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College Binge Drinkers Are Posting While Drunk, ‘Addicted’ To Social Media

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College students who binge drink are frequently posting on social media while intoxicated and show signs of social media “addiction,” according to a new study.

Students later may regret their drinking-related posts and experience other negative consequences from combining social media and alcohol use. The research appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

“During these times when young students are feeling disinhibited by alcohol, they may be even more likely than usual to post inappropriate material without considering the future impact,” says lead researcher Natalie A. Ceballos, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology at Texas State University in San Marcos. “In some cases, these sorts of mistakes have even influenced college admission and later job applications.”

Further, friends who view their posts of heavy drinking may then be more likely to perceive intoxication as exciting and fun, Ceballos’s group notes.

However, social media also may prove to be an avenue for prevention efforts among student drinkers.

“While college students’ reliance on social media has been identified as a risk factor for alcohol-related problems,” Ceballos says, “it might also present an opportunity for innovative interventions.”

Because social media use has exploded in recent years and trends among young people have changed so quickly, the researchers sought to define exactly what platforms college students are using and how they are using them, particularly in relation to alcohol use.

To do this, the research group recruited 425 undergraduate students, ages 18 through 25, asking about students’ alcohol use, including the quantity and frequency with which they drank and if they had ever “binged” (in the study, defined as ever having five drinks at one time for men and four or more for women).

The researchers also queried about students’ use of social media, including Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and whether students posted social media messages while drinking and while intoxicated. Students then were asked about their social media “addiction” — that is, if they experienced negative consequences from their social media use. (Currently, however, there is no official psychiatric diagnosis of addiction to social media.)

Compared with students who had never binged, student binge drinkers were more likely to have posted on any social media platform while drinking and while intoxicated. Binge drinkers also showed greater “intensity” toward social media (more emotional investment that allowed social media to become part of their identities) and a non-statistically significant trend toward being more addicted to social media. They also used more social media platforms than non-binge drinkers.

“These findings suggest that, in terms of common brain reward mechanisms, perhaps when students get a positive response on social media, this might be “rewarding” to them in a way that is similar to other addictive behaviors, and then over time they get ‘hooked’,” Ceballos notes.

However, social media may turn out to be a good platform for interventions to reduce heavy drinking. Studies of pathological gambling have shown that harm-reduction messages delivered “in the moment” can help disrupt this behavior. The research group suspects that similar interventions, timed while students are socially drinking but before significant impairment occurs, “might be useful in preventing an episode of social drinking from escalating into a binge,” according to the study.

“As for what form this intervention might take, we’re not really there yet,” Ceballos reports. “However, I believe that pairing recent advances in alcohol biosensor technology (to detect a drinking episode when it occurs) and ecological momentary interventions (to reach out to clients via mobile phones ‘in the moment’) could make this type of intervention a reality in the very near future.”

Knowing which social media platforms students are using is important for such interventions. The study showed that Snapchat and Instagram are the most popular sites used by college students, followed by Facebook and Twitter. “Facebook is waning in popularity among younger users,” the researchers write, “whereas Snapchat is becoming more popular.” Therefore, they note, interventions should be geared toward the more frequently used sites. However, binge drinkers, specifically, used Snapchat and Facebook more frequently.


Droughts Boost Emissions As Hydropower Dries Up

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When hydropower runs low in a drought, western states tend to ramp up power generation – and emissions – from fossil fuels. According to a new study from Stanford University, droughts caused about 10 percent of the average annual carbon dioxide emissions from power generation in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington between 2001 and 2015.

“Water is used in electricity generation, both directly for hydropower and indirectly for cooling in thermoelectric power plants,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, the Kara J. Foundation professor in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth) and senior author of the study. “We find that in a number of western states where hydropower plays a key role in the clean energy portfolio, droughts cause an increase in emissions as natural gas or coal-fired power plants are brought online to pick up the slack when water for hydropower comes up short.

The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, shows emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides – air pollutants that can irritate lungs and contribute to acid rain and smog – also increased in some states as a result of droughts. Some of the largest increases in sulfur dioxide took place in Colorado, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The largest increases in nitrogen oxides occurred in California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Challenges to going carbon-free

In total, the researchers found drought-induced shifts in energy sources led to an additional 100 million tons of carbon dioxide across 11 western states between 2001 and 2015. That’s like adding 1.4 million vehicles per year to the region’s roadways. The power sector in California, which has a mandate to go carbon-free by 2045, contributed around 51 million tons to the total. Washington, where the legislature is expected in January 2019 to consider a proposal to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2045, contributed nearly 22 million tons.

“For California, Oregon and Washington, which generate a lot of hydropower, the drought-induced increases in carbon dioxide emissions represent substantial fractions of their Clean Power Plan targets,” said postdoctoral researcher Julio Herrera-Estrada, lead author of the study. Enacted in 2015, the Clean Power Plan established nationwide limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The policy has been rolled back under the Trump administration, but according to Herrera-Estrada, it remains a valuable benchmark for targets that states or the federal government may eventually set for the electricity sector.

Western states in recent years have suffered the kind of intense droughts that scientists expect to become more common in many regions around the world as global warming continues. The new research suggests that failure to prepare for the emissions impact of these droughts could make achieving climate and air quality goals more difficult.

