the Biblical prophecies of the Ingathering of the Exiles and the protector of Jewish rights, opted for denouncing a Jew together with a leader whose policies prompted the European parliament to pursue unprecedented disciplinary action against Hungary over alleged breaches of the European Union’s core values, including minority rights.

“In no way was the (ambassador’s) statement meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself,” the ministry said.

The implicit message, like Israel’s decision to bar entry to its Jewish critics despite its law of return that grants anyone who is Jewish a right to citizenship, was that Israel rather than being the potential home of all Jews was a home only to those who support the government’s policies.

Mr. Netanyahu’s alignment of Israel with right-wing nationalist and populist forces like his support for ultra-orthodox Jewish groups that deny equal rights for less stringent religious trends in Judaism on issues such as marriage, divorce, conversion and prayer at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, are likely to drive a wedge between the Jewish state and world Jewry, particularly in the United States.

The wedge, that puts Israel at odds with the Jewish Diaspora, could be deepened by this week’s Democratic Party success in regaining a majority in the US House of Representatives. Jews historically tend to vote Democratic in the US, a stark contrast with Mr. Netanyahu’s growing alliance with right-wing evangelists who support Israel because they believe the Messiah will only return to a Holy Land controlled by Jews.

Many evangelists, however, also believe that Jews will not be saved on the Day of Judgement without first converting to Christianity.

Israel’s divisive approach to World Jewry is not without its supporters in the Jewish Diaspora. Anti-Muslim and anti-migration sentiments have prompted some Jews to form their own group within Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party.

The notion that bigotry and prejudice are the best defense against rising anti-Semitism has meant that AfD Jews have little compunction about joining a party whose members favour abandoning Germany’s culture of remembrance and atonement for its Nazi past.

One AfD leader, Alexander Gauland, described Nazism as a “speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”

To be fair, the issue of rising prejudice and bigotry is not the exclusive perch of right-wing nationalist and populists. Britain’s Labour Party, traditionally a home for Jewish voters and activists, has been plagued by charges of anti-Semitism and reluctance to put its own house in order.

Moreover, the emergence of strange bedfellows in a world in which ideological affinity replaces defense of a community’s minority rights is not uniquely Israeli or Jewish.

Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Islamic movements with some 94 million members in Indonesia, in a bid to reform Islam and counter all political expressions of the faith, risks being tainted by its potential tactical association with Islamophobes and Christian fundamentalists who would project their alliance as Muslim justification of their perception of the evils of Islam.

Nahdlatul Ulama is not alone in the Muslim world’s opportunistic engagement with the Christian right.

Saudi rulers, who long aligned themselves with a supremacist, intolerant interpretation of Islam that viewed Christians as swine and Jews as apes have discovered that they share with evangelists and fundamentalist Christians, a significant voting bloc in the United States and part of President Donald J. Trump’s support base, conservative family values as well as political interests.

In a first, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, last week met with a delegation of US evangelists that included Reverend Johnnie Moore, Israel-based evangelical political strategist-turned-novelist Joel Rosenberg, former congresswoman Michele Bachmann; and prominent religious broadcasters.

The jury is out on whether the fallout of the rise of nationalism, populism and extremism heralds a new world in which bigotry and prejudice are legitimized as a defense strategy against discrimination, racism and persecution and an anti-dote to radicalism – a world that would likely prove to be far more divided and polarized and likely increasingly unsafe for minorities on the receiving end.

A question would naturally arise in the minds of astute readers of alternative media that why did the mainstream media, Washington Post and New York Times in particular, take the lead in publicizing the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2?

One apparent reason could be that Khashoggi was an opinion columnist at The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon. Washington Post has a history of working in close collaboration with the CIA because Bezos had won a $600 million contract [1] in 2013 to host the CIA’s database on the Amazon’s web-hosting service.

It’s worth noting here that despite the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman being primarily responsible for the war in Yemen that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and has created a famine in Yemen, the mainstream media hailed him as a “liberal savior” who had brought radical reforms in the conservative Saudi society by permitting women to drive and by allowing cinemas to screen the Hollywood movies.

So what prompted the sudden change of heart in the mainstream media that the purported “moderate reformer” was all of a sudden vilified as a brutal murderer? It could be the nature of the brutal assassination as Khashoggi’s body was barbarically dismembered and dissolved in acid, according to the Turkish sources.

