Those with a stake in the hustling racket of empire have little time for the contrariness that comes with exposing classified information. Those who do are submitted to a strict liability regime of assessment and punishment: you had the information (lawfully obtained or otherwise) but you released it for public deliberation. Ignorance remains a desensitising shield, keeping the citizenry in permanent darkness.

Critics indifferent to the plight of Julian Assange have seen his concerns for prosecution at the hands of US authorities as the disturbed meditations of a sexualised fantasist. He should have surrendered to the British authorities and, in turn, to the Swedish authorities. It was either insignificant or irrelevant that a Grand Jury had been convened to sniff around the activities of WikiLeaks to identify what, exactly, could be used against the organisation and its founder.

Cruelty and truth are often matters of excruciating banality, and now it is clearer than ever that the United States will, given the invaluable chance, net the Australian publisher and WikiLeaks founder to make an example of him. This man, who dirtied the linen of state and exposed the ceremonial of diplomatic hypocrisy, was always an object of interest, notably in the United States. “He was,” confirmed Andrea Kendall-Taylor, former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia under the director of national intelligence, “a loathed figure inside the government.”

Whether it was the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Department of Justice, or the specific army of investigators assembled by special counsel Robert Mueller III to weasel out material on the Trump-Russia connection, Assange remains a substantial figure who needs to be captured, sealed and disappeared. Forget any such references to journalism and being a truth teller with obsessive tendencies; for these officials, Assange had become a calculating machine in the information market, a broker in state details and activities, trading and according value to subject matters of his choice.

A gnawing fascination for US authorities persists on whether Assange has a direct, cosy line to the Kremlin. Fashioned as such, it can be used as a weapon against President Donald J. Trump, and a cover for Democratic villainy and incompetence. In terms of scale and endeavour, WikiLeaks has been kitted out in the outfit of a guerrilla information organisation. This exceedingly flattering description may well have given Assange a flush of pride, but it assumes a measure of disproportionate influence. It also ignores the vital issue of how public discussion, which may well translate into voting patterns, can alter policy. (This, it should be added, remains the big hypothetical: does such information induce an altered approach, or simply reaffirm prejudice and predisposition? The flat-earth theorist is hardly going to be moved by anything that would conflict or challenge.)

Both the New York Times and Washington Post revealed last Friday that prosecutors had inadvertently let a rather sizeable cat out of the security bag. (That feline escapee was noted by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.) As with so much with matters of secrecy, errors made lead to information gained. In the filing of a case unrelated to Assange, Assistant US Attorney General Kellen S. Dwyer informed the relevant judge to keep the matter at stake sealed, claiming that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

Dwyer, whose remit also includes investigating WikiLeaks, had bungled. “The court filing,” claimed a meek Joshua Stueve of the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, “was made in error. This was not the intended name for this filing.”

What is not known is the nature of the charges and what events they might cover. Do they date back to the days of Cablegate or feature updates with the Vault 7 revelations showing the range of cyber tools deployed by the CIA to penetrate mobile devices and computers? Or do they feature the trove of hacked Democratic emails which constitute a feature of the Mueller investigation? Charges might well centre on using 18 USC §641, which makes it unlawful for a person to receive any record or thing of value of the United States with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing that it was stolen. But even there, the issue of press protections would apply.

Prosecutors have previously flirted with conspiracy, theft of government authority and purported violations of the Espionage Act, but the Obama administration, for all its enthusiasm in nabbing Assange kept coming up against that irritating bulwark of liberty, some would say impediment, known as the First Amendment. Prosecute Assange, and you would be effectively prosecuting the battlers of the Fourth Estate, however withered they might be.

The free speech amendment, however, does not trouble current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who, as CIA director, claimed that, “We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

A niggling concern here lies in Justice Department regulations, as amended by Eric Holder in 2015, which cover the obtaining of information and records from, making arrests of, and bringing charges against members of the press. As Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn and Benjamin Wittes point out in Lawfare, one exception stands out with sore attention: “The protections of the policy do not extent to any individual or entity where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the individual entity is … [a] foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”, so defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The mania in packaging, ribbon and all, of Assange with those in the Kremlin becomes clear. To make him a foreign threat takes him outside the scope of press protection, at least when it comes to those desperately drafted regulations.

Since US voters cannot be trusted by the country’s corporate owners and the parties of business to act with any degree of maturity and intelligence, it has been assumed by the political classes that they must have been swayed and manipulated by a foreign power. Or fake news. Or news. That assessment obviates any issue as to whether the Clinton machinery within the Democratic Party did its fair share of manipulation and swaying – but then again, quibbles can’t be had, nor hairs split on this point. Keeping it local, and attacking the Great Bear fused with Satan that is Russia, frosted with new Cold War credentials, remains the low-grade, convenient alibi to justify why the backed horse did not make it to the finishing line. To Assange would be small though consoling compensation.

As expected the Democratic Party won the majority in the US congressional elections, while the Republicans held on to their majority position within the Senate. As a result, President Donald Trump is on a weaker position today than ever before in his nearly two-years in office, which has been highly divisive and polarizing for the voters. The 2018 midterm election results were truly a verdict on his presidency than anything else.

Guessing what is coming on his way within the next few months, Trump promptly fired his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It is worth noting that Sessions was one of the earliest supporters of President Donald Trump, but over time their relationship became strained. After Sessions recused himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump campaign associates colluded with Russia, Trump’s attitude toward Sessions changed. He felt betrayed or abandoned.

Matthew Whitaker, who was Sessions’ chief of staff, will fill the position. He is known to be against Mueller’s investigation. As acting attorney general, Whitaker will be able to reject requests — such as for more funding or for subpoenas — from the special counsel’s office. According to the CNN, Whitaker could use this authority as a potential way to reign in special counsel Robert Mueller without firing him outright, should he choose to do so, although his plans for handling the Russia investigation are still unclear.

Former Republican Presidential candidate and Senator-elect Mitt Romney from Utah state said that Trump’s firing of Sessions should not affect the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He said, “Under Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, it is imperative that the important work of the Justice Department continues, and that the Mueller investigation proceeds to its conclusion unimpeded.”

Trump’s problems, however, don’t end with the Mueller probe. He has been keen on strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia, a longtime American ally. There, the young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) outmaneuvered his rival in 2017 to consolidate his position.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has been particularly close to MBS. Mr. Kushner wants to maintain support for the crown prince despite the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Saudi officials now say was killed with a lethal dose of tranquilizers and dismembered. Previously, Saudi officials said that Mr. Khashoggi had been strangled.

According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has recently concluded that the Saudi crown prince ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, according to American officials. The C.I.A. made the assessment based on the crown prince’s control of Saudi Arabia, which is such that the killing would not have taken place without his approval and has buttressed its conclusion with two sets of crucial communications: intercepts of the crown prince’s calls in the days before the killing and calls by the kill team to a senior aide to the crown prince.

The intercepts show that MBS was trying to find ways to lure Mr. Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, although the crown prince did not specifically say in the phone calls that he wanted to have Mr. Khashoggi killed. The CIA is also believed to be examining communications between Mr. Khashoggi and the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of the crown prince.

The Turkish authorities had a 15-minute audio recording where the Saudi “hit-squad” team could be heard discussing and reviewing their plan, and reminding each other of their duties, showing the strongest evidence of the premeditated nature of the killing. In that recording, Khashoggi’s “desperate attempts to survive” could be heard.

The CIA has passed that assessment on to lawmakers and Trump administration officials.

The increasingly definitive assessment from the CIA creates a problem for President Trump, who does not want to jeopardize $110 billion arms deal to the desert kingdom. He has tied his administration to MBS and proclaimed him the future of Saudi Arabia. But the new assessment by the C.I.A. is sure to harden the resolve of lawmakers on Capitol Hill to continue to investigate the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and punish Saudi Arabia.

A bipartisan group of US senators has already introduced legislation seeking to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s murder and the kingdom’s role in the devastating war in Yemen. The move came hours after the United States slapped economic sanctions on 17 Saudis, including top aide of MBS, Saud al-Qahtani, allegedly involved in the killing of Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

The new US measures, which follow travel bans already in place, freeze any assets the 17 may have in the US and prohibit any Americans from doing business with them.

“The Saudi officials we are sanctioning were involved in the abhorrent killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday. “These individuals who targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States must face consequences for their actions.”

The sanctions will be implemented under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which targets the perpetrators of serious human rights abuses and corruption. The announcement was unusual for Washington, which rarely imposes sanctions on Riyadh.

The move came after Riyadh’s public prosecutor said five out of 11 suspects are facing a possible death sentence in the case.

If the Senatorial bill were to become law, it would suspend weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and prohibit US re-fueling of Saudi coalition aircraft conducting air raids in Yemen. It also would impose sanctions on anyone blocking humanitarian access in Yemen and anyone supporting the Houthi rebels.

US Vice President Mike Pence has said the US will hold the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi to account, following reports in US media that Saudi Crown Prince MBS ordered the killing. Mr. Pence described the murder of the Saudi journalist as an “atrocity” and an “affront to a free and independent press” but declined to comment on classified information.