“To have reliable and clean electricity, you have to make sure you have an energy portfolio that’s diverse, such that low-emissions electricity sources are able to kick in during a drought when hydropower cannot fully operate,” Herrera-Estrada said.

Assessing the West

The western United States offers an ideal testing ground for understanding relationships between droughts and emissions from the power sector. In addition to plentiful data from recent droughts, the researchers could examine how emissions change with different types of backup power plants because states across the region have a wide variety of energy mixes.

Colorado, for example, tends to ramp up coal-fired power plants when hydropower dwindles, while California and Idaho increase generation from natural gas. Oregon, Washington and Wyoming tend to increase both. Wyoming and Montana increase coal generation in part so that they can export the electricity to surrounding states that are also experiencing declines due to drought.

“For decades, people have been looking at the impacts of droughts on food security and agriculture,” Herrera-Estrada said. “We’re less aware of exactly how droughts impact the energy sector and pollutant emissions in a quantitative and systematic way.”

Previous efforts to understand how drought affects electricity have mostly relied on models of power plants, which require researchers to make assumptions about factors such as the plants’ efficiencies and decisions about how water resources are allocated. For the current paper, the scientists analyzed statistics reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

According to Herrera-Estrada, the new study can help validate existing models, which can then be used to gain a more complete picture of the risks associated with droughts and to inform efforts to tamp down drought-induced emissions.

Far beyond the American West, droughts may drive similar emission increases in places that normally rely heavily on hydropower and turn to natural gas, coal or petroleum when waterways run low.

“Other parts of the world depend on hydropower even more than the western U.S.,” said Diffenbaugh, who is also Kimmelman Family senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Our results suggest that hydro-dependent regions may need to consider not only primary generation but also backup generation in order to meet emissions reduction targets, such as those in the UN Paris Agreement.”

Pollutants From Wildfires Affect Crop And Vegetation Growth Hundreds Of Kilometers From Impact Zone

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Pollutants from wild fires affect crop and vegetation growth hundreds of kilometres from impact zone, research shows

The startling extent to which violent wild fires, similar to those that ravaged large swathes of California recently, affect forests and crops way beyond the boundaries of the blaze has been revealed.

A pioneering new study by Professor Nadine Unger of the University of Exeter and Professor Xu Yue of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing, has revealed that pollutants released by the devastating wild fires can affect crop and vegetation growth hundreds of kilometres from the fire impact zone.

The study examined how ozone and aerosols – two by-product pollutants of wildfires – influences healthy plant growth in areas that are seemingly unaffected by the destructive natural disasters.

It found that there was a significant reduction in plant productivity in areas far away from the fire’s borders. The study suggests that fire pollution could pose an increasing threat to regional, and even global, productivity in the warming future world.

The study is published in Nature Communications.

Professor Unger, from the University of Exeter’s Mathematics department said: “The impacts of these wildfires on public health has been widely recognized, but the impact they also have on our ecosystems is less known.

“What we have found is that the pollutants released by these fires impact plants in areas way beyond the boundaries of the disaster. Globally, over the past decade, fire ozone pollution reduced plant productivity substantially more than estimated drought losses.”

The impact of fire on the Earth’s carbon budget has been well documented. Each year, global fires directly emit large amounts of carbon directly into the atmosphere. This immediate carbon loss is partially compensated by a boost in new ecosystem productivity, driven by changes to canopy composition and soil respiration.

For the study, scientists used state-of-the-art computer models, together with a vast array of existing measurement datasets, to assess the separate and combined effects of fire pollutants from 2002-11.

It found that the Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) – essentially plant photosynthesis – was significantly reduced when the amount of surface ozone increases.

Crucially, this reduction in GPP was not confined to the areas immediately in and surrounding the fires. It found that areas downwind from the fires, hundreds of kilometres away, experienced significantly reduced plant productivity.

Crops and vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa were identified as a particularly vulnerable hot spots to fire ozone pollution damage.

The study suggests that the ecological impacts of this air pollution is far greater than previously thought – potentially impacting crop production that is crucial to the survival of rural, remote communities.

Professor Unger added: “To the extent that we are worried about fire particulate pollution affecting human respiratory health, we need to be concerned about fire ozone pollution damaging forest and agricultural productivity downwind. We are now using the UK Met Office Hadley Centre Earth System Model to predict how increasing fire activity, air pollution, and drought affect the ability of the land surface to grow food and to take up carbon dioxide in the future warmer world.”

Laser Diode Combats Counterfeit Olive Oil

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Researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and the Scintillon Institute in the USA have designed a sensor that can detect counterfeit olive oil labelled as extra virgin or protected designation of origin.

The tool, a report on which has been published in Talanta, can distinguish between apparently similar oils that present notable differences in quality. This is possible thanks to the use of laser diodes, because the fluorescence emitted by adulterated oils is slightly different to that of pure extra virgin olive oils.

The tool is inexpensive both to use and to manufacture (with a 3D printer). “Other clear advantages of our tool include the possibility of conducting on-site analyses, because the equipment is the size of a briefcase and therefore portable, and of generating results in real time”, explained José S. Torrecilla, a senior lecturer and researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials at the UCM.

