By Kamran Reza Chowdhury

Bangladesh will reduce internet broadband speeds to block “fake news and propaganda” during parliamentary elections on Dec. 30, a spokesman said Thursday, in a move that journalists criticized as a government attempt to gag social media.

The decision came after the Election Commission met with chiefs of police districts and officials from security and intelligence agencies in Dhaka, S.M. Asaduzzaman, the commission’s public relations chief, told BenarNews.

“It was decided at today’s meeting that the existing 4G mobile network would be reduced to 2G level on the day of election, Dec. 30,” Asaduzzaman said, emphasizing that officials were aiming at “stopping fake news and propaganda” related to the balloting.

The Election Commission also decided to block mobile banking services from Dec. 28 through Dec. 30 to prevent unidentified groups from using financial transactions to “sabotage” the elections, Asaduzzaman said. He did not elaborate.

In addition, law enforcement officials during the meeting suggested “regulating” the access of journalists and election observers at polling stations.

“They also opposed allowing journalists in the polling station with mobile phones,” he said. “They think live telecasts create problems.”

Muhammad Zahidul Islam, president of Telecom Reporters Forum of Bangladesh, told BenarNews on Wednesday that reducing internet services to 2G would effectively become “a secondary way to regulate social media.”

“So, uploading videos and photos in social media and YouTube will be impossible with 2G service,” he said. “Even attaching a photo will take a long time.”

Rights groups and media organizations have criticized Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government for recently intensifying attempts to curb press freedom. But Hasina, who is seeking a third consecutive term as PM, has denied the accusations.

“The government firmly believes in freedom of press, but attention needs to be given so that no one can use this with a childish attitude,” she told journalists at her office in September. “No one can say we ever gagged anyone; we never did that, and we don’t do that either.”

But in October, less than a month after she made that statement, her government proposed another piece of legislation, the Broadcast Act 2018, which was aimed at regulating broadcast news portals.

Hundreds of people, including journalists, have already been arrested or charged for defamation under an earlier law, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act of 2006, which rights groups say has been used to silence government critics.

The government lately strengthened the nation’s defamation laws with a new Digital Security Act (DSA), which Human Rights Watch and other groups slammed for allegedly retaining the most problematic provisions of the previous law.

According to former election commissioner Shakhawat Hossain, election officials must not obstruct journalists from doing their job.

During the 2008 general election, the commission allowed reporters to broadcast their reports live from the polling stations, he said.

“The voters were not permitted to take mobile phones, but the journalists were exempted,” Hossain told BenarNews. “Mobile phones are necessary for discharging their professional duties.”

Self-censorship on rise

Meanwhile, dozens of reporters and editors across print, digital and broadcast media in Bangladesh recently told Reuters that they had engaged in self-censorship, as Dhaka began cracking down on free speech through tighter media laws, arresting dozens of journalists.

Matiur Rahman Chowdhury, editor-in-chief of Manab Zamin, a popular Bengali-language daily, said self-censorship was becoming common.

“As an editor, I feel sad when I kill a report that was the outcome of several days of exhaustive work by a reporter. But I take the decision purely to save the reporter, because I know the risks involved in publishing it,” he told Reuters. “I fight every moment with myself and with my shadow.”

The official campaigning season for the election kicked off on Monday, but at least two people have been killed and scores injured in election-related violence, police said.

A news release distributed by the government’s public relations agency in Washington blamed poll-related violence on the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Its leader, Khaleda Zia, is serving a prison term after a pair of corruption convictions this year, which her aides said were politically motivated.

The BNP boycotted national polls five years ago, but party members are fielding candidates this time, despite a recent ruling from the Election Commission that effectively threw out Zia’s candidacy papers submitted by the BNP on her behalf.

Election officials disqualified her, saying laws prohibited anyone sentenced to more than two years in prison from running for public office.

Ruling party leaders praised that decision, describing it as proof that a level playing field was prevailing in the country.

“This proves that all are equal in the eyes of the law,” Faruk Khan, a senior Awami League leader told reporters early this month after meeting with election officials. “The law will not be different for any person no matter he or she is the chief of a political party.”

Officials said 1,846 candidates representing 39 registered political parties would be vying for a five-year term for 300 seats in Bangladesh’s unicameral parliament.

By Courtney Grogan

The Vatican announced Thursday that Pope Francis will travel to Bulgaria and Macedonia May 5-7, 2019, with a stop in Mother Teresa’s hometown of Skopje.

The pope will spend the bulk of the trip in the Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Rakovski before visiting Skopje, Macedonia, the birthplace of Mother Teresa, on May 7.

While Mother Teresa is commonly associated with Calcutta, India — the city included in her heavenly title of Saint Teresa of Calcutta — she spent the first 17 years of her life as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia before receiving her call to a vocation as a missionary sister in 1928.

The Mother Teresa Memorial House in Skopje, the saint’s former home-turned-museum, has welcomed visitors who desired to learn about St. Teresa and venerate one of her relics since 2009.

Pope Francis will be the second pope to visit Bulgaria after St. Pope John Paul II’s visit in 2002.

The motto for Pope Francis’ Bulgarian trip is “Pacem in Terris,” recalling St. John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical of the same name. Before becoming pope, St. John XXIII was the first apostolic visitor and then apostolic delegate to Bulgaria from 1925 to 1931.

Church leaders in both Bulgaria and Macedonia invited Pope Francis to visit their respective countries, the Dec. 13 Vatican message stated.

According to the U.S. State Department, Bulgaria’s Catholics make up only 0.8 percent of its population. Seventy-six percent of Bulgarians are Eastern Orthodox Christian, mostly in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The second largest religious group in the country are Muslims at 10 percent of the population.

In Macedonia, an estimated 65 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian and 33 percent is Muslim.

The Vatican has confirmed that Pope Francis will also visit Panama, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco in 2019 before his trip to Bulgaria and Macedonia.

As Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan are using lame-duck sessions to overturn the outcome of last month’s elections, throwing aside long-standing procedures and basic democratic principles, House Democrats seem determined to throw up roadblocks to limit what they can do with their new majority

Specifically, likely Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is proposing the House adopt pay-as-you-go (paygo) rules that require all new spending be offset with either budget cuts or tax increases.

These rules would also prohibit any new taxes on the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution. Overturning the rules would require a 60 percent supermajority, which means that a substantial number of Republicans would have to be pulled along to get passage.

To see why this is such a poor idea, it’s only necessary to think of many of the proposals that Democrats floated in the recent election.

There is considerable support among Democrats for “Medicare for All,” extending the Medicare program to the whole population. While many do not interpret this as meaning an immediate extension of Medicare to everyone, even lowering the qualifying age to 55 or 60 will mean additional spending.

Under Pelosi’s pay-go rule, this extension would be prohibited unless it was coupled with offsetting budget cuts and/or taxes on the top 20 percent.

There are many Democrats who would support cuts to the military, but realistically these will only go so far. The same applies to additional taxes on the wealthy.

Furthermore, in the case of health care, the most obvious tax is to replace the money that employers now pay in premiums to their insurers with a tax that would be paid to cover the cost of an expanded Medicare program.

It is difficult to believe that many middle-income people would be outraged if the money that their employer deducted from their paychecks for insurance premiums instead went for government-provided health care insurance.

There is a similar story with proposals like free college, free or heavily subsidized child care or green jobs. Does it really make sense, as their first move in the new session of Congress, for Democrats to throw a huge roadblock in front of all these programs?

It is also important to look at the full political context here. The Republicans still control the Senate. Given the fact that Republicans have voted in lockstep for at least the last decade, the prospect of any of these measures getting through the Senate is almost zero.

This means that we are not talking about what actual laws will look like. The legislation passed by House Democrats is giving them a chance to showcase their priorities for a post-2020 world when they may again control the White House and the Senate. The pay-go rules severely hamper their ability to lay out a progressive agenda for the public in advance of the election.

The contrast to the Republicans could not be greater. Trump and Republicans in Congress ran on the promise of a big tax cut. They never said a word about how they would pay for it, they just uttered nonsense about how the tax cut would pay for itself.

They then pushed it through on a straight party line vote and used fabricated budget projections to show that it would be self-financing.

It is already clear that the tax cut will not come close to paying for itself. Instead, the deficit will be considerably larger as a result of the tax cut. Of course, we have seen this story before, it happened with the President George W. Bush tax cut in 2001 and the President Ronald Reagan tax cut in 1981.

The Republicans have paid no political price for repeatedly expanding the deficit to give tax cuts to the wealthy. If Pelosi thinks Democrats will somehow be rewarded for handcuffing themselves so that they can’t even consider bills that will expand the deficit, she is a much less astute politician than most of us give her credit for.

Deficits certainly can be too large, and we don’t want to burden the middle-class with excessive taxes. But all the Democrats in the House understand these facts. They will not pass legislation that is stupid policy and bad politics.

The issue here is whether they need special rules that needlessly narrow the scope of what can be considered. This is what pay-go does, and it is really bad politics in a world where the other party has no respect for any rules whatsoever.

This article originally appeared in The Hill.

“Freedom of the press in the world will cease to exist if a judge in one country is allowed to bar publication of information anywhere in the world.” — Martin Baron, Executive Editor, The Washington Post, Dec 13, 2018

It had been shrouded in secrecy akin to the deepest conspiracy, but the trial of Cardinal George Pell, while not letting much in the way of publicity in Australia, was always going to interest beyond the walls of the Victorian County Court. This was the legal system of a country, and more accurately a state of that country, glancing into the workings of the world’s first global corporation and its unsavoury practices. The Catholic Church, in other words, had been subjected to a stringent analysis, notably regarding the past behaviour of one of its anointed sons.

Cardinal Pell, a high-ranking official of the Catholic Church and financial grand wizard of the Vatican, was found guilty on December 11 of historical child sexual abuses pertaining to two choir boys from the 1990s. But details remain sketchy. We know, for instance, that the number of charges was five, and that the trial has been designated “the cathedral trial”. We also know that a first trial failed to reach a verdict.

Scrutiny from the Australian press gallery and those who had been victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests over the years, was limited for reasons peculiar to this country’s ambivalence to open discourse. They were told that would be so.

The Pell case is a classic instance of suppression laws in action and, more particularly, their appeal in the Victorian jurisdiction that was not dimmed with the passage of the Open Courts Act 2013 (Vic). Section 4 of the Act noting “a presumption in favour of disclosure of information to which a court or tribunal must have regard in determining whether to make a suppression order” has proven a fairly weak exercise.

Victorian judges, such as former Victorian Supreme Court Justice Betty King, have gone so far as to boast about the frequency they have handed down such orders. Former Victorian Chief Justice Marilyn Warren, writing in October 2015, illustrated the classic struggle between the media which “has its own interests” and the judicial system. “Crime,” she reminds us prosaically, “sells.”

Little wonder then that Judge Peter Kidd relented to the prosecutor’s request in the Pell case that a gag order be imposed ahead of the trial “to prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice.”

The suppression order issued by the Victorian County Court is still in force, covering “all Australian states and territories” and “any website or other electronic or broadcast format accessible within Australia”. The reason lies in a connected trial, known as the swimmers’ trial, in which Pell is also being tried for allegedly abusing two other boys at a Ballarat swimming pool in Victoria during the 1970s, proceedings of which will take place in late February or early March.

Australian newspapers have engaged in what can only be regarded as an absurd song and dance that demonstrates the hollow, ceremonial nature of such restrictions. Melbourne’s The Age noted how “we are unable to report their identity due to a suppression order.” (Tantalising!) The paper did, however, note that, “Google searches for the person’s name surged on Wednesday, particularly in Victoria. Two of the top three search results on the suppressed name showed websites that were reporting the charges, the verdict and the identity of the person in full.”

The Daily Telegraph huffed with “the nation’s biggest story” in its front-page headline. “A high profile Australian with a worldwide reputation has been convicted of an awful crime.” In evident terror, the paper has done its best to delete any links on the web to that initial story. Likewise the Herald Sun of Melbourne, despite its agitated bold headline “Censored.”