President Trump has repeatedly maintained that the USA needs Saudi Arabia for business and creating American jobs. So, he is not expected to take any measures that will weaken MBS’s position inside Saudi Arabia that may undermine the US strategic goals about the region, esp. vis-à-vis Iran and keeping the oil price low (to punish Iran). MBS has also proven to be a reliable partner in bolstering Israeli strategic interests and Pax-Judaica.

What’s to expect next?

Neither Trump administration officials nor intelligence officers believe the controversy over Mr. Khashoggi will drive MBS from power, which is one reason White House officials believe cutting ties with the prince would not be in the interest of the United States.

“It is one of those acts that must cause us to re-examine the relationship and how much dependence we place on it,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who is set to lead the House Intelligence Committee next year. “If we truly want to affect Saudi behavior, it is going to be more important to focus on bringing an end to the campaign in Yemen than these announcements of sanctions on these individuals we are unlikely to be able to reach,” he said.

Skepticism in Congress about the Saudis has grown as Saudi officials have given multiple and conflicting accounts of what happened in the consulate in Istanbul. This week, they announced they would seek the death penalty against some of the perpetrators.

CIA officials have long been unsure about MBS and his abilities to lead the kingdom. Now that they may have established the latter’s involvement with the barbarous murder of the Saudi journalist could such information be used as a blackmail or bargaining chip to make him to play to the tune of Washington?

By Nick Cunningham

After declining by more than 20 percent from the October peak, oil prices are showing some signs that they have now bottomed out.

WTI hit a low point at $56 per barrel recently and Brent hit a low just below $65 per barrel. Both crude benchmarks regained some ground at the end of the week, despite the huge increase in U.S. crude oil inventories. In fact, rising prices in the face of the 10-million-barrel increase in crude stocks suggests that oil may have already hit a bottom. “[Y]esterday’s price reaction to the US inventory data shows that negative news is now largely priced in,” Commerzbank said in a note. “This is the only way to explain why an increase in US crude oil stocks of a good 10 million barrels failed to put further pressure on prices.”

At the same time, crude stocks have now climbed for eight consecutive weeks, surely a sign that the market is decidedly back in a surplus situation. That is bearish, to be sure, and helps explain the collapse in oil prices over the past month.

But it also significantly increases the odds of a response from the OPEC+ coalition in early December. “[W]e believe oil is oversold and will likely bounce up from the current levels, as OPEC+ dials back production in December,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note on Wednesday. The bank said that it no longer sees Brent rising to $95 per barrel next year, as it previously thought, noting that “oil bulls have capitulated and so have we.”

However, the liquidation of net-long positioning by hedge funds and other money managers has taken a lot of pressure out of the market. As a result, there is more room on the upside once again. “[T]he oil market is a lot cleaner now from a positioning standpoint. Given that inventories are still not too high, we believe oil prices should find some support from a fundamental perspective,” BofAML wrote.

Barclays pointed to some fundamentals to suggest that things aren’t as bad as they seem. For instance, OECD stocks in terms of “days of demand cover,” remain below the five-year average. “Based on our balances, we expect the amount of inventories in the OECD on a days of demand cover basis to remain supportive of prices through the end of next year,” Barclays said in a note.

Moreover, the waivers on Iran sanctions are temporary, and even though the U.S. was more lenient than expected, Iran should continue to lose exports in the months ahead. Indeed, the recent price crash actually gives the Trump administration a lot more room to work with, and it can take a harder line with the eight countries it granted waivers to the next time around.

Finally, lower prices could shut in marginal supply and stimulate demand. Barclays even suggests that Iran may step up threats on the Strait of Hormuz because of lower prices, while Venezuela might lose output at a faster rate.

Still, a price increase from current levels hinges on action from OPEC+. Saudi Arabia has already signaled that it intends to lower exports by 500,000 bpd in December, and that further action might be forthcoming from OPEC+. Russian officials told Reuters that they are not enthusiastic about the 1.4-million-barrel-per-day cut that was reported in the media, but that they might sign on to something more on the order of 1 mb/d.

These rumors tend to drive the market and the price gains seen on Thursday and Friday may have been somewhat driven by rising expectations of OPEC+ action. As these things go, oil traders buy and sell on the rumor. More specifically, the 500,000-bpd Saudi cut is already being priced into the market, and the potential 1-mb/d cut from OPEC+ collectively is now increasingly being factored into the market as well. Because there are now rumors of a cut as large as 1.4 mb/d, the 1 mb/d option could take on a “middle-of-the-road” option. Anything less will be a huge disappointment and could drag oil prices back down.

The IEA noted that the global supply surplus could rise to as much as 2 mb/d in the first half of 2019 based on the trajectory of the current fundamentals. It will require OPEC+ action to head that off.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Can-We-Expect-A-Major-Rebound-In-Oil-Prices.html

Adolf Hitler once said that “when diplomacy ends, war begins” and it has been a major task for diplomats from Cambodia, a small Southeast Asian country with just 16.33 million people surrounded by much bigger neighbors, to ensure that diplomacy never ends and war never returns to their country.

The gentle Khmer people have suffered a lot and for a long time from the bloody wars caused by big-power conflicts and interests as well as the brutal atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), unlike the glory days of the Khmer Empire that ruled Cambodia from the ninth to the 15th centuries.

Over the past three decades, however, the Cambodian people have enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity, especially since the historic 1991 Paris Peace Accords were signed and Samdech Hun Sen became prime minister in 1985.

So what strategy is required for Cambodia to navigate troubled waters? Down-to-earth tact and diplomacy according to Nambora Hor, the epitome of a smart Cambodian diplomat, in his forthcoming book titled Down-to-Earth Tact and Diplomacy, An Untold Story.

Nambora is currently Cambodian Ambassador to Indonesia and his book is the very first of its kind by a Cambodian diplomat, skillfully setting out theory in down-to-earth ways.

The book, according to Nambora, will be published in December 2018 and in January 2019 will be launched in both Phnom Penh and Jakarta.

Even before it is published, the book has already received a solid endorsement from renowned Indonesian diplomat, thinker and former foreign minister RM Marty Natalegawa.

“A fascinating personal account and reflection of a diplomat’s complex and multi-faceted work. An important read,” Marty said.

Echoing a similar view, University of Connecticut professor and former United Nations diplomat Benny Widyono describes Nambora as a different breed of diplomat who accomplished a great deal in the three continents of Australia, Europe and Africa.

Benny, who worked as a UN Secretary General’s representative from 1994-1997 in Cambodia, writes in the foreword to the book that Nambora’s tactful “down-to-earth” diplomacy is a by-product of his experiences in employing non-conventional methods to deliver expected outcomes. He is amazed at the theory Nambora put into practice, achieving enormous victories in the modern shaping of Cambodian diplomacy within a rigid geopolitical setting.

The new book will be useful for many.

“This book will be very useful for professional diplomats, scholars, academics and university students,” Nambora told this author recently in Jakarta.

Nambora’s fascinating book portrays a complete picture of him — from birth, growth and maturity as a diplomat, and both his conventional and unconventional work.

“Each and every page best explains how contemporary diplomacy has contributed to peace, comprehensive strategic partnerships among states, and the development of world diplomacy on the basis of political and economic profits,” he said.

“If you aim at building peace on earth as a foreign diplomat or world leader, let’s chase your dream by deciphering the essence of modern diplomacy and peace in Down-to-Earth: Tact and Diplomacy, An Untold Story,” Nambora writes in the book.

The book is divided into 11 chapters, namely Chapter 1 Biographical Sketch: Angkorian Birth; Chapter 2 The Anatomy of “Down-to-Earth Tact and Diplomacy: Unconventional Way”; Chapter 3 Twilight Years in Australia; Chapter 4 Bridging Diplomatic Gaps in Europe: Best Practices; Chapter 5 A United and Strong Africa: The Cambodia Mission; Chapter 6 Peace Building: The Heart and Soul of “Down-To-Earth” Tact and Diplomacy; Chapter 7 Indonesia: Torn between two powers The Pancasila Way; Chapter 8 ASEAN Trajectory, Moving Toward or Apart: Milestone challenges; Chapter 9 Personal Reflections on Politics, Diplomacy, Theology and Life; Chapter 10 Down-to-Earth Foundation: Development Diplomacy; and Chapter 11 Conclusion.

Even though he spent just 14 months in Jakarta, Nambora acquired a vast knowledge about Indonesia, its people, culture and state ideology Pancasila. He devotes Chapter 7 especially to Indonesia and its ideology Pancasila (the five principles of belief in one God, a just and civilized humanity, Indonesian unity, democracy under the wise guidance of the people’s representatives and social justice).

“I fell in love with Indonesia’s beauty, culture and its people, who are very tolerant. I am also impressed by Indonesia’s Pancasila ideology,” Nambora said.

Tact and diplomacy come naturally to Nambora, as he was born into a family of diplomats. His father, Hor Nambong, was Cambodia’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2016.

Nambora is an adept diplomat who has mastered all the tricks in the art of diplomacy. After graduating from the University of Economics of Budapest, Hungary, in the late 1980s, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1988. During his three decades of distinguished diplomatic service, the jovial diplomat worked as an ambassador in three different continents – Australia and New Zealand from 1999 to 2004, the United Kingdom and Ireland from 2004 to 2013, Ethiopia and the African Union from 2011 to 2013, Switzerland from 2016 to 2017 – and has enriched Cambodia’s relations with these countries.