The tool offers the olive oil sector a means to tackle a problem that generates large economic losses. “The quality of olive oil is recognised nationally and internationally. It is therefore necessary to protect this quality and combat the fraudulent activities carried out with increasing frequency and skill in the sector”, the UCM researcher continued.

One example of fraudulent practice, noted Torrecilla, is adulterating fresh, pure virgin olive oil with inferior, cheaper olive oil or oils of another botanical origin.

Analysis using chaotic algorithms

To conduct the study, researchers mixed single-varietal, protected designation of origin oils with other protected designation of origin oils that were past their “best before” date. All the oils were purchased from shopping centre stores.

Subsequently, mixtures were made using oils with between 1 and 17% acidity that were also past their “best before” date. Lastly, measurements were performed using the sensor, which was manufactured with a 3D printer, and an analysis was conducted of the results obtained by means of chaotic algorithms.

“This technique is available for use at any time, and only requires oils prior to packaging for quality control or after packaging to detect fraudulent brands and/or producers”, concluded the UCM researcher.

Robert Reich: 10 Steps To Save American Democracy – OpEd

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Trump isn’t the only problem. As Big Money floods our political system, and some in power are intent on making it harder for certain people to vote, we need a movement to save our democracy. 

Here are 10 steps:

Number 1: Make voter registration automatic for all eligible voters, using information they’ve already provided the Department of Motor Vehicles or another government agency. This has already been implemented in several states, including Oregon, and it works.  In 2014, over 1 in 5 Americans were eligible to vote but did not register. Automatic registration would automatically change this.

Number 2: Pass a new Voting Rights Act, setting uniform national voting standards and preventing states from engaging in any form of voter suppression, such as voter ID laws, the purging of voter rolls, and inaccessible and inadequate polling places.

Number 3: Implement public financing of elections, in which public funds match small donations – thereby eliminating the advantage of big money.

Number 4: Require public disclosure of the sources of all political donations. Much of that is now secret, so no one is held accountable.

Number 5: End the revolving door between serving in government and lobbying. Too often, members of Congress, their staffs, cabinet members and top White House personnel take lucrative lobbying jobs after leaving government. In turn, lobbyists take important positions in government. This revolving door must stop. It creates conflicts between the public interest and private greed.

Number 6: Ban members of Congress from owning specific shares of stock while they’re in office. Require that they hold their investments in index funds, so they won’t favor particular companies while carrying out their public duties.

Number 7: Require that all candidates running for Congress and the presidency release their tax returns so the American people know of any potential financial conflicts of interests before they’re elected.

Number 8: Eliminate gerrymandered districts by creating independent redistricting commissions. Some states – Arizona, California, Michigan, and Colorado, for example – have established non-partisan commissions to ensure that congressional maps are drawn fairly, without racial or partisan bias. Other states should follow their lead.

Number 9: Make the Electoral College irrelevant. The presidency should be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes. Period. States should agree to award all their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote by joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

10 and finally: Fight for a Supreme Court that will reverse its Citizens United decision, which interpreted the First Amendment to prevent Congress or state governments from limiting political spending.

Follow these 10 steps and begin to make our democracy work again.

Ralph Nader: Letter To President Donald Trump

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Dear President Trump:

After repeatedly telling the autoworkers in Ohio and Michigan not to sell their homes because the jobs are coming back—“believe me, believe me,” you declared, GM is making a fool of you and you are pouting and doing nothing.  Last month, GM, now a profitable company, announced that it will “idling” five plants—four in the U.S., one in Canada, putting over 15,000 workers out of work. GM is also opening another auto plant in Mexico— to further mock your declarations. GM says it is doing this because its sales are shifting ever more to SUVs, crossover vehicles and light trucks, and away from small cars and large four door sedans.

GM’s decision comes after a $10 BILLION stock buyback designed to increase the metrics and other forms of compensation for GM executives. As with all buybacks, they create no jobs, no new productive facilities, no better wages, salaries, or firmly based pension plans, no R&D, nor anything that could be called a productive investment.

Your notorious tax law favoring the wealthy and corporations was justified on the basis of releasing more capital for productive investments and job formation. GM benefitted from this tax cut, as a company, to the level of at least $150 million, not counting the large sums retained by highly paid GM executives starting with CEO Mary Barra.

In the light of all this background, what is Donald J. Trump, the “big boy” in the White House, going to about GM and its aggressive rebuke?

First, you can demand that the tax cut you pushed for GM be used to extend the severance pay for the laid off GM workers. Second, you can demand that the workers be given the equivalent of the GM shares, purchased via the buyback, that would provide, under similar circumstances, further assistance or a trust fund for each of the laid off workers to sustain them and their families in their lonely and difficult quest for employment commensurate with their skills and  pay.

Second, you can remind GM and the American people how in 1980-1981, GM demanded the city of Detroit use a “quick take” eminent domain statute to take over and demolish the Poletown neighborhood. This community included 465 acres where 1500 homes, 117 businesses, 12 churches, and a hospital were located in a peaceful, multi-racial community. GM further  demanded and received over $350 million in local, state, and federal subsidies. In return, GM promised to build a Cadillac factory employing 6,000 workers. The promise of 6,000 jobs was never kept. GM promptly maximized its automation—experiencing recurrent, expensive troubles— and settled on a workforce of about 3,000 laborers. Did GM have to return a proportional amount of its subsidies? No, not a dollar was returned to the taxpayers.