Other Australian outlets have also been cowed. Josh Butler of 10 Daily sounded anguished. “We’d like to tell you what happened, instead of speaking in riddles, but our legal system – specifically, the legal system of one Australian state – forbids us from telling you.” In the words of feminist and voluble website Mamamia, “we too cannot report on the person’s identity or the crime they have been found guilty of.” Spot the Australian in question, but in heaven’s name do not mention him in Australia proper. The pathology of suppression proves irresistible.

It was left to foreign press services to run with the story, or not, as it were, leaving an absurd spectacle of neurotic meanderings in its wake. Some agencies, like Reuters and Associated Press, played the cautious card and resisted temptation. Reuters’ spokeswoman, Heather Carpenter, insisted that Reuters was “subject to the laws of the countries in which we operate”.

In the United States, the reaction was particularly determined, though the enthusiasm did not spread to The New York Times, despite that paper having given extensive coverage to the allegations themselves. The paper’s deputy general counsel, David McCraw, claimed that the paper was abiding by the court’s order “because of the presence of our bureau there. It is deeply disappointing that we are unable to present this important story to our readers in Australia and elsewhere.” Press coverage of judicial proceedings, he insisted, was “a fundamental safeguard of justice and fairness.”

The Washington Post, National Review, Daily Beast and National Public Radio were all busy in their efforts to run stories on Pell. The Daily Beast has, however, geoblocked reports to Australian readers. In the words of the outlet’s editor, Noah Shachtman, “We understood there could be legal, and even criminal, consequences if we ran this story.”

In a global, relentless information environment, one accessible at the search on a phone, suppression orders retain an anachronistic insensibility. When it comes to matters concerning an individual of such standing and influence as Cardinal Pell, including the clandestine institution he has represented for decades, the courts risk looking all too cosy with creatures of power.

While barristers rightly seek to defend their clients and hope, often elusively, for that fair trial to be extracted from a prejudiced milieu, such court directives smack of theatrical illusion rather than impact. Imposing suppression orders can be a case less of assisting the accused have a fair trial than preventing discussing what is already available. To make them function in any effectual manner would be to select jurors hermetic and immune to the Internet or an interest in foreign news sources – a nigh impossible task. Victoria’s judges, like King Canute, are attempting to control the tide in vain.

By Iqbal Jassat*

Recent events in South Africa have had a profoundly positive impact on Palestine.

It may not be music for this country’s pro-Israel lobby but certainly welcomed by the broad spectrum of solidarity movements active in pursuit of freedom and justice for the Palestinian cause.

These milestone events have provided Palestinian Resistance Movements, particularly Hamas, as well as solidarity activists, renewed hope that the pendulum is slowly but surely swinging away from the colonial settler regime Israel.

Among these current events that rekindled hope has been an important judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and the equally significant Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the ANC Parliamentary Caucus and the Hamas-led one in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The SCA judgment upheld an appeal by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) against an earlier ruling by the Equality court which found COSATU guilty of anti-Semitism and hate speech.

As explained by COSATU, it and its International Secretary Bongani Masuku were hauled before the Equality court by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies in an attempt to “silence and isolate” the federation and all supporters of freedom for the Palestinian people.

Having successfully appealed and delivered a crushing defeat to Israel’s lobby, COSATU has vowed to continue being vocal against the “apartheid rule of Israel” and to ensure workers’ rights to offer solidarity, freedom of expression and intensify Palestine’s struggle for justice.

Sizwe Pamla of COSATU, said:

“We will never keep quiet in the face of extreme barbarism of Israel against the Palestinian people. The ruthless massacre of innocent children, women, and ordinary Palestinians in Gaza represents the continuation of the colonial, apartheid and racist policy of occupation against the Palestinians.”

The other development which has sparked excitement in the camp opposed to Israel’s obnoxious racist policies is the groundbreaking MOU signed between the ANC’s Parliamentary caucus with its Palestinian counterpart. Important to note that the Palestinian delegation was led by Mahmoud al Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas, based in Occupied Gaza who survived several assassination attempts.

Held up as a hero of Palestine’s freedom struggle, al Zahar who lost members of his family including his sons during Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza’s besieged civilian population continues to play a crucial leadership role. That Israel regards him as an “enemy” and a “terrorist”, adds profound value to his signature on the MOU.

Following the ANC’s December 2017 unanimous resolution to downgrade South Africa’s embassy in Tel Aviv, which a year later awaits action despite the recall of its ambassador, many activists will be skeptical, justifiably so, about whether the MOU is worth the ink its written on.

However as a former underground leader and subsequent minister in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet Ronnie Kasrils pointed out at a dinner hosted by the Media Review Network for Hamas, the responsibility to ensure that government makes good on its promises to the Palestinians lies with civil society and human rights activists.

The commitment contained in the MOU seeks to introduce practical steps in mobilizing the world community in ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It further seeks to mobilize for an immediate end to the Zionist regime’s aggression, killings, torture, and human rights abuses.

While Hamas was in parliament in Cape Town, a motion to rename one of Johannesburg’s prominent roads, Sandton Drive, after Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was passed in the Joburg City council.

Though largely symbolic, a name change in the financial hub of this country to reflect popular admiration for Palestine’s freedom icons is a huge step. Indeed it is in step with widespread public opinion which believes in standing up for Palestinian rights.

And to drive the message of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) home, Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape province, disinvited Israeli participants to its academic conference entitled “Recognition, Reparation, Reconciliation: the Light and Shadow of Historical Trauma”.

This has been a fatal blow, both to Netanyahu’s criminal regime as well as its lobby in South Africa. The organizers of the conference gave due consideration to the arguments presented by solidarity activists who cited Israel’s racist “nation-state law” and many more horrendous violations of fundamental human rights including the draconian laws of its military administration in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As Palestine’s Resistance Movements develop more effective deterrence capacity to obstruct Israel’s military operations, its global campaign to harness meaningful support has shown encouraging results.

Mirroring South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, BDS has resonance. After all, as Ilan Pappe has warned, Israel’s incremental genocidal policies cannot be ignored. South Africa is thus well placed to respond to the myriad of dehumanizing conditions faced by Palestine.

*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com

Privatization. Privatization. Privatization. It’s all you hear from Republicans. But what does it actually mean?

Generations ago, America built an entire national highway system, along with the largest and best public colleges and universities in the world. Also public schools and national parks, majestic bridges, dams that generated electricity for entire regions, public libraries and public research.

But around 1980, the moneyed interests began pushing to privatize much of this, giving it over to for-profit corporations. Privatization, the argument went, would boost efficiency and reduce taxes.

The reality has been that privatization too often only boosts corporate bottom lines.  

For example, consider Trump’s proposal for infrastructure. It depends on private developers, who would make money off of both tax subsidies and private tolls. So the public would get charged twice, without any guarantee that the resulting roads, bridges, or rapid transportation systems would be where they’re most needed.

It’s true that private for-profit corporations can do certain tasks very efficiently. And some privatization has worked. But the goal of corporations is to maximize profits for shareholders, not to serve the public interest.

The question should be: What’s best for the public? Here are five rules of thumb for when public services should not be privatized:

1. Don’t privatize when the purpose of the service is to bring us together – reinforcing our communities, helping us connect with one another across class and race, linking up Americans who’d otherwise be isolated or marginalized. 

This is why we have a public postal service that serves everyone, even small rural communities where for-profit private carriers often won’t go. This is why we value public education and need to be very careful that charter schools and other forms of so-called school choice don’t end up dividing our children and our communities rather than pulling them together.  

2. Don’t privatize when the service is less costly when paid for through tax revenues than through prices set by for-profit corporations. 

America’s hugely expensive for-profit health-insurance system, for example, is designed to sign up healthy people and avoid sick people, while running up huge tabs for advertising and marketing, and giving big rewards to shareholders and executives. Which is why the administrative costs of Medicare are a fraction of the costs of for-profit medical insurance – and why we need Medicare for all.

3. Don’t privatize when the people who are supposed to get the service have no power to complain when services are poor. 

This is why for-profit prison corporations have proven again and again to violate the constitutional rights of prisoners, and why for-profit detention centers for refugee children at the border pose such grave risks.

4. Don’t privatize when those who are getting the service have no way to know they’re receiving poor quality. 

The marketers of for-profit colleges, for example, have every incentive to exploit young people and their parents because the value of the degrees they’re offering can’t easily be known. Which is why non-profit colleges and universities have proven far more trustworthy.

5. Finally, don’t privatize where for-profit corporations face insufficient competition to keep prices under control. 

Giant for-profit defense contractors with power over how contracts are awarded generate notorious cost overruns because they’re accountable mainly to their shareholders, not to the public.

In other words, for-profit corporations can do some things very well. Including, especially, maximizing shareholder returns. But when the primary goal is to serve the public, rather than shareholders, we need to be careful not to sacrifice the public interest to private profits.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke on Wednesday after he himself asked to do so and following a request from various parliamentary groups to report on the European Council (Article 50) on Brexit, the political situation in Catalonia.

Sánchez highlighted the parallels and connections between Brexit and the situation in Catalonia, for which there is a single common response: the need to strengthen the European project and the Spain project. The Prime Minister said he believes that “Catalan independentism stifles the European project by challenging the collective Spain project” and that “the strength of union is based on integration, never segregation”.

Sánchez defended the Spanish Constitution, a plural Spain, proud of its territorial diversity, the self-rule of its autonomous regions and dialogue over unilateralism. “Self-rule”, said Sánchez, “means social harmony, and that is what we must preserve as political leaders; our social harmony is what is at stake here, not independence”.

He also recalled that the Government of Spain will not allow the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra [Regional Police Force of Catalonia] to be derelict in their duties and, if that attitude continues, the Government of Spain will deploy the State law enforcement agencies to Catalonia to ensure public security. The Government of Spain will not accept constitutional order to be violated and “everything found to be outside the framework of the Spanish Constitution and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy will receive a calm but firm, proportional and resounding response from the Social and Democratic State under the Rule of Law,” Sánchez said.

In his speech, Sánchez confirmed that a Council of Ministers will be held on 21 December in Barcelona and that it will approve an increase to the minimum wage in 2019 to 900 euros, which is an increase of 22% and the largest increase since 1977. “A rich country”, he said, “cannot have poor workers”.

Guarantees for the people living in Campo de Gibraltar

Sánchez stressed that, as is the case with the Catalan pro-independence movement, Brexit “was launched on an unprecedented campaign of lies and misinformation” and that “we are facing a movement that goes against history and against reason” that “will bring dire consequences for the United Kingdom,” he warned.

As regards the Withdrawal Agreement signed by the Member States of the European Union on November 25 in Brussels, Sánchez stressed that it safeguards the rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom and vice-versa, “an absolute priority for the Government of Spain”, he said. In terms of markets and services, it also guarantees the free movement of goods commercialised following the end of the transitional period established, ending on December 31, 2020.

Sánchez highlighted the Government of Spain’s priority to offer peace of mind and security to the people living in Campo de Gibraltar and said that Spain “has more than achieved the goals proposed at the start of negotiations”, going on to stress that “Article 184 does not include Gibraltar within the territorial scope of the future relationship” and saying that the Political Declaration from the European Council and the European Commission firstly requires prior agreement from Spain to negotiate any agreement by the European Union that applies to Gibraltar and, secondly, excludes Gibraltar from the general negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom.

AKDA Engineering Group Sri Lanka which designed the world’s first underwater night club, spa and wine cellar has also completed building the world’s largest underwater restaurant with a glass tunnel.

Eng. A K Diyabalanage, Chairman, Managing Director AKDA said that all these innovation were ‘not copies’, but original engineering marvels from Sri Lanka. He said that it took Colombo Dockyard five months to build this restaurant which is 22.5 meters long and weighs about 220 tons. The total investment is around US$ 1.5 million.

The state of the art under water restaurants could accommodate nearly 30 people and would be delivered to Uthuru Maafara Luxury Hotel island owned by Akbar Brothers in the Maldives next Monday, by sea. The underwater restaurant would have two lifts to carry guest and will also offer 180 degrees of underwater sea view. It would be placed six meters below sea level.

