Many analysts are inclined to blame the presidentialist nature ofthe 1993 Russian Constitution for the rise of authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin; but Sergey Shelin argues that is a mistake and that Putin’s approach to rule “arose not because a quarter of a century ago this document was adopted.”

 The Rosbalt commentator says that the power vertical at the core of the Putin system has been built on the basis of more or less informal understandings rather than on the basis of constitutions or laws. Thus, whatever defects the constitution has – and it has many, he says –it didn’t provide the road map to today (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/12/12/1752413.html).

“The 1993 Constitution is the first Basic Law in Russian history, the initiators of which seriously intended to live and work within its framework. And for a good decade,” Shelin continues, “it could be called effective” in that regard.  Indeed, it put into legal form the results of “the small civil war” which had occurred two months before.

And it did so in a remarkable way. “The victors at that time did not seek to make their rule absolute,” and they made it clear by the document they drafted, approved and for a time lived under, “wanted to construct a society of a contemporary type.” The Constitution reflects both of these things.

The constitution combines both a clear definition of rights, so clear that proclaiming them now in the streets could invite arrest, and a clear definition of the powers of the president to control many things, something Putin certainly wants to emphasize. But there is no simple answer to whether the 1993 document ineluctably led to Putinism.

“In October 1993,” Shelin says, “the presidential power won a victory in a difficult struggle and one of these tasks… was to ensure that such a struggle would not begin again, but the authorities did not attempt to legalize its role as the only power in the country.”  Instead, it created a number of centers of power under the president.

But that is not the basic problem of the constitution. Its basic weaknesses concern federalism. “At some points, the subjects of the Federation are presented almost as autonomous states, but in others as territories entirely run from above.” The constitution did not resolve these disputes which had roiled the political scene in the early 1990s but simply put them on hold.

Despite its references to a single power system, Shelin says, “the Basic Law would not have interfered with the division of powers and the strengthening of rights if the country had wanted to move in that direction.” A quarter of a century ago, it looked like that might be a possibility. But that hasn’t happened. 

“Today,” Shelin concludes, the 1993Constitution is a monument to our 1990s, with all their unachieved hopes and missed opportunities.” It was not in and of itself a road map to where Russia is now.

Inspecting a damaged building after an earthquake or during a fire is exactly the kind of job that human rescuers would like drones to do for them. A flying robot could look for people trapped inside and guide the rescue team towards them. But the drone would often have to enter the building through a crack in a wall, a partially open window, or through bars – something the typical size of a drone does not allow.

To solve this problem, researchers from the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich and the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL created a new kind of drone. Both groups are part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Inspired by birds that fold their wings in mid-air to cross narrow passages, the new drone can squeeze itself to pass through gaps and then go back to its previous shape, all the while continuing to fly. And it can even hold and transport objects along the way.

Mobile arms can fold around the main frame

“Our solution is quite simple from a mechanical point of view, but it is very versatile and very autonomous, with onboard perception and control systems,” explains Davide Falanga, researcher at the University of Zurich and the paper’s first author. In comparison to other drones, this morphing drone can maneuver in tight spaces and guarantee a stable flight at all times. The Zurich and Lausanne teams worked in collaboration and designed a quadrotor with four propellers that rotate independently, mounted on mobile arms that can fold around the main frame thanks to servo-motors. The ace in the hole is a control system that adapts in real time to any new position of the arms, adjusting the thrust of the propellers as the center of gravity shifts.

“The morphing drone can adopt different configurations according to what is needed in the field,” adds Stefano Mintchev, co-author and researcher at EPFL. The standard configuration is X-shaped, with the four arms stretched out and the propellers at the widest possible distance from each other. When faced with a narrow passage, the drone can switch to a “H” shape, with all arms lined up along one axis or to a “O” shape, with all arms folded as close as possible to the body. A “T” shape can be used to bring the onboard camera mounted on the central frame as close as possible to objects that the drone needs to inspect.

First step to fully autonomous rescue searches

In the future, the researchers hope to further improve the drone structure so that it can fold in all three dimensions. Most importantly, they want to develop algorithms that will make the drone truly autonomous, allowing it to look for passages in a real disaster scenario and automatically choose the best way to pass through them. “The final goal is to give the drone a high-level instruction such as ‘enter that building, inspect every room and come back’ and let it figure out by itself how to do it,” says Falanga.

In Seattle, Washington, delaying the start time of two high schools by nearly an hour lengthened students’ daily sleep by more than half an hour, and was associated with reduced sleepiness and increased academic performance.

Notably, in the students at the school that was more economically disadvantaged, the delayed start time was also associated with an increase in punctuality and attendance.

These results offer quantitative evidence that delaying school start times is beneficial for students. In addition, given the distinct positive effects of this effort on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, implementing this change in school policy, the authors say, could contribute to a decrease in the learning gap between low and high socioeconomic groups.

Teenagers tend to stay up late at night; they usually do not get the recommended eight to ten hours of sleep. With many teenagers being chronically sleep-deprived, some experts and organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics have suggested delaying school start times, which would allow students to wake up later without shifting their natural bedtimes (the latter being biologically determined by the circadian clock).

However, quantitative data showing that delaying school start times would increase daily sleep and academic performance is lacking.

Taking advantage of a “natural” pre/post study setup, created after the Seattle School District delayed high school start time by 55 minutes (from 7:50 am to 8:45 am) in 2017, Gideon P. Dunster and colleagues measured sleep-wake cycles of sophomore students enrolled in two public high schools in Seattle for two weeks using wrist activity devices.

The delay had several measurable benefits for students – notably, the median sleep duration increased by 34 minutes in 2017 compared to 2016.

This increase in amount of sleep was associated with a 4.5% increase in the median grades of students at both schools. One high school – Roosevelt High School – showed no difference in improved attendance and punctuality between years, but students in the second school – Franklin High School, an economically disadvantaged school – had significantly fewer instances of late arrival and absenteeism after the delayed school start time was implemented.

The Indian Ocean played a far greater role in driving climate change during the last ice age than previously believed and may disrupt climate again in the future. That’s according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin, the findings of which could rewrite established Pacific-centric theories on tropical climate change.

“The processes we have uncovered are particularly important for predicting future impacts of climate change,” said Pedro DiNezio, a research associate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) who led the team conducting the study. “A big climate shift like this could have a huge impact on water availability over the heavily populated Indian Ocean rim.”

The study was published on in Science Advances. UTIG is a unit of the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences.

The scientists investigated changes in the climate of the tropics during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a period of the last ice age 21,000 years ago when ice sheets covered much of North America, Europe and Asia. Although scientists know the tropics changed radically during this time, they did not understand what was driving these climate changes until now.

Today, the Indian Ocean is characterized by uniformly warm and stable rainfall patterns. This is because the prevailing winds blow from west to east maintaining warmer waters over the eastern side of the region and bringing rainy conditions over countries like Thailand and Indonesia.

During the LGM, however, the tropics were struck by dramatic changes, including a reversal of prevailing winds and uncharacteristic changes in ocean temperatures.

“The geologic record tells us that Indonesia and the monsoon regions of the east Indian Ocean became drier and cooler while the west became wetter and remained warmer,” said co-author Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona.

To find what drove these changes, scientists used a climate model to simulate how various glacial conditions affected climate. They compared simulated outcomes with paleoclimate data (chemical signatures about our past climate stored in rocks and ocean sediments).

The climate model suggests that as ice sheets advanced over Canada and Scandinavia, sea-levels lowered by as much as 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) creating vast continental bridges stretching from Thailand to Australia. According to the model, these new land masses reversed the prevailing winds, blowing seawater to the west and allowing cold water to cycle up to the surface in the eastern Indian Ocean.

The findings are important because they reveal that the Indian Ocean is capable of driving radical changes in the climate of the tropics and that climate models are able to simulate this complex process.

“Now that we have reproduced glacial climate conditions for the Indo-Pacific region we are more confident that the same climate model can be used to predict our planet’s future,” said co-author Bette Otto-Bliesner, a climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

What’s more, the study also shows that the mechanisms driving the climate changes of the LGM may be unique to the Indian Ocean. This is especially important for predicting how rainfall in the tropics will change because current theories focus on the influence of the Pacific Ocean.

Although the study did not specifically investigate whether these climate mechanisms will emerge as the Earth warms, the authors believe the role of the Indian Ocean should not be forgotten in making predictions for our warming planet.

“As greenhouse gases rise, we might see a different kind of reorganization,” said Tierney. “If that happens, it could really change our predictions of what rainfall and climate extremes will be like in Indian Ocean rim countries.”

Thyalacoleo carnifex, the “marsupial lion” of Pleistocene Australia, was an adept hunter that got around with the help of a strong tail, according to a study released in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Roderick T. Wells of Flinders University and Aaron B. Camens of the South Australia Museum, Adelaide. These insights come after newly-discovered remains, including one nearly complete fossil specimen, allowed these researchers to reconstruct this animal’s entire skeleton for the first time.

A marsupial predator with an estimated weight of over 100kg, Thylacoleo was unlike any living animal, and paleontologists have long tried to interpret its lifestyle from incomplete remains. The new fossils, discovered in Komatsu Cave in Naracoorte and Flight Star Cave in the Nullarbor Plain, include the first known remains of the tail and collarbone of this animal. The authors used this new information to re-assess the biomechanics of Thylacoleo, and by comparing its anatomy to living marsupials, reach new conclusions about the biology and behavior of the “marsupial lion”.