Years later, starting with George W. Bush’s administration and culminating in Barack Obama’s administration, GM received $50 billion in bailout money, allegedly repaid $39 billion and retained $11 billion for itself. The federal government, owning over 60% of GM stock in return for the billions in bailout monies, sold the stock at a loss.

This is some of the background of taxpayer largesse, seizure of shareholder’ money, without their approval, for selfish stock buybacks that did not increase shareholder value. What did bump the price of GM stock recently was the company’s announcement of these plant closures and layoffs of workers—a perverse reaction indeed.

You have more than enough arguments now to use your bully pulpit and diminish your image as a paper tiger when your early boastful promises to workers are mocked by the corporate bosses who take your tax cuts and laugh all their way to the bank. Something more than a tweet, please.

I’m sending this letter to selected members of Congress and the auto industry press and look forward to your considered response.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

PO Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036
info@csrl.org

* GM’s demands for tax breaks and subsidies and its destruction of a vibrant community was recounted in a 1981 CBS network documentary, “What’s Good for General Motors,” and in a 1989 book titled, Poletown: Community Betrayed, by Jeanie Wylie (University of Illinois Press).

Navigating The Chrome Age: Jobs, Growth And Public Policy – Analysis

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The ability to transform disruption into opportunity will be central in determining who will benefit and who will lose.

By Terri Chapman

Rapid technological innovation is fueling enthusiasm and pessimism simultaneously, even as the realities of its impact on jobs and growth are uncertain. How soon and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation will be adopted will vary significantly between and within countries. The experience of emerging economies in the face of technological transformations and adoption may be vastly different from that of advanced economies.

The ability to transform disruption into opportunity will be central in determining who will benefit and who will lose from these changes. During a discussion on Navigating the Chrome Age: Jobs, Growth and Public Policy, panelists brought to light a number of areas where unconventional opportunities may lie.


How soon and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation will be adopted will vary significantly between and within countries.


Jayant Sinha, India’s Minister of Civil Aviation, outlined the extent of the employment challenge in the country. He argued that providing gainful employment and meeting the expectations of India’s vast youth population will be a core challenge in the face of automation. Of India’s workforce of approximately 500 million people, just 21 million are in the formal, private sector and 23 million in the public sector. The  challenge facing India is to find ways of providing gainful employment for the rest of the population, of which a majority are under the age of 35.

The presence of a large informal sector, a challenge in many developing economies, has acquired a new dimension in the context of technological transformation. Informalisation, a fundamental problem for many development economists, has been cast in a new light in the contemporary context of technological transformation. The informal economy in India accounts for 91 percent of employment, and firms are dominated by micro-enterprises. The small size of firms and informal ecosystem in India may create an opportunity as the digital economy becomes more prominent, allowing India to avoid deep structural transitions that will be required by more formal economies. It is not only in emerging and developing nations where informality is relevant, there has also been a rise in non-standard employment in advanced countries in recent years.


The informal economy in India accounts for 91 percent of employment, and firms are dominated by micro-enterprises. The small size of firms and informal ecosystem in India may create an opportunity as the digital economy becomes more prominent, allowing India to avoid deep structural transitions that will be required by more formal economies.


Two important conclusions can be drawn from this. The transformation processes experienced by countries will vary significantly. The opportunities that must be leveraged to take advantage of the inclusive potential of disruption are unconventional, requiring leaders and policy makers to challenge prevailing notions and policy frameworks.

As mentioned by Jayant Sinha, the vast movement of agricultural workers in India into other sectors, primarily the service sector, is challenging the prevailing farm to factory model. Mr. Sinha argued that countries such as India need to embrace a farm to franchise model if they are to fully benefit from their demographic dividends. New employment models building on services, new digital platforms, and the gig economy present significant employment generating opportunities. In India these opportunities are critical in the face of stagnating employment in the manufacturing sector.

Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20, argued that new employment models and relations, including a rise in informalisation, need to be met with new social security frameworks that link social benefits directly to people rather than to jobs. She pointed to three key imperatives for managing vast technological transformations — skills, new policy frameworks and global standards.


New employment models building on services, new digital platforms, and the gig economy present significant employment generating opportunities. In India these opportunities are critical.


While skills and education have been central to discussions on the future of work and technological change, new approaches to skills development are needed. The traditional short-term, job-specific, vocational training model that has been widely embraced, may not be suitable for the changing world of work. Gabriela Ramos suggests that an increasing focus must be on developing ‘soft’ skills over ‘hard’ skills and basic education. However, the means through which appropriate skills and education frameworks can be developed are likely to vary significantly between and within countries. India’s ailing education system and massive young population create unique challenges for upskilling and reskilling.

Yao Zhang, Founder and CEO of RoboTerra, suggested that despite the challenges presented by new technologies, including the unpredictability of innovation, technological change has typically been positive. She further pointed to an unconventional opportunity presented by ‘brain drain,’ a phenomenon that has traditionally been viewed as a major challenge for countries such as India.