Diyabalanage said that this is the fifth underwater leisure sector project they have completed and delivered to the Maldives hotels. “We are now looking at accepting bigger orders from all over the world including buyers from Europe to help Sri Lanka to get more foreign exchange.”

“We started this enterprise in 1985 as a local construction company specializing as an offshore contractor and a craft builder. Over the years we’ve diversified into many and varied disciplines because of our manifold forte in agriculture; plantation and realty; designers, consultants and contractors.”

AKDA Group comprises of AKDA Engineering Lanka (Private) Limited specializing in steel buildings, tank farms, water purification plants and products manufacturing equipment: AKDA Engineers International (Private) Limited was established for the designing and construction of roads, airports, harbours, shipyards, craft building, on shore and off shore hotels.

“We have also built the futuristic Air Traffic Control Tower in Male International Airport, Republic of Maldives largest Harbour, Dharavandhoo Domestic Airport in Maldives. In addition we have so far constructed 36 harbours and 8 airports and this is our 6th underwater facility project. These projects have helped Sri Lanka to earn over US$1 billion so far.”

He said that he played a major role in the development of Trincomalee harbor and the Navy facility. “Unfortunately no major developments are happening now and the Trincomalee tourism, maritime potential is underutilized.

Diyabalanage said that they also developed a new typology of architecture known as aquatecture meant to provide either leisurely temporary accommodation or permanent residence when time on land is no longer an option.

By Daniel Heler*

Serbia’s military industry build-up brings money and has the potential to reshape the country´s strategic position in the Balkans  – although it also creates the danger of a regional arms race.

While Serbia has steadfastly maintained its neutral military status since 2007, that has not stopped it from engaging in extensive cooperation with Russia and associated Eurasian countries as well as with NATO and the EU, including multinational military drills and peacekeeping missions abroad.

In fact, when it comes to exercises and missions, the Serbian army cooperates more intensively with NATO and EU member states than it does with Russia.

Despite that, NATO and especially the US are still broadly perceived as a challenge and as an unwelcome partner in Serbia, while most Serbs see Russia as a friendly power.

This is not only the case in Serbia but also in the Serb-dominated entity of Bosnia, Republika Srpska, and in other Serbian communities in post-Yugoslav states, such as Montenegro.

Serbia’s defence industry is  currently growing and undergoing significant modernization, while Belgrade builds up its military muscle in cooperation with Russia, which is inevitably framing the wider geopolitics of the Balkans and beyond.

The defence industry generates over 500 million euros annually, a significant income for Serbia. It consists of about 200 companies and research institutes and employs over 10,000 people.

The industry produces all kinds of weapons, except for high-end armaments, such as supersonic aviation, long-range missiles and navy vessels.

Recently, Serbia has made moves to ease its regulations on the defence industry, allowing foreign investors to own up to 49 per cent of such enterprises.

A significant cash flow goes directly to the state budget from state-owned arms enterprises and from the state firm with a monopoly on arms trading, Yugoimport-SDPR.

This income has become more notable in recent years, given the rise in armed conflicts across the globe.

However, some untransformed companies in the defence sector do not make a profit and pose a financial burden on the country.

Therefore, if Serbia wants to re-establish itself as a truly important global trader in weapons, the industry needs more access to high technology, more contemporary management, greater capital inflow and more high-end markets for its products.

Since 2012, despite talk about possible joint ventures with Russia, including the modernization of obsolete tanks and armoured vehicles for the army, no significant projects have been realized.

And when it comes to exports, Russia and Serbia are more like competitors than partners on the global market, as Serbian manufacturers produce roughly the same kinds of goods as their Russian counterparts when it comes to many technologically less-demanding armaments.

Western arms companies, mostly under direct or indirect state control, could potentially offer financial injections and know-how to the Serbian defence industry, which needs more capital and high-tech transfers.

Russia, on the other hand, in its present economic situation, can provide only technological assistance.

Naturally, there is a question why Russia should want to help re-build the Serbian weapons industry and expand its opportunities on the global arms market.

Extending such a favour could probably only be a part of a broader deal, which includes concessions by Belgrade on important geopolitical matters of interest to Moscow.

On a limited scale, cooperation could be realized in possible joint ventures designed to rearm the Serbian military.

There is also recently a more active Chinese factor that could potentially bring in not only capital and technological advances but also, most importantly, opportunities to export to the huge Chinese market.

The same applies to possible investors from the Gulf states.

Danger of regional arms race:

Serbia’s 40,000-strong armed forces currently rely mostly on out-dated Yugoslav and Soviet arms and equipment.

Thus, the army urgently needs new acquisitions and modernization to upgrade its weaponry.

Apart from domestic suppliers, an agreement on military-technical cooperation with Russia is currently on the table.

In line with this agreement, Serbia is acquiring 10 outdated MiG-29 fighters, some donated from Belarus, 30 T-72C main battle tanks and 30 BRDM-2 armoured vehicles, MI-17 and possibly MI-35 helicopters, and Antonov An-26 transport aeroplanes.

These are being bought for very favourable prices though the costs for subsequent modernization are less advantageous.

Western military supplies, largely limited to light weapons and vehicles, account for a much less significant part of the weaponry held by the Serbian armed forces.

There are also suggestions about air defence acquisitions from Russia, such as the famous S-300 system, designed to better secure Serbian airspace and restrain a possible threat, primarily posed by the West and its allies in the post-Yugoslav space, in case regional conflicts escalate.

These purchases are strongly supported by the more anti-Western nationalist politicians, including influential members of the ruling Progressive and Socialist parties.

The expected general build-up of the Serbian military power, not only of the air force and air defence, together with simultaneous developments, especially in Croatia, has the potential to lead to a dangerous regional arms race, however, with implications for all of Europe’s security.

Bosnia’s Serb-led entity, Republika Srpska, under the leadership of Milorad Dodik, also aims to arm its own police force.

Some reports say it aims also to re-establish its own military forces, which were originally recognized by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.

So far, the entity, which is pushing for greater independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has progressed in the militarization of its police forces after acquiring 2,500 assault rifles recently delivered by the Serbian manufacturer Zastava.

In security affairs, the Republika Srpska maintains close relations with both Serbia and Russia. Its police force is being trained by Russian officers and intensive cooperation in counter-terrorism and police and internal security education has been established over the past few years.

In geopolitical terms, Serbia’s ambitions to maintain its neutrality, while also re-equipping and building up its armed forces and boosting arms exports, could reshape Serbia’s position, not only in the region but also to an extent vis-à-vis both the West and the East.

Given the recent political developments in former Yugoslavia, it is not surprising that Serbia aims to strengthen its position in the military sphere.

Along with a growing income from arms exports [even to some highly problematic destinations] it represents an important factor in the Serbian economy and the country’s general position within the region.

The opinions expressed in the Comment section are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.

This article was written as part of the project “Western Balkans at the Crossroads: Assessing Non-Democratic External Influence Activities,” led by the Prague Security Studies Institute, and was also published in local language on the web site of the Hoenrich Boell Stiftung in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

By Wilder Alejandro Sanchez*

The Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) has taken the next step in its quest to become a Central Asian investment hub by opening the first session of the Astana International Exchange (AIX) in mid-November. Considering that the AIFC only officially commenced its operations in July, it is too early to predict whether it will be successful or not, but, for the time being, Astana can be pleased with the AIFC’s promising first steps.

The author of this report has previously discussed the AIFC for Geopolitical Monitor (“The Astana International Financial Centre: Kazakhstan’s Ambitious Step Forward”), hence we will solely focus on recent developments.

The first session of the AIX included the trading of shares for Kazatomprom, the world’s largest producer of uranium. “We have executed a successful IPO [initial public offering], proving the status of the world uranium industry leader, and have become the first company listed on the Astana International Exchange,” said Galymzhan Pirmatov, CEO of Kazatomprom National Company. Unconditional trading in Kazatomprom’s global depositary receipts began on November 19, KazInform reported. Additionally, some 49 foreign and 16 Kazakh companies, as well as some 2,700 Kazakh citizens presented their shares on the stock exchange on opening day, according to other reports.

Another important development is that Goldman Sachs has acquired 108,480 ordinary shares. These represent a “4.1 per cent of the total issued share capital (post-money) of AIX while simultaneously entering into a 5 year put option with AIFC to protect Goldman Sachs against a decline in the value of the shares below the purchase price,” the AIFC explained.

In the near future, there are plans for the the AIX to trade shares of other state-run companies such as Kazakhtelecom, Air Astana, KazMunaiGas, among others. The obvious objective, other than to cement AIX as the country’s premier stock exchange, is to convince foreign investors that they too should utilize this new agency. Adding to the enticement is the fact that the AIFC’s International Arbitration Centre is based on English Common law.  Moreover, if the AIFC is trying to attract Western investment it helps to have a brand name like Goldman Sachs attached – not to mention NASDAQ and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Curiously,  coinciding with the AIX’s first trading session, a delegation from Slovakia, headed by Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, visited the AIFC’s facilities, hinting that the Central European government may be interested in the new initiative.

Dr. Ariel Cohen, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, praised the AIFC at a 4 December conference in Washington DC titled “Future Calling: Infrastructure Development in Central Asia” for what it could mean for Kazakhstan. He explained that the AIFC “is a transition from a 20th century natural resources-based proposition to a 21st century investment and financial services added value proposition.”  Meanwhile, another panelist, Catullus Helmer, Co-Founder and Partner at Enovid LLP, argued that “the AIFC and the AIX have already been a success” if we regard these newborn initiatives not as the next London Stock Exchange, but rather as “a haven, bellwether, and a benchmark for the rule of law, institutions, and the business environment.”

Kazatomprom: Up for (Partial) Auction

As previously mentioned, Kazakh heavyweight Kazatomprom which, by the company’s own estimates is valued at between USD$3-4 billion, was the first company to be traded at AIX. Apart from producing uranium, the company also “manufactures and sells beryllium and tantalum products; produces, transfers, and sells electric and heat energy; produces and sells potable, technical, and distilled water; among other services, according to Bloomberg.  “Kazatomprom also traded at the London Stock Exchange, raising $451 million. 5.5 million shares were sold in Astana, including 3.93 million actual shares and 1.6 million of Global Depositary Receipts,” reported Forbes.

The selling of Kazatomprom shares is important, but should not be overestimated. As the Jamestown Foundation explains, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna “will remain the majority shareholder and will continue to exert effective control over company operations;” hence it comes as no surprise that the plan is to sell no more than 15 percent of shares to outside investors. Then again, as the article also notes, “if Kazatomprom becomes a public company, it will be only the second major uranium miner in the world, after Canada’s Cameco, to obtain such a status.”  The partial privatization of this company is a good example of Astana giving up (partial) control of its profitable state-run enterprises, beginning with the crown jewel,  Kazatomprom, in order to attrack a more global clientele.

Ambitious Goals

The AIFC’s raison d’être is ambitious: to become the country’s main financial hub and one of the leading financial centers of Asia in the shortest possible time, which will help the Central Asian state become one of the top 30 most developed nations by 2050. The Centre was launched this past January, though it only started operating in July; and in November the AIX opened.

The role of Goldman Sachs and the partial privatization of an important company like Kazatomprom are attractive first steps. Another factor that could also attract investors is the Central Asian state’s ranking in the “Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs” report by the World Bank. In the latest report, Kazakhstan ranks number 36 in the “Ease of Doing Business Ranking” section,  with Switzerland at 33, Japan at 34, Russia at 35 and Slovenia at 37, out of 190 states that were analyzed. The next Central Asian state is Uzbekistan at number 74.  Even more, the report notes that “thirteen economies [including Kazakhstan] passed legislation in 2016/17 that increased corporate transparency requirements,” in addition to strengthening minority investor protections by increasing shareholder rights and their role in major corporate decisions. Thus, Kazakhstan is in an expectant place and we will have to see if the AIFC manages to increase the country’s position further in the coming years.

Of course, the future of the AIFC is not free of challenges. One obvious issue is that the Kazakh market and capital alone are not big enough to remain constantly active, and attractive. At the Atlantic Council event, Dr. Cohen explained that the AIFC can succeed “provided it is not limited just to Kazakhstan.” Hence, AIFC’s priority is to present itself as the natural conduit though which investors can make business with other Central Asian nations.