For example in Chapter 4, the book explains how Nambora, while concurrently working as ambassador to Ireland when he was in London, enriched and enlarged Cambodia’s diplomatic relations with Ireland by engaging Irish networks by drinking beer in pubs.

The 61-year-old Nambora, who is married to Hor Khemtana and has three children, has won several major awards both in Cambodia and outside for his outstanding work. The Australian Committee on Human Rights recognized him as a “Citizen of Humanity” in 2002. The Cambodian government conferred on him the Royal Order of Cambodia – Commander in 2007 and in 2010 he received the Royal Order, Grand Officer title.

The book clearly portrays the importance of diplomacy and tact as effective tools of communication during negotiations. That’s why once Winston S. Churchill said that: “Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”

Likewise Isaac Newton said: “Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”
Nambora became successful wherever he was posted by using his down-to-earth personality and several unconventional methods to make more friends in foreign countries and boosting his country’s image.

He is a very frank diplomat who never shies from expressing his views openly. At the same time he has devoted his whole life to working for Cambodia’s peace, stability, territorial integrity,
sovereignty, independence and economic prosperity.

This new book will certainly set a new milestone in the history of Cambodian diplomacy.

The dynamics of the Iranian state make for an intriguing case study. Informed observers maintain that two strong internal forces are pursuing irreconcilable political objectives. On the one hand there is the reformist camp, concerned about the people’s welfare and willing to engage with the outside world. On the other, there is the “deep state”, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supported by the powerful IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps), dedicated to upholding and strengthening the Islamic Revolution. It is the deep state that has complete dominance over the country’s political affairs, and can exercise its will in defiance of any contract or agreement enacted between Iran’s government and other countries.

For his own good reasons Khamenei facilitated the re-election in May 2017 of Hassan Rouhani as President for a second term in office. Rouhani drew a great deal of support from “progressives” within Iranian society, who believed he could – and would – carry through a programme of economic development aimed at improving the standard of living for the nation as a whole.

This belief was founded on the nuclear deal signed on 14 July 2015 between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. For years the Iranian economy had been crippled by severe sanctions imposed by the UN and the USA for violating directives laid on Iran regarding its nuclear programme. With the grudging support of the Supreme Leader, Rouhani negotiated the deal under which a whole raft of sanctions were lifted, as a quid pro quo for Iran severely curtailing its nuclear development programme. Incidentally, no sooner was the deal signed, than Khamenei issued a statement hedging on some of its terms. “Even after this deal,” he pronounced, “our policy toward the arrogant US will not change.”

It is doubtful how high a priority Khamenei and the ruling Iranian élite placed on the economic wellbeing of the nation. The Supreme Leader had been fixated for a long time on a concept he dubbed “resistance economy” – an idea he introduced in 2011 in response to Western sanctions.
Resistance economy lays down measures aimed at overcoming the economic pressure of sanctions, such as creating domestic versions of foreign products, increasing barter trade, and smuggling. The idea has re-emerged in Iranian official rhetoric following the wave of unrest that swept the country in late December 2017 and early January 2018.

Khamanei himself, Iran’s religious bureaucracy, and leading IRGC officials were equivocal from the start about the negotiations leading to the nuclear deal with the West. They went along with it to win the lifting of sanctions, but once the sanctions were eased, assets unfrozen and substantial loans poured into Iran’s coffers, nothing was done to improve housing, education, public health, or transportation for the nation.

In a recent report, Radio Farda – which broadcasts to Iran under the aegis of Radio Liberty – maintained that many Iranians subsist on the bare minimum while their rulers live lavishly. “Khamenei suggests that the nation should consume less,” ran the report, “while the government wastes the country’s resources.” It cites in particular the chronic embezzlement and financial corruption, and the petro dollars poured into financing the IRGC. Resources were lavished on proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, and supporting IRGC’s ballistic missile programme.  Millions more were given to terrorist factions such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Khamenei and his supporters reject the idea that the civil unrest, which continued well into 2018, was an expression of dissatisfaction with the regime itself, despite the clearest indications during the uprisings that this is what they were. They blame Iran’s economic problems on “foreign enemies” and Rouhani’s administration, which they accuse of neglecting the principles of resistance economy.

The defenders of resistance economy are in fact isolationists. They oppose improved ties with the outside world, and are thus at total odds with one of the major concepts behind the nuclear deal – to restore Iran to the “family of nations”. Rouhani responded positively to this aspect of the deal, having recognized, together with his supporters, that the end result of resistance economy is to maintain the Iranian people in a permanent state of poverty and, for large numbers, misery.

The high hopes placed in Rouhani by the progressive movement were shattered with the emergence of Donald Trump as US president. At total odds with his predecessor, President Obama, Trump was fundamentally opposed to the deal, withdrew from it step by step, and has re-imposed the lifted sanctions.

Although Khamenei has asserted that the sanctions would make no difference to Iran’s economy – an assertion that may well prove correct, given the determination of the EU to circumvent them – Rouhani’s political position has been gravely weakened. His own support base feels frustrated, while the reformist movement has lost credibility among ordinary Iranians. The economic benefits they had hoped for never materialized. As for the Iranian establishment, they are now castigating Rouhani for the whole nuclear deal policy, and for placing any faith at all in the West.
Strangely the two Irans have shifted places. Rouhani and the progressives, once favoured by Washington, are now lobbying strongly against the US administration in the hope of a Democrat president in two years’ time.

The Iranian regime, on the other hand, is delighted that eight nations have been exempted from Trump’s embargo on Iranian oil. The concession was allowed on the proviso that income from these oil sales is placed in an escrow account usable only for food and other humanitarian imports. The élite might have chosen to use the petro dollars very differently, but the exemption frees up other sources of income for them to get their hands on.

In addition, in the belief that every cloud has a silver lining, Khamenei hopes the re-imposed sanctions will provide a long spell of isolation that will give Iran the chance to strengthen its adherence to the fundamentalist Islamism that lies at the root of the Revolution.

This fall in Europe and in the Baltic region in particular is very “hot” from the military point of view. Russia thinks that NATO exercises in the region are not just single episodic maneuvers but a chain of successive events, a well-designed scheme of conducting large-scale exercises that are offensive in nature.

This point of view is disputable but certainly Russian experts have the reasons to feel threatened.

These days NATO exercise dubbed Anakonda 2018 is conducted on the territory of Poland and three Baltic States. If taken separately, Anakonda 2018 is not so large-scale, as for instance, Trident Juncture, held between October 25 and November 7 in and around Norway (that was just one of NATO’s military exercises this year.) But taking into account a series of NATO military events that were conducted and planned this autumn, Anakonda 2018 exercise distrusts Russia.

Thus, in parallel with and just after Trident Juncture exercise in Europe and in the Baltic region, smaller NATO exercises are united by a common concept and held against a common background.

These are Baltic Host 18 in the Baltic States (November 1–30), Iron Wolf 18 in Lithuania (November 5–18), Brave Lion in Denmark (November 5–23), Arcade Fusion 18 in the UK (November 5-27), Anakonda 18 in Poland and in the Baltic States and the Baltic Sea (November 7-16), Citadel Bonus 18 in France and Poland (November 10-20).

By the way, this year NATO has already coordinated approximately 100 exercises, 20% more than during the same period in 2017.

During exercises NATO, as it was officially stated, trains and assesses multinational battle groups abilities to plan and conduct “defense/offense in decisive action environment and improves the level of interoperability of multinational forces.”

One more fact shows the offensive nature of NATO exercises. This is a clear intention to train troops under severe weather conditions. Such a climate is typical only to some countries in the world including Russia. So, are NATO troops going to fight on Russian territory? This automatically means the offensive nature of Alliance’s maneuvers.

The more so, the accelerating of rearmament in the Eastern European countries, the deployment of new bases, the renewal of NATO infrastructure, new military formations in the region, and specifically in the Baltic countries – all this suggests that the main goal of the exercises is not to defend NATO member states, but to prepare to attack.

*Viktors Domburs is an engineer, born in Latvia, and now lives in the United Kingdom.

Terrorists have perpetrated many attacks in Pakistan against the shrines of Sufi Saints and grand scholars of Islam, who played major role in preaching Islam in the Subcontinent. The saints like Syed Ali Hijweri and Baba Farrid were acclaimed spiritual leaders of Muslim World, as they converted millions of non-Muslims to Islam. As per the teachings of Islam, even the graves of ordinary Muslims are respectable but unfortunately, Al-Qaeda, DAISH and Taliban have conducted more than 70 attacks, on the shrines of revered Sufi saints in Pakistan. Suicide bombers were used in the most of the attacks and hundreds of Muslims were killed by the terrorists. The suicide attack on the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar on 16 Feb, 2017, in which more than 70 devotees, innocent women and children were killed, is reflective of this hate.

In one of the worst attacks on Sufi mosques and shrines, on 1 July, 2010, two suicide bombers targeted the shrine of Datta Darbar in Lahore. At least 42 people were killed and 172 were injured in the attack. On 8 Oct, 2010, at least eight people were killed and more than 65 people were injured after two bombs exploded at the Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazaar at Clifton, Karachi. The shrine of Baba Farrid at Pakpattan, one of the most important Sufi centres was also attacked on 26 Oct, 2010. 6 persons were killed and 12 injured in this attack. On Apr 3, 2011, at least 51 persons were killed and more than 100 were injured when two suicide bombers blew themselves outside the shrine of Sufi Saint Ahmed Sultan, popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar at Dera Ghazi Khan. In Khuzdar, Balochistan, the suicide attack at the Shrine of Shah Noorani resulted in 60 deaths and more than 100 people were injured on 12 Nov, 2016.