While technological change and its impact on the workforce is a long-standing discussion, the pace at which these changes are happening today is unprecedented. This means that new models and approaches are needed to manage these transitions and turn disruptions into opportunity. Conventional approaches to job creation, skill development, and social protection must be reimagined and recast to meet new demands.

We Can End The US War On Syria – OpEd

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The US war against Syria was one that people almost stopped. President Obama was unable to get Congress to authorize the war in 2013, but the Pentagon and foreign policy establishment, who have long wanted to control Syria, pushed forward with war anyway.

It has been a disaster. The war has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries as well six million people displaced within the country and five million people who have fled the country.

The people were right, and the military was wrong. The war on Syria never should have happened and now must end.

President Trump announced withdrawal from Syria this week. This creates an opportunity to end the war on Syria. We have work to do to make peace a reality.

The People Almost Prevented the US War in Syria

In 2013, amidst highly-doubted, unproven allegations of a chemical attack by Syrian President Assad (debunked a year later), the threat of war escalated, and so did opposition to the war. Protests against an attack on Syria took place around the world. In the US, people were in the streets and speaking out at town halls. Obama was forced to bring the issue to Congress for authorization.

Congress was barraged with a Peace Insurrection encamped outside its doors, sit-ins in Congressional offices, and a massive number of phone calls with 499 to 1 opposing the war. Obama could not get the votes to support the war. Harry Reid surrendered to the public by never holding a vote.

The other superpower, the people, had stopped a war. Obama became the first president to announce a bombing campaign who was forced to back down by the people

But the victory would be temporary, neocons and militarists continued to push for war. Based on new fake terror fears, and false chemical attack allegations, the ‘humanitarian’ destruction of Syria proceeded.

WSWS described how the war escalated under Obama, writing, “The illegal US occupation of Syria, begun under the Obama administration in October 2015 without authorization from either the United Nations or the Syrian government.” There was a shift from CIA support for Al Qaeda-linked militias to war to bring down the Assad government. US troops coordinated a campaign of airstrikes that reduced the city of Raqqa and other Syrian communities to rubble. Amnesty International, after conducting field investigations, reported the US has committed war crimes in Syria. Vijay Prashad described the US creating “hell on Earth” in Syria.

Despite this, the US was losing the war in Syria. With Russia coming to the aid of its ally, Assad was not going to be removed.

Trump escalated and drove the US deeper into the Middle East quagmire betraying the non-interventionist base who elected him. The corporate media praised Trump as ‘becoming president’ for bombing Syria based on another unproven chemical attack. Later, even General Mattis admitted there was no evidence tying Assad to chemical attacks.

Early this year, the Trump administration was announced a permanent presence in one-third of Syria with 30,000 Syrian Kurds as the ground forces, US air support, and eight new US bases. Protests continued against the bombing of Syria throughout the spring in the US and around the world.

Now, as Andre Vltchek describes, the Syrian people have prevailed and most of the country is liberated. People are returning and rebuilding.

Trump Announces Withdrawal

President Trump’s announcement that he is withdrawing from Syria over the next 60 to 100 days has been met with a firestorm of opposition. Trump tweeted on Wednesday, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Russia is drawing down its military activities with Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu reporting Russia was carrying out 100 to 110 flights per day at its peak and now they do no more than two to four flights per week, chiefly for reconnaissance purposes. Putin agreed that ISIS had been defeated and supported Trump’s decision but cast doubt on Washington’s plans, saying, “We don’t see any signs of withdrawing US troops yet, but I concede that it is possible.”

There has been very little support for withdrawal from elected officials. Many Republicans and the corporate media are criticizing Trump. The first two Democrats to step forward to support the removal of troops were Rep. Ted Lieu, a frequent Trump critic who applauded the action, and Rep. Ro Khanna. But, the bi-partisan war Congress opposes Trump.

Secretary of Defense Mattis resigned after Trump’s announcement. In his resignation, he expressed disagreements with Trump over foreign policy. The media is mourning the exit of Mattis, neglecting his history as a likely war criminal who targeted civilians. Ray McGovern reminds us Mattis was famous for quipping, “It’s fun to shoot some people.”

Mattis is the fourth of “My Generals,” as Trump called them, to leave the administration, e.g. Director of Homeland Security and then Chief of Staff, John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. This leaves neocon extremist John Bolton and pro-militarist Mike Pompeo as the biggest influences on Trump’s foreign policy.

Popular Resistance supports the withdrawal of troops from Syria and applauds Trump’s decision.

We are not alone in supporting Trump’s withdrawal announcement. Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK described the withdrawal as “a positive contribution to the peace process,” urging “all foreign powers that have been involved in Syria’s destruction, including the United States, take responsibility for rebuilding this nation and providing assistance to the Syrian people, including the refugees, who have suffered so tragically for over seven years.”

Veterans for Peace supports the withdrawal saying the US has “no legal right to be [there] in the first place” and describing the brutal destruction caused by US bombs. 

Black Alliance for Peace supports the withdrawal writing  the war “should have never been allowed in the first place.” They denounce the corporate press and members of the political duopoly for opposing the withdrawal. BAP also recognizes that the foreign policy establishment will fight this withdrawal and promises to work to end all US involvement in Syria and other nations.