More significantly, however, it was the timing of the assassination and the political mileage that could be gained from Khashoggi’s murder in the domestic politics of the US. Khashoggi was murdered on October 2, when the US midterm elections were only a few weeks away. Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in particular have known to have forged close business relations with the Saudi royal family. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Donald Trump chose Saudi Arabia and Israel for his first official visit in May last year.

Thus, the neoliberal media’s campaign to seek justice for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was actually a smear campaign against Donald Trump and his conservative political base, which is now obvious after the US midterm election results have poured in. Even though the Republicans have retained their 51-seat majority in the Senate, the Democrats now control the House of Representatives by gaining more than 30 additional seats.

Regarding the nature of the steadfast alliance between Washington and Riyadh, it bears mentioning that in April 2016 the Saudi foreign minister threatened [2] that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Saudi government in the United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack. (Though the bill was eventually passed, the Saudi authorities have not been held accountable; even though 15 out of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.)

Moreover, $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment in the Western Europe and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investments in North America and Western Europe.

Furthermore, in order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few rough stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production exceeds 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq, each, has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day, each; while UAE and Kuwait, each, has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day, each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold more than half of world’s 1477 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry’s sales of arms to the Gulf Arab States, a report [3] authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during its eight-year tenure.

Similarly, the top items in Trump’s agenda for his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia in May last year were: firstly, he threw his weight behind the idea of the Saudi-led “Arab NATO” to counter Iran’s influence in the region; and secondly, he announced an unprecedented arms package for Saudi Arabia. The package included between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales, and over a period of 10 years, total sales could reach $350 billion.

Therefore, keeping the economic dependence of the Western countries on the Gulf Arab States in mind during the times of global recession when most of manufacturing has been outsourced to China, it is not surprising that when the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decided to provide training and arms to the Islamic jihadists in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Obama administration was left with no other choice but to toe the destructive policy of its regional Middle Eastern allies, despite the sectarian nature of the proxy war and its attendant consequences of breeding a new generation of Islamic jihadists who would become a long-term security risk not only to the Middle East but to the Western countries, as well.

Similarly, when King Abdullah’s successor, King Salman, decided on the whim of the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to invade Yemen in March 2015, once again the Obama administration had to yield to the dictates of Saudi Arabia and UAE by fully coordinating the Gulf-led military campaign in Yemen not only by providing intelligence, planning and logistical support but also by selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition to the Gulf Arab States during the conflict.

In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab states by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs contribute substantial investments to the tune of trillions of dollars to the Western economies.

After the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the publicity it got in the mainstream media, some starry-eyed dreamers are wondering is there a way for Washington to enforce economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia? As in the case of Iran nuclear sanctions from 2006 to 2015, sanctioning the Gulf states also seems plausible; however, there is a caveat: Iran is only a single oil-rich state which has 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day (mbpd) of crude oil.

On the other hand, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies are actually four oil-rich states: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. Together, their share amounts to 466 billion barrels, almost one-third of the world’s 1477 billion barrels of total proven oil reserves.

Therefore, though enforcing economic sanctions on the Gulf states sounds like a good idea on paper, the relationship between the Gulf’s petro-monarchies and the industrialized world is a consumer-supplier relationship. The Gulf states are the suppliers of energy and the industrialized world is its consumer, hence the Western powers cannot sanction their energy suppliers and largest investors.

If anything, the Gulf’s petro-monarchies have “sanctioned” the Western powers in the past by imposing the oil embargo in 1973 after the Arab-Israel war. The 1973 Arab oil embargo against the West lasted only for a short span of six months, during which the price of oil quadrupled, but Washington became so paranoid after the embargo that it put in place a ban on the export of crude oil outside the US borders and began keeping 60-day stock of reserve fuel for strategic and military needs.

Sources and links:

Jeff Bezos Is Doing Huge Business with the CIA, While Keeping His Washington Post Readers in the Dark: http://www.alternet.org/media/owner-washington-post-doing-business-cia-while-keeping-his-readers-dark

[2] Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html?_r=0

[3] The Obama administration’s arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion:  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security-idUSKCN11D2JQ

During the past few weeks, subtle events took place in the Republic of Moldova, which largely flew under the international media’s radar amidst rising tensions between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Despite the standoff between the two over the death of Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan still found time to make a two-day diplomatic visit to the Republic of Moldova, between October 17-18. Whilst on this visit, Turkey and Moldova signed several economic agreements. However, the importance of Erdoğan’s visit goes beyond economic ties and may potentially foreshadow the political course the country will take in the years ahead.