The people of KP confronted the major brunt of terrorists’ attacks, as more than 50 Sufi shrines were targeted by the militants in the Province. On 5 Mar, 2009, the attack at the mausoleum of Rehman Baba, a revered Pashto Sufi poet of the 17th century, was widely condemned by the public. Terrorists’ utter disrespect to the shrines of Muslim saints depicts their extreme level of ignorance. They neither respect teachings of Islam nor honor Pashtun traditions.

*Shaikh Muhammad Bilal is a freelance journalist

Many neoliberals are under the impression that communism failed due to wasteful economic policies adopted by the former Soviet Union. Economic weakness must have played a role, but it was only secondary to the primary role played by politics and a desire for enfranchisement in three-quarters of a century old autocratic political system, especially among the non-Slavic population of the erstwhile Soviet Union.

If we take a cursory look at the history of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in December 1991, it appears that the communist system collapsed due to Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization policies of Glasnost, or openness, and Perestroika, or restructuring.

The Glasnost phenomena is especially important because it sheds light on the impact of new technology on the social and political life of a country. The late 1980s was the era of the emergence of satellite television in the developing world and it coincided with the political developments in the former Soviet Union. The impact of relatively independent media, such as privately owned television channels and radio stations, cannot be underestimated in creating awareness among the masses.

Marxism as it was practiced in Russia and China was barely disguised Slavic and Han nationalism, respectively. Gorbachev wanted to liberalize and democratize the bureaucratic Bolshevism in Russia gradually, but such was the level of frustration felt by all other nations of the erstwhile Soviet Union besides Slavs that things slipped out of control.

The only force that kept the former Soviet Union together was the Russian Communist Party and its repression. But once relatively free and fair elections were held, first for the Congress of People’s Deputies of the former Soviet Union in March 1989 and then for the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russian Republic in March 1990, a rival power center emerged under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin and the ensuing power struggle between Gorbachev as the then-President of the former Soviet Union and Yeltsin as the then-President of the Russian Republic – one of the 15 constituent Republics of the former Soviet Union – and the unfolding events resulted in the declaration of independence by the Baltic states.

In a momentous coup plot on 19 August 1991, Gorbachev’s vice president, prime minister, defense minister and KGB chief put Gorbachev under house arrest. The coup organizers expected some popular support but the public sympathy in large metropolitan cities was against them.

The attempted coup failed after three days and Gorbachev returned as the President of the former Soviet Union, but not only the power of the president but also the invulnerability of the Communist Party and the Soviet armed forces and intelligence apparatus were compromised in the eyes of wider public. A failed coup plot is always a recipe for disaster because it compromises the deterrence value of power projection which is more about tacit intimidation than actual use of excessive and violent force.

Marxism aspires for the lofty ideals of social justice and the establishment of a classless and stateless society, but it fails to offer a modus operandi for the realization of those goals. It leaves everything to the bureaucratic cadres of the communist party’s ideologues. But the accountability of those ideologues can only take place in a top-down manner, not in a bottom-up manner, because they are not held accountable to the people over whom they are supposed to rule.

China is different from Russia due to its cultural homogeneity: 90% Chinese are Han Chinese who speak the same language and share a similar culture. Due to this reason, it may not collapse like the erstwhile Soviet Union, but it must create a representative political framework to function democratically and in an accountable and transparent manner.

Here let me confess that I am indebted to inimitable Karl Marx for his unprecedented critique of the capitalist exploitative system and his numerous concepts pertaining to economic theory and labor rights. But at the same time, I will dare to question Marx’s flawed sociological analysis. His “dialectical materialism” is akin to social Darwinism. Individuals, even analytical philosophers, are socially constituted and socially situated, and apparently the mindsets of Marx and his disciples were structured by their European cultural and historical experience.

The Russian Slavic imperialism in the form of Marxism-Leninism gained world-wide traction simply because Russia is culturally a European offshoot, even though geographically it occupies the North Asia, whereas the Asian Han imperialism in the form of Maoism is only limited to some regionally adjacent countries.

This fact alone is a sufficient proof of the European cultural hegemony on the rest of the world – not only the thesis but the anti-thesis must also have European cultural roots in order to gain traction among social elites of the Western world. The Marxists fail to appreciate the fact that there are two kinds of divisions: vertical divisions on the basis of class and horizontal divisions on the basis of ethnic, linguistic and cultural groupings, which might also have legitimate ethnic and cultural aspirations.

Moreover, after carefully observing ideas and worldviews of disparate groups of socialists around the world, I’ve reached a conclusion that there are two separate and distinct classes of socialists. Idealist Marxists generally are the erudite and highbrow intellectuals of the developed Western countries; whereas national socialists mostly are the Russian, East European, Chinese and sometimes Latin American nationalists.

Basic difference between the two is that idealist Marxists typically are socialists by choice and learning who have overcome their ethnic and nationalist prejudices, whereas national socialists are socialists by birth and indoctrination since their national narratives are based on facile Marxism. The make-believe socialism of the latter class of socialists is actually nationalism in the guise of socialism.

Regarding the New Left, although it seems revisionist, I prefer the evolutionary, non-violent and nuanced approach of the New Left over classical Marxism. I have noticed only one serious deficiency in the New Left creed, however. Instead of being single-mindedly labor-focused, they waste their time and efforts on a wide range of tangential issues.

And the way I see it, it isn’t their fault. When a Western Marxist looks around him, he doesn’t finds an exploited class; the labor is already well paid and there is no need for further labor reforms. Thanks to the North’s exploitation of the South, the general state of national economies in the developed West is robust, and dollar, euro and pound can buy anything; that’s why, the Western Marxists find time to take interest in marginal issues.

Due to the neocolonial global economic order, the real exploited class does not exist in the developed world; it only exists in the developing world; where labor is still underpaid, overworked and labor rights and laws are virtually non-existent. For the New Left to become relevant once again on a world-wide scale, it must focus on the mainstream issues affecting an overwhelming majority of the dispossessed masses all over the world, and not just in the developed world.

Finally, China is an interesting case study in regard to its history. Firstly, although it did fight a couple of Opium Wars with the British in the middle of the nineteenth century, the influence of Western imperialism generally remained confined to its coastal cities and it did not make inroads into inland areas.

Secondly, China is ethno-linguistically and culturally homogeneous: more than 90% Chinese belong to the Han ethnic group and they speak various dialects of Mandarin, thus reducing the chances of discord and dissension in the Chinese society.

And lastly, behind the “Iron Curtain” of international isolation beginning from the Maoist revolution in 1949 to China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China successfully built its manufacturing base by imparting vocational and technical education to its disciplined workforce and by building an industrial and transport infrastructure.

It didn’t allow any imports until 2001, but after joining the WTO, it opened up its import-export policy on a reciprocal basis; and since labor is much cheaper in China than in the Western countries, therefore it now has a comparative advantage over the Western capitalist bloc which China has exploited in its national interest. These three factors, along with the visionary leadership of Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai and China’s vanguard socialist party collectively, have placed China on the path to progress and prosperity in the twenty-first century.

On November 14, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives blocked a resolution that its supporters say would end U.S. participation in the war and famine in Yemen. It is unclear, however, what effect this resolution would have on the ground even if it were passed into law. It imposes no limits on arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It does not propose any oversight or limitation of activities CIA or of private contractors from the U.S. in Yemen. The resolution is based on a time table that does not reflect the dire urgency to end the war in Yemen, where almost two months ago the United Nations’ humanitarian chief warned “We may now be approaching a tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to prevent massive loss of life as a result of widespread famine across the country.” Further, the resolution provides exemptions for continued hostilities conducted directly by U.S. with drones and Special Forces.

Limited as it is to removing “U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities,” one might even agree with Republican leadership that with the mutual decision that the U.S. stop refueling Saudi war planes, the resolution is moot, even as the war and famine continue. If the resolution were allowed to pass, there would be a 30-day window between the date when the bill might be signed into law and when it would take effect, in which time millions of Yemenis might succumb to famine.

House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 138, introduced in the House, “Directs the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in Yemen, except for Armed Forces engaged in operations authorized under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, within 30 days unless and until a declaration of war or specific authorization for such use has been enacted into law.” Senate Joint Resolution 54 is even more explicit and generous in its exception allowing U.S. aggression to continue in Yemen: “This joint resolution directs the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting Yemen, except those engaged in operations directed at Al Qaeda, within 30 days unless: (1) the President requests and Congress authorizes a later date, or (2) a declaration of war or specific authorization for the use of the Armed Forces has been enacted.”

An AP report produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis, “The hidden toll of American drones in Yemen: Civilian deaths,” was released on November 14. “The AP account gives a glimpse, even if incomplete, into how often civilians are mistakenly hit by drone strikes, at a time when the Trump administration has dramatically ramped up the use of armed drones. It has carried out 176 strikes during its nearly two years in office, compared to the 154 strikes during the entire eight years of the Obama administration, according to a count by the AP and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The AP based its count on interviews with witnesses, families, tribal leaders and activists. Most of those killed, 24, were civilians; at least 6 others were fighters in pro-government forces — meaning ostensibly on the same side as the U.S. — who were hit in strikes away from the front lines while engaged in civilian life.”