The tail of Thylacoleo appears to have been stiff and heavily-muscled, probably allowing it to be used along with the hind limbs as a “tripod” to brace the body while freeing up the forelimbs for handling food or climbing, as many living marsupials do. The analysis suggests that Thylacoleo had a rigid lower back and powerful forelimbs anchored by strong collarbones, likely making it poorly suited for chasing prey, but well-adapted for ambush hunting and/or scavenging. These features also add to a list of evidence that Thylacoleo was an adept climber, perhaps of trees or steep-walled caverns. Among living marsupials, the anatomy of Thylacoleo appears most similar to the Tasmanian devil, a small carnivore that exhibits many of these inferred behaviors.

The authors add: “The extinct marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex has intrigued scientists since it was first described in 1859 from skull and jaw fragments collected at Lake Colongulac in Victoria Australia and sent to Sir Richard Owen at the British Museum. Although Australia’s largest marsupial carnivore it retains many features indicative of its diprotodont herbivore ancestry and its niche has been a matter of considerable debate for more than 150yrs. Recent cave finds have for the first time enabled a description and reconstruction of the complete skeleton including the hitherto unrecognised tail and clavicles. In this study, Wells and Camens compare the Thylacoleo skeleton with those of range of extant Australian arboreal and terrestrial marsupials in which behaviour and locomotion is well documented. They conclude that the nearest structural and functional analogue to Thylacoleo is to be found in the unrelated and much smaller Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, a scavenger /hunter. They draw attention to the prevalence of all age classes within individual cave deposits as suggestive of a high degree of sociality. Those ancestral features Thylacoleo shares with arboreal forms are equally well suited to climbing or grasping a prey. They conclude that Thylacoleo is a scavenger, ambush predator of large prey.”

With fierce winds and flooding rains, hurricanes can be disasters for people — and for ecosystems. These devastating storms have major effects on tropical forests, demolishing tree canopies and leaving behind debris that piles up in watershed streams and on forest floors.

Scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF) co-located Luquillo Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) and Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in Puerto Rico spent the past year evaluating the impacts of Hurricane Maria, a powerful category 5 storm that struck Puerto Rico head-on in September 2017.

The researchers reported their results today at a press conference — Puerto Rico one year later: Hurricane Maria’s lasting footprint — at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in Washington, D.C.

Increased nitrate flowing downstream

After Maria, sensors measuring nitrate in streams at the NSF Luquillo CZO site showed a dramatic increase in how much of the nutrient was transported from mountain headwaters to the sea, according to biogeochemist William McDowell of the University of New Hampshire.

Nitrate is essential for plant growth. In large quantities, however, it can be harmful to coastal ecosystems. After major hurricanes like Maria and the tremendous changes they produce in vegetation, nitrate escapes from damaged forests and is flushed downstream, says McDowell.

“The implication of the loss of nitrogen from an ecosystem is uncertain,” says McDowell, “but is likely to play a role in which trees grow back first.” The downstream delivery of nitrate to coastal waters may also fuel algae blooms and, eventually, coastal dead zones.

Dead and broken trees

Based on data collected at the NSF Luquillo LTER site, Hurricane Maria killed twice as many trees as previous storms and tripled the number of broken trees, found ecologist Maria Uriarte of Columbia University. Palm trees were the exception; their sinewy stems bent in the wind and their fronds began to grow back almost immediately after the storm.

Future storms of Maria’s strength could switch the dominant trees in Puerto Rico’s forests from tall hardwoods to palms, Uriarte says, with consequences for whether forests take up more carbon or release carbon into the atmosphere.

Research offers new insights

McDowell and Uriarte will present their scientific findings on Friday, Dec. 14, in a conference session on “Tropical Forests in a Changing Environment.”

Their studies at Luquillo address long-term climate patterns, disturbances such as hurricanes and landslides, and the legacies of land use history in forest and stream ecosystems. By understanding how nutrient cycles — and plant and animal populations — respond to natural and human disturbances, scientists can supply the information needed to model, manage and conserve tropical forest ecosystems.

Research at the NSF Luquillo CZO site focuses on physical and chemical processes in a mountain watershed. Scientists conducting research at the Luquillo CZO study such subjects as mineral weathering, nutrient transport, and changing water, dust and sediment inputs to the ecosystem.

NSF Luquillo LTER research includes long-term observations of species and ecosystems; the connections between forest and stream ecology; and the ways mountains and precipitation interact. Experiments simulate the effects of hurricane intensity on forest and stream ecology.

A new Cornell University-led study shows that Midwest agriculture is increasingly vulnerable to climate change because of the region’s reliance on growing rain-fed crops.

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, assistant professor of applied economics and management, set out to assess the impact extreme weather is having on agricultural productivity in the United States. While previous studies have looked at the vulnerability of individual field crops, which make up one-third of the country’s agricultural output, researchers haven’t addressed the whole scope of agricultural production, including livestock, at the national level.

“We’re trying to get a big picture idea of what is going on,” said Ortiz-Bobea. “The data captures every state’s agriculture over the past 50 years. If you see in the aggregate data that something big is happening, this really captures massive processes that are affecting many people at the same time.”

The resulting paper, “Growing Climatic Sensitivity of U.S. Agriculture Linked to Technological Change and Regional Specialization” published in Science Advances, pinpoints the specific regions in the U.S. that are growing more sensitive to extreme climate shocks. The area of greatest concern is the Midwest, where rain-fed field crops like corn and soybeans have become increasingly vulnerable to warmer summers.

To get this panoramic snapshot, Ortiz-Bobea and his team used state-level measures of agricultural productivity that capture how inputs – such as seeds, feed, fertilizer, equipment and herbicides – are converted into economic outputs. The researchers mapped that information against nearly 50 years’ worth of climate data from 1960 through 2004, essentially seeing what would happen if weather was treated as an additional input.

The results show a clear escalation in climate sensitivity in the Midwest between two distinct time periods. In the 1960s and ’70s, a 2-degree Celsius rise in temperature during the summer resulted in an 11 percent drop in productivity. After the 1983, however, the same rise in temperature caused productivity to drop 29 percent.

While these damaging summer conditions usually only occur six percent of the time, the researchers indicate that an additional 1-degree Celsius warming would more than quadruple their frequency to roughly one of every four years.

“Losing almost half your profit every four years? That’s a big loss,” said Ortiz-Bobea, a fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

One of the reasons the Midwest is growing more vulnerable to drastic climate variations is because its agriculture industry is increasingly specialized in crop production, like nonirrigated cereal and oilseed crops.

“Specialization in crop production is a compounding factor,” said Ortiz-Bobea, who collaborated on the paper with Erwin Knippenberg, a Cornell doctoral student in applied economics and management, and Robert G. Chambers of the University of Maryland.

“Most of the agriculture in the Midwest is corn and soybeans. And that’s even more true today than it was 40 years ago,” Ortiz-Bobea said. “That has implications for the resilience to climate of that region, because they’re basically putting all their eggs in one basket, and that basket is getting more sensitive.”

As more and more parents travel overseas to find a surrogate, a new study published in Human Fertility is the first to compare the experiences of those who carry out surrogacy in the UK with those who go abroad. The research highlights important problems faced by parents, which could influence UK surrogacy law.

A new study is the first to compare the experiences of people who have carried out surrogacy in the UK with those who go overseas, for example, to countries such as USA, India and Georgia. The research, led by Dr Vasanti Jadva at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, in collaboration with NGA Law and Brilliant Beginnings, surveyed over 200 people who had either already had a child through a surrogate, were in the process, or were planning a surrogacy arrangement.

Almost half (42%) of parents who chose to find a surrogate in the UK did so to foster a closer relationship with the surrogate, while almost all (97%) of those opting to go to the US did so to access a better legal framework, which includes being recognised as the legal parents of the child from birth. In addition, although the laws surrounding surrogacy vary by state in the US, many states allow commercial surrogacy and it is generally easier to find a surrogate than it is in the UK.

Although the US offers a more secure legal framework, it comes with a hefty price tag, and the study found that going to the US simply wasn’t affordable for many parents who considered it.

Those who found a surrogate in other, more affordable countries – such as India, Thailand or Ukraine – experienced greater delays and difficulties in obtaining the necessary legal documents on their return to the UK. One couple returning from India reported a delay of 6 months in getting a passport for their child.

The UK has a notoriously challenging legal landscape for those seeking surrogacy arrangements. Profit-making surrogacy agencies are illegal in the UK and surrogacy arrangements are not legally enforceable, which means the surrogate remains the legal mother of the child until a Parental Order is made, often many months after the birth.

Estimates suggest that the number of children being born through surrogacy in the UK has tripled in the past few years. But until now, very little has been known about why people go to these countries or their experiences of the process.

The findings of this new study highlight the stress and anxiety that parents can face when travelling abroad for surrogacy, particularly in trying to obtain legal parenthood when back in the UK, but also caused by the lack of legal security in the UK.

“UK surrogacy law is outdated and struggling to cope with the strain of modern surrogacy experience both in the UK and globally,” said co-author Natalie Gamble.

The Law Commission (the independent body responsible for reviewing the law in England and Wales) has started a project to substantively review surrogacy law. As lead author and Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, Dr Vasanti Jadva, added: “We hope our findings will feed into the Law Commission’s review of surrogacy law as they highlight how people’s experiences can differ depending on the country in which they conduct their surrogacy arrangement. “

As reform of UK surrogacy law is considered, the authors recommend that future iterations are clearer, more secure, and designed to reduce delays in recognizing parents as the legal guardians of the child.

A new study published in the journal Sexual Medicine indicates that sexual activity is associated with improved wellbeing amongst older adults, measured through higher enjoyment of life scores.

Led by Dr Lee Smith from Anglia Ruskin University and Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL, the study involved analysing survey data from 6,879 older adults, with an average age of 65, living in England.

It found that older men and women who reported any type of sexual activity in the previous 12 months had a higher life enjoyment score than those who were not sexually active.