Even though Moldova is a small and impoverished country, it has become a political battleground between pro-European and pro-Russian supporters. Indeed, there are few nations in Europe with such polarising geopolitical views as Moldova. Whilst European Union flags drape from practically every governmental building, Russian influences, including the media, still predominate in Moldova. The split in the republic is best represented by the fact that the ruling parliamentary party, the Democratic Party of Moldova, is nominally pro-European, whilst the president, Igor Dodon, is pro-Russian. This difference of opinion, has led to several clashes between the president and parliament.

However, recently Moldova has been shunned by the two geopolitical powers that it’s population aspires for closer integration with. After signing a European Union Association Agreement in 2014, Russia moved to ban a number of imports from Moldova, including wine and agricultural produce, which had a harsh effect on the economy. Furthering its diplomatic isolation, Moldova has recently come under fire from the European Union, who are concerned about the preservation of democratic standards in the republic, as well as Moldova’s failure to implement the commitments it made in 2014. This has led to some in Brussels to call upon the European Union to halt its funding to Moldova, at least until after the 2019 elections.

Hence, Erdoğan’s visit to Moldova occurred amidst diplomatic uncertainty, spurred by internal disputes and external pressures. By visiting during such turbulent times, Turkey has positioned itself not only as a new regional partner to Moldova, but as a potential counter balance to both Russia and the European Union. Should the European Union cut off funding, Turkey has proved willing to fund various Moldovan projects. In addition to this, new measures signed between the two countries during Erdoğan’s visit will make trade easier, potentially mitigating some of the damage caused by the loss of Russian markets. Whilst Turkey could never provide the same funding as the European Union, import as much agricultural produce as Russia, or receive the political support that the two geopolitical powers enjoy in Moldova, support from Ankara could allow the ruling elites, most notably oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, breathing space as they clarify their position, and consolidate their power in the run up to the 2019 elections and beyond.

This last point is of particular relevance to Moldova. Recently, the Moldovan authorities announced that the results of the mayoral elections in Chișinău were to be annulled, after victor and rival of Plahotniuc, Andrei Năstase, was elected mayor. Both the Appellate Court and later the Supreme Court alleged that Năstase and his opponent Ion Ceban had campaigned on social media on election day. This move has caused concern amongst many Western commentators for the preservation of democratic standards in Moldova. Should Moldova, as many Western commentators believe, move away from democracy, then it is likely that the elites will find support and inspiration in Turkey. Indeed, Moldova has been cultivating closer ties with Turkey for the past while, with Plahotniuc even visiting Turkey and meeting with Erdoğan, despite holding no official state position.

Despite not being as influential in Moldova as the European Union or Russia, Turkey does hold a significant amount of influence over the country, through its support for the Gagauz population, a Christian Turkic minority who reside in the south of the country. After a failed attempt at secession from Moldova, the central powers in Chișinău granted the Gagauz their own autonomous region . Despite receiving praise from certain Western academics, especially when comparing the lack of autonomy given to other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe, Turkey has recently questioned this autonomy. Indeed, the new Moldovan-Turkish relationship is far from one sided. Standing in front of a crowd in Comrat, the capital city of the autonomous region, Erdoğan told listeners that he, the central authorities and the regional ones had agreed upon concrete steps to implement their autonomy. Thus, demonstrating that he would take care of his ‘kinsmen’. Such declarations should help improve Erdoğan’s standing at home as he battles an economic crisis and looks to re-establish Turkey on the world stage. Attempting to divert attention away from domestic issues, Erdoğan has invaded Syria and is now seeking to position himself as the protector of co-ethnics abroad (a move which has worked well for Vladimir Putin). Successful offensives combined with safeguarding the rights of venerable ‘kinsmen’, is likely to boost Erdoğan’s image at home.

The Moldovan authorities have been more than supportive of closer links with Turkey, which go beyond economics, as evidenced by the deportation of seven Turkish teachers, who reportedly had links to US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Erdoğan accuses of orchestrating the failed 2016 coup.

For now, we can only speculate on how strong the ties between Turkey and Moldova will develop. However, the European Union should take considerable interest in the developments in Moldova. Further disregard for democratic practices could result in further destabilisation of an already poor and fragmented country. Such a situation is not one which the European Union wants on its borders. Furthermore, should Moldova continue to move away from democracy, it is likely that the country will be drawn back into the Russian camp. For the moment, questions surrounding the preservation of democratic standards are just speculative. However, what is certain, is that should Moldova slide towards authoritarianism following the 2019 elections, the establishment of closer ties with Turkey, and Erdoğan’s visit, will be viewed by commentators and historians as a watershed moment in the small nations retreat from democracy.