Exceptions for “those engaged in operations directed at Al Qaeda,” or in the House version, “Armed Forces engaged in operations authorized under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force,” ensure that U.S. drones strikes in Yemen will continue. The resolution before Congress will also permit U.S. Special Forces attacks on Yemen to continue unchecked, such as the raid on Yakla in January, 2017, in the first days of the Trump administration that killed 25 civilians, including nine children under the age of 13 and one U.S. Navy Seal.

In the current political reality, there is no room in Congress to resist U.S. participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen without at the same time endorsing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, a blank check that has allowed for the destruction of whole nations and a manifold increase in the threat of terrorism. The Authorization was a disgraceful obfuscation by Congress when it was passed in 2001 and it has no place in a plea for peace in Yemen in 2018. So long as the 2001 Authorization provides an exception and the profitability of arms trafficking in the region goes unchallenged, there is no congressional resolution for peace in Yemen.

The leaflet prepared by Voices for Creative Nonviolence and distributed at the United Nations, the U.S. Mission to the U.N. and the Saudi Consulate in New York on November 6, 7 and 8, reads: “We call on all parties in this conflict to immediately and permanently end all military and economic assault on Yemen. We urgently demand that the U.S permanently withdraw from warfare half a world away in Yemen, starting now. The U.S. request for a ceasefire to begin in 30 days, in which time many thousands will die, has been met by the Saudis with a surge of violence directed at (the port of) Hodeidah.”

It is especially shameful that a resolution as weak as H.Con.Res.138 is having trouble even being brought to the floor for discussion. Getting this resolution passed may be a step along the way, but it cannot be the goal. Support for this legislation needs to be accompanied by a somber recognition of its limitations and with the uncompromising and urgent demand that the U.S. end the war in Yemen now.

*Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Saudi sports diplomacy is proving to be a mirror image of the kingdom’s challenged domestic, regional and foreign policies.

Overlorded by sports czar Turki al-Sheikh, Saudi sports diplomacy, like the kingdom’s broader policies, has produced at best mixed results, suggesting that financial muscle coupled with varying degrees of coercion does not guarantee success.

Mr. Al-Sheikh, a 37-year old brash and often blunt former honorary president of Saudi soccer club Al Taawoun based in Buraidah, a stronghold of religious ultra-conservatism, and a former bodyguard of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, is together with Saud al-Qahtani among the king-in-waiting’s closest associates.

Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the kingdom’s wealthiest investors, acknowledged Mr. Al-Sheikh’s ranking in the Saudi hierarchy when he made a donation of more than a half-million dollars to Saudi soccer club Al Hilal FC weeks after having been released from detention.

Prince al-Waleed was one of the more recalcitrant detainees among the scores of members of the ruling family, prominent businessmen and senior officials who were detained a year ago in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton Hotel as part of Prince Mohammed’s power and asset grab.

Prince Al-Waleed said on Twitter at the time that he was “responding to the invitation of my brother Turki al-Sheikh.”

Mr. Al-Qahtani, who was recently fired as Prince Mohammed’s menacing information czar in connection with the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was banned this week from travelling outside the kingdom. Mr. Al-Sheikh has not been linked to the Khashoggi murder.

Nevertheless, his sports diplomacy, exhibiting some of the brashness that has characterized Prince Mohammed as well as Mr Al-Qahtani’s approach, has largely failed to achieve its goals. If anything, it appears to have contributed to the kingdom’s growing list of setbacks.

Those goals included establishing Saudi Arabia as a powerhouse in regional and global soccer governance; countering Qatari sports diplomacy crowned by its hosting of the 2022 World Cup; projecting the kingdom in a more favourable light by hosting international sporting events; becoming a powerhouse in soccer-crazy Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation; and using the competition for the 2026 World Cup hosting rights to bully Morocco into supporting the Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led boycott of Qatar.

To be sure, with the exception of a cancelled tennis exhibition match in Jeddah between stars Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic, most scheduled sporting events, including this season’s opening Formula E race in December and the Italian Supercoppa between Juventus and AC Milan in January, are going ahead as planned despite a six-week old crisis sparked by the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.

Yet, if last month’s friendly soccer match in Jeddah between Brazil and Argentina and this month’s World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) Crown Jewel showpiece are anything to go by, major sporting events are doing little to polish the kingdom’s image tarnished not only by the Khashoggi killing but also the war in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two. The sports events have so far failed to push Mr. Khashoggi and Yemen out of the headlines of major independent media.

Mainstream media coverage of Saudi sports has, moreover, focussed primarily on Saudi sports diplomacy’s struggle to make its mark internationally. One focus been the fact that Gianni Infantino, president of world soccer body FIFA, has run into opposition from the group’s European affiliate, UEFA, to his plan to endorse a US$25 billion plan for a new club tournament funded by the Saudi and UAE-backed Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.

If adopted, the plan would enhance Saudi and Emirati influence in global soccer governance to the potential detriment of Qatar, the host of the 2022 World Cup. Saudi Arabia and the UAE spearhead a 17-month old economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar designed to force it to surrender its right to chart an independent course rather than align its policies with those of its Gulf brothers.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought to engineer a situation in which Qatar is either deprived of its hosting rights or forced to share them with other states in the region, a possibility Mr. Infantino has said he was exploring.

Mr. Infantino has also said he was looking into implementing an expansion of the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams already in 2022 rather than only in 2026. An expansion of the Qatari World Cup would probably involve including others in the Gulf as hosts of the tournament. Qatari officials have all but ruled out sharing their hosting rights.

Another media focus has been alleged Saudi piracy aimed at undermining Qatar-owned BeIN Corp, the world’s biggest sports rights holder, including the rights to broadcast last summer’s Russia World Cup in the Arab world.

Mr. Al-Qahtani reportedly played a key role in the sudden emergence of BeoutQ, a bootleg operation beamed from Riyadh-based Arabsat that ripped live events from BeIN’s feed and broadcast the games without paying for rights. The Saudi government has denied any relationship to the pirate network.

The piracy has sparked international lawsuits, including international arbitration in which BeIN is seeking US1 billion in damages from Saudi Arabia. The company has also filed a case with the World Trade Organization.

FIFA has said it has taken steps to prepare for legal action in Saudi Arabia and is working alongside other sports rights owners that have been affected to protect their interests.

Mr. Al-Sheikh’s effort to create with funds widely believed to have been provided by Prince Mohammed an international Saudi sports portfolio that would project the kingdom as a regional power broker collapsed with fans, players and club executives in Egypt furious at the Saudi officials buying influence and using it to benefit Saudi rather than Egyptian clubs.

“No one, no one at all — with all due respect to Turki or no Turki … will be allowed to interfere in the club’s affairs,” said Mahmoud el-Khatib, chairman of Egyptian club Al Ahli SC, one of the Middle East’s most popular clubs with an estimated 50 million fans. Mr. Al-Sheikh had unsuccessfully tried to use his recently acquired honorary chairmanship of Al Ahli to take control of the club.

Al Ahli’s rejection of his power grab persuaded Mr. Al-Sheikh to resign in May and instead bankroll Al Ahli rival Pyramid FC. He invested US$33 million to acquire three top Brazilian players and launch a sports channel dedicated to the team.

The club’s fans, like their Al Ahli counterparts, nonetheless, denounced Mr. Al-Sheikh and the kingdom and insulted the Saudi official’s mother in crass terms during a match in September. Mr. Al-Sheikh decided to abandon his Egyptian adventure after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ignored his request to intervene. “Strange attacks from everywhere, and a new story every day. Why the headache?” Mr Al-Sheikh said on Facebook.

Mr. Al-Sheikh’s attempt to form a regional powerbase by creating a breakaway group of South Asian and Middle Eastern soccer federations beyond the confines of FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) collapsed five months after the formation of the South-West Asian Football Federation (SWAFF) when seven South Asian nations pulled out with immediate effect.

The collapse of SWAFF and Mr. Al-Sheikh’s withdrawal from Egypt were preceded by his backing of the US-Canadian-Mexican bid for the 2026 World Cup against Morocco after he failed to bully the North Africans into supporting the boycott of Qatar.

Adopting a Saudi Arabia First approach, Mr. Al-Sheikh noted that the United States “is our biggest and strongest ally.” He recalled that when the World Cup was played in 1994 in nine American cities, the US “was one of our favourites. The fans were numerous, and the Saudi team achieved good results.”

That was Mr. Al-Sheikh’s position six months ago. Today, men like Prince Mohammed and Messrs. Al-Sheikh and Al-Qahtani are seething. US President Donald J. Trump is proving to be an unreliable ally. Not only is he pressuring the kingdom to come up with a credible explanation for Mr. Khashoggis’ killing, Mr. Trump is also seemingly backtracking on his promise to bring Iran to its knees by imposing crippling economic sanctions.

Saudi distrust is fuelled by the fact that Mr. Trump first asked the kingdom to raise oil production to compensate for lower crude exports from Iran and then without informing it made a 180-degree turn by offering buyers generous waivers that keep Iranian crude in the market instead of drive exports from Riyadh’s arch-rival down to zero.