Will the Long History Of US Regime Change In Syria End?

Trump is being fought because the US has a long history of trying to control Syria dating back to the 1940s. Controlling Syria has been a consistent policy objective. CIA documents from 1986 describe how the US could remove the Assad family.

While the bulk of destruction of Syria occurred during the Obama administration, plans for the current war and overthrowing Assad date back to the George W. Bush administration. A State Department cable, “Influencing the SARG In The End Of 2006”, examines strategies to bring about regime change in Syria.

This is not the first time President Trump said the war on Syria would be ending. He did so in March, but in April, Mattis announced expanding the US military in Syria. As Patrick Lawrence writes in Don’t Hold Your Breath on US Troop Withdrawal from Syria, “By September the Pentagon was saying . . .U.S. forces had to stay until Damascus and its political opponents achieved a full settlement.“

In response to Trump’s newest announcement, the Pentagon said it will continue the air war in Syria. They would do so at least for as long as troops were on the ground, adding “As for anything post-US troops on the ground, we will not speculate on future operations.” The Pentagon has not given any details on a withdrawal timeline, citing “force protection and operational security reasons.”

As Trump’s removal of US troops from Syria challenges the foreign policy establishment, which seemed to be planning a long-term presence in Syria, the movement must support Trump to end the war.

The People Must Ensure the End of the War on Syria

The peace movement should do all it can to support Trump’ call for withdrawal because he needs allies. Patrick Lawrence describes the experience thus far during the Trump administration:

“As Trump finishes his second year in office, the pattern is plain: This president can have all the foreign policy ideas he wants, but the Pentagon, State, the intelligence apparatus, and the rest of what some call ‘the deep state’ will either reverse, delay, or never implement any policy not to its liking.”

We saw this scenario play out earlier this month when Trump complained about the Pentagon’s out-of-control budget and pledged to cut it. As Lawrence points out, just days later the president met with Mattis and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee and announced that the three had agreed on a 2020 defense budget of $750 billion, a 5 percent increase.

Trump has made no progress on North Korea since the first meeting and has been prevented from making progress on positive relations with Russia. The foreign policy establishment of the Pentagon, State Department, Intelligence Agencies, weapons makers and Congressional hawks are in control. Trump will need all the help he can get to overcome them and withdraw from Syria.

We should urge Trump to be clear that ALL troops are leaving Syria. This should include not only the troops on the ground but the air force as well as private contractors. The CIA should also stop its secret war on Syria. And the US should leave the military bases it has built in Syria. Similarly, the movement should support Trump’s calls to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The US has done incredible damage to Syria and owes restitution, which is needed to help bring Syria back to normalcy.

Syria and Afghanistan join the list of failed and counterproductive US wars. These are more signs of a failing empire. The people of the United States must rise up to finish the job we started in 2013 — stop the war on Syria, a war that never should have occurred.


Restoring Civilization: We Can’t MAGA Unless We MAMA – OpEd

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They can sense it. They can feel it. Something is seriously wrong in our civilization, and many people know it. This is why despite the relatively good economic times, most Americans polled say our country is on the “wrong track.” Yet many are like a gravely ill man who knows he’s not well but can’t precisely identify his ailment. Most often, Americans have only a vague sense of cultural malaise, or they “self-diagnose” wrongly.

Years ago I had a brief “state of the nation” discussion with a very fine, older country gentleman. While no philosopher, he did offer the following diagnosis. Struggling for words and gesticulating a bit, he said, “There’s…there’s no morality.”

Most believe morality is important both personally and nationally. We generally agree that an immoral man treads a dangerous path; of course, it’s likewise for two immoral men, five, 53 or 1,053 — or a whole nation-full.

Echoing many Founders, George Washington noted that “morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” The famous apocryphal saying goes, “America is great because America is good, and if she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” For sure, we can’t MAGA unless we MAMA — Make America Moral Again.

Yet if immorality is the diagnosis and restoring morality the cure, we must know what this thing called “morality” is. Ah, that’s where agreement can end.

Talk to most people today — especially the people who study people, sociologists and anthropologists — and they’ll “identify morality with social code,” as Sociology Guide puts it. They’ll essentially say what sociologists Durkheim and Sumner do, “that things are good or bad if they are so considered by society or public opinion,” the site continues. “Durkheim stated that we do not disapprove of an action because it is a crime but it is a crime because we disapprove of it.” Yet true or not, would the majority really view an action as a crime, in the all-important moral sense, if they came to believe it was true?

Consider a man I knew who once proclaimed, “Murder isn’t wrong; it’s just that society says it is.” Clearly, “public opinion” isn’t swaying him much.

Yet how do you argue with him? Barring reference to something outside of man (i.e., God) dictating murder’s “immorality,” you’re left with a striking reality:

Society is all there is to say anything.

Then “Man is the measure of all things,” as Greek philosopher Protagoras put it.

Yet acceptance of the “society says” thesis presents a problem: Now you must convince others to equate “public opinion” with credible, binding “morality.” This is mostly fruitless because, frankly, it’s stupid.