*Keith Harrington, NUI Travelling Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences,PhD Candidate, History Department, Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, Maynooth University.

The tension and conflict between the United States and China that has lately become visible with war on tariffs, trade, and intellectual property will go a long way before it can be resolved in some form. The confrontation is not really about China’s economic gains or financial profit through unfair trade practice with the United States, or about China’s illegitimate acquisition of U.S. intellectual property. The battle is about how we can reshape our civilization for the next 100 years and which path humanity should take. It is a decision that humanity must make at this juncture. It is an effort to bring awakening to humanity and to change course for a better future.

China does not want change from its one party-ruled fascism, which has enabled its military sector and the ruling power elite to gobble the nation’s entire wealth under the state-run economic system. A nation being populated by more than one billion people and wielding economic power on the world stage should take responsibility for our civilization and should have a vision for the future of humanity.

However, China has instead strengthened its fascist ruling under Xi Jining’s leadership, who recently amended the Communist Party’s decree and paved the way for permanent dictatorship with no term limit. China has pursued its aggressive agenda for world domination relentlessly under Xi’s leadership, which has been materialized by its recent political and military undertakings: (a) the building of a modern-time silk road for energy supplies that would encircle the Middle East, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia over the land and the seas, which China officially calls the One-Belt-One-Road Project; (b) the construction in South China Sea of artificial islands and military bases with missile units, which not only irreversibly destroyed huge coral reefs and priceless maritime environments, but increased military aggression against the sovereignty of its neighboring countries; (c) giving North Korea advanced nuclear materials and ballistic missile technology and keeping the rogue regime as China’s nuclear-armed handyman, which brought about Kim Jong Un’s uncontrollable missile tests and appalling nuclear threats to the United States and the West in 2017; the list goes on.

Moreover, domestically China has built numerous internment camps and imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang in the name of “re-education,” who are an ethnic minority living in China’s far west autonomous region. The international community views it as an attempt for ethnic cleansing much beyond human rights abuse. What legitimate account can Xi Jinping offer for this mass incarceration? How does that differ from Nazi Germany’s oppression of Jews in the concentration camps?

In South Korea, as Gordon Chang said, ideological fanatics and their zombies, who call themselves a “candlelight generation,” are running amok in every government office, from President Moon to the Supreme Court justices to countless representatives in the National Assembly to numerous generals in the military. Lim Jong Seok, Moon’s chief of staff has a criminal record and served a jail term on treason charges; Suh Hoon, director of the national intelligence agency of South Korea lived two years in North Korea having a tie with the North Korean elite. Where are they taking South Korea with them?

All that these fanatics and criminals want is to deny the legacy of South Korea as a free and democratic country and instead subject South Korea to the rule of North Korea’s Kim regime, which they think is the legitimate successor of the Chosen Dynasty that ruled the Korean peninsula for 500 years as a monarchy before Korea’s surrender to Japan in 1910. In a nutshell, South Korea was hijacked by a pack of well-planned traitors in a political coup after illegal impeachment of the sitting South Korean president in early 2017. The rest is what the world has witnessed: systematic enslavement of the free and democratic country under the rogue one-party regime of North Korea, in the name of “peace and prosperity of one Korea.”

No doubt these South Korean traitors and fanatics are loyal cells and agents who have diligently carried out Xi Jinping’s delusional agenda for world domination. Should the hijacking have occurred during the Obama administration, South Korea would have become another helpless Communist satellite state under the rule of China and North Korea. Fortunately, the timing of this hijacking was not right. It occurred when the United States was determined to reshape the world order for a better future of humanity.

As the U.S. confrontation with China grows stronger and becomes more intense, its energy buildup must find a place for pressure relief before explosion. That place is North Korea. The United States and the West cannot allow China-led multinational fascist alliance in the region since it will pose a grave threat to humanity. North Korea’s fate is sealed. South Korea’s Moon Jae In added fuel to the flames, and the flames will only engulf the two Koreas faster.