For older women, a greater frequency of kissing, petting, and fondling was associated with a higher enjoyment of life, as was feeling emotionally close to their partner during sex. However, there was not a significant association with sexual intercourse and enjoyment of life amongst older women.

Amongst older men, however, satisfaction with their sex life and frequency of sexual intercourse was associated with greater enjoyment of life. The results from the study indicate that sexual intercourse may be more important for older men than women in terms of promoting wellbeing, with women’s enjoyment more closely linked to other sexual activities.

Dr Smith, Reader in Exercise Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University, said: “Previous research has suggested that frequent sexual intercourse is associated with a range of benefits for psychological and physiological wellbeing, such as improved quality of life and mental health, and lower risk of certain cancers and fatal coronary events.

“Health professionals should acknowledge that older adults are not asexual and that a frequent and problem-free sex life in this population is related to better wellbeing. However, encouragement to try new positions and explore different types of sexual activities is not regularly given to ageing populations.

“The findings of our study suggest that it may be beneficial for physicians to query geriatric patients about their sexual activity and offer help for sexual difficulties, such as problems with erections, as sexual activity helps older people live more fulfilling lives.”

Dr Jackson, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, added: “Promoting wellbeing in later life is a public health priority. We know that psychological wellbeing is intricately linked with physical health, and as the population continues to age, the burden on health services increases. If encouraging and supporting people to continue to enjoy a healthy sex life in old age could help to boost wellbeing, there may be benefits both for the individual and for the sustainability of health services.”

By Ed Condon

Cardinal George Pell has been convicted by an Australian court on charges of sexual abuse of minors, according to media reports and CNA sources close to the cardinal.

A judicial gag order has restricted Australian media coverage of the trial since June.

Despite the gag order, a story published Dec. 11 on the Daily Beast website first reported that a unanimous verdict of guilty had been returned by a jury on charges that Pell sexually abused two altar servers in the late 1990s, while he was Archbishop of Melbourne.

The verdict reportedly followed three days of deliberations by the jury – the second to hear the case. An earlier hearing of the case is reported to have ended in early autumn with a mistrial, after jurors were unable to reach a verdict.

In October, two sources close to Cardinal Pell, members of neither his legal team nor the Catholic hierarchy in Australia, told CNA that the first hearing of the case had ended in a mistrial due to a jury stalemate. One source said that jury was deadlocked 10-2 in favor of Pell.

In remarks to CNA Dec. 12, the same sources independently confirmed this week’s report that a guilty verdict had been reached.

The conviction has not yet been confirmed by the Australian judiciary, and the gag order on Australian media could remain in place for several months.

Pell will reportedly be sentenced in early 2019. He will not be incarcerated prior to his sentencing.

Citing deference to the gag order, the Vatican has declined to comment on reports of the guilty verdict.

“The Holy See has the utmost respect for the Australian courts. We are aware there is a suppression order in place and we respect that order,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told reporters Dec 12.

Pell has been accused of multiple instances of sexual abuse of minors. In May, lawyers for the cardinal petitioned the County Court of Victoria to split the allegations into two trials, one dealing with the accusations from Melbourne, and another dealing with accusations related to his time as a priest in Ballarat in the 1970s.

As the trial for the Melbourne allegations began in June, the judge imposed a sweeping injunction preventing media from reporting on the progress of the case. The gag order reportedly remains in force, over concerns that the verdict could influence the outcome of the second trial, which is expected to be heard early in 2019.

Pell has been on leave from his position as prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy since 2017. Pell asked Pope Francis to allow him to step back from his duties to travel home to Australia to defend himself against the charges, which he has consistently denied.

Prior to his appointment to the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, Pell served as the Archbishop of Sydney.

In October, Pope Francis removed Pell, along with Cardinal Javier Errazuriz and Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, from the C9 Council of Cardinals charged with helping the pope draft a new constitution for the Holy See’s governing structure.

In April 2018, Robert Richter, the lead attorney on Pell’s legal team, refuted the allegations made against Pell.

“The allegations are a product of fantasy, the product of some mental problems that the complainant may or may not have, or just pure invention in order to punish the representative of the Catholic Church in this country,” Richter said.

Richter further said that the accusations were “not to be believed,” and were “improbable, if not impossible.”

Until the imposition of the gag order in June, Pell had been the subject of sustained media attention in Australia, prompting the order. The extent of hostile attention directed at Pell by several Australian outlets, even prior to the accusations being made, led to a public debate in some sections of the Australian media about whether it would be possible to find an impartial jury for the cardinal.

Although the gag order was issued, one source called the integrity of the proceeding into question. In remarks to CNA, he called the trial a “farce” and a “witch hunt.” He said that Australian prosecutors were determined to secure a conviction, despite the earlier mistrial.

“They kept going until they got the jury who’d give them what they want,” the source told CNA.

Last week, another Australian court overturned the recent conviction of the former Archbishop of Melbourne, Philip Wilson, on charges he failed to report complaints of sexual abuse.

Newcastle District Court Judge Roy Ellis said Dec. 6 that the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Archbishop Wilson did not report abuse committed by Fr. James Fletcher, when Fletcher was charged in 2004 with child abuse which occurred between 1989 and 1991.

The judge also noted the possibility of undue media influence on the case.

“This is not a criticism of media, but intended or not, the mere presence of large amounts of media from all around Australia and the world carries with it a certain amount of pressure on the court,” Ellis stated.

The heavy media presence “may amount to perceived pressure for a court to reach a conclusion which seems to be consistent with the direction of public opinion, rather than being consistent with the rule of law that requires a court to hand down individual justice in its decision-making processes.”

“The potential for media pressure to impact judicial independence may be subtle or indeed subversive in the sense that it is the elephant in the room that no one sees or acknowledges or wants to see or acknowledge,” Ellis said.

He added that  Wilson could not be convicted merely because the “Catholic Church has a lot to answer for in terms of its historical self-protective approach” to clerical sex abuse. “Philip Wilson when he appears before this court is simply an individual who has the same legal rights as every other person in our community.”

“It is not for me to punish the Catholic Church for its institutional moral deficits, or to punish Philip Wilson for the sins of the now deceased James Fletcher by finding Philip Wilson guilty, simply on the basis that he is a Catholic priest.”

If the decision is confirmed, Pell can appeal to the Supreme Court in Victoria, and from there to the Australian High Court.

Restrictions on freedom of expression should be lifted in Thailand to allow credible national elections to be held early next year, says a leading rights group.

On Dec. 11, the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) lifted its prohibition on public gatherings and political activities, allowing political parties to conduct election campaigns for parliament, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement.

However, the junta kept in place military orders restricting expression and authorizing detention and prosecution for speech critical of the junta, its policies and actions, and the monarchy, said HRW.

All criminal cases in military and civilian courts related to opposition to military rule will proceed. The national elections are scheduled to be held on Feb. 24, 2019.

“Thailand can’t hold credible elections when political parties, the media, and voters are gagged by threats of arrest and criminal prosecution,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director. “With polling day just two months away, the Thai junta should immediately lift all legal orders that restrict the right to freedom of expression.”

Since the May 2014 military coup, Thailand’s junta has broadly and arbitrarily interpreted peaceful criticism and dissenting opinions to constitute disinformation, seditious acts, and threats to national security.

For more than four years, the junta has routinely enforced media censorship and blocked public discussions about human rights and democracy.

On Dec. 1, Thai authorities blocked access to the Human Rights Watch Thailand webpage, alleging that the contents were inappropriate and constituted a “national security threat.”

For more than four years under military rule, Thai authorities have prosecuted hundreds of activists and dissidents on serious criminal charges such as sedition, computer-related crimes, and lese majeste (insulting the monarchy) for peaceful expression of their views.

Since the beginning of 2018, more than 100 pro-democracy activists have been prosecuted for peacefully demanding the junta to hold the promised elections without further delay and to lift all restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

In August, the leader of the Future Forward Party, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, was charged with violating the Computer-Related Crime Act, which could result in a five-year prison term, for online commentary criticizing the junta.

Watana Muangsook, former Social Development and Human Security Minister, and other key members of the Pheu Thai Party have also been repeatedly charged with sedition and computer-related crimes for making comments, including on social media, opposing military rule.

Local human rights and political activists expressed concern to HRW that independent monitoring of elections will not be possible under current conditions. Thai authorities frequently retaliate with criminal charges, including for criminal defamation and Computer-Related Crime Act violations, against anyone who reports allegations of state-sponsored abuses and official misconduct.

The junta forcibly blocked efforts to monitor the constitutional referendum in 2016 and prosecuted many people involved in such activities.

Thailand’s upcoming elections will be held while Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha still maintains unchecked and unaccountable powers, including for human rights violations, that will remain in place until a new government is formed.

The junta-appointed Senate and other elements of the 2017 constitution will ensure prolonged military control even after elections are held.

By Jaishree Balasubramanian

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party lost power through polls in three key agrarian states, according to official results out Wednesday, dealing his government its worst defeat since 2014 and boosting the opposition’s political fortunes ahead of next year’s general election.

Mounting loans owed by farmers, low prices for farm produce, lingering anger over the BJP government’s decision to ban high-denomination currency notes in 2016, and a lack of new jobs were among issues that led to the ruling party’s unseating in state assembly polls in the three northern states, political observers said.

The trio of Hindi-speaking states – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan – have often been referred to as bellwether states for parliamentary elections, which are next expected in April or May. During state assembly elections in 2013, a majority of voters in all three states picked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in a precursor to the party’s massive victory in the 2014 general election that brought Modi to power.

“The BJP faced anti-incumbency and dissatisfaction of the voters on falling farm prices, lack of adequate employment opportunities and a general drift in policies in the rural areas,” analyst Anil Wadhwa told BenarNews.