Man’s opinion is just that — opinion. If the term “morality” is essentially synonymous, it’s a risible redundancy. If we’re acting as slick marketers, trying to elevate “opinion” via assignment of an impressive-sounding title, it’s false advertising. So if that is all we’re really talking about — “opinion” or “societal considerations” — let’s drop the pretense and just say what we mean:

We sentient organic robots (soulless entities comprising chemicals and water) have preferences for how others should behave (subject to change with or without notice). No, we can’t call these tastes “morality” — but, hey, we can punish the heck out of you for defying our collective will (see North Korea et al.).

To cement the point, consider my patent explanation. Who or what determines what this thing we call morality is?

Only two possibilities exist: Either man or something outside of him does. If the latter, something vastly superior and inerrant (i.e., God), then we really can say morality exists, apart from man. It’s real. Yet what are the man-as-measure implications?

Well, imagine the vast majority of the world loved chocolate but hated vanilla. Would this make vanilla “wrong” or “evil”? It’s just a matter of preference, of whatever flavor works for you.

Okay, but is it any more logical saying murder is “bad” or “wrong” if we only do so because the vast majority of the world prefers we not kill others in a manner the vast majority considers “unjust”? If it’s all just consensus “opinion,” it then occupies the same category as flavors: preference.

This is the matter’s stark reality, boiled down. It’s why serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s darkness-enabling attitude was, as his father related in a 1996 interview (video below; relevant portion at 40:26), “If it [life] all happens naturalistically, what’s the need for a God? Can’t I set my own rules?” It’s why occultist Aleister Crowley, branded “the wickedest man in the world,” succinctly stated, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (Preference Über Alles 101).

[See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgw0x0TxRO8]

This perspective engenders what’s often called “moral relativism,” the notion that “Truth” (absolute by definition) is illusion and what’s called “morality” changes with the time and people. But saying all is preference is actually moral nihilism, the belief that “morality” (properly understood) doesn’t actually exist — because, again, “opinion” isn’t morality.

Of course, few think matters through as thoroughly as a Dahmer or Crowley. (In fact, a possible reason sociopaths may possess above-average intelligence is that they’re smart enough to grasp the “morality” question’s two possibilities — either morality exists as something divinely-authored, something transcendent, or there is no morality — but draw the wrong conclusion.) Yet moral relativism/nihilism has swept Western civilization.

And hell has followed with it.

How relativistic/nihilistic are we? A Barna Group study found that in 2002 already, most Americans did not believe in (absolute) Truth, in morality; in fact, only six percent of teens did. Thus are they most likely to base what once were called “moral decisions” on…wait for it…feelings. Surprise, surprise.

Such prevailing philosophical/moral rot collapses civilization. For anything can be justified. Rape, kill, steal, violate the Constitution as a judge, commit vote fraud? Why not? Who’s to say it’s wrong? Don’t impose values on me, dude.

To analogize it, imagine we fell victim to “dietary relativism/nihilism” and fancied the rules of nutrition nonexistent. With only taste left to govern dietary choices, most would indulge junk food; nutritional disorder would reign and health deteriorate. Moreover, considering one man’s poison another’s pleasure, we might sample those pretty red berries the birds gobble down. Hey, if it tastes good, eat it.

This reflects what’s befalling our “If it feels good, do it” Western civilization. Considering the rules of any system non-existent or irrelevant brings movement toward disorder — and a point where those who can impose their preferences restore order, a tyrannical one.

Having said this, discussing “Truth” and God evokes complaints, as the morally relativistic/nihilistic world view influences even many conservatives, and secularists find faith-oriented talk unsettling.

So let’s focus here on not faith but fact. As to this and the world’s Dahmers, Crowleys and the murder-skeptic man I knew, call them names, but don’t call them illogical. Within their universe of “data”— that “God doesn’t exist” and thus only organic robots can be the measure — they’re right: Murder’s status isn’t “wrong,” just “unpreferred.”

Note that moral principles cannot be proven scientifically any more than God’s existence; you can’t see a moral under a microscope or a principle in a Petri dish. Science only tells us what we can do, not what we should. Finding guidance on “should” necessitates transcending the physical and venturing into the metaphysical. It requires, pure logic informs, taking a leap of faith.

Something else not a matter of faith but fact is man’s psychology: People operate by certain principles. Like it or not, believing as Dahmer did (when young) about God leads to believing as he did about morality. “If man is all there is to make up rules, why can’t I just make up my own?”

As I put it in 2013, “Just as people wouldn’t abide by the ‘laws’ of physics if they didn’t believe they existed (the idea of jumping off a building and flying sounds like fun), and there weren’t obvious and immediate consequences for their violation (splat!), they won’t be likely to abide by morality if they believe its laws don’t exist.”

Of course, this rarely leads to serial killing. But it always — at population level — leads to serial immorality. This is an immutable rule of man.

So how should we combat our time’s moral relativism/nihilism? First, realize that from the Greek philosophers to the early/medieval Christians to the Founding Fathers, Western civilization was not forged by relativists/nihilists. It won’t be maintained by them, either. “If it feels good, do it” yields a healthy society even less than “If it tastes good, eat it” does a healthy body.

Thus, one needn’t have faith to understand that belief in Truth is utilitarian.