This will be achieved if the AIFC’s agencies are successful. For example, if the International Arbitration Centre successfully manages a dispute between Western company “X” and Central Asian country “Y” in a manner which both sides regard as professional and whose outcome is regarded as acceptable, this will  increase the AIFC’s international pedigree. We will have to wait and see how the Arbitration Centre deals with cases once they start coming in, but at least the IAC seems to be well staffed, as it is chaired by Barbara Dohmann QC, a well-known UK commercial barrister. The Kazakhs have imported “high quality expertise” to the IAC, remarked Dr. Cohen at the Atlantic Council event.

There is also a foreign policy aspect to the AIFC’s success, as the Kazakh government will have to maintain cordial and friendly relations with the other Central Asian states (relations with Uzbekistan have steadily improved since the new president came to power) in order to maintain borders open in order to promote freedom of movement and trade.

The AIFC and Kazakhstan

If the AIFC works as expected, and greater investment and industries come from Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States, this will also help diversify Kazakhstan’s economy. An October 2018 report by the Project on Prosperity and Development, part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, entitled “The Future of Global Stability The World of Work in Developing Countries Kazakhstan Case Study,” explains this situation well. “Kazakhstan was one of the fastest-growing economies in the world during the natural resources boom of the 1990s,” the report explains, adding that it “has shown great progress in formal job creation. Between 2003 and 2013, annual employment growth was 2.1 percent, compared to the total labor force growth of 1.7 percent. During this period, a total 1.5 million jobs were created.”

However, there is government-acknowledged over-reliance on natural resource extraction, namely oil and gas. The CSIS report argues that, “construction, mining, and agribusiness are among the sectors projected to be the most promising for economic growth in the next 10 to 15 years, but challenges to the labor market remain,” including a large informal job sector. If oriented correctly, the AIFC could bring companies and externally-backed projects that would help diversify the Kazakh economy: e.g. constructing roads to help the agricultural sector.

Conclusion

There is an understandable degree of international skepticism about the AIFC’s ambitious objectives. Plenty of projects around the world begin with great fanfare only to collapse. However, what the AIFC has achieved in its firsts months of operations is commendable, which should help convince the international financial community to look at the AIFC as viable conduit for investment in Kazakhstan, and potentially the rest of Central Asia.

*Wilder Alejandro Sanchez is an analyst who focuses on geopolitical, military, and cybersecurity issues. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com or any institutions with which the author is associated.

By Dr. Arshad M. Khan*

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entered the Second World War.  A war of horrors, it normalized the intensive, barbaric bombing of civilian populations.  If the Spanish Civil War gave us Guernica and Picasso’s wrenching painting, WW2 offered up worse:  London, Berlin, Dresden to name a few, the latter eloquently described in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter House Five.”  Against Japan, the firebombing of Tokyo, and above all the revulsion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki radiated a foretaste of ending life on the planet.

Reparations demanded from Germany had led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and a thirst for revenge.  Thus Hitler demanded France’s 1940 surrender in the same railway carriage where the humiliating armistice was signed in 1918.

If the war to end all wars — its centenary remembrance a month ago — killed 20 million plus, the successor tripled the score.  Disrupted agriculture, severed supply chains, fleeing civilians, starvation and misery; civilian deaths constituting  an inordinate majority in our supposedly civilized world.

One of the young men baling out of a burning bomber was George H. W. Bush.  He was rescued but his crew who also baled out were never found, a thought that is said to have haunted him for the rest of his life.  He went on to serve eight years as vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then four more as president.  Last week he passed away and was honored with a state funeral service in Washington National Cathedral.

His legacy includes the first Iraq war and the liberation of Kuwait.  While he avoided the hornet’s nest of ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq itself, the war’s repercussions led to the Clinton sanctions and the deaths of half a million children.  The UN representative overseeing the limited oil-for-food program, Irishman Denis Halliday, resigned in disgust.  Not to forget the infamous answer by Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.  Asked by Leslie Stahl if it was worth the lives of 500,000 children … more than that died in Hiroshima, she answered:  “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”  (CBS 60 Minutes program, May 12, 1996).

Note the “we” in her answer.  Who else does that include but our “I-feel-your-pain” Bill Clinton.  Hypocrisy, arm-twisted donations to the Clinton Foundation while wife Hillary was Secretary of State in the Obama administration; her shunning of the official and secure State Department email server in favor of a personal server installed at her request and the subsequent selective release of emails.  Well who cares about verifiable history these days anyway as the following demonstrates.

Yes, there was another anniversary this week for a different kind of war.  This time in India.  After securing freedom from the British, a secular tradition was proudly espoused by the patrician Nehru and the epitome of nonviolence, Gandhi.  It is now in the process of being trampled in a war against minorities.  The communal war includes the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat for which Narendra Modi was barred from the U.S., a ban lifted only when he became prime minister.  He, his party and his allies have been also responsible for the destruction of the Babri Mosque.  An organized Hindu mob tore it down on December 6, 1992; hence the shameful anniversary.  Built on the orders of the first Mughal emperor Babur, its purpose was to cement relations with Hindu rajas by also sanctifying for Muslims a place holy to Hindus and held traditionally to be the birthplace of Rama — famous from Hindu epics for fighting evil with the assistance of a monkey god’s army … although one is advised to avoid close contact with temple monkeys when visiting.

As the first Mughal, Babur’s hold on India was tenuous and he actively sought alliances with Hindu rulers of small states against the pathans whose sultan he had just defeated.  That affinity continued during the entirety of Mughal rule and one manifestation was frequent intermarriage with Rajputs.  Several emperors had Hindu mothers including Shah Jahan the builder of the Taj Mahal.  In the end, Babur’s fears were warranted because Sher Shah Suri did marshal those pathan forces and throw out his son Humayun, the second Mughal ruler.  It was only Sher Shah’s untimely death during the capture of Kalinjar (a Hindu fort then held by Raja Kirat Singh) that made Humayun’s return possible.

The destruction of the mosque was a historical wrong if ever there was one, but then Mr. Modi has never been bothered by history.  He is also not bothered that his party’s fairy tale revision of school history books is a scandal.  For similar reasons, Indian history on Wikipedia is too frequently tarnished, requiring verification from other sources to be properly informed.

The wrongs of communities, just as the wrongs of war, can lead to repercussions unanticipated and cataclysmic.  Yugoslavia is an example in living memory.  Clearly, any ruler of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country contemplating a path of communal dominance must take note before he is hoisted with his own petard.

This article first appeared on Counterpunch.org  

*About the author: Dr. Arshad M. Khan is a former Professor based in the US. Educated at King’s College London, OSU and The University of Chicago, he has a multidisciplinary background that has frequently informed his research. Thus he headed the analysis of an innovation survey of Norway, and his work on SMEs published in major journals has been widely cited. He has for several decades also written for the press: These articles and occasional comments have appeared in print media such as The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and others. On the internet, he has written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, Eurasia Review and Modern Diplomacy among many. His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in its Congressional Record.

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

ASEAN’s rapid urbanisation has implications for important issues such as strained infrastructure, rising inequalities, and public safety and security. However, if ASEAN makes full use of technology by bringing its smart cities together, a vision of sustainable and liveable cities across the region will become achievable.

By Phidel Vineles*

ASEAN’s demographic and economic growth has led to rapid urbanisation. According to a report by Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore, an additional 90 million people are expected to move to cities across the region by 2030. In fact, the largest growth is expected in medium-sized cities of between 200,000 and two million populations, and these cities are projected to drive 40% of the region’s growth.

Against this backdrop, it is important for ASEAN cities to adopt “smart” technologies to address the challenges in urban development such as traffic congestion, pollution, and strained infrastructure. With the establishment of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN), which is an initiative of Singapore for the 2018 ASEAN Chairmanship, it gives ASEAN member states a leeway to adopt cities-level mechanism for achieving a vision of sustainable and liveable cities.

Ground-Breaking Initiative

ASCN has 26 pilot cities from the 10 ASEAN member states. It is a collaborative platform where these cities across the region would work together towards the goal of smart and sustainable urban development. To have a good representation, each ASEAN member state nominates a national representative to the network, and each city nominates a Chief Smart City Officer.

Through this, it allows a representation both at the national and municipal levels to facilitate cooperation on smart cities development.

To help ASCN achieve a sustainable urban development, the ASEAN Smart Cities Framework was developed to serve as a non-binding guide to facilitate smart city development in each ASCN city in the region. It consists of three strategic outcomes or objectives: competitive economy, sustainable environment, and high quality of life.

Smart cities help economies become competitive by leveraging innovation and entrepreneurship that will help generate business and job opportunities. They also promote sustainable environment by employing sustainable green technology and energy. Smart cities also enhance the well-being of people by applying innovative solutions, especially on key services such as education and services.

Smart Cities Come with Opportunities

ASCN allows ASEAN to capitalise on new technologies for innovation. For example, there is an opportunity for ASEAN to develop and improve their infrastructure through technological innovations in urban planning. In Thailand, the government established the Phuket Smart City Vision, which aims to boost tourism using big data and analytics.

One of its projects is The City Data Platform, which is used to understand tourist behaviour in Phuket collected from Wi-Fi, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and social media. The data collected on popular locations that tourists visited as they connected to Wi-Fi is also used to ensure their safety.

A smart city initiative also helps promote the well-being of people. For example, Indonesia’s fifth largest city, Makassar, initiated its Smart City Plan in 2014 to create a people-centric and sustainable city. One of its programmes is the mobile health services, which is known as Dottoro’ta. Its services include diagnosis, emergency care, and follow-up care, which are available 24 hours every day.

Safety and security are also assured through smart city projects. In the Philippines, Davao City established its own Public Safety and Security Command Centre (PSSCC) to oversee activities related to safety and security. The PSSCC adopts technology capabilities such as CCTV surveillance system and Geographical Information System (GIS), which is used to analyse spatial information and edit data in maps.

It also raised the efficiency of innovative services through the adoption of smart technologies. Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative (SNI) aims to provide an open and accessible national e-payment infrastructure to facilitate simple and seamless digital transactions. In fact, Singapore’s banking industry launched FAST (Fast and Secure Transfers) in 2014, which allows having a money transfer system between consumers and businesses across different banks.

Implementation Is Key

Yet these opportunities will be harnessed successfully if challenges of implementing smart city initiatives are addressed. Since access to the Internet is required to fully benefit from digital technology, ASEAN member states should work together to address digital divide.

For example, Singapore sits atop the ranking on the Digital Adoption Index (2016), while other countries in the region are in a distant place – Malaysia (41st), Brunei (58th), Thailand (61st), Vietnam (91st), Philippines (101st), Indonesia (109th), Cambodia (123rd), Lao PDR (159th), and Myanmar (160th).

Other countries in ASEAN also experience the grip of high cost of adopting high-speed Internet. In Singapore, high-speed Internet cost is only at US$0.05 per megabit per month, which is more affordable than in Thailand (US$0.42), Indonesia (US$1.39), Vietnam (US$2.41), the Philippines (US$2.69), and Malaysia (US$3.16).

Insufficient digital talent base could also hold ASEAN back from harnessing the opportunities of digital economy. A report by Bain & Company (2018) said that 45% of SMEs in the region are lacking of understanding on digital technology although SMEs represent 99% of total enterprises in ASEAN.

Lack of trust and low consumer awareness could also hinder the uptake of digital services. In fact, around 89% of Malaysians and 79% of Indonesians are having concerns sharing their personal information online and through mobile devices, according to a survey by GSMA Intelligence.

Ultimately, the respective governments and legislatures must design and put in place the relevant legislations and rules to implement the ASCN. However, there are still some regulatory elements that restrict digital economy in the region. For example, Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010, which was enforced in 2013, compels data users to seek approvals from its authorities before moving personal data out of Malaysia’s territories.

Partners and Stakeholders Needed

The government cannot build smart cities alone that is why it is important for them to partner with the private sector to deploy smart solutions technology on a bigger scale. Involving private sector helps create better solutions and value, whether it is in financing, planning experience, and technical expertise.