“State election results may not affect the general elections in 2019, where the voter will look for political stability and strong leadership,” cautioned Wadhwa, who is a distinguished fellow at the Vivekananda International Center, an Indian think tank. “On that score, the BJP May perform better.”

According to results announced by the country’s Election Commission on Wednesday, the opposition Congress party took over control of the state assemblies from the BJP in all three states.

Congress was declared the winner in the Chattisgarh polls, but fell short of a state assembly majority in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. However, regional parties, which had previously opposed Congress, offered the party support, allowing India’s main opposition party to obtain majorities in those two states’ assemblies.

Assembly elections were also held in the southern state of Telengana and northeastern state of Mizoram. In both these states, regional parties won the polls.

A BJP lawmaker, Sanjay Kakade, said the party had focused its election campaign on partisan themes like building a Hindu temple at a disputed site in Ayodhya city claimed by both Muslims and Hindus.

“We forgot the issue of development that prime minister Modi took up in 2014,” newspapers quoted him as saying.

Online newspaper Scroll noted that the “BJP cannot afford to ignore the acute agrarian distress that afflicts state after state, prompting thousands of farmers to march on the capital, demanding redress.”

“Across Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh farmers spoke of low minimum support prices, rising input costs and losses that have built year on year,” the report said.

Prime minister Modi tweeted on Tuesday that “we accept the people’s mandate with humility” as he congratulated the Congress Party.

BJP’s setback in regional polls could boost the political career of Rahul Gandhi, the 48-year-old president of the Congress Party whose great grandfather, grandmother and father were all prime ministers.

He took over as party chief from his mother, Sonia Gandhi, last year.

On Tuesday evening, on the eve of the official announcement of poll results and as his party was out ahead, Rahul Gandhi told reporters that “frankly, Narendra Modi taught me the lesson what not to do.”

One of India’s biggest newspapers, the Indian Express, said that mere “asset creation” by the ruling BJP through the building of roads, houses, and toilets, or providing liquefied petroleum gas, electricity and broadband connectivity was not enough for rural voters.

“Incomes not rising, due to low crop prices and stagnating wages, has more than offset any asset gains in the recent period, which also probably explains the party’s heavy losses in the three states it ruled,” the newspaper said.

Why The Sage’s Ideals Matter To Xi Jinping.

By Kalpit Mankika*

Asia seems to be on a journey of discovering its traditions. India is connecting with its culture. In 2015, United Nations General Assembly declared 21 June as ‘International Yoga Day’, giving a major boost to the ancient Indian practice. In a span of nearly two years, yoga seemed to be a rage across the world with thousands descending on Times Square in 2017 to mark the day. A small company, which was founded by a monk who had no experience in the FMCG sector, gave well-established MNCs a run for their money. Its USP was ayurved, a 5,000-year-old natural healing solution.

In Asia, where memorials and statues decide the stature of a person long after he/she has left this world, the world’s largest Confucius statue was inaugurated in his hometown Qufu, Shandong province, two months ago. The thoughts of the Chinese sage had a huge impact on the administration through the ages. His teachings have resonated during various phases in China’s history in the curriculum of its imperial service examinations, which allowed for advancement in governance hierarchy for the nation’s youth. The scholar believed that acting ethically in situations relating both to the family and state would create social harmony, and that it was the job of rulers to emulate and spread ethical behaviour, just as it was children’s duty to venerate their parents and continue their traditions, codifying the filial piety that continues to define familial relations across Asia. His teachings are preserved in Analects, a book that takes the form of structured conversations between Confucius and his followers.

However, Confucian thought went out of favour with the fall of the Imperial Court in early 19th century. The May Fourth Movement, an anti-imperialist and cultural agitation of students in 1919 that laid the seeds of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) birth, aimed at eradicating the ills of traditional Chinese society. The agitators slammed Confucian thought, calling for an end to patriarchy.

The modern nation’s founder, Mao Zedong, denounced Confucius for “subjugation of women”. He accused the sage of propagating an orthodox ideology that curbed women from receiving an education and encouraging the brutal practice of foot binding, in which a girl’s feet are wrapped to stunt her growth.

In the 60s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards waged a battle against the Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas (known as the ‘Four Olds’). The Cemetery of Confucius in Shandong was attacked and vandalised by a team of Red Guards from Beijing in November 1966.

Project rehabilitation

In 2004, Confucius Institute, an outreach project of the Chinese government to promote its language and culture, was born.

Experts say, the project is the “biggest soft power and public diplomacy programme” in the world and over the years there are more than 1,000 Confucius institutes across the globe.

A year later, Xi visited the Research Institute of Confucianism in the city of Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, and Kong Family Mansion, the historical residence of the direct descendants of Confucius. He called for new and positive roles for Confucianism.

The Economist reported that in February 2014 he convened a “collective study” session of the party’s elite and emphasised Confucian values. Months later, Xi became the first party chief to attend a birthday party for Confucius. Incidentally, since becoming China’s leader, Xi has not paid respects at the birthplace of Mao Zedong at Shaoshan in Hunan province.

His ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ refers to the preaching of stalwarts like Mao and Marx, but draws on ancient Confucianism. Xi underscores the wisdom of Confucius with emphasis on submission and stability. The idea is perhaps to promote to the nation that he is the protector of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

To some extent Xi’s anti-graft campaign is spurred by Confucian principle of probity in public office. The Communist Party of China perhaps believes that the sage’s thoughts have the advantage of being home-grown and are keen on cashing in on its appeals to a yearning for ancient values among those thrown off-balance by the nation’s rapid speed of change.

New school of thought

Over the last few years, several private educational institutes dedicated to Confucian teachings have opened across the country in response to a desire by parents to school their wards in traditional education. The schools, backed by the central government, instil ideas on filial piety and integrity. At a tender age, kids start memorising Confucian classics, at six (when state schooling commences) they begin reciting the Great Master’s wisdom. The demand for such ‘prep’ schools is growing with upper middle-class parents yearning for inculcating a Confucian bent of mind.

China’s pragmatic ruler is merely following in the footsteps of East Asia’s mini-dragons. In 18th century Japan, the elite was eager to modernise and catch up with the West. Confucian ideals were determinedly used in the curriculum, which were developed to serve the government’s desire to link industrialisation with the preservation of traditional Japanese respect for family and state. The Ministry of Education issued ethics textbooks in Japanese schools between 1904 and 1945, introducing students to topics like learning, loyalty, courage and kinship. The implicit aim was to introduce a sense of self-cultivation, a sense of a nation and civic ethos. It specially emphasised on the need for each citizen to be a good person and learn and constantly upgrade his/her knowledge.

Singapore, a British colony that become an independent state by 1965, transformed from a no-hope to a nation with the second highest per capita income. Due to an ambitious industrialisation programme in the 1970s, the standard of living of Singaporeans grew, so did crime, drug abuse, delinquency. The state later introduced Confucian ethics as a component of moral education as a “counterweight to creeping Western culture”. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew used Confucian ideals as a means of ensuring modernisation and political stability.

While the enormous statue watches over China, Confucius’ hometown of Qufu is scheduled to host China’s first teachers’ museum. The message from Beijing is clear. Mao’s visage is ubiquitous across China, but Confucius is its new star.

*Kalpit Mankikar was a news editor at a leading Indian broadsheet, and is currently pursuing his China studies at the London School of Economics.

The hyped jingoistic ‘surgical’ action did nothing to deter Pakistani ‘misadventure’.

By Manoj Joshi

Lt Gen DS Hooda (retd) is right when he talks about needless hype over operations like the surgical strikes. Note, of course, that he is not arguing that such strikes are wrong, but that the accompanying hype, often aimed at playing to the political gallery, undermines their military value.

There is, of course, the larger question as to the very nature of the so-called surgical strikes of September 29, 2016, that had been launched to avenge the Uri militant strike of September 18. Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Ranbir Singh who, as DGMO, announced the strikes, responded to Hooda by saying  that the strikes were a successful tactical operation that  had conveyed a message to  Pakistan.

Lt Gen Ranbir Singh’s statement is not borne out by facts. Pakistan did not stop its ‘misadventures’ as he quaintly put it. Almost two months later,  on November 29, Jaish militants attacked an Army base in Nagrota and in the ensuing shootout 10 soldiers, including three officers were killed.

The Nagrota strike was far more serious than the Uri one. Unlike Uri, which is very close to the LoC and more vulnerable, Nagrota is somewhat inland. More important, it is the headquarters of the huge 16 Corps and should thus have had a much higher level of protection.

But by far the more damaging was the fact that the Indian Army did not react to this provocation. If the surgical strikes after Uri were meant to deter further Pakistani ‘misadventure’, the only way it would work as a strategy, would be if the Army hit Pakistan hard every time it launched an attack.

The next year, 2017, there were several attacks across the LoC attributed to Pakistani jihadis and forces. In one, an Indian patrol was attacked in Krishna Ghati sector of the Poonch district, killing two soldiers. In December, a Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) came half a kilometre into Indian territory and killed four soldiers, including a Major.

Early this year, there was another Jaish attack on the Sunjuwan camp housing soldiers and their families, a few kilometres to the east of Jammu City. As many as 11 soldiers and a civilian were killed and 20 injured.  Yet, there was no reaction comparable to the surgical strikes. So it is evident that  the strikes did not deter Pakistan.

You can draw many conclusions from this. One is that the Indian policy of surgical strikes was flawed to start with. Perhaps publicising it the way it was done was not a good idea. Or, the Army had not thought through its strategy because if it was aimed at sending a signal that India would no longer sit back and tolerate attacks such as the ones on Pathankot and Uri,  the Army needed to demonstrably hit back at Pakistan every time jihadis or BAT attacks took place.