At the Singapore summit in June, North Korean dictator Kim promised U.S. President Trump to fulfil his vows for denuclearization. In October U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang, but Kim refused to give a list of North Korea’s nuclear stockpiles. Why did Kim balk? U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton pointed out that North Korea’s rapid development of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities to hit the United States was made possible by technical and material assistance from China’s Xi Jinping. North Korean-made ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads all have Chinese-made parts, and the vehicles and equipment used to mobilize them were manufactured and supplied by China. Thus, Kim could not disclose them to the U.S. officials without permission from China’s Xi. Kim is little more than a puppet of Xi’s.

Kim should better remember the short video clip that President Trump showed him at the summit and its message: A move forward for a prosperous and glorious future, or a fallback to a paleontological past is your choice.

What choice does Kim Jong Un have now? I don’t think he has any choice. Betrayal of China’s dictator Xi would mean death to him, and Kim knows it. Breaking the promise he made personally to President Trump at the summit would mean death to him, too, and Kim knows it well. All Kim can do is delay denuclearization indefinitely, earn his time through empty words, and pray for another ride in his new Rolls Royce Phantom.

Can Kim play Trump? No. Will Kim have enough revenue to manage his regime? No. That is why Kim sent his South Korean delegate, President Moon to Pope Francis in Vatican, then to EU leaders—French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel. South Korea’s sitting president begged these world leaders to lift the United Nations sanctions on North Korea and asked them to save North Korea’s dictator from falling into a bottomless pit. Mr. “Waning-Crescent” Moon came home only with mocking laughter behind him. I admire the South Koreans since they elected an empty-headed man to be their president.

History tells us that leaders who have kept their hands bloody for power cannot open the door to democracy and free markets, because of the fear of reprisal and revolts. Dictators are unable to change the systems they have built, until their last days in the office. Deng Xiaoping could embrace open policy for China because he climbed to power with clean hands. But Kim Jong Un cannot open North Korea to the outside world; he has put too many political rivals to death, including his uncle and half-brother. Xi Jinping is driving China off the cliff. Unfortunately, Xi is unable to change the system he has built for power, out of fear for retaliation. Only the people of China can save the fate of China from falling back to the dark age of the Cultural Revolution and the abject poverty the country saw.

*Max S. Kim received his PhD in cognitive science from Brandeis University and taught at the University of Washington and the State University of New York at Albany. Besides his own field of profession, he occasionally writes on regional affairs of the East Asia, including the two Koreas.

By Danielle Ryan*

The expected ‘blue wave’ didn’t materialize for the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Perhaps that’s because while the Republicans mostly played successfully to their base, the Democrats ran screaming away from theirs.

Yes, the Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives — a legitimate victory for the party, but they (and the liberal-leaning media) had hoped for, and expected, much more. In the Senate, the party faced serious disappointment, losing three seats and allowing Republicans to expand their control.

When one digs a little deeper and tries to figure out why that huge ‘blue wave’ never broke, it becomes clear that there is a serious strategy problem that the party leadership seems utterly blind to.

We are constantly reminded by the media that Republicans “play to their base,” telling them exactly what they want to hear. How often do we hear anything similar about Democrats? With the DNC establishment, elections become a kind of competition to see who can act least like a Democrat, often alienating the left-wing base, giving them little to get excited about.

Take Senators Joe Donnelly (Indiana) and Claire McCaskill (Missouri) — both incumbent Democrats who lost to Republican challengers on Tuesday night. If you didn’t know Donnelly was a Democrat, you would assume he was a Republican from the campaign ad in which he scaremongers about “socialists” and the “radical left,” professes support for ICE and Trump’s border wall, and quotes Ronald Reagan.

In other words, it’s a standard Republican campaign ad. Donnelly lost because progressive Democrats — and there are a lot of them (remember the Bernie Sanders juggernaut?) — don’t feel energized by wishy-washy Democrats-in- name-only (DINO).

McCaskill also cast herself as a kind of ‘Republican-lite’ candidate, believing it would allow her to scrounge up moderate support. She promised voters she wasn’t just one of those “crazy” left-wing Democrats and stood “100 percent” behind Trump on the issue of the migrant caravan. An undercover reporter for Project Veritas recorded one of her staffers admitting that she was indeed “distancing herself from the party” to win more votes but “people just can’t know” that. It didn’t work — and in fairness to McCaskill, who ran in a state Trump won by a significant margin, maybe nothing would have.

This phenomenon of Democrats trying to act as much like Republicans as possible in the mistaken belief that the ‘middle’ is where all the votes are is a huge part of the reason why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, and the party leadership doesn’t seem to have figured out yet that it is a bad strategy. If people want to vote for someone who sounds like a Republican, they’ll just vote for the Republican.