Developing public awareness on ASCN must be a top priority to disseminate the progress and key achievements of the initiative. Hence, there is a need for social media engagement so that the achievements of ASCN will be communicated on a bigger scale.

It is also important to have a highly coordinated government system like Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Office, which was established to develop and coordinate digital strategies across government agencies. This allows the country to have a proper coordination system with other institutions in designing digital and smart city roadmaps.

Support and partnerships from external partners are also a key for the success of ASCN. Collaborative partnerships can bring not only financing but also technical expertise and operational capabilities. For example, Amata Smart City Chonburi and the Yokohama Urban Solutions Alliance have signed a letter of intent on smart energy management system, which would help Amata Smart City Chonburi for its plan to set up its own Smart Grid Project.

ASCN is instrumental for bringing ASEAN smart cities together. However, realising opportunities of smart cities across the region requires action plans such as involving private sector cooperation, developing public awareness, having a highly coordinated government system, and collaborating with external partners.

*Phidel Vineles is a Senior Analyst in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

76% among farmers want to give up farming, according to the survey, “State of Indian Farmers”, 2018.

By Jayshree Sengupta

With farmers’ protests cropping up all over the country and recently in the national capital, it is the right time to focus on the agrarian distress facing India today. Why are farmers not able to get remunerative prices?  Obviously, the terms of trade (the ratio of agricultural prices to industrial prices) have turned against the farmer which is why the retail inflation rate is low at 3.3 per cent. Agricultural products are facing deflation and it is affecting the lives of millions of people. Around half the population of India is engaged in agriculture and allied industries, yet their contribution to the GDP is only 14 per cent.

Production of cereals has risen over the years, but the productivity of the crops per hectare is below that of China, the US and the EU. While there is availability of subsidised inputs like fertilizers, seeds and power in many States, the costs have risen compared to the returns from farming. Most crop prices have remained below the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and hence the outcry from farmers.

The Swaminathan Committee (2004-06) had recommended that MSP should be 50 per cent above the cost of production. But this has not worked out satisfactorily for farmers. MSP is a guarantee price for farmers’ produce and if market prices fall below MSP, the government agencies are supposed to purchase the entire quantity offered by farmers in the case of 22 commodities.  According to the report of the Shanta Kumar Committee report, appointed by the Modi government in 2015, only 6 per cent of the farmers get the benefit of MSP while 94 per cent do not.

Today, however, the problem is surplus production of some agricultural products, especially in the case of smaller farmers who are not able to sell their produce to the government procurement agencies because it is mainly in the case of rice and wheat, when market prices are below the MSP that the government agencies procure the offered produce.  For other crops, in case of a glut, farmers have to sell to traders at rock bottom prices whereas the urban consumers continue to pay 10 times more.

The problem of low prices affects the small farmers most.

They account for 86.2 per cent of land holdings that are less than 2 hectares. According to the 10^th agricultural census (October 2018) farms have got more fragmented between 2010-11 and 2015-16 and continue to be inequitably distributed and the number of small and marginal farmers have risen by 9 million during the last 5 years.  It is small farmers who are vulnerable, unable to pay back debts and are committing suicides. There have been 270,000 farmer suicides in the last 15 years.

India’s small farmers have multiplied because for 70 years, the fragmentation and sub-division of landholdings have been taking place due to population pressure and the result is smaller and smaller land holdings whose returns from farming are not enough to feed the family. Being short of capital, they are not able to undertake investments that would help productivity to rise or use quality inputs. They lack the advantage of scale even with a rise in productivity.  It is this group of farmers who need help and handholding from the State governments. There could be more NGOs and extension workers who would help in advising small farmers about what crops to grow and how to take advantage of government schemes and access formal sources of credit.  This is because marginal farmers are mostly uneducated and lack awareness which lands them in the clutches of money lenders.

Seventy-six per cent among farmers want to give up farming, according to the survey, “State of Indian Farmers”, 2018, done by the Centre for the Study of Development Societies. It states that the benefits of government schemes and policies are being given to big farmers who have more than 10 hectares and above. Only 10 per cent of poor and small farmers (0.4 to 1.6 hectares) have benefited from schemes and subsidies and only 62 per cent are aware of the MSP. Among those who are aware of the MSP, 64 per cent are not satisfied.

Hence better credit and transportation facilities, warehousing and storage, better access to crop insurance are important for improving the earnings and living conditions of marginal farmers. Higher farm incomes will boost demand for industrial goods which will revive industrial growth.

There is need to have alternative sources of irrigation for small farmers, like drip irrigation and rain water harvesting, which will lead to higher productivity and conservation of water to reduce their dependence on rainfall. There is a crying need for less number of middlemen and more efficient markets in rural areas. The model APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) has all the ingredients for a more efficient agricultural marketing system without middlemen, but it has been adopted only by 18 States.

The setting up of farmer producer companies (FPC) is a way out for small farmers. They can have better incomes as it will lead to aggregating of produce and selling it at better prices. Such entities are a hybrid between a private company and a cooperative society and were created in 2003 after amending the Indian Companies Act of 1956.  They are modelled on Amul, which has been very successful. But unfortunately, only 3000 such FPCs are in existence. According to Niti Ayog, for 6 lakh villages we need 1 lakh FPCs to transform agriculture. In Maharashtra, Maha FPC is successfully engaged in Minimum Support Price procurement on behalf of the government. But FPCs are cash strapped as they have to take loans at interest rates as high as 22 per cent from NBFCs (Non-Banking Financial Companies). This is not sustainable and the problem has to be addressed. Also, FPCs need leadership as in the case of Amul so that they can run smoothly.

Contract farming is another option for small farmers, but it will introduce monopsony by multinationals in farming and could lead to monoculture and affect biodiversity negatively. FPCs, however, can go for contract farming because it has a professional management team that can implement the Model Contract Farming Act with its regulatory framework.

Indigenous and tribal peoples of Asia, are facing complex threats to their survival as distinct peoples. Not only are they confronted with dispossession of their lands and resources, and physical persecution, but they are also faced with the appropriation of their collective knowledge on plants, trees, animals, insects and even land and waters, developed through the ages.

This is according to a book by this author titled ‘The Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Asia’ written for the Minority Rights Group International (MRG) based here in London, now available at Amazon.

Minority Rights Group International is an international human rights organisation founded with the objective of working to secure rights for ethnic, national, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples around the world with international headquarters in London.

The book says traditional knowledge on food, crops and medicinal plants is being taken by multinational companies, while traditional songs and designs are being commercialized for the tourism industry. The issue of indigenous cultural property rights is becoming more and more urgent for indigenous peoples.

Even with the United Nations’ adoption of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there is minimum standard for the protection of indigenous peoples rights, the book asserts. This is because unfortunate international instruments are adversely impacting on indigenous peoples cultural rights. For instance, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPS), put both indigenous peoples and developing nations at a disadvantage by imposing an intellectual property rights regime that does not take into account the diversity of cultures.

Also, Article 8j of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), gives minimal recognition of indigenous peoples rights. It does not protect indigenous peoples from the drive by multinational companies to patent plant and animal materials — resources that are generally found in the biodiverse territories of indigenous peoples — for their potential medicinal and agricultural value, without the knowledge or consent of the peoples who have protected and nurtured such resources, the book covering 22 Asian countries said.

Salak Dima Personifies Asian IPs’ Suffering

“When the trees are gone, the deer forever lost and the forests are just memories, we will weep. Not for the land that is bare and dead. But for us, our children and their children. When there are no more tears to fall, we will weep with our own blood.”

This is what Agta IP leader Salak Dima said to the author deep in the Palanan Wilderness Area of Sierra Madre, the biggest tropical rainforest of the Philippines at 200,000n hectares in personifying what wordsmiths call “the last forest guardians.

The Agtas are one of Asia’s indigenous peoples marginalized by incoming settlers. Indigenous and tribal peoples see themselves as distinct from the mainstream. They speak their own languages, are largely self-sufficient, and their economies are tightly bound to their intimate relationship with their land. Their culture is different from that of the mainstream, inherited from their forebears and adapted to their current situation.

They take only from the Earth what they need, nurturing and caring for resources as a way of life. They have often lived on their lands for thousands of years.

It is difficult to generalize about Asia’s indigenous and tribal peoples. They encompass a huge variety of peoples, living very different ways of life in a great variety of environments. One thing that they do have in common is the oppression and marginalization they experience. Often they suffer direct violence, for example in Papua New Guinea, in Burma/Myanmar and in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh. They also suffer from development efforts by their own governments and by multinationals, through the takeover of their lands and resources.

In most parts of Asia where indigenous peoples land rights are recognized, the government retains the power to overrule these rights in the economic interest of the state. The intellectual and cultural property rights (ICPR) of indigenous peoples are under threat. These include their beliefs, knowledge (agricultural, technical, medicinal, ecological movable and immovable cultural properties), the book reveals.

Asian Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle To Protect ICPR of Biodiversity

The struggle of Asian indigenous peoples to protect intellectual and cultural rights ranges in form from resisting subjugation, territorial takeover, resources exploitation, the destruction of traditions, and infringement on customs and lifestyles, to fighting inhumane treatment, abuse and deprivation of human rights.

In South East Asia much of the struggle is over land and resources, as mining, timber and oil and agricultural corporations encroach upon indigenous peoples lands in search for profit.

Indigenous peoples are becoming victims of forced resettlement, pollution, diseases, militarization, starvation, social and cultural destruction, and the ruin of traditional ways of life.

Asian indigenous peoples close connection to the land makes them particularly vulnerable to ecological damage. Extractive activities threaten patterns of subsistence, living conditions and cultural practices.

In some cases governments deny indigenous peoples civil and political rights in order to prevent them from resisting the incursions. Some states face challenges in reconciling international human rights commitments to indigenous peoples with the requirements of foreign direct investment.

Against the odds, indigenous peoples have had some successes. Divide and rule tactics intended to break down their opposition have failed. Often, there are clear connections between resource extraction, human rights abuses and militarization. In some countries, governments have attempted to stifle the growing resistance of their indigenous populations.

From the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to Papua New Guinea, there is a burgeoning indigenous movement against both governments and resource-depleting companies. This movement has brought together concerns about human rights and the environment. It is rural-based, grassroots-initiated and multiracial.

The indigenous opposition remains vibrant and effective. In Bangladesh, the struggle of the Jummas, the original inhabitants of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is primarily to do with rights to land and resources. Many Jummas are losing their lands; they have been forcibly evicted by government military forces. The Jummas are also being displaced because of the discovery and development of a gasfield.

The gas reserve development has affected traditional food sources like homegardens and age-old community forests, threatening the extinction of many traditional food crops.

In Nepal, the indigenous people of Nepal are campaigning against the widespread plunder of germplasm (i.e. plant cells) and indigenous knowledge. Already, many plant resources have been lost, without recognition or recompense.

In Sri Lanka the Wanniyala-Aetto (forest beings), the Sri Lankan indigenous people, are being uprooted from their forest dwellings, shot at, detained, placed in reservations and sold as slaves or prostitutes. Their trees are being cut, logged and traditional foodlots being razed. The Wanniyala-Aetto women, in particular, bear the brunt of this inhuman treatment.

In the Philippines, many NGOs are working for indigenous peoples intellectual and cultural property rights in the Philippines and, seemingly, their efforts have paid off, with the passing of Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997. But the body set up to implement IPRA, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), cannot stop creeping mining, logging and commercial agriculture destroying wide tracts of forests.

In Indonesia,the most significant result of indigenous peoples struggle for recognition of their rights is the government’s granting of decentralized power. It gave adat-based (traditional-based) villages powers beyond the standard notions of indigenous rights in international legal discourse. This allows the natives to take care of their forests and homegardens.

But millions of hectares of indigenous peoples lands are be destroyed and planted with oil palm destroying thousands of plant and animal species.

In Malaysia, encroachment into ancestral lands and intimidation are two of the many problems facing Malaysian indigenous peoples. There is no pause in the exploitation of their resources and appropriation of indigenous territories.