Clearly, there are hazards in the latter policy. If demonstrable strikes take place, the two countries could get locked into an escalatory cycle which could eventually lead to war. That neither side wants this is evident from the fact that their cross-LoC activity remains limited. Even episodes of cross-border bombardment that occasionally take place on the LoC or the border in Jammu, usually end in a ceasefire. That is why, it is important to keep a tight control on the escalatory framework. The way of doing this earlier was to keep the retaliatory cycles secret and not let them enter the political or electoral cycles in either country because hype tends to be the hand-maiden of politics. That the strikes were politicised is no secret. Whether it is in the speeches of BJP leaders or the posters that came up, the strikes were widely featured in the Uttar Pradesh state Assembly elections of 2016.

At the end of the day, there is the challenge of deterring Pakistan. It is one thing to deter it from the point of view of nuclear weapons and large-scale conventional conflict, and quite another to make it cease and desist from sending groups of militants in the name of ‘political support’ to the Kashmiri militancy.

India has not yet found the formula of dealing with them. The so-called surgical strikes were mooted as the solution, but they have clearly not worked.

Having initiated a policy, it was important for the Army to follow through with that policy, which it did not, because the main purpose of the strikes was to make a political statement which was aimed at the UP elections. The Indian challenge was neatly side-stepped by Islamabad which simply denied that such strikes took place and did not feel compelled to respond to the Indian action in word or deed.

New Delhi certainly has the option of using military retaliation every time the Pakistanis act. The politicians do not mind basking in the glory of the strikes because they took out a few terrorist launching pads for no loss of life. But escalation, even a larger skirmish, always has the possibility of going awry and putting pressure on the government to enhance the level of violence when things don’t go according to plan. We cannot be sure just how Islamabad will react and we should not exaggerate our capabilities with regard to Pakistan. In such matters, sober realism is the best approach, and this would tell us that we need a different menu of options when it comes to bringing down and eliminating the violence in Jammu & Kashmir.

This article originally appeared in The Tribune.

Denise Hearn is Head of Business Development at Variant Perception, a global macroeconomic research and investment strategy firm. Her new book is The Myth of Capitalism.

You write that American capitalism is a myth. How would you label the US economy?

American capitalism is a myth because the competitive free markets we associate with capitalism are a myth in today’s economy. Instead, we have an economy dominated by monopoly and oligopoly firms who can use their economic power to exert influence over regulators and politicians. Most Americans, 71% in fact, believe the economy is rigged and in many ways they are correct.

Will it be necessary to decline to bail out banks and corporations that go bankrupt in the inevitable next recession? Many people have argued that the 2008 bailout just made the US economy more vulnerable to future shocks.

The bailouts and the accompanying new regulation (Dodd-Frank) only further entrenched the ‘too big to fail’ banks. Glass-Steagall was 35 pages and Dodd-Frank is 2200. Most smaller banks cannot comply with that burdensome regulation, and so you have Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, now stating that we’re in a “Golden Age of Banking.” No new entrants can come in and compete.

Credit unions and small banks do 60% of lending to small businesses, so you’ve also seen a decline in small businesses starting in the US as their lenders have disappeared, swallowed or put out of business by the major banks. Five banks now control half the nation’s banking assets. Additionally, when you lose localism and diversity, the entire economy suffers. Like monocropping in agriculture, loss of diversity means more susceptibility to shock, and we are certainly in that state today in the economy – not just in the banking industry.

Similarly, it seems to me that the rise of passive investing is leading to further self-perpetuation of the economic status quo by relying on the slow, steady gains of oligopolistic companies. What are your thoughts on passive investing?

I fully agree. Even Jack Bogle came out with an article recently stating that he’s concerned about the dominance of passive investing – the very financial innovation he created. Passive investing has been a great boon to American investors, but now you have a handful of oligopolistic firms (Vanguard, BlackRock, StateStreet) that control access to the passive products. Those big 3 own nearly 19% of the S&P 500, and passive funds now own 40% of all US assets. So it’s like an oligopoly layer cake where oligopolistic investors invest in oligopolistic industries.

What are your thoughts on natural monopolies? Can Google be considered to be a natural monopoly?

Natural monopolies are rare and necessary only in very specific industries like aerospace manufacturing. Google controls 90% of search, but it did not get here simply via innovation. Google, Facebook, and Amazon have great technology, but much of their current status and financial success comes from regulatory and antitrust mistakes. Amazon was allowed to buy dozens of ecommerce rivals and online booksellers to give it a monopsony position in the book industry. Google was able to buy its main competitor, DoubleClick, and vertically integrate online ad markets by buying advertising exchanges. It also scraped loads of data from Yelp, Getty Images and multiple other companies to build its search interface. So no, Google is not a ‘natural’ monopoly.

Should stock buybacks and corporate spending on election campaigns be outlawed, like they were pre-Reagan?

Stock buybacks are symptomatic of larger issues. Corporate profits are at record highs, and companies need to invest their cash somewhere. The explosion in buybacks is symptomatic of sky-high profits that are not mean-reverting, due to the solidified market power of oligopolistic firms. Although, US corporates are on a spending spree with plans of $1 trillion worth of buybacks this year, according to a recent FT article.

Rather than outlawing buybacks, I think some useful limitations could be instituted. Like, for instance, preventing CEOs and corporate insiders from selling their stocks during (or within a reasonable time frame after) repurchasing programs.

How should executive pay be restructured to eliminate perverse incentives for executives to mortgage a company’s future in the name of short-term gains?

In the 1970s, CEO-to-worker compensation was much more level with many other countries around the world today (about 30:1). That number has skyrocketed to 361:1 in the United States. Managers should certainly be compensated for the difficult work they do, but it is hard to believe CEOs, as a group, are now ten times more valuable relative to workers than they were in the 1970s.

Part of the issue is that, originally management pay was determined according to “internal equity.” A manager’s value to the firm was determined by his or her performance relative to other employees. In the 1970s, with the rise of executive compensation consulting, the focus shifted to “external equity” – or comparing CEOs to what others were being paid across the industry.

Boards and compensation committees agree to compensation packages based on benchmarking against other comparable companies, but they are all benchmarking against each other in a never-ending infinite loop of salary increases. Studies also show that the companies that serve as benchmarks are always chosen to maximize CEO pay. Returning to a focus on internal equity would be a start in reforming.

The financial stability of the antitrust enforcement era coincided with the peak power of the trade union. Can a renewal of unionization reverse the fortunes of the average American worker?

Workers today are dispersed and have very little bargaining power. Unionization has collapsed, and according to one study by Katz and Krueger (Princteon and Harvard economists) almost 100% of the jobs created since the Financial Crisis are temporary. Workers need some kind of countervailing force, especially in the wake of the stunning consolidation of corporate power we’ve seen in recent decades.

Strengthening union participation would certainly help, but other measures that give workers power like including them on corporate boards, as Germany does, in co-determination agreements, or making them owners of capital via ESOPs are other ways to restore power to American workers.

Do you think the US should adopt an ordoliberal economic model or a Scandinavian social-democratic economic model?

Either would be an improvement on our current state of affairs. As a Canadian living in the US and married to an American, I now appreciate to an even greater degree elements of Canada’s social-democracy like socialized healthcare.

Ordoliberalism argues that capitalism requires a strong government to create a framework of rules that provide the order that free markets need to function properly. The Ordoliberals thought state intervention through antitrust was an essential ingredient to make markets function, and I would agree with this perspective.

What do you make of the unprecedented success of China’s system of state capitalism?

Capitalism has been a global success in many ways when you consider that it has lifted billions out of poverty and created vast wealth and high standards of living for millions around the world – China included. I don’t feel qualified to make a statement on China’s version of capitalism, but we do write about some of the new tactics of command and control that state is using to monitor citizens in the book, like the social credit system.

Americans are shocked to learn of the implementation of the credit system, but we have abdicated just as much information (likely more) to the private entities/tech giants. Google and Facebook have more information on us than the Stasi ever had on citizens in Germany. We seem unperturbed and continue using our devices.

How would you respond to the argument that capitalism has, from its roots as the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company, mainly succeeded due to slavery and colonialism and that the decline of Western capitalism started alongside the era of de-colonization and the death of Jim Crow?

This is a big question and one that I would want to spend much more time researching before providing a definitive claim. There is, however, no doubt that systems of power and privilege have exploited people of color the world over, and continue to do so today. My work on this book is motivated by a desire to create systems with opportunity for all, and I sincerely hope that this is one small step in that direction.

You write a lot about how US healthcare companies are price-gouging Americans, to the tune of trillions. Do you think Medicare for All is a good policy solution for the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare?

I’m not a healthcare expert by any means, so I won’t make a comment on what the US should or should not do regarding single-payer systems – there are multiple iterations of what that can look like. I will say, that endlessly extending patents on slightly reformulated drugs or not approving generics (there is currently a backlog of over 4000 at the FDA) has greatly hurt the average American and caused insane price gouging to occur, as you mention.

How do you envision the future of capitalism in the coming era of automation?

Workers had similar fears of obsolescence during the Industrial Revolution, but with new technology come the creation of new jobs. I think we will likely continue to see the creation of jobs we have yet to conceive of in coming years. People tend to overestimate the effects of automation on the job market, and to look to the past with nostalgia and the future with trepidation.

100 years ago most humans were employed as farmers, and globally now only 2% of the population are farmers – and we don’t have 98% unemployment. There are multiple examples like this when we think of advancements in technology and the labor market.

A more pernicious and immediate threat than automation, in my opinion, is labor monopsony from dominant firms. Ask Amazon fulfillment center employees who are likely most at risk of losing jobs to automation. If we don’t materially reduce the corporate ascendency of mega firms, the worker’s next contract job may entail even worse wages, conditions, and benefits. And that’s saying something, considering how bad those Amazon jobs are.