Speaking of Clinton, she also potentially managed to do some damage in the midterms, despite not even being a candidate. In Florida, Democrat Andrew Gillum ran a fairly progressive campaign for governor and then decided to do himself absolutely no favors by campaigning with Clinton, despite the fact that her popularity is below the floor in Florida and at a record low across the country in general. It was an inexplicably stupid move for Gillum and did not go unnoticed. Then there’s Obama. He didn’t help either. In fact, most of the candidates he campaigned for lost, too.

To be fair, Gillum ended up losing by only one percentage point. There are two ways to look at that. Republicans, the media and establishment Democrats are probably thinking that he should have toned down his already-mild progressivism. Another way to look at it, however, is that if a mildly progressive Democrat came within one point of beating an opponent with bigger name recognition in an increasingly red state, could a genuinely progressive candidate have won?

Lessons for 2020

Two Democratic newcomers to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, shocked the establishment by beating 10-term Democrat incumbents in their district primaries. The legions of activists that Bernie Sanders inspired across the country in 2016 would suggest that Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez’s victories are not simply some glitch in the system.

Pundits and party operatives will already be analyzing these election results with an eye on the 2020 presidential election campaign. But will they learn any lessons? Trump led a Republican revolt in 2016. If Democrats want to have any chance of doing the same and winning in 2020, they had better realize they won’t do it by offering a limp and cowardly candidate who runs a Clinton-style campaign.

If recent history is any indicator, however, the Democratic establishment will do its best to steamroll progressives and run as far to the right as possible without having to actually change the letter beside their names. Instead of opting for candidates who energize people on a human level, they keep throwing their weight behind the ones who are best at raising money from corporate donors, not exactly inspiring confidence in progressives. They would also do well to remember that a strategy of calling Trump a racist and misogynist while bleating non-stop about Russia doesn’t win elections; ideas and policies do.

The media, for its part, does a great job of helping corporate-funded Democrats with this by indulging them with disproportionate coverage of various Russia-related conspiracy theories, while constantly framing progressive newcomers as illegitimate and chastising them for ‘dividing’ the party or pushing policies that are too ‘radical’ for voters.

Big voices in the progressive movement, such as Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have already pushed some potential 2020 candidates to the left on various issues. The pressure is starting to work because the policies —like Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, tuition-free college and criminal justice reform — are actually popular among Americans.

Progressives may not have won across the board on Tuesday, but momentum is building and these things don’t always happen overnight. Democrats managed to take back the House last night, but they might have done so despite the party strategy, not because of it.

*Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ

Something very ugly and dangerous is happening in Russia today, Aleksandr Tsipko says. Elites increasingly are expressing their contempt for ordinary Russians, failing to see that this attitude means that ever fewer of the latter are going to be impressed by imperial games or willing to sacrifice anything to achieve them.

What is especially bad, the Moscow social commentator continues, is that the elites are willing to mouth the lines of the Kremlin that the ordinary people should sacrifice themselves for imperial greatness even while it is all too obvious that the elites aren’t prepared to sacrifice anything for anyone except their own wealth and position (ej.ru/?a=note&id=33100).

The calculation of these elites is “simple,” Tsipko says. “As long as Putin is alive, he won’t give up power to anyone and consequently will never give up what he considers his victories in foreign policy. “if we want to remain in power,” they say, “we must profess and defend the absurd” and try to convince “the simple people” they should be willing to suffer.

“This open distain of the present-day political elite to how the simple man lives and what bothers him” is rapidly landing the Russian elites in trouble, the commentator says. They have lost their bearings and show no signs of getting them back, and they have even forgotten that when elites behaved like this at the end of Soviet times, they lost their country.

“The constant stress on the ideology of great power status combined with the eternal Soviet deficit led in the end to the complete de-ideologization of the population, to the appearance in the population of a desire to reject everything” and to cease to be moved by any appeals to them at all, Tsipko recalls.

What makes the current moment even more dangerous, however, is that within living memory Russians lived better than they do now and did not see the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer as the defining factor of their lives. As a result, Russians today are even more put off by what the elites are saying than they were at the end of the 1980s.

“People are beginning to exit from the paradigm of the besieged fortress,” Tsipko argues. “They are tied about all this talk of eternal enemies who supposedly surround us on all sides. And the most dangerous thing for the authorities and for our political stability” is that they see their leaders don’t care what happens to them as long as the elites are taken care of.