In Thailand, the Chao-Chaos, a mixed grouping of indigenous tribes in northern Thailand numbering almost a million, were granted a peoples Constitution which allowed them to participate in the democratic process in the country. They are led by the Assembly of Indigenous and Tribal peoples of Thailand (AITT). Together with the Northern Farmers Network, AITT is pressing for the adoption of a community Forest Bill, which will give indigenous peoples recognition of their right to their traditional resources and management practices.

In Cambodia, positive developments with regard to indigenous peoples struggle for land rights and the protection of their forests and natural resources is happening. Local activists and NGOs headed the campaign for a new law that gave provision for land tenure for indigenous people. Those who now have ownership and control of their lands are enjoying their rights to their resources, such as in the tapping of resin and development of inland fisheries.

But in Vietnam. the government is oppressive towards its indigenous population and does not allow advocacy activities. The government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Department for Sedentary Farming announced a campaign to wipe out traditional nomadic life and swidden farming of its indigenous population.

The government is attempting to eradicate traditional shifting agriculture, which is the lifeline of most highland indigenous peoples including the Banar, Ehde, Jarai, Koho and Mnong tribes, thousands of whom were imprisoned after calling for independence in February 2001.

This is causing genetic erosion of hunreds of traditional food crops including upland rice, rootcrops, legumes, tubers and leafy crops.

Laos has a similar policy as that of Vietnam, which aims to eradicate all traditional forms of agriculture by its indigenous peoples. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Hmong are being removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to areas which are not suitable for their lifestyle an cultural practices.

It is perhaps only in Burma/Myanmar, out of all the states in Asia, that the indigenous peoples form a majority. But under its military rule, politIcal detentions, harassment, militarization, military offensives, forced labour in labour camps and an educational crisis are widespread. Women face rape, marriage to military men and are trafficked by the military as slaves, labourers and prostitutes.

International Efforts to Fight Threat on IPs’ ICPR

Indigenous people view the world they live in as an integrated whole. Their beliefs, knowledge, arts and other forms of cultural expression have been handed down through the generations. Their many stories, songs, dances, paintings and other forms of expression are therefore important aspects of indigenous cultural knowledge, power and identity form their heritage.

Heritage includes all expressions of the relationship between the people, their land and the other living beings and spirits which share the land, and is the basis for maintaining social, economic and diplomatic relationships — through sharing — with other peoples.

All of the aspects of heritage are interrelated and cannot be separated from the traditional Territory of the people concerned. What tangible and intangible items constitute the heritage of a particular indigenous people must be decided by the people themselves.

The guardians of an indigenous peoples cultural and intellectual property are determined by the customs, laws and practices of the community, and can be individuals, a clan or the people as a whole The heritage of indigenous people includes:

Due to the active lobbying by indigenous peoples representatives in various international meetings, there is a growing appreciation by international agencies of the complexity of indigenous peoples discourse.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has begun discussions on the issue of indigenous peoples intellectual and cultural property rights, although many indigenous peoples are not entirely happy with the process. The UN has also undertaken a study on the heritage of indigenous peoples and put forward several recommendations but these remain recommendations only.

Most of the discussions at the international level on the issue remain elitist — only a very few indigenous individuals are able to participate and information regarding the discussions or outcomes is not extensively disseminated. There is a gap between the international debate and the local realities

Most indigenous communities are faced with life-threatening issues that keep them from actively engaging in international policy advocacy work, and yet many of the issues that indigenous peoples face on the ground are brought about by the implementation of policies crafted at the international level.

Asian indigenous peoples are now often able to wage their local struggles on a global front by working closely with international allies. A transnational movement of environmentalists, human rights workers, lawyers and indigenous organizations is emerging to defend indigenous rights.

*Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan has a Masters Degree and Ph.D. in Development Studies and Environmental Resource Management from University College Dublin, Ireland as a European Union Fellow. He writes for the British Gemini News Service, New York’s Earth Times and the Environmental News Service. He is currently a Fellow of Echoing Green Foundation, New York

The November 27 Bloomberg article “Malaysia Beats Emerging Market Peers as Asia Outshines“, highlights the positive economic performances of some Asian countries, contrasted with a negative overview of South Africa and Turkey. In this piece, Russia’s second place ranking among the so-called “emerging economies” is noticeably downplayed. According to the referenced Bloomberg statistic, Russia is ahead of China, India, South Korea, Hungary and Poland. 

I’m sure that a good number of economists and others will (within reason) add that the statistic at issue doesn’t give an overall complete picture of how well a given nation is economically performing. Regardless, the referenced Bloomberg statistic has enough meat to counter the mantra of a poorly performing Russian economy, whose president engages in nationalist activity as a cover for his nation’s shortcomings. If anything, that take is more applicable to the socioeconomically challenged Kiev regime controlled Ukraine, that has become greatly dependent on US government influenced International Monetary Fund loans. 

Within the past year, the Kiev regime has engaged in several nationalist stunts, involving the – faked murder of Arkady Babchenko, to (as spun) uncover a still unproven sinister Russian plot – pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is loosely affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate – violation of Russian territory (including area recognized as Russian before Crimea’s reunification with Russia), as well as breaching the established protocol for passing the Kerch Strait. The last point concerns the Russian built bridge connecting Crimea with the rest of Russia. Inside and outside of Ukraine, there’ve been calls to destroy that bridge. With that in mind, it’s quite provocative to not give the standard notice before nearing the area of that bridge. 

In the US, the ongoing effort to dislodge Donald Trump on a flimsy Russian meddling claim (continuously promoted as believable by the Democratic Party establishment and some of the major US mass media venues), serves to encourage the US president to take some unnecessary aggressive action on the foreign policy front. The Trump administration’s kid gloves treatment accorded to the Kiev regime is one example.   

For the purpose of showing that he isn’t “soft” on Russia, Trump and much of his support base highlight that behavior (albeit positively), along with his military actions against the Russian supported and internationally recognized Syrian government. Recall CNN’s Fareed Zakaria saying that Trump became US president, when he bombed a Syrian government position – for a basis that factually remains quite suspect, as has been detailed byTed Postal and some others. 

Shifting gears, the December 7 National Interest article “A Major National Security Shakeup: Nauert In and Kelly Out?”, notes that Dina Powell and John James, have been passed over in favor of Heather Nauert, as a replacement for Nikki Haley as America’s UN ambassador. This piece doesn’t address Trump’s foreign policy flip flop. During his campaign for the US presidency, Trump stated the desire to reshape US foreign policy to include competent individuals, typically shunned by the establishment. That desire has been contradicted by his cabinet selections and what they’ve said. The likes of Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard and Jim Jatras, are among those who better identify with what Trump had advocated on foreign policy.  

The current US Secretary of Defense James Mattis appears to be transferring his shortcomings to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mattis rather ironically said that Putin is a “slow learner”. This is pretty rich coming from Mattis, who not too long ago belittled Russia’s Middle East presence. Russia is the only country that has held open talks with the governments of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria and the US. Going back a good several years, the neocon/neolib desire to see Syria’s president leave office hasn’t happened. The neocon regime change operations in Iraq and Libya are now understandably regarded by many as counterproductive. 

Especially ridiculous is Mattis’ recent contention that the claim of Russian meddling in the 2018 US general election is a fact (without Mattis providing specifics), unlike the view that the Saudi head of state knew and approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Along with Nauert and Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, haven’t exhibited the foreign policy stances that Trump campaigned on.   

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. This article was initially placed at the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website on December 13.

Media messages are carefully formulated by their creators, unless it is civilian journalism1 which has emerged as a form of presentation of media content without the conditioned appearances of an organization, but is often generated by events that are suddenly and unplanned (The attack in Paris, 2015)2, for which we need a special study, but it should be emphasized that this form of civic (non)awakening is also conditioned by the appropriate media literacy.

Within media education, it is necessary to develop skills that help to look below the surface of media messages to understand the way in which they are designed. Media messages, news, information are the form of presentation of events and ideas. The problem of real-time events within postmodern – understanding of media literacy – is that manipulations can be minimized if people are involved in information exchange also technologically educated. Namely, the media technologically educated person has the advantage of the other because he/she knows how to arrive and check, using new technologies, all the information that comes to him/her daily through the all “vessels” of media appearances.

It is necessary to work on creating the assumptions of media education aimed at developing the skills of translating3 the presented texts, news and information so that they can demonstrate the difference between reality and the presented reality. The audience, at the same time, certainly negotiates the meanings within the media. What is it about? The audience is interacting with the media text in a way that is unique4 to a specific audience in relation to a concrete example of media text. Everything is happening in an idiosyncratic way. 5

Alternatives for the “facts“

One part of the audience, without questioning, accepts immediately “on the first”, while the other part of the audience refuses media text, disagreeing and not approving the messages from media text, considering it undesirable and/or unpleasant. At the same time, a third audience, uncertain whether to accept or reject media text, will try, through specific questions, to come to conclusions, seeking the opinion of others and/or finding other stands on the subject, creating assumptions for their own, final, conclusion. Media educated personalities should be open to different interpretations of the media text and be aware that reaction to the text itself is a common product of the medium text itself but also what the audience, to whom it is intended, enters into it based on their’s own life experiences.

The media also have commercial implications – one of the most important goals of the media in today’s burdened society, on planet Earth, with neo-liberalism, globalization, and populism, is also the promotion of consumerism. Media literate person, even while enjoying the reading of the magazine/portal that he/she considers to be the best for him/her, is to know how to differentiate media texts that are designed for the public with the aim of delivering commercials of certain products than those ones that are referring to the usual media coverage of the general public on certain issues.

The media certainly contain both ideological and valuable messages – if we only take the example of the realization of the Hollywood Dream through the movie, where there is always present happy end and where love wins, it is enough to realize that there are valuable messages within the media texts. Media literate will even be able to make and differentiate at certain Radio/TV stations, newspapers and/or magazines/portals by “reading and watching” them as a representative of a certain ideological appearance. At the same time, the media have a social and political meaning & message & implication – the media literate person will certainly be able to recognize the appropriate positive, although also negative orientations realized through the media messages with the goal of gaining public attention to a particular issue of social and/or political interest. Recognition of social and political meaning of meaning & message & implication is a very important skill that should be a part of media literate persons. Each media has its own and unique aesthetical but also an ethical form of appearance, although mass communication is a source of invaluable pleasures and entertainment. Media literate people are enriched not only with the ability to enjoy the analysis of certain media messages and contents, but also to further develop themselves within the understanding of how media messages affect the audience and vice versa. The question of the great appearance of apathy and non-including is going hand in hand with political polarization and division. That is why media literacy is extremely needed within societies worldwide in accordance with the above-mentioned guidelines.

Being ethical, above all, in understandings

First and foremost, media literate person will know to recognize propaganda because propaganda awakes strong emotions for media illiterate audience, and simplifies information and ideas (Chomsky N., 2010). At the same time, propaganda has a problem with an image, apropos how to make someone better and/or weaker related to the targeted intentions towards the audience. Propaganda can be found in Journalism; Public Relations; advertising; governments; education; culture; art; advocacy; entertainment … A media literate person will certainly be able to recognize propaganda in these forms of presentation, by developing an understanding of the positive propaganda messages, and negating all the negativities the person faces. To be able to properly consider propaganda within the media literacy, or to think about what is causing welfare or damage, we must consider, above all:

• What is the nature of the information and ideas that are presented when the media message is concerned
• Which symbols and rhetoric strategies were used to attract and activate emotional responses – techniques of use
• How did the media messages reach the audience and in what form they reached it – what makes them effective means of communication
• Where, where and how much of the audience was influenced by the media message – the environment inside which the message is placed
• How big or the small part of the audience has expressed, in a certain way, about the media message itself and how free they are to accept and/or refuse as such – the way in which a media message is received by the audience.

“Media literacy is an extremely important step in the long march towards truly participative democracy, and the democratization of our institutions. The expansion of media literacy is extremely important if all citizens exercise the power, make rational decisions, become effective representatives of change, and have effective participation in the media themselves” (Masterman L., 1985).