Seemingly cut from the same cloth as Prince Mohammed, Mr. Al-Sheikh, drew his pro-American definition of Saudi Arabia First from the crown prince’s focus on the United States. Prince Mohammed, Mr. Al-Sheikh and other senior Saudi officials may be considering whether putting the kingdom’s eggs primarily in one basket remains the best strategy.

Whatever the case, Mr. Al-Sheikh’s sweep through regional and global sports has left Saudi leaders with little to leverage in the kingdom’s bid to pick up the pieces and improve its image tarnished first and foremost by Mr. Khashoggi’s killing but also by the trail the sports czar has left behind.

Soft power was always a term best suited for eunuchs. It relies on persuasion, counsel and an air of seduction. It does not imply actual force as such (often, that side of the bargain is hidden). At its core are the presumed virtues of the product being sold, the society being advertised to others who are supposedly in the business of being convinced. Joseph Nye came up with it in the groves of academe as the Cold War was coming to an end, and every policy maker supposedly worth his or her brief insists upon it. (Since 1990, Nye has done another shuffle, attempting to market another variant of power: from soft, power has become erroneously sentient – or “smart”.)

Nye himself already leaves room for the critics to point out how the concept is, essentially, part of an advertising executive’s armoury, the sort an Edward Bernays of foreign affairs might embrace. It co-opts; it suggests indirectness; it is “getting others to want what you want” by shaping “the preferences of others”; it employs popular culture and concepts of political stability. In a vulgar sense, it inspires envy and the need to emulate, stressing desire over substance.

The Australian Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs is currently chewing over soft power, having been tasked with reviewing it by Julie Bishop when she was foreign minister. Australian think tanks have been all praise for its mystical properties. All rely on fictional measurements and surveys such as The Soft Power 30 index, which sounds awfully like a heavily carbonated soft drink.

The Australian Foreign Policy White Paper from 2017 also does its bit: it reads like a designer product flogged to the appropriate customers. “Australia’s ability to persuade and influence others is underpinned by some enduring strengths. Among these are our democracy, multicultural society, strong economy, attractive lifestyle and world-class institutions.”

This less than modest appraisal should immediately trigger the little grey cells of any sceptic. Australia remains plagued by a policy towards refugees that would rank highly with most despotic states; it maintains, relative to other states, a low GDP-aid percentage and remains almost dangerously cosy to Washington. Then there is that issue of seasonal bloodletting of leaders that led the BBC to call the country the “coup capital of the democratic world.”

In truth, such concepts are frustratingly inchoate, the sort of piffle best kept in obscure management manuals and textbooks chocked with political sloganeering. “Isn’t soft power like Fight Club?” came a seemingly puzzled foreign policy official to Caitlin Byrne, writing for The Strategist of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “And the first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

Even Byrne concedes that soft power, in terms of language, is slippery and problematic. “Many equate ‘soft’ with ‘weak’ and ‘superficial’ or, worse still, ‘subversive’. These terms rarely sit easily with those in the business of advancing national interests.” Recipients of such power can also be resentful, co-opted by the venture. (No one genuinely wants to be considered a case for charity.)

But such commentary is convinced there is a story to tell and, in the case of Canberra’s apparatchiks, Australia affords them ample opportunities. “[T]he aim of soft power – to help shape an environment that is positively disposed to Australian foreign policy interests and values over the long term – is not to be dismissed if Australia is to navigate its way in a more contested region.”

Most recently, Australia’s tetchy Prime Minister Scott Morrison (daggy cap and all), has been busy pushing Australian credentials in the immediate region, throwing $2 billion at a new Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific. Another billion is also sought for Australia’s export financing agency.

What is striking in this endeavour is the language of ownership, part proprietary and part imperial. “This is our patch,” Morrison explained to those at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville on Thursday. “This is where we have special responsibilities. We always have, we always will. We have their back, and they have ours.” These are the vagaries of power. “Australia has an abiding interest in a Southwest Pacific that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically.” Diplomatic posts will be established in Palau, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Niue and the Cook Islands, all newly modelled sets of eyes.

In other instances, however, Australian policy makers want to do things on the cheap, showing a characteristic stinginess that praises Australian power and its institutional heft while trimming back services that might supply a “softer” edge. Australia’s broadcasting capacity, notably in the short-wave sense, has diminished. Soft-power, note the propagandists, has been muted.

In January 31, 2017, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ended shortwave broadcasts to the South Pacific, concluding a tradition that had lasted eight decades. “The choice is dumb,” suggested Graeme Dobbell, “because it misunderstands the central role radio still plays in the South Pacific.” This has left the problematic question open as to what other Australian suppliers – of the commercial variety – will do to replace the content of the national broadcaster.

Most of all, and most critically, proponents of soft power in Australia fear a crowding, and crowding out threat: that of China, which operates as the putative cuckoo keen on pushing out the chicks of others. This, aligned to the issue of creating more debt for the region, suggests potential exhaustion in the region.

Australia, ever sluggish and drugged by presumptions of allegiance from its Pacific neighbours (our backyard!), has previously ignored the increasingly important role Beijing is playing with the island states. A growing, even paranoid interest is now being shown towards the presence of Chinese aid and funded projects in the region. There are also measures, tied to US strategic interests, of frustrating the efforts of such Chinese giants as Huawei, from achieving a greater measure of influence.

Morrison’s cavalier volunteering of taxpayer funded projects to lure Pacific neighbours away from Beijing’s “few-strings attached” load and aid program is something that will be looked at with enthusiasm if for no other reason that double dipping will be on offer. From Papua New Guinea to Fiji, the options to milk the greed of powers have never been better, whatever nonsense soft power might entail. The problem of debt, however, will remain the lingering nuisance at the feast.

The Iranian Navy on Thursday received two new homegrown submarines.

In a ceremony at Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas, two Qadir-class submarines joined the Navy’s combat fleet.

The launch ceremony was attended by Navy Commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi and Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ Navy Rear Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri.

The Iranian Navy has also plans to unveil the Sahand destroyer and Fateh submarine in coming days.

Iran has so far launched different classes of domestically-built advanced submarines including Qadir, Qaem, Nahang, Tareq and Sina.

In a meeting with Navy commanders on Wednesday, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei praised as “great and fabulous” the advances that Iranian military forces, the Navy in particular, have made since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, saying the Navy’s success in bringing into service homegrown vessels such as the Sahand destroyer or Fateh and Qadir submarines heralds more progress day after day.

By Frank Kane

The summit of the G20 nations assembling in Buenos Aires comes at a crucial time in world affairs, as well as a critical juncture in the economy of its host nation, Argentina.

For Saudi Arabia too, the meeting comes at an important crossroads – an opportunity to move its economic transformation strategy onto another level in the face of challenges at home and abroad.
While public perception of the G20 is based on the power-play politics on display over the traditional 48 hours of summitry, behind the scenes the gathering is a forum for the resolution of economic and financial issues.

The two days of in-your-face events are preceded by more discreet meetings of business leaders and financial officials — the legendary “sherpas” — from the member countries and their invitees; their discussions are decidedly economic, rather than political; their implicit agenda is to maintain economic stability within the existing financial framework.

Maybe this is why, over the course of the 10-year history of the G20, it has attracted more criticism and opposition from the left wing, and physical opposition from violent extremists, than any other multinational gathering.

The G20 is unashamedly a club of capitalists, even when its most populous member and second biggest economy, China, is still nominally a communist economy. In its decade in the capitalist inner sanctum, China has proven just as orthodox a capitalist as any of the other members, including the standard bearer of free enterprise, the US.

In 2009 at the G20 in Pittsburgh, China joined with the US to bail out the world with an expansionist program after the global financial crisis had led it to the brink, declaring itself a committed member of the club.

How different the atmosphere is in Buenos Aires. The global economic system seems to be on the point of fracture again, but this time there seems little chance of a US-China double act coming to the rescue.

The Costa Salguero Center on the edge of the Rio de la Plata will be the venue for the first meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping since, earlier this year, the former fired the opening shots in the “trade war” going on between them by declaring his intention to impose $250 billion of tariffs on Chinese imports.

China retaliated with its own tariffs, and there is a danger that the confrontation — which some American officials describe as merely a “skirmish” — will descend into a full-scale battle next year, when the tariffs take effect.

That would have serious consequences for a global economy that is looking increasingly fragile amid concerns that the financial system, too, is laboring under a weight of increased debt and overinflated asset prices.

China recently held out an olive branch, with deputy president Wang Qishan declaring his readiness to enter serious negotiations to avoid a breakdown in the global trade system. The hope is that Trump will hold off formally applying the tariffs in January.

But in Buenos Aires, nobody is expecting too much from the dinner that the two presidents have arranged on Friday night.

By then, the first full day of the summit will have been completed, and President Mauricio Macri of Argentina will be hoping that it has gone off without the major incidents that have been threatened by home-grown and international agitators.

If there was a repeat of the serious football-related violence that broke out in Buenos Aires recently, it would take the shine off his attempts to claim that Argentina had turned a corner in its economic troubles, in the run-up to presidential elections next year.

Macri was elected three years ago in a burst of optimism that his reformist policies would put the Argentine economy on the road to stability after years of boom-and-bust cycles, interspersed corruption scandals, and domestic unrest.