Tsipko says that he “always distances himself from the catastrophism of Sergey Kurginyan, but in [his] view, there is truth in his latest interviews where he directs the attention of the powers to the fact that many of the representatives of ‘Crimea is Ours’ Russia are beginning to look at the powers with the eyes” of those who want “a velvet revolution.”

“Our present-day political elite somehow doesn’t take into consideration the possibility that the people could become tired of their open lying” and that as a result, the population is “losing faith not only in them but in the powers that be as a whole.” Increasingly, ordinary Russians view the elites as having sold out to the powers for money not Russia.

Russians still watch these “talking heads” but they do so “with new eyes.” They are no longer persuaded. Instead, they start with the assumption that they are going to be lied to but need to watch to know what new horrors the regime and the elites around it are planning to visit upon them next.

That is because ordinary Russians as a result of income differentiation driven by state power increasing look at themselves, their own lives, the current powers that be, and its representatives not as one common thing but rather “through the prison of the opposition of the poor and the rich.”

Ordinary Russians have lost all interest what is going on in the Donbass, Syria or even Crimea. They place ever fewer hopes in the state and aren’t persuaded by the propaganda or some new foreign policy “triumph.” Instead, they see these things as just another means to keep those on top there and those like themselves on the bottom there.

And that is extremely dangerous because the situation Russia finds itself in today is at a dead end, the Moscow social analyst says. No Russian government is going to give up Crimea, but no Russian government knows how to live and develop if sanctions continue as they may for decades.

The Russian people don’t want to give up Crimea either, but they will not sit still for long “with the negative consequences” that sanctions are bringing. “Now it is becoming clear” that they no longer think Putin can provide them with a better life or that they should back him no matter what.

“In my view,” Tsipko says, “the present-day powers, in contrast to the CPSU will fine it ever more difficult to justify the negative consequences of these sanctions seriously and for a along time.” They aren’t offering an image of the country as one in which everyone is making sacrifices but only one in which those without power are.

As a result, “instead of the Soviet equality of poverty has arrived the disturbing in equality between those who choose among the capitals of Europe as the place for their children to live and study and those who do not know where they will find enough money to pay for summer school holidays.”

The latter aren’t going to be bought off with images of victory in some new war, Tsipko continues. Instead, they are likely to ask more questions about why the situation in Russia is what it is. And that ought to lead the elites to ask the people the following question: “does it want to die in the name of the great power ambitions of the present-day powers that be?”

The answer almost certainly will soon be if it is not already a resounding “NO.”

Attempts to reform global trade rules on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should balance improving markets and development needs, but geopolitical rifts in the global trading system could obstruct progress.

By Amalina Anuar*

The visible hand of the state can significantly influence markets, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are no exception. As global heavyweights, government-owned, controlled or linked multinational enterprises constitute an estimated 25% of the Global Fortune 500. Concomitantly, pressure to discipline SOEs is mounting.

The longstanding push for SOE reform gained added traction with the recent communique by Business 20 (B20), the G20’s informal business interest group. It advocated for the “significant limitation and/or elimination of policies that accord preferential treatment to SOEs”.  To level the SOE-private enterprise playing field, the B20 recommends that a tweaked multilateral trading regime should proscribe actions ranging from cheap financing to debt relief and other forms of market-distorting non-commercial assistance, i.e. assistance granted on the basis of ownership.

New Rules

World Trade Organisation (WTO) SOE-related rules already proscribe non-commercial assistance. They also mandate notifications on what SOEs exist domestically and how they are treated, including on non-commercial assistance received. Compliance, however, has lagged.

The B20’s clarion call for stricter SOE rules amplifies that of certain countries trying to bridge these regulatory gaps. India supports any potential Japanese-led bid for stricter SOE rules in the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). In September 2018, the European Union, the United States and Japan proposed more transparent reporting on SOE numbers and reducing market-distorting SOE benefits.

The new free trade arrangement known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) likewise aims for higher standards in SOE disciplines, with US lawmakers previously designing the pact with an eye towards exporting its standards into other arrangements. Having adopted the CPTPP SOE chapter nearly wholesale, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has similar ambitions.

CPTPP rules more narrowly define SOEs, such as more than 50% government ownership/control of shares. They apply only to SOEs earning more than 200 million SDRs (roughly USD276 million), and cover trade in goods and services. While it circumscribes non-commercial assistance for international SOE operations and production of goods, it grants exemptions for economic emergencies and public goods provision.