In accordance with the above, critically observing reality, media literacy invites citizens to identify cultural codes that shape the author’s work, understand the way these codes function as part of the social system and distort the text through alternative interpretations. Through learning how to read the media messages in a critical way, the media literate audience develops opportunities to collect ethical and, above all, accurate and relevant information about the society in which they live and work while questioning the authority, both textually and institutionally (Hobbs R., 1998).

When the audience6 have the capacity for media literacy both for traditional and new generation of media7, it can identify personal, corporate or political agendas and are then empowered to speak in the name of missing perspective in our communities. By identifying and trying to solve the problem, people use their own strong voice of media literate people and their rights under the law to enhance the world around them.

The greater level of critical thinking and the higher level of participation inspire cooperation and creative efforts to reduce inequality – if we became media literate within the educational process.

Notes:

1. Civic
2. CNN, 2016 (last accessed 12.12.2018): http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/08/europe/2015-paris-terror-attacks-fast-facts/
3. Interpreting
4. Read: media (non)literacy
5. Attributive
6. Read: people individually, of course.
7. Digital

While combing out the episcopate of the new Local Church in Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarchate that reinstated the primates of UOC KP and UAOC on October 11 will have to anathematize some other clergy instead. By leaving the daughter Church to its own devices, the Phanar will disgrace all Orthodox hierarchs in unity with Constantinople.

As it is known, in Orthodoxy a canonical bishop should be ordained by at least two or three bishops of the Orthodox Church (Ap. c. I; c. III of the 7th; c. XIX of Antioch; c. VI of Sardican; c. XII of Laodicea; and cc. XII, LVIII, LIX of Carthage).

Also, according to the Canons of the Holy Apostles, Holy Fathers and Ecumenical Councils, any bishop is forbidden to have a subintroducta (c. V of the 6th; c. XXIII of the 7th; c. XIX of Ancyra; C. XIX of Carthage; c. LXXXVIII of Basil). No bishop, clergyman or monk is also allowed to farm any estate or office or to involve himself in secular cases (Ap. cc. VI, LXXXI, LXXXIII; c. VII of the 4th; c. XI of the lst-&-2nd; c. XVIII of Carthage; and c. X of the 7th). Obviously, it is prohibited to give episcopate to men who have but recently come to the faith or lived a sinful life (Ap. c. LXXX; c. XVII of the lst-&-2nd; c. X of Sardican; c. III of Laodicea; c. IV of Cyril).

If any hierarch is received from a schismatic jurisdiction, the canonical Church first must review their Apostolic succession and whether their way of living allows them to be given episcopate in accordance with the Canons.

Recently, an Australian court jailed one of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church’s (UAOC) founders Vikenty Chekalin for fraud. He had fled there under the name of Vincent Berg allegedly escaping the Soviet persecution of protestants (!). This is a reason to remember whom Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has brought under his jurisdiction.

In 1990, the first “bishops” of the revived UAOC were ordained by the above-mentioned Vikenty Chekalin and Ioann Bodnarchuk. The first is a pedophile and a swindler who claimed to be the bishop of several confessions. Of course, he has never been ordained as a bishop even in uncanonical communities. The second, a former bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church Ioann Bodnarchuk (disfrocked in 1989) many times personally admitted the invalidity of his sacraments. So, all ordinations of schismatic hierarchs carried out by him are uncanonical.

Many of the UAOC hierarchs “ordained” by Chekalin and Bodnarchuk later moved to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC KP) and back so the canonical status of the bishops headed by Filaret Denysenko, reinstated by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on October 11, also have to be scrutinized since they will comprise the majority at the Unifying Council that is to take place in December.

The schismatics have no God’s grace and don’t communicate with canonical Orthodoxy and this obviously affected the morality of their episcopates. The sins of these “hierarchs” are evident even for non-Orthodox and discredit our Church in their eyes (for example, quite an unpleasant article for Orthodox Christians has appeared). It is out of the question how the unrecognized hierarchs “comply” with the Holy Canons. Below I’ll write about only few of disgraceful things happening in the UOC KP and UAOC.

As the author of the above mentioned article states citing the Ukrainian media, the eldest and one of the most powerful UAOC hierarchs, metropolitan Andrey Abramchuk of Ivano-Frankivsk and Galicia (ordained by Vikenty Chekalin) lived with two women in the 2000s. These poor things, for some reason residing with the alcoholic, quarreled and fought right before his flock. The metropolitan himself is regularly preaches dead-drunk and this doesn’t confuse him.

The acting UAOC metropolitan Roman Balaschuk of Vinnytsia and Bar also received ordination from Ioann Bodnarchuk and the already mentioned Andrey Abramchuk. When he joined the UOC KP during the period of forced unification of the churches in 1992, he was “reordained”. A year later Roman was again in the UAOC.

An accident widely known in Ukraine shows how much he values the title of hierarch received in schism. In 2011, when Roman was displaced as the head of the Khmelnitsky Eparchy, he tore the Panagia with the image of Our Lady off his successor Adrian Kulik and trampled it down.

Although the Kyivan Patriarchate doesn’t recognize the ordinations of the UAOC, the situation with sins there is no better.

Thus, in 2004 the incumbent UOC-KP archbishop Iakov Makarchuk of Drohobych and Sambir had to leave the UAOC as the laity expressed their discontent with corruption and sexual relations of the hierarch: Makarchuk was divorced, kept numerous mistresses. Nevertheless, he was admitted to the UOC KP. But this didn’t calm him down. On the contrary, in 2013 during an argument with an UAOC priest about the affiliation of a temple in Odessa, Makarchuk, as he said, decided to “hold earthy court” and knocked out his opponent. To be added is that the local court had already decided in favor of the UAOC.

Another UOC KP hierarch, archbishop Alexander Reshetnyak of Bohuslav, has a wife and children and runs a business in Kyiv and the Czech Republic. This high ranking clergyman keeps mistresses both there and in Ukraine.

The late UOC KP archbishop Danyil Chokalyuk of Rivne and Ostroh lived quite a sinful live when he was young and now his son known as metropolitan Epiphany Dumenko of Pereyaslav and Bila Tserkva, locum tenens of Filaret Denysenko. Moreover even in his middle years Chokalyuk had a wife and two mistresses.

Another example of the UOC KP excessive tolerance is retired archbishop Job Pavlishin who suffers from psychological disorder. The hierarch not only was married but beat his wife and later lived with his secretary who brought him children. Homosexual relations also weren’t something embarrassing for him.

Michel Laroche, a famous theologian and church historian who has changed at least six church jurisdictions, is now known as the UOC KP’s archbishop of Lyon, Paris and all France. The grandson of a French ambassador to Turkey, Laroche joined various canonical and schismatic jurisdictions, was admitted to the Romanian Orthodox Church twice but has never been under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Moreover, one of his work titled The roots of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Papism and its ecclesiastical rivalry with the Moscow Patriarchate features such sayings as “The Moscow Patriarchate today, as yesterday, is guarding the spiritual purity of the Orthodox Church”.

Nevertheless, Laroche’s attempts to return to the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1990s weren’t successful. The reason for it could be not only his uncanonical ordination but the fact that he lives with his wife and children. His wife is a former high-ranking manager of Le Bon March é store in Paris and earns money not only for her family but for her husband’s eparchy.

Another peculiarity related to the theologian is his close assistant – transgender higoumene Alexandra Carrasco. Earlier she was a Melchite priest Joubert Carrasco who later was admitted to the Moscow Patriarchate. Changing his gender in 1970s, Carrasco was admitted to the Paris Diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and then joined Michel Laroche.

Former UOC KP bishop Yuri Yurchik, who tried to pass under the infallible Pope’s rule time and again, also has quite a list of switching to this or that church. Transferring in 1993 from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the Kyivan Patriarchate and given the title of bishop there, Yurchik attempted to convert to the Traditional Catholicism and even publicly renounced the Orthodox faith. Despite this, “bishop” Yuri was admitted to the UOC KP again. In the end, achieving the recognition of his title, albeit without the right to preach, Yurchik joined the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 2009.

Like Ioann Bodnarchuk and Michel Laroche, Paisy Dmokhovsky, who was admitted to the UOC KP in 2001 and was “ordained” as bishop, attempted to return to the canonical Church in 2010. But sodomy and dope addiction were too strong in him so in 2013 Dmokhovsky could only join one of the Ukrainian schismatic branches – the UOC KP Sobornopravna.

However, sodomy is not an obstacle for being a UOC KP or UAOC bishop: of the incumbent (!) hierarchs at least six are claimed to be homosexuals.

A lot of terrible things are known about many hierarchs of the UOC KP and UAOC but the above mentioned facts are enough to understand the moral atmosphere in the quasi-ecclesiastical structures deprived of the Apostolic succession and God’s grace.

It is not sufficient to reinstate the hierarchies of the Ukrainian schismatics in order to bring the new Ukrainian Church to a canonical state. The Ecumenical Patriarch has to successfully clean the Augean stables there but the responsibility he has taken can be too heavy.

*Nadia Bazuk is an Orthodox Ukrainian journalist.

Donald Trump was right when he said that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been a disaster for the United States and promised to renegotiate it when he became president. However, the renegotiated NAFTA-2 is worse than the original NAFTA and should be rejected.

On December 1, NAFTA-2 was signed by President Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nietos. This started the process of approval by the legislatures of each country.

Our movement for trade that puts people and planet first now has two synergistic opportunities: We can stop NAFTA II and replace corporate trade with a new model that raises working conditions and protects the environment.

Stopping NAFTA-2

When NAFTA became law on January 1, 1994, it began a new era of trade – written by and for transnational corporations at the expense of people and planet. President George H.W. Bush failed twice to pass NAFTA. During Bush’s re-election campaign, independent Ross Perot described NAFTA as the “giant sucking sound” that would undermine the US economy.

President Clinton was able to get it through Congress. The Los Angeles Times described that vote as “a painfully divided House of Representatives” voting a 234-200 for NAFTA. A majority of Democrats 156-102 opposed NAFTA. During the debate, protesters were ejected when they showered fake $50 bills that said “trading pork for poison” from the visitors gallery.

In the 2016 election, President Trump showed he understood what the United States experienced — NAFTA was bad for the people undermining manufacturing and agriculture. People want it repealed. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Trump had his finger on the pulse of the population.

NAFTA-2 is another trade agreement designed for corporate profit. Trump trade fails to provide enforceable protections for workers or the environment. In this time of climate crisis, it does not mention climate change. It fails to protect the food supply and will result in increased cost of medicines.

Citizen’s Trade Campaign writes, there are positive labor standards “but only if currently absent enforcement mechanisms are added.” As the Labor Advisory Committee states, “Unenforced rules are not worth the paper they are written on.”

The Sierra Club reports NAFTA-2 takes a significant step backward from environmental protections included in the last four trade deals by failing to reinforce a standard set of seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that protect everything from wetlands to sea turtles.

NAFTA-2 allows intensely-polluting oil and gas corporations involved in offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities to challenge environmental protections in rigged corporate trade tribunals. Trump Trade preserves a NAFTA rule that prevents the US government from determining whether gas exports to Mexico are in the public interest. This creates an automatic gas export guarantee, which will increase fracking, expand cross-border gas pipelines, and increase dependency on Mexican climate-polluting gas.

Food and Water Watch summarizes: “The energy provisions will encourage more pipelines and exports of natural gas and oil that would further expand fracking in the United States and Mexico. The text also provides new avenues for polluters to challenge and try and roll back proposed environmental safeguards, cementing Trump’s pro-polluter agenda in the trade deal.”

NAFTA-2 undermines food safety and health by making it more difficult to regulate and inspect foods. It limits inspections and allows food that fails to meet US safety standards to be imported. NAFTA-2 serves Monsanto and other giant agro-chemical corporations by allowing unregulated GMOs, rolling back Mexico’s regulation of GMOs, and letting chemical giants like Monsanto and Dow keep data on the risks of their pesticides secret for 10 years. NAFTA-2 is designed for agribusiness, not family farmers and consumers.