By Uran Botobekov*

Some Western countries mistakenly think that the al Qaida-linked Salafi-jihadi groups from Central Asia and Chinese Xinjiang are fragmented, weak and less dynamic; therefore they do not pose a big threat compared to the Islamic state. However, in-depth study of their activities and ideological doctrine shows that the Central Asian al Qaida ally groups today are actively engaged in the ideological education of children and youth, which in the future will become faithful fighters of the global jihad.

The following comparison covers the methods of ideological education of Central Asia’s children and youth, and their use by ISIS and al Qaeda to achieve their goals.

 It is known that during the bloody reign of the Caliphate, more than 10 thousand citizens from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and the Uyghurs from northwest China fought on the side of ISIS. Many of them made a Hijrah (the migration of Muslims for Jihad) to Iraq and Syria to “protect the values of true Islam” and brought their families with small children there.Subsequently, some of these children entered the battalion ‘Cubs of the Caliphate’ and became protagonists in the Islamic State’s Propaganda.

According to my statistical research, in 2013-2018, more than 55 video, audio, and text materials were released by the Islamic State’s media wings with the participation of Central Asia’s children in Arabic, Uygur, Uzbek, Russian, Kyrgyz, and Tajik.After the fall of the Caliphate, propaganda videos with the participation of Central Asian children almost ceased.But the ideological “virus” ISIS continues its mutation among the youth of the former Soviet republics.

With the diminishing possibilities of the Islamic state’s media resources, the propaganda and ideological activity of the al Qaida-linked Central Asian Salafi-jihadi groups have recently increased in contrast.As is already known, the Uzbek militants of Katibat al-Tawhid wal Jihad (KTJ) and Katibat Imam al-Bukhari (KIB), as well as Uyghur jihadists of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP)from the Chinese province of Xinjiang are affiliated with al Qaeda. All three groups regularly publish propaganda videos of children from the Syrian province of Idlib where they are fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Since 2013, al Qaeda has posted about 30 videos, audio and text materials in which Central Asia’s children made up the main plot.

It should be noted that in Syria and Afghanistan about 200 Uyghur and Uzbek children are now being raised, whose parents are associated with al Qaeda. Many of them came to the Middle East with their parents. However, among them, there are those who were born already in Syria.

Common aspects of the ideological school of al Qaeda and ISIS

Based on a comparative analysis of video, audio and text materials regarding the participation of Central Asian children, it is possible to point out the common and specific aspects of the alQaeda and ISIS ideological schools, and what different methodologies they use in raising children and youth.

The main common characteristic of the curriculum in al Qaeda’s and ISIS’ madrasas is learning the Quran by heart, Tawhid (monotheism), Fiqh (jurisprudence), Salat (prayers), Aqidah (creed), Hadith, and Sura (life of Prophet Muhammad).

The second common feature in the education of Central Asian children in al Qaeda and ISIS’ camps is the call to Jihad. The doctrine of Jihad is the main place in the ideology of both Sunni terrorist groups, and accordingly, in the madrasas and training camps, children are brainwashed from early childhood with ideas of holy Jihad. Imams explain to children in detail about all forms of Jihad and the sacred purpose of the Shahid (martyr).As a result, children after training in such religious schools, as a rule, replenish the “reserve fund” of ideologically hardened jihadists.

The difference between al Qaeda and ISIS in the education of children and youth

A sharp ideological confrontation between the two main Sunni groups has escalated into armed conflict, which also affects the education of the younger generation of Islamists. To achieve victory in the struggle for hegemony in the global jihadist movement, the ideologists of al Qaeda use all means, including children’s education in madrasas.

Al Qaeda-sympathized Uzbek and Uyghur imams in madrasas in Syria tell children about the enemies of Islam, which they ranked on a par with the “Kafir regimes” of the USA, Russia and China also the Kharijites (those who defected from the Ummah and rebelled against the Caliph) of the Islamic state and its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

KTJ and TIP opened several madrasas to teach their children in Uzbek and Uyghur languages on the territory of the so-called “Liberated land of Sham”, which is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), former al-Nusra Front.KTJ on the Internet often disseminates information about the activities of two madrasas: the Abdullah ibn Abbas Madrasa and the Umar ibn al-Khattab Madrasa.

Also, the Uyghur Salafists of TIP own several madrasas in in Jisr al-Shugur in northwestern Syria. This was possible thanks to the fact that the Uyghur and Uzbek jihadists live compactly and separately in last major rebel stronghold of Idlib.In accordance with the guiding doctrine of al Qaeda, they have skillfully adapted to local conditions, and have virtually no conflicts with the local Arab population.

As is known, during the ideological confrontation, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri accused ISIS of excessive cruelty towards other Muslims, an unjustified using of Takfir (accusation of apostasy), ignoring the high goals of the Shari’a, which split the Mujahideen ranks.In 2015, the ideologues of al Qaeda even published a special book entitled “The Islamic State is the succession of tyranny and corruption,” in which they raised the problem of excessiveness in Islam (Ghulu fid-deen) and called al-Baghdadi to moderation.Zawahiri brought to mind him the Hadith, in which Prophet said: “Beware of ghulu (excessiveness) in religion, for indeed, what devastated those before you was ghulu in religion.”

ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani replied that the Caliphate did not swear al Qaeda because it was not appropriate for the State to swear organizations. As a result, ISIS began to use mass executions and public beheadings with incredible cruelty. Unlike ISIS, al Qaeda advocated a more gentle approach to convince local Muslims to accept its views and not force them to do.Ayman al-Zawahiri noted that it is impossible to unite Muslims, trying to impose their power on them with the help of violence.

Indeed, during the peak of his reign in 2015–16, ISIS released dozens of videos with the participation of Central Asian children, who not only taught the Quran in the madrasas, but also cut off the heads of prisoners, executed “kafirs”, and blew themselves up as martyrs. Central Asia’s children were integrated into the military machine of the Caliphate as cruel executioners and suicide bombers, becoming an ideological tool in the struggle for leadership in the global jihad.

The ideological differences between the Islamic state and al Qaeda manifested themselves with the example of teaching children in madrasas. The Uyghur and Uzbek jihadists of TIP, KTJ and KIB, in organizing the teaching of children in the madrasas, took into account the recommendations of their spiritual leader Zawahiri to show a sense of practicality, pragmatism and not to demonstrate excessive cruelty.

When analyzing video plots, the “peaceful nature” of the educational process stands out and the excessive cruelty of the students of the madrasa does not appear.For example, in the Abdullah ibn Abbas Madrasa, in addition to studying the Quran, children also study mathematics, Arabic and Uzbek languages, military science and sports.Imam says that the madrasa is fully equipped with books and textbooks, and books on the Uzbek language brought from Central Asia.According to him, the goal of training is to bring up a new generation of educated and highly intelligent warriors of Allah so that in the future they can resist the technological know-how of the West and defeat the enemies of Islam.

Another video shows the educational process in the Umar ibn al-Khattab Madrasa, where the Uzbek children study among local Arab children. For Uzbek children, a bus-service has been organized that to take and pick children up from Madrasa.

On October 29, 2018, TIP published a video entitled “Protectors of the Quran”, where Uighur children demonstrate excellent knowledge of the Quran, social science classes, swimming in the pool, exercise and military training.The Imam tells them about the atrocities of the Chinese authorities against the Uyghur Muslims and sets the task that they must liberate the lands of East Turkestan from the yoke of Beijing in the future.An analysis of these videos shows that in madrasas, the learning process is organized according to the concept of al Qaeda and the upbringing of children is conducted according to its ideology.

The USA is the main enemy for al Qaeda-backed Central Asia’s jihadists

The fall of the Caliphate revealed that Ayman al-Zawahiri had strategically calibrated the priorities of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups from Central Asia, and managed to implement an action plan that allowed them to survive in the struggle for leadership of the global jihad.For him, it is important not the seizure of territories or the creation of his own state with Sharia rule, but the process of jihad against the USA and its allies, and the widespread of al Qaeda ideology in the Islamic world.

Al Qaeda’s tactic is that it tries not to draw enemy’s fire, slyly and prudently leads the game on its own survival, fundamentally creates its own ideological infrastructure and persistently teaches the next generation of jihadists.

The activities of TIP, KTJ and KIB showed that over the past five years the influence of al Qaeda among the Salafis of Central Asia has increased significantly. There is not only the rejuvenation of al Qaeda militants, but also the ideology of global jihadism is rejuvenating.

In his manifest address named General Guidelines for Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined al-Qaida’s priority task of fighting against the far enemy – the United States and its allies.According to him, the local regimes and other Islamic movements (Rawafidh, Ismailis, Qadianis, and deviant Sufis, etc.) are nearby enemies for Al Qaida. He urged not to attack the “nearby enemies”, but instead focus on fighting the “far enemy.”

There is no doubt that TIP, KTJ and KIB will firmly adhere to the strategic line designated by Zawahiri.For them, the main priority remains a blow to the US and its military, diplomatic missions near the conflict zones in the future.But they are not in a position to carry out such an operation now and so far securely hide their true intentions.Therefore, the US should not underestimate the potential threat posed by the al Qaeda-affiliated Central Asian Salafi-jihadi groups.

*About the author: Uran Botobekov, Doctor of Political Science (PhD), expert on Political Islam

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

China, Russia, Japan and the United States sought to pivot towards India on the margins of the recently-concluded G20 summit. For Delhi, which wants to become a leading power rather than a balancer, the choice of right partners is challenging.

By P S Suryanarayana*

Surprising as it may seem, India was a key interlocutor for both China and the United States, trade adversaries, on the margins of the 13th summit of Group of Twenty (G20) in Buenos Aires on 30 November and 1 December 2018. This was a manifestation of big-power geopolitics.