For a while it seemed to be working, and winning the G20 was seen as a mark of approval by the international community for his presidency.

But recently the old Argentine malaise has come back with a vengeance. The peso has lost 50 percent of its value against the dollar this year, Argentine financial markets have been chaotic, and inflation has soared to more than 30 percent per annum. Some Argentinians complain they cannot afford steak.

Macri has stabilized the situation in recent weeks, with the IMF giving its blessing in a series of measures to stabilize the economy and the financial system.

But Argentine citizens are still having to live with an austerity program that threatens their standard of living, and it would not take much for ordinary citizens — the ones who have not taken Macri’s advice to have a long weekend away from Buenos Aires — to join protests that could easily descend into violent confrontation as the G20 leaders meet.

That would be an embarrassment for Macri in front of his fellow leaders, and would also distract from the rest of the very worthy G20 program.

While the media is salivating for a Trump-Xi confrontation on trade, more fireworks on climate change and street protest, the compilers of the G20 program have actually put together a formal agenda that reflects some of the other genuine concerns of the international community.

The theme of the Buenos Aires G20 — as it is the case increasingly with international forums from Davos to Singapore — is sustainability. The world has to live within it means, both in terms of energy, environment, society and finance.

The Argentine G20’s self-declared goals are to focus solutions on the future of work, infrastructure for development, viable food production and consumption, and the inclusion of more women in the global workforce, all against the backdrop of the rapid technological change turning most aspects of the economic process on its head.

That coincides with many of the goals of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which Saudi policymakers — led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — will be at pains to stress is still on track in Buenos Aires. The event gives the opportunity to reassert the project’s credentials on the international stage after a period of uncertainty in crucial global energy markets and changes in the international perception of the Kingdom.

Some aspects of the Vision 2030 program — like the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco originally slated for next year — have been modified in line with changing circumstances, and lower oil prices threaten to alter the fiscal mathematics for the Kingdom’s economic policymakers.

As the biggest economy in the Middle East, a leading oil producer and a long-standing member of the G20, Saudi Arabia will retain its role and its influence in Buenos Aires. The top-level delegation will be working hard behind the scenes, at the bilateral and “retreat” events at the summit center, to argue its case among its global peers.

It all promises to be an instructive lesson in the stagecraft, and statecraft, that goes into hosting a G20 summit, which, after a move to Japan next year, is planned to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2020, its first time in the Middle East.

Russia and the U.S. have agreed on details of a presidential meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

The meeting will take place on Dec.1 at 1430GMT and will last about two hours, a source in the Russian delegation told state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday.

About 20 minutes are reserved for in-person talks between the two presidents.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that the presidents would discuss bilateral issues, including how to break the deadlock in relations between the two countries and start looking for ways to normalize ties.

According to U.S. Security Adviser John Bolton, security, arms control and regional issues are on the agenda of the meeting.

Original source

By Mike Eckel

(RFE/RL) — The longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump admitted he lied to Congress about the timing and extent of his discussions with unnamed Russian officials about a proposed Trump-branded development in Moscow.

The guilty plea by Michael Cohen, entered in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan on November 29, was a dramatic development in the deepening legal problems Trump faces from various Russia-linked investigations ongoing in Washington and elsewhere.

The new charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller said that Cohen misled at least one congressional committee about the discussions he had with unnamed Russian and other officials about a building that Trump had long sought to build in Moscow.

Cohen had previously said that talks about the deal stopped in January 2016, but, according to Mueller’s court filing, those discussions in fact were ongoing as late as June 2016, as Trump was closing in on securing the Republican party’s nomination to be U.S. president.

Cohen admitted that he misled the Senate Intelligence Committee about that and other details in testimony he provided to the committee in August 2017.

‘Individual 1’

In his appearance in federal court, Cohen said: “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1.”

Mueller’s court filing describes “Individual 1” as the owner of a “Manhattan-based real estate company”– a description that matches Trump’s.

Trump, meanwhile, had denied he had any business dealings in Russia during the 2016 election campaign, and he reacted quickly to news of Cohen’s guilty plea on November 29.

“He is a weak person. And by being weak, unlike other people that you watch, he’s a weak person, and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So, he is lying about a project everybody knew about,” Trump said at the White House as he departed for the Group of 20 summit being held in Argentina on November 30-December 1.

Trump had been scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the summit, but in a post to Twitter just after departing the White House, Trump said the meeting had been canceled. He cited the uptick in tensions between Russia and Ukraine over a naval confrontation near the Black Sea.

The Trump Tower project in Moscow never got built, despite years of efforts by Trump to develop some sort of real estate venture in the Russian capital.

In the new charges, Mueller detailed Cohen’s direct communications with the Kremlin in early 2016. Cohen had previously said he e-mailed the office of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in January 2016, seeking to discuss “the Moscow Project,” but had received no reply.

In fact, according to the new charges, an assistant to Peskov e-mailed a reply to Cohen on January 20, 2016, and Cohen then spoke with the assistant for about 20 minutes. A day later, Cohen was contacted by “Individual 2” who asked to speak with Cohen, saying “It’s about [the President of Russia] they called today.”

While the new plea stemmed from charges brought by Mueller’s investigators, Cohen had earlier pleaded guilty in a separate prosecution that grew out of Mueller’s investigation, but was filed instead by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, will be in federal court on November 30, as part of new charges filed by Mueller that allegedly involve a shadowy Ukrainian man who U.S. intelligence believes has ties to Russian security agencies.

Manafort had been convicted by a U.S. jury of financial crimes related to his lobbying work for Ukrainian politicians, work that preceded his time as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016.

And on November 26, a former foreign policy aide to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, reported to prison to serve a two-week sentence for lying to the FBI about his conversation with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.

Also, this week, Trump submitted written answers to a series of questions made by Mueller’s investigators. The answers have not been released publicly.

‘We Swore Him Under Oath’

News of Cohen’s plea prompted scattered reaction among lawmakers in Congress.

Paul Ryan, who is resigning this year as the top Republican in the House of Representatives, said Cohen should be prosecuted.

“Well, he should be prosecuted to the extent of the law,” Ryan said at a forum hosted by The Washington Post. “That’s why we put him under oath. I mean so just back it up for a second, lying to Congress. That means he came and testified. That means we swore him under oath. That means we put him on the record. That means we did our job.”

That was echoed by Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“This is a reason people shouldn’t lie when they’re in front of a congressional investigation,” he said.

Mark Warner, Burr’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, called on Congress to pass legislation to protect Mueller from being fired by Trump. Earlier this week, the Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, declined to allow a vote on such legislation.

Adam Schiff, who will be the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee beginning in January, said the plea provided new impetus to restart the committee’s investigations.

The committee’s investigation was ended in April by its Republican majority, which issued a report that largely cleared Trump and his associates of any wrongdoing in connection with Russian influence operations.

The report was criticized by the committee’s Democrats, who will now be in the majority come January.

“All these developments make clear the counterintelligence imperative for the House Intelligence Committee in the new Congress to continue to probe the Trump Organization’s financial links to Russia,” Schiff said.

Academic Marc Lamont Hill lost his contract as a CNN contributor after a speech about Israel and Palestine that critics called anti-Semitic. His firing quickly turned into a battleground in the ongoing US political culture war

Hill teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and has been a frequent on-air contributor for CNN – until Thursday, when the network dropped his contract like a hot potato without further comment, following the outrage over a speech he gave.

Speaking at the UN on Wednesday, Hill accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and denying due process to Palestinians, calling for a “a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea,” meaning the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

That particular phrase is anti-Semitic, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) fired back. “Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel,” Sharon Nazarian, ADL’s senior VP for international affairs, told the Jewish Journal.

“Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” the network said on Thursday afternoon, without further explanation. Battle lines were quickly drawn over Hill’s termination, with CNN finding itself in the crossfire.

Hill’s defenders called his firing shameful and accused CNN of kowtowing to Israeli interests.

Those who agreed with the ADL said that CNN should have denounced Hill and his statements openly, and that a network that just aired a special on the rise of anti-Semitism was actively contributing to it.

Hill himself tried to explain on Twitter that he does not support anti-Semitism or killing Jews, but is “deeply critical of Israeli policy and practice” and supportive of Palestinian freedom and self-determination.

“My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza,” he said.

The Wizard of Oz, followed by Star Wars and Psycho, is identified as the most influential film of all time in a study published in the open access journal Applied Network Science.

Researchers at the University of Turin, Italy, calculated an influence score for 47,000 films listed in IMDb (the internet movie database). The score was based on how much each film had been referenced by subsequent films. The authors found that the top 20 most influential films were all produced before 1980 and mostly in the United States.

Dr. Livio Bioglio, the lead author, said: “We propose an alternative method to box office takings – which are affected by factors beyond the quality of the film such as advertising and distribution – and reviews – which are ultimately subjective – for analysing the success of a film. We have developed an algorithm that uses references between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate the career of directors, actors and actresses, by considering their participation in top-scoring movies.”

Applying the algorithm to directors, the five men credited for The Wizard of Oz are all in the top eight, with Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick ranked third, fifth and sixth respectively. When the authors used another approach to remove the bias of older movies – which, because they were produced earlier, can potentially influence a greater number of subsequent films – Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma occupied the top spots instead.