NAFTA-2 increases the cost of pharmaceutical drugs through intellectual property protections that go “significantly beyond” NAFTA. Trump’s NAFTA-2 gives pharmaceutical companies a minimum 10 years of market exclusivity for biologic drugs and protects US-based drug companies from generic competition, driving up the price of medicine at home and abroad.

All the ingredients that led to a mass movement of movements that stopped the Trans-Pacific Partnership  exist to stop NAFTA-2. Citizens Trade Campaign sent a letter signed by 1,043 organizations to Congress outlining civil society’s shared criteria for a NAFTA replacement. The requirements outlined in this letter have not been met.

Just as it became impossible across the political spectrum to support the TPP, we can make it impossible to support NAFTA-2. Democrats are signaling NAFTA-2 is not going to pass in its present form. After Robert Lighthizer met with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi last week, she described NAFTA-2 as “just a list without real enforcement of the labor and environmental protections,” that would be unlikely to pass in its present form. We can stop NAFTA-2.

Defeat of NAFTA-2 Creates the Opportunity to Transform Trade

The defeat of NAFTA-2 will show that corporate trade will no longer be approved by Congress.  Trade must be transformed to uplift workers, reduce inequality, confront climate change and improve the quality of our food and healthcare. The defeat NAFTA-2 opens the space to make transforming trade a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaigns.

President Trump has signaled that he will withdraw from NAFTA to pressure Congress to ratify NAFTA-2. Trump’s threat to withdraw from NAFTA should not be feared but embraced. It will create an opportunity for trade transformation.

A smart presidential campaign will use the defeat of NAFTA-2 as an opportunity to begin a new era of trade transformed for the public good, serving the many, not the few. Politicians running for president in 2020 can put forward a vision of trade that the people will support.

Already, Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA) has taken initial steps in this direction. In a speech to American University, Warren said she opposed Trump’s NAFTA-2 agreement, challenged the bipartisan embrace of “free” trade, and called for starting “our defense of democracy by fixing” corporate trade. In discussing trade she said, “Wow. Did Washington get that one wrong.”  She described trade as delivering “one punch in the gut after another to workers…” She urged, “We need a new approach to trade, and it should begin with a simple principle: our policies should not prioritize corporate profits over American paychecks.” This is a start, if she adds the environment, climate change, healthcare, food safety, sovereignty and Internet freedom, she will put forward a vision of smart trade that will bring millions to support her.

Warren is not alone, Senator Sherrod Brown (OH), who easily won re-election in Ohio and is considering a presidential run, has been a longtime advocate for trade that lifts up workers and challenged agreements that failed to do so. Brown sent a letter to the president eight days after the 2016 election urging Trump to keep his trade promises. Brown voted against NAFTA in one of his first acts as a member of Congress in 1993 and wrote a book entitled “Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed.”

Transforming trade, by rejecting corporate trade, creates an opportunity for candidates to turn a negative issue into a positive one. The movement needs to demand candidates put forward a new vision for 21st century trade.

A Vision for Trade for People and Planet

We must put forward the vision for trade we want to see as part of the campaign to stop NAFTA-2. Trade in the 21^st century needs to confront multiple crisis issues made worse by trade designed for corporate wealth. Transformed trade needs to focus on the public interest.

Pubic interest includes shrinking inequality within the United States and between nations. It means workers having a livable wage, encouraging worker-ownership of businesses so they grow their wealth not just their incomes. Trade should strengthen the rights of workers to organize, create unions and adhere to International Labor Organization standards.

Trade should aid in preventing transnational corporations and wealthy individuals from avoiding taxes. Trade should end tax havens and require transparency, end banking abroad or locating corporate charters offshore to ensure wealthy individuals and corporations pay their taxes. Countries can negotiate a global tax collected to solve global problems like poverty, homelessness, lack of healthcare and environmental degradation.

There are numerous environmental crises that trade needs to address. Three reports, the dire October 2018 IPCC report, warning we have 12 years to transform the energy economy to prevent climate catastrophe, the November 23, 2018 4th National Climate Assessment, which warned of the serious impacts of the climate crisis and the Global Carbon Project which reported carbon emissions are at record highs, show climate change must be central to trade policies.

International trade needs to be re-formulated to protect the labor, human rights, economy, environment and domestic industry of partner and recipient nations so local industry and agriculture has the advantage over foreign corporate domination. Trade needs to guarantee people their right to public ownership and control of their own resources. Trade agreements must protect the rights of nations to establish stricter stand

In November, about 25 progressive Democrats were newly elected to the House of Representatives. How do the citizen groups know whether they are for real or for rhetoric? I suggest this civic yard stick to measure the determination and effectiveness of these members of the House both inside the sprawling, secretive, repressive Congress and back home in their Districts. True progressives must:

1. Vigorously confront all the devious ways that Congressional bosses have developed to obstruct the orderly, open, accessible avenues for duly elected progressive candidates to be heard and to participate in Congressional deliberations from the subcommittees to the committees to the floor of the House. Otherwise, the constricting Congressional cocoon will quickly envelop and smother their collective energies and force them to get along by going along.

2. Organize themselves into an effective Caucus (unlike the anemic Progressive Caucus). They will need to constantly be in touch with each other and work to democratize Congress and substantially increase the quality and quantity of its legislative/oversight output.

3. Connect with the national citizen organizations that have backers all around the country and knowledgeable staff who can help shape policy and mobilize citizen support. This is crucial to backstopping the major initiatives these newbies say they want to advance. Incumbent progressives operate largely on their own and too rarely sponsor civic meetings on Capitol Hill to solicit ideas from civic groups. Incumbent progressives in both the House and the Senate do not like to be pressed beyond their comfort zone to issue public statements, to introduce tough bills or new bills, or to even conduct or demand public hearings.

4. Develop an empowerment agenda that shifts power from the few to the many – from the plutocrats and corporatists to consumers, workers, patients, small taxpayers, voters, community groups, the wrongfully injured, shareholders, consumer cooperatives, and trade unions. Shift-of-power facilities and rights/remedies cost very little to enact because their implementation is in the direct hands of those empowered – to organize, to advocate, to litigate, to negotiate, and to become self-reliant for food, shelter and services (Citizen Utility Boards provide an example of what can come from empowering citizens).

5. Encourage citizens back home to have their own town meetings, some of which the new lawmakers would attend. Imagine the benefits of using town meetings to jump-start an empowerment agenda and to promote long over-due advances such as a living wage, universal health care, corporate crime enforcement, accountable government writ large, renewable energy, and real tax reform.

6. Regularly publicize the horrendously cruel and wasteful Republican votes. This seems obvious but, amazingly, it isn’t something Democratic leaders are inclined to do. Last June, I urged senior Democrats in the House to put out and publicize a list of the most anti-people, pro-Wall Street, and pro-war legislation that the Republicans, often without any hearings, rammed through the House. The senior Democrats never did this, even though the cruel GOP votes (against children, women, health, safety, access to justice, etc.) would be opposed by more than 3 out of 4 voters.

7. Disclose attempts by pro-corporate, anti-democratic, or anti-human rights and other corrosive lobbies that try to use campaign money or political pressure to advance the interests of the few to the detriment to the many. Doing this publically will deter lobbies from even trying to twist their arms.

8. Refuse PAC donations and keep building a base of small donations as Bernie Sanders did in 2016. This will relieve new members of receiving undue demands for reciprocity and unseemly attendance at corrupt PAC parties in Washington, DC.

9. Seek, whenever possible, to build left/right coalitions in Congress and back home that can become politically unstoppable.

10. Demand wider access to members of Congress by the citizenry. Too few citizen leaders are being allowed to testify before fewer Congressional hearings. Holding hearings is a key way to inform and galvanize public opinion. Citizen group participation in hearings led to saving millions of lives and preventing countless injuries. Authentic Congressional hearings lead to media coverage and help to mobilize the citizenry.

Adopting these  suggestions will liberate new members to challenge the taboos entrenched in Congress regarding the corporate crime wave, military budgets, foreign policy, massive corporate welfare giveaways or crony capitalism.

The sovereign power of the people has been excessively delegated to 535 members of Congress. The citizens need to inform and mobilize themselves and hold on to the reins of such sovereign power for a better society. Demanding that Congress uphold its constitutional obligations and not surrender its power to the war-prone, lawless Presidency will resonate with the people.

Measuring up to this civic yardstick is important for the new members of the House of Representatives and for our democracy. See how they score in the coming months. Urge them to forward these markers of a democratic legislature to the rest of the members of Congress, most of whom are in a rut of comfortable incumbency.

The yellow vests ought to be inspirations for the 99% on this side of the Atlantic ocean.

French law requires drivers to keep gilets jaunes, yellow vests, in their vehicles. The vests are a safety measure ensuring visibility for anyone who may find themselves in a roadside emergency. In an act of supreme irony thousands of French men and women use the yellow vest symbolism to tell president Emmanuel Macron that they will not be run over any longer.

France has long been known for its generous safety net and for its strong worker movements. The willingness of the French to hit the streets when their livelihoods are in danger is legendary. But even they could not stave off the predations of worldwide neoliberalism.

Macron was the choice of France’s 1%. The oligarchs wanted and got another Obama, a young and charismatic figure who would do their bidding under the guise of hoping and changing. Macron didn’t disappoint his patrons as he cut taxes for the wealthy and enacted gasoline “carbon taxes” allegedly used to fight climate change. Even the cherished national health care system is slowly being privatized and people accustomed to this generous government benefit are seeing the beginnings of an American style system.

It is always a good thing when people rise up against neoliberalism and austerity. Just as in the U.S. the French banks were bailed out, but the people got nothing but cuts in services and benefits. A dose of popular push back was much needed.

That is not to say that this movement is entirely left wing. The racism that has long permeated French society hasn’t disappeared. When the presence of black and brown people reached a tipping point right wing parties which never polled higher than single digits suddenly became contenders for power. When French police kill, they kill people of color who fought back in uprisings in 2005 and as recently as July of this year . France is no paragon of leftist virtue.

Likewise, French foreign policy remains abysmal, a vestige of the imperialism that oppressed people all over the world. If Macron isn’t lecturing Africans who are still under France’s economic and military thumb he is joining in attacks on Syria. One of his predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy, took millions of dollars from Muammar Gaddafi and then helped to assassinate him. That duplicity can only be described as gangster and that mentality hasn’t left the French state.

Despite the serious shortcomings of French politics the people are speaking out quite clearly. They will not accept neoliberal plunder without a fight. Not only are they fighting back against Macron’s domestic policies but they are speaking out against other issues, such as European Union membership. The EU is a means for the capitalists to move their capital with greater ease, who then demand austerity for member nations. Poor countries like Greece were victims of the EU confidence game and the 2008 financial bubble that burst all over the world. Richer nations like Germany and France showed Greece no mercy and forced it to sell public assets and eviscerate its own social support system.

The emergence of the yellow vest protesters is not surprising. Other Europeans used elections to try and win change but without success. The Greek Syriza party talked loudly but said nothing, so did the Spanish Podemos party. The faux leftists in Europe had no stomach for a fight. That is why non-electoral formations are so important. When the system doesn’t respond the people must speak up.

But no one knows where this particular movement is headed. Hopefully the left will see that they must be true to the beliefs they claim to hold and help give the people what they need. France once had strong left parties. But the last socialist president, Francois Hollande, laid the ground work for Macron with his own austerity measures and resulting increases in poverty and homelessness.

What began as anger over inequality has given way to larger complaints about pensions and university admissions. The anger is real. No one should believe the corporate media or neoliberals here in the U.S. who fall back on tropes about evil Russians and accuse Vladimir Putin of stirring up the protestors . Those same lies were used to put Macron in office and they must be dismissed out of hand. If Americans are going to chime in about protests in France it should be to gain some knowledge of how to replicate the process here.

Even in its state of degradation the French welfare state is far superior to the American model. The yellow vests ought to be inspirations for the 99% on this side of the Atlantic ocean. The U.S. has a history of crushing protest and a violent police force that kills 1,000 people every year. It won’t be possible to respond exactly as the French are doing, but protest is sorely needed. Americas are experiencing their own emergency and would do well to learn from the masses in other nations.