Besides these two countries, Russia, China’s “coordinating” partner, and Japan, America’s foremost strategic partner in Asia, interacted closely with India on that occasion. Such a flurry of diplomacy was a pointer to the possibility of India being viewed by major powers as a potential swing-state or balancer in the current nebulous global order.

A Flurry of Summits: Indo-Pacific ‘Nucleus’?

The meetings, indicative of multidimensional pivoting towards India in this scenario, took place in the following order. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks on 30 November 2018, marking their fourth bilateral summit in just seven months.

Xi then joined Russian President Vladimir Putin and Modi for the first Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral summit since 2006. Subsequently, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Modi and US President Donald Trump on the G20 margins, also on the same day.

Trump discussed “trade” and “defence” with Modi and Abe. Their talks on issues concerning Indo-Pacific, held at Abe’s initiative, marked the first-ever summit among these three ‘Malabar’ partners.

‘Malabar’ is the high-quality naval exercise that features the US, India and Japan every year. Washington and Tokyo are long-standing military partners, while Delhi is moving towards all-round defence cooperation with America.

Overarching the Delhi-Washington defence links, the latest Japan-America-India forum seems to constitute an embryonic Indo-Pacific ‘nucleus’ or core group. Modi enthusiastically coined the acronym of ‘JAI’ (Japan-America-India) for this forum to synchronise with the Hindi word for “success”.

This meeting may have, arguably, messaged the primacy of these three countries, rather than the Quad (which includes Australia), in the evolving Indo-Pacific dynamics. More significantly, the US and Japan, old partners, have now clearly pivoted towards India in the Indo-Pacific.

Eurasia ‘Caucus’?

On the G20 sidelines, Putin piloted the latest RIC summit to promote “cooperation” and “closer coordination” among Russia, India and China in “Eurasia”. These countries have been meeting at sub-summit levels since the RIC summit in St Petersburg in 2006. However, the current revival of the RIC summit signals urgency to create a Eurasia ‘Caucus’.

The RIC, if led by the highest leaders of its constituent states into the future, can be a formidable rival to an Indo-Pacific core group spearheaded by the US and Japan. This calculation obviously guided Putin.

Beijing and Moscow have in recent years acted in concert on the international stage. Recognising India as a major power since 2015, China has in recent months intensified its engagement with India. These realities should account for Putin’s current success in re-elevating the RIC to that of a leaders-led forum. But a more powerful China might want to lead the RIC if the emerging Indo-Pacific ‘nucleus’ stabilises.

Four ‘Pivots’

In conventional wisdom, India’s presence in both these groups can be a complicating factor for the other players. Moreover, Delhi, on its part, has already clarified that it aspires to be “a leading power” rather than a balancing actor in geopolitics and geo-economics.

Nonetheless, Japan, America, China and Russia are pivoting towards India, practically treating Delhi as a balancer or a swing-state which, by tilting to one side or the other, can strengthen the favoured outfit.

Eager to maintain China’s ties with America on an even keel, Xi appears equally keen to prevent India from allying with Washington against Chinese interests. Xi’s two-day-long informal summit with Modi at Wuhan (China) in April 2018 signalled the start of China’s experiment of pivoting towards India.

Japan’s focus on India is triggered by their shared interest in ensuring that a powerful China becomes less ‘threatening’. Abe has recognised India’s potential as a strategic asset in his vision of a “confluence” of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

For Washington, Delhi is a potential partner in keeping Beijing’s rise within manageable limits. Trump recently startled the world, especially China and Russia, by outlining his Indo-Pacific vision which pivots towards India. Now, by joining hands with Modi and Abe, Trump has hinted that the Indo-Pacific stays on his strategic radar.

Moreover, Russia traces its relationship with India to the old Soviet-era and tends to see Delhi as a valuable partner in dealing with Beijing. Putin’s friendly outreach towards Delhi is evident on two counts: the way he championed India’s recent admission to the China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and his latest revival of the RIC summit. All these considerations account for the four pivots towards India.

Pleasant Dilemma?

This happy situation of being ‘pivotal’ to the interests of big powers can turn tricky for India if it has to eventually choose its place.

Russia has remained India’s long-standing strategic partner despite occasional uncertainties, while Delhi cannot overlook China’s importance as a big neighbour. Some would, therefore, suggest that India take care of its ‘national interest’ and stay in the RIC, if Russia and China can keep the group going.

It is also not yet clear whether the Indo-Pacific will be more of a values-based rather than a national interest-driven outfit. The values being articulated are democracy, free and open oceans, ASEAN centrality etc. For India, choices will become manageable only if it enhances its comprehensive national strength and becomes “a leading power”.

*P S Suryanarayana is a Visiting Senior Fellow with the South Asia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is the author of ‘Smart Diplomacy: Exploring China-India Synergy’ (2016).

By Allan C. Brownfeld*

Elon Musk and his corporate empire, much of it financed by taxpayer dollars, is very much in the news. Most of it is not good. And it may be getting worse.

Tesla spends $1 million annually on Washington lobbyists. Its cars are financed by over $280 million in federal tax incentives, including a $7,500 federal tax break and millions more in state rebates and development fees. SpaceX has also received over $5 billion in government support. It has over promised and under delivered. SpaceX rockets, for example, are far less reliable than many of its competitors. This is outlined in reports from December 2017 and January 2018 in which the Department of Defense Inspector General and NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Council described a list of security concerns they have with SpaceX, among them 33 significant non-conformities.

Bloomberg Business News reported in November about a Tesla solar factory for which the State of New York paid $750 million based on a commitment to create 1,500 jobs. The factory had been developed for another Musk-run company, SolarCity, which Tesla bought in 2016 in a $2.6 billion deal. SolarCity had been $2.9 billion in debt. Only a relative handful of jobs have been created, and New York officials are expressing dismay. Raymond Walter, a Republican in the New York State Assembly, says he is concerned that the state “has too many eggs in the Tesla basket, which doesn’t seem like a very strong basket.” John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a nonprofit focused on government accountability, says, “It’s a complete hoo-ha! These mega-subsidy deals take place in complete secrecy without scrutiny from the public.”

Bloomberg News declares that this is “…a familiar playbook for Musk, start with wild promises followed by product delays, production hell, shareholder anger and finally, hopefully, redemption.”

Things, however, may be even worse than they appear. Some are even speculating that Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla may be on their way to becoming the new Enron. Enron, the energy giant, employed approximately 20,000 people and claimed revenues of $111 billion at its peak by 2000. As it turned out, Enron used shady accounting practices to hide its losses and report profits which, in fact, did not exist. Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer, created the scheme to falsify Enron’s real financial status. In April 2001, the fraud began to unravel as analysts began to question Enron’s numbers. In the end, Enron was found to have losses of $591 million and debt totaling $628 million. Stock prices declined from $90 in 2000 to less than one dollar when the scandal was exposed. Senior managers, who kept selling their stock while encouraging others to continue buying, were convicted of insider trading. In December 2001, the company declared bankruptcy.

In the view of many, Elon Musk has been engaging in similar behavior. A Bloomberg report in November suggests that SpaceX may be less than honest with its numbers, giving a false illusion of profitability. According to Bloomberg , “While SpaceX is burning through cash, disclosures to potential lenders showed the company had positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $270 million for the 12 months through September, people with knowledge of the matter said. But that’s because it included amounts that customers had prepaid and because it excluded costs related to non-core research and development…Without those adjustments, earnings were negative, they said.”

According to Bloomberg , “This shouldn’t come as a shock. A Wall Street Journal report from a few years ago showed that its profit margins were laser-thin. But if Musk is now going to these lengths to pad SpaceX’s books to secure a loan, it appears there’s a serious problem.”

In the case of Tesla, the Wall Street Journal reports that, “Federal investigators are probing whether Tesla’s stated information about production of its Model 3 electric sedans had misled investors about the company’s business. Under examination is Tesla’s public statements about Model 3 productions as compared to the number of vehicles that were actually built.”

Elon Musk and his companies have a very questionable record when it comes to truth and honesty. Overstating prices to qualify for higher state tax credits seems to fit a pattern. According to a recent report in The Oregonian/Oregon Live, “The state of Oregon has recovered $13 million it paid to Tesla for solar power projects, after an investigation conclude the company inflated prices to qualify for higher tax credits.”

Whether Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX will go the way of Enron is impossible to know, but that they should not be the recipients of taxpayer dollars seems clear. And whatever the future holds, speculation has already begun.

Marketwatch reports: “Is Tesla the next Enron? One hedge fund manager charts a gloomy path. Harris Kupperman of Praetorian Capital recently compared Tesla to one of the biggest falls Wall Street has ever seen.”

Time will tell, but in the interim, the government should put its cozy relationship with Musk on a long, if not permanent, hiatus.

*About the author: Allan C. Brownfeld, a former U.S. Senate staffer and consultant to the Vice President, is a freelance author, Contributing Editor of The St. Croix Review, Associate Editor of The Lincoln Review, and editor of Issues.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

It has been an ordinary year for universities in Australia. While the National Tertiary Education Union pats itself on the back for supposedly advancing the rights and pay of academics, several face removal and castigation at the hands of university management. Consumerism and pay are the sort of quotidian matters that interest the NTEU. Less interesting is the realm of academic ideas and how they clash with the bureaucratic prisons that have been built into universities.

At James Cook University, Peter Ridd was sacked on “code of conduct” grounds applied with a delightful elasticity. He claimed that it was for holding views on climate change out of step with his colleagues, and attacking the credibility of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. (The pettiness of such institutions knows no bounds: Ridd’s knuckles were wrapped, for instance, for satirising, trivialising or parodying the university.)