When applied to actors, the algorithm ranked Samuel L. Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise as the top three. The authors noticed a strong gender bias towards male actors; the only female in the top ten was Lois Maxwell, who played the recurring role of Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond franchise.

Dr. Bioglio said: “The scores of top-ranked actresses tend to be lower compared to their male colleagues. The only exceptions were musical movies, where results show moderate gender equality, and movies produced in Sweden, where actresses ranked better compared to actors.”

To calculate the influence score for the 47,000 films investigated in this study, the authors treated the films as nodes in a network and measured the number of connections each film has to other films and how influential the films connected to it are. Similar network science methods have already been widely applied to measuring the impact of work in other fields, such as scientific publications.

Dr. Bioglio said: “The idea of using network analysis for ranking films is not completely new, but to our knowledge this is the first study that uses these techniques to also rank personalities involved in film production.”

The authors suggest that their method could be used for research in the arts and by film historians. However, they caution that the results can only be applied to Western cinema as the data on IMDb are strongly biased towards films produced in Western countries.

From diagnosis of HIV to successful viral suppression: in a rapid communication published in Eurosurveillance, ECDC and co-authors from Public Health England and The National AIDS Trust summarise the progress towards HIV elimination in 52 countries in Europe and Central Asia. The main issues: diagnosing those who are unaware of their HIV infection and treating them.

The global targets set out by UNAIDS for 2020 are to diagnose 90% of all HIV-positive people, provide antiretroviral therapy for 90% of those diagnosed, and achieve viral suppression for 90% of those treated (known as 90-90-90 targets). In 2018, 52 of 55 countries completed the survey indicating the progress towards these targets in Europe and Central Asia.

Between “substantial progress” and “concerning”

Is Europe on track to end AIDS by 2020? Following analysis of the data provided by the 52 countries in 2018, the progress towards the 90-90-90 targets stands at 86%-91%-92% in the EU/EEA. This means that overall, countries in the EU/EEA are on track to reach the targets by 2020. Looking at the whole Region, however, a striking drop in the second stage of the continuum is apparent: across Europe and Central Asia, the figures show a significant gap in the amount of people who are diagnosed with HIV but not receiving treatment: 80%-64%-86%. The article provides results on the targets for each of the reporting countries.

The authors acknowledge “substantial progress” towards the 90-90-90 targets across Europe and Central Asia. However, among the estimated 2.1 million people living with HIV in Europe and Central Asia “only two out of five are estimated to be virally suppressed in 2018”. Furthermore, “the substantial drop-off between the percentages diagnosed and treated in the East sub-region is concerning since it enables preventable deaths, serious illness and onward transmission.”

The results give new insights into necessary steps in the regional or national HIV responses. As almost two-thirds of the 1.2 million people across the region with transmissible virus are diagnosed but only half of those are on treatment, “the biggest public health impact could be achieved through rapid and sustained scale up of treatment”, according to the authors. This is particularly true for countries in the east of the region where the outcome was 76%-46%-78%.

Policies that diversify and enhance the offer of HIV tests could help address the problem of late diagnosis across Europe, as outlined in the new ECDC guidance on HIV, hepatitis B and C testing. This would include testing for indicator conditions, during screenings for other sexually transmitted infections, in community-based settings, as self/home-testing and for partner notification.

The authors highlight that the 90-90-90 targets remain a “powerful tool to assess progress towards HIV elimination and drive standards in care” for people living with HIV. But these targets do not provide a comprehensive picture of the public health response to HIV. “Each ‘last 10 percent’ includes people especially marginalised from healthcare services.”

What are the 90-90-90 targets?

The so-called continuum of HIV care is a framework which allows countries to monitor the effectiveness of key areas in the response to the HIV epidemic along several stages, from diagnosis towards viral suppression. The overall aim is to that people living with HIV are diagnosed (early) and receive antiretroviral treatment (ART) which leads to viral suppression, i.e. the virus is no longer detectable in the blood. Such an undetectable viral load also means that HIV positive people on effective treatment do not transmit the virus.

Based on the findings of the ECDC Dublin Declaration report on the continuum in 2015, ECDC now monitors a four-stage continuum that is directly relevant in the European region. Stage 1 looks at the estimated number of all people living with HIV (PLHIV); stage 2 at the number of all PLHIV who have been diagnosed; stage 3 at the number on PLHIV who have been diagnosed and who are on ART; and stage 4 comprises the number of PLHIV on ART who are virally suppressed. In 2018, 34 of 55 countries provided data on all four continuum stages.

Research group from Russia and the United States analyzed samples of obsidian volcanic glass in Kabardino-Balkaria. It turned out that more than 70 thousand years ago, Neanderthals transferred this mineral to distances up to 250 kilometers and used it to manufacture tools. These findings help to understand how populations from different regions communicated in antiquity. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation and is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

When volcanoes erupted, the ejected lava hardens formed a mixture of various minerals, including obsidian. In the Stone Age, the ancient people used this material extensively to create tools. In fact, we use it even now: in surgery, for the manufacture of dark glass and jewelry. The elemental composition of obsidian is unique not only for each volcano, but also for each eruption. This makes it possible to determine precisely the specific archaeological site, where particular obsidian sample originated from.

According to earlier studies, in the Paleolithic in Central Europe and the Caucasus, obsidians were actively transferred from one settlement to another, and over time the distance of its transportation increased from 100 to more than 700 kilometers.

Scientists from the non-profit organization “Laboratory of Prehistory” analyzed the elemental composition of obsidian samples from various Neanderthals ites of the Central and North-Western Caucasus, which were found during several expeditions. The obsidian composition turned out to be almost identical for many tools, which indicates their common origin. New data also indicates that obsidian was transported over more than 250 kilometers from sources in the Central Caucasus to the North-West Caucasus during the Middle Paleolithic. At the same time, new studies show that the Central Caucasus populations cultural tradition differed from the Neanderthals of the North-West Caucasus. So archaeologists have yet to figure out how the interaction between these different Neanderthals groups was build in this period.

Scientists also found that in the Upper Paleolithic, people transported obsidians from the Elbrus region and the South Caucasus to the Mezmay cave, which is located in the North-West Caucasus. The length of migration was 250 and 450 kilometers respectively. The researchers suggest that in the Upper Paleolithic there was already a developed social network between groups of people from different regions.

“The study of cultural areas, the impact of innovations and mechanisms for the dissemination of new technologies is one of the most important tasks of modern research. Our work reliably shows the existence of connections of the population of different regions in antiquity. These results can be widely used in university lectures, as well as in modern textbooks for middle and high school. Also, the results of recent studies can be used in the design of expositions of museums and thematic exhibitions,” summarizes Ekaterina Doronicheva, one of the authors of the work, Ph.D., research associate of the “Laboratory of Prehistory”.

In August 2012, in the frigid wilderness of West Greenland, the Jakobshavn Glacier was flowing and breaking off into the sea at record speeds, three times faster than in previous years. An underwater calving event had caused the massive glacier to lose its footing. But the movement was not linear like a runaway train (as previous studies suggested), but dynamic: drastically speeding up, then slowing down after a few days.

Now, a new assessment by a multi-institutional, CIRES-led team has harnessed a novel, highly detailed dataset to identify the factors that caused the speedup and slowdown. As the glacier flowed faster, it became thinner and more unstable–and then, in a twist, a pileup of thick ice replenished the glacier’s terminus, slowing it down again. The work, published in the Journal of Glaciology, may help scientists better predict how tidewater glaciers contribute to sea level rise.

“As tidewater glaciers, like Jakobshavn Isbræ, thin they become increasingly sensitive to small variations in ice thickness,” said Ryan Cassotto, CIRES researcher and lead author of the new study, which was conducted while he was a doctoral student at the University of New Hampshire. “This is because water pressure at the base of the glacier counters pressure from the weight of ice above it, which impacts how fast the glacier flows.” For tidewater glaciers grounded deep below sea level, thicker, heavier ice travels slower, and thinner, lighter ice, faster. It’s similar, Cassotto said, to the way different sized cars hydroplane: large, heavy truck tend to be very stable and resist sliding while lightweight, compact cars readily slip.”

Autoplay video here of 2012 ice calving

Jakobshavn Isbræ, the subject of James Balog’s 2012 documentary “Chasing Ice,” produces some of the largest icebergs and fastest speeds in the Arctic. And since iceberg calving contributes significantly to sea level rise, it’s critical to understand the glacier dynamics and calving events that produce them, the researchers said.

“Over the last two decades, Jakobshavn Isbræ has discharged more ice than any other glacier in Greenland,” said Cassotto. “It alone contributes about three percent of the current rise in global sea level annually.”

The research team, which included coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Southeast, the University of New Hampshire, and The Ohio State University, harnessed new techniques to observe the glacier at a level of detail never seen before. They used instruments called ground-based radar interferometers to observe how the ice surface was deforming, measuring every three minutes. Calving events happen in a matter of minutes and so they often can’t be caught by satellite-based instruments that repeat measurements only every 11 days.

Cassotto and his team found the geometry of the fjord bed is critically important to understanding glacier speed, as others have proposed. The new work shows that even small changes at the ends of glaciers, those last several hundred feet moving out toward the ocean, can profoundly affect speed.