Aiming High

As rules are vehicles for broader agendas, what do more transparency and less non-commercial assistance aim to achieve?

Some main goals are incentivising SOEs to become more innovative and competitive. Curtailing preferential treatment would bar SOEs from operating even when unprofitable, culling these so-called “zombie firms” and reducing unfair competition. For international businesses, this could equalise operating terms in economies such as China.

Meanwhile, improving transparency and understanding of SOEs’ impact on trade in goods and services allows for more informed rulemaking and could reduce violations of the WTO’s national treatment principle, wherein all enterprises should receive equal treatment regardless of origin or ownership.

Development Dilemmas in Asia Pacific

However, broadly stringent rules on SOEs could dampen development for many, even if the main target is China. So what is the impact of these tightening moves on the Asia Pacific economies where SOEs have played defining roles in the region’s growth over the years?

Constraints on non-commercial assistance could hamstring the development of certain industries. The East Asian growth story would have looked much different, for instance, had non-commercial assistance been barred, with SOEs present everywhere from Malaysian palm oil to Korean steel.

A deeper and broader SOE discipline may also affect international development partnerships, depending on how non-commercial assistance is circumscribed and exemptions for SOE activity abroad are made.

The World Bank, amongst others, has pinpointed infrastructure as critical for economic growth. In the smorgasbord of infrastructure projects under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to the American Enterprise Institute, SOEs carry out nearly 70% and 95% of BRI investment and construction respectively.

Considering that many such SOEs enjoy non-commercial assistance — and that several BRI-participating SOEs would be inoperable without this assistance — eliminating such assistance could leave a question mark hanging over the fate of some BRI development projects.

Uphill Battle

Ultimately, updating the multilateral rulebook must balance between meeting development needs and reducing market impediments, whether from state or private enterprises. Otherwise, attempts to strengthen the multilateral trading system, from the B20 or elsewhere, will only erode it instead.

However, several challenges dim such prospects. First, it is difficult to build consensus among the diverse membership and interests represented in the WTO. China, for instance, maintains that it has already established competitive neutrality, i.e. a level playing field between private and state enterprises.

Some developing countries have signed on to SOE reform rules — e.g. CPTPP members Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. However, significant carve-outs in these agreements and absent SOE clauses in many FTAs worldwide indicate that developing countries are generally not on board with stricter SOE rules, even if opposition is not vocal. Meanwhile, the US has broadly complained about development-based exemptions to WTO rules and their abuse.

Second, trade tensions, including the SOE debate, fall under the larger banner of US-China geopolitical rivalry. There is a longstanding disagreement on which economic model — state or liberal capitalism — should constitute the foundations of the rules-based trading order.

Any consequences for the BRI and the race for infrastructure-based geostrategic influence are side-effects of this ageless clash of capitalisms and China’s delay in meeting its accession terms satisfactorily, including in SOE notifications and transitioning to a market economy.

Talking Trade

Yet while multilateral progress may stall, SOE rules in plurilateral and regional trade agreements can be tightened. Ensuing effects on China may be indirect. The use of poison pill clauses in the USMCA and future US trade agreements, which discourage participating countries from entering trade agreements with non-market economies like China, could put pressure on Beijing to further reform lest it be isolated from trading partners.

Third, Trump’s abhorrence for actual or perceived losing could make compromise tough. Yet flexibilities for development and domestic political-economy considerations could help China’s reformists, while unrelenting external pressure could make its hardliners more resistant to valid reform attempts — especially if China seemingly loses face and capitulates to others.

Balanced SOE rules could bring benefits vis-à-vis development and improved markets. However, changing trade rules without addressing underlying geopolitical tensions will not lay the foundations for an inclusive, sustainable global trading regime or make them less vulnerable to power politics.

Greater dialogue between some of the multilateral trading system’s largest economies is important for all stakeholders; reaching a new trade consensus is even more so. The fate of global trade depends on it.

*Amalina Anuar is a Research Analyst with the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

The ways we access news and, with it, the nature of political communication have radically changed since the advent of social media. This column uses a unique dataset that matches individuals to Facebook audiences to examine the extent and intensity of online political campaigns conducted on the site before the 2016 US presidential elections. The social platform had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to support Trump and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on election day, but had no effect on Clinton’s side.

By Federica Liberini, Michela Redoano, Antonio Russo, Ángel Cuevas Rumin and Ruben Cuevas Rumin*