At the University of Sydney, Tim Anderson, a full time critic of Western interventions in the Middle East and acquitted for ordering the 1978 Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing, has been suspended pending what would seem to be imminent sacking. Causing “offense” was what mattered.

A cardinal rule applies in this case: Be suspicious of those who use good behaviour as a criterion of policing, notably in an environment where bad behaviour and dangerous ideas should hold sway over meek bumbling and submissiveness. Be wary of the demands to be vanilla and beige – behind them lies administrative venality and the dictates of compliance.

Such rubbery provisions as being “civil” or not causing offense shield the weak, spineless and fraudulent and, most dangerously, create the very same intolerable workplace that managers are supposedly opposed to. Very importantly, such code of conduct regulations are designed to immunise management from questions about their behaviour and often daft directives, letting institutions grow flabby with corruption. Inoculated, that class thrives in its toxicity.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of JCU, Iain Gordon, has drawn upon the usual stock nonsense defending the decision regarding Ridd. “The issue has never been about Peter’s right to make statements – it’s about how he has continually broken a code of conduct that we would expect all our staff to stick to, to create a safe, respectful professional workplace.” The thrust of this is simple: Never cause offense; be compliantly decent; be cripplingly dull and go back to your homes in your suburbs living a life unexamined. As an academic, you are merely delivering a service mandated by individuals several steps removed from the education process, not performing an ancient duty to educate mankind.

The code of conduct, the product of a corporatized imbecility, assumes the mantle of dogma in such disputes. “All staff members must comply with the Code of Conduct,” goes Gordon’s official statement in May, with its distinct politburo flavour of placing things beyond debate. “This is non-negotiable. It is a fundamental duty and obligation that forms part of their employment.” Ridd, explains Gordon, “sensationalised his comments to attract attention, has criticised and denigrated published work, and has demonstrated a lack of respect for his colleague and institutions in doing so. Academic rebuttal of his scientific views on the reef has been separately published.”

Anderson, having found himself at stages in the University of Sydney’s bad books, has also run the gauntlet of offensiveness. The specific conduct resulting in his suspension featured lecture materials shown to students suggesting the imposition of a swastika upon Israel’s flag. This was deemed “disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the university’s behavioural expectations”. Tut, tut, Anderson.

The Sydney University provost and acting vice-chancellor Stephen Garton followed the line taken at JCU towards Ridd with zombie-like predictability. “The university has, since its inception, supported and encouraged its staff to engage in public debate and it has always accepted that those views might be controversial.” But debate – and here, behavioural fetters were again to be imposed – had to be undertaken “in a civil manner.” Contrarianism should be expressed with a good measure of decency.

The letter of suspension from Garton to Anderson is one-dimensionally authoritarian. Principles of academic freedom were supported by the university, but only in “accordance with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards”. But the all supreme, and trumping document, remained the Code of Conduct, capitalised by the bureaucrats as Mosaic Law. “The inclusion of the altered image of the Israeli flag in your Twitter Posts, Facebook Posts and teaching materials is disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the University’s behavioural expectations and requirements for all staff.”

Some heart can be taken from the protest last Friday on the part of 30 academics who signed an open letter objecting to the treatment meted out to Anderson, stating that academic freedom was “meaningless if it is suspended when its exercise is deemed offensive.” His suspension pending termination of his employment was “an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney”. Reaction to Ridd has been somewhat cooler.

The point with Anderson is that his views are deemed bad for university business, which tolerates no room for the offensive. This, in a place where the most varied, and, at points, tasteless views, should be expressed. But as universities have become shabby entrepreneurial endeavours which see students as obesely delicious milch cows for their existence, the idea is less important than the process.

As is so often the case of free speech, advocates of it always assume it doesn’t apply to others. It is only to be extolled as a mark on paper and university policy. But never, for instance, challenge inane university policy or the hacks who implement it. Never ridicule ideas that deserve it. Never mock the obscene nature of managerialism’s central principle: massaged incompetence and assured decline. University managers and the colourless suits aided by their ill-tutored human resources goon squads tend to hold sway over opinions, taking against anybody who questions certain aspects of their (non)performance.

The Ridd and Anderson cases, coming from separate parts of the academic spectrum, demonstrate the prevalence of toadyism on the part of those who wish to avoid questioning the rationale of a university’s management process. They also suggest an immemorial tendency of authority to savagely oppress those who ignore it; to manifest its existence through punishment. In truth, it is precisely in ignoring those officials long barnacled upon the research and teaching endeavours of the University and drawing revenue best spent on students and scholars that a grave sin is committed. Such officialdom should be ignored, treated as the bureaucratic irrelevance that it is. Time for sit-ins, occupations, boycotts and a retaking of the University.

“How to draw the line between the recent and still unsettled EU/EURO crisis and Asia’s success story? Well, it might be easier than it seems: Neither Europe nor Asia has any alternative. The difference is that Europe well knows there is no alternative – and therefore is multilateral. Asia thinks it has an alternative – and therefore is strikingly bilateral, while stubbornly residing enveloped in economic egoisms. No wonder that Europe is/will be able to manage its decline, while Asia is (still) unable to capitalize its successes. Asia clearly does not accept any more the lead of the post-industrial and post-Christian Europe, but is not ready for the post-West world.” – professor Anis H. Bajrektarevic diagnosed in his well-read ‘No Asian century’ policy paper. Sino-Indian rift is not new. It only takes new forms in Asia, which – in absence of a true multilateralism – is entrenched in confrontational competition and amplifying antagonisms. The following lines are referencing one such a rift.

At the end of 2017, Brahma Chellaney, a professor with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, wrote an article titled “China’s Creditor Imperialism” in which he accused China of creating a “debt trap” from Argentina, to Namibia and Laos, mentioning its acquisition of, or investment in the construction of several port hubs, including Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Piraeus in Greece, Djibouti, and Mombasa in Kenya in recent years.

These countries are forced to avoid default by painfully choosing to let China control their resources and thus have forfeited their sovereignty, he wrote. The article described China as a “new imperial giant” with a velvet glove hiding iron fists with which it was pressing small countries. The Belt and Road Initiative, he concluded, is essentially an ambitious plan to realize “Chinese imperialism”. The article was later widely quoted by newspapers, websites and think tanks around the world.

When then United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Africa in March, he also said that although Chinese investment may help improve Africa’s infrastructure, it would lead to increased debt on the continent, without creating many jobs.

It is no accident that this idea of China’s creditor imperialism theory originates from India. New Delhi has openly opposed China’s Belt and Road Initiative, especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as it runs through Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which India regards as an integral part of its territory. India is also worried that the construction of China’s Maritime Silk Road will challenge its dominance in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Based on such a judgment, the Indian government has worked out its own regional cooperation initiatives, and taken moves, such as the declaration of cooperation with Vietnam in oil exploration in the South China Sea and its investment in the renovation of Chabahar port in Iran, as countermeasures against the Chinese initiative.

Since January, India, the United States, Japan and Australia have actively built a “quasi-alliance system” for a “free and open Indo-Pacific order” as an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. In April, a senior Indian official attending the fifth China-India Strategic Economic Dialogue reiterated the Indian government’s refusal to participate in the initiative.

The “creditor imperialism” fallacy is in essence a deliberate attempt by India and Western countries to denigrate the Belt and Road Initiative, which exhibits their envy of the initial fruits the initiative has produced.

Such an argument stems from their own experiences of colonialism and imperialism. It is exactly the US-led Western countries that attached their political and strategic interests to the debt relationship with debtor countries and forced them to sign unequal treaties. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is proposed and implemented in the context of national equality, globalization and deepening international interdependence, and based on voluntary participation from relevant countries, which is totally different from the mandatory debt relationship of the West’s colonialism.

It is an important “Chinese experience” to use foreign debts to solve its transportation and energy bottlenecks that restrict its economic and social development at the time of its accelerated industrialization and urbanization. By making use of borrowed foreign debts, China once built thousands of large and medium-sized projects, greatly easing the transportation and energy “bottlenecks” that long restrained its social and economic development. Such an experience is of reference significance for other developing countries in their initial stage of industrialization and urbanization along the Belt and Road routes.

In the early stage of China’s reform and opening-up, US dollar-denominated foreign debt accounted for nearly 50 percent of China’s total foreign debts, and Japanese yen close to 30 percent. Why didn’t Western countries think the US and Japan were pushing their “creditor imperialism” on China?

Some foreign media have repeatedly mentioned that Sri Lanka is trapped in a “debt trap” due to its excessive money borrowing from China. But the fact is that there are multiple reasons for Sri Lanka’s heavy foreign debt and its debt predicament should not be attributed to China. For most of the years since 1985, foreign debt has remained above 70 percent of its GDP due to its continuous fiscal deficits caused by low tax revenues and massive welfare spending. As of 2017, Sri Lanka owed China $2.87 billion, accounting for only 10 percent of its total foreign debt, compared with $3.44 billion it owed to Japan, 12 percent of its total foreign debt. Japan has been Sri Lanka’s largest creditor since 2006, but why does no foreign media disseminate the idea of “Japan’s creditor imperialism”?

In response to the accusation that China is pursuing creditor imperialism made by India and some Western countries, even former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa wrote an article in July using data to refute it.

Most of the time, the overseas large-scale infrastructure construction projects related to the Belt and Road Initiative are the ones operated by the Chinese government and Chinese enterprises under the request of the governments of involved countries along the Belt and Road routes or the ones undertaken by Chinese enterprises through bidding.

It is expected that with the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects and industrial parks under the Chinese initiative, which will cause the host country’s self-development and debt repayment ability to constantly increase, the China’s creditor imperialism nonsense will collapse.

*Dr Lu Wei is an associate research fellow with the China’s National Development and Reform Commission’s Academy of Macroeconomics Studies.