As George Washington warned, “[R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Second, know that moral relativism/nihilism’s appeal is that it’s the ultimate get-out-of-sin free card. After all, my sins can’t be sins if there are no such things as sins, only “lifestyle choices.” Yet also know that we can have this seemingly eternal but illusory absolution — or we can have civilization. We can’t have both.

So act as if Truth exists; seek it, speak it, love it, for it will set you free. Realize also that relativism is juvenile pseudo-philosophy. For if everything were relative, what you believed would be relative, too, and thus meaningless. So let’s talk about what’s meaningful.

The alternative? Well, it was expressed nicely by an old New Yorker cartoon. It featured the Devil addressing a large group of arrivals in Hell and saying, reassuringly, “You’ll find there’s no right or wrong here. Just what works for you.”

It’s an alluring idea — and a powerful one. It creates Hell on Earth, too.

Where Can The Anger Go? – OpEd

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Writing from Kabul, Carolyn Coe describes experiences of frustration, outbreaks of rage and efforts to cope.

At a busy four-way intersection in the northwestern part of Kabul, traffic is stuck. There is no traffic signal, and cars are threaded through one another like a woven rug.

A passenger car is in front of our taxi. The driver, with two children in the car, has managed to wedge into position, perpendicularly blocking three rows of cars. On the other side of his car are vehicles headed in the direction he came from, and another line of cars is trying to cross in front of his. The driver with the children cannot move anywhere.

Soon, an angry man approaches on foot, placing his hands on the hood of the family vehicle and shouting at the driver. The man walks from the hood to the driver’s side window and back again, shouting. Now the driver cannot move his car forward without hitting the man. He absorbs the verbal abuse without gesticulating or yelling back.

Twice a traffic police officer walks by, trying to untangle the knot of traffic. The angry man continues to yell in front of the car. Meanwhile, two other drivers step out of their cars and start yelling at the man though they don’t approach closer.

Eventually, the angry man walks away, and the traffic knot loosens. The family car manages to clear the intersection, and our taxi finally turns left.

I reflect afterwards how this flare-up is representative of the underlying tensions in Kabul after decades of war, where any situation or statement may soon explode in anger. A precarious balance exists between the venting of frustration and the descent into physical violence.

On November 15, a violent altercation in the men’s dormitory at Kabul University, the preeminent Afghan university in the city, resulted in one student’s death and several injuries. The inter-ethnic clash soon spilled into the streets. The university promptly closed the men’s dormitory, abruptly obligating its residents to find other accommodation, and moved up the final exam dates so that the university could end the semester early.

Reports of the violence at the university spread by social media, reports that two university students tell me drew from deep-seated ethnic biases instead of being a search for a clear understanding of the facts or for a nonviolent approach to resolving the escalating inter-ethnic tensions.

A half hour before today’s road rage, in Kabul’s Char Rah-e Qarbar neighborhood, I met Ramzia, age 17. Ramzia is a student at the JRS school in a camp for refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs). The living quarters in the camp are crowded. Multiple families might share one simple mud home with their sheep and other livestock. Such tight spaces combined with traumatized residents fuels tensions, and Ramzia told me that she didn’t use to know what to do with her anger. “I would keep the anger in my heart,” she said.

Ramzia’s family fled the violence in Laghman province, violence that prevented her from continuing her studies beyond the fourth grade. In the camp, she was able to resume her studies and just completed a dozen life skills classes. The women’s life skills classes, in partnership with JRS, were led by Elina, one of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APV) who do various volunteer projects in the city. The curriculum included trauma healing, permaculture, nonviolent conflict resolution, storytelling, nonviolent communication, and relational thinking skills.

Ramzia said that the most valuable lesson she learned from Elina was to take slow deep breaths when she became angry. “When I do that,” she said, “I feel calmer and happier.”

Ramzia now has some part-time employment in the camp. From 9 to 11 each morning, Ramzia works in the JRS kindergarten, skipping rope and playing ball with the children. The kindergartners living in the camp will grow up facing the same daily frustrations that Ramzia does, living with no electricity and non-potable water, and trudging along unpaved camp paths that turn to mud each spring.

Naser, an APV who was co-teaching the life skills classes for men in the camp, believes the most important thing they shared with the men was how they might behave differently with their parents and siblings. “The parents behave a bit violently with their children, and the brothers behave violently with their sisters,” Naser said. “If children do something wrong, [the parents] don’t ask why or what happened. They just shout at them, beat them.”

After the first nonviolent communication lesson, Naser and his co-teacher Hakim assigned homework to each student. The students were to talk to their parents and siblings about their feeling as well as their favorite food. Before doing the homework, none of the students knew what his parents’ or siblings’ favorite food was as they were not in the habit of sharing their feelings. Naser said, “The next week, they were happy because they were talking about the future with their families.” The students said they’d buy their family members’ favorite food for special celebrations.

The value in teaching life skills, such as what to do with one’s anger and to share one’s feelings, is in its ripple effect. Through these lessons, Ramzia has a tool to help find a calmer way to respond to a four-year-old child at the kindergarten who is acting out or with a neighbor with whom there’s a disagreement. Others might take a moment to try to understand a situation before acting upon it. The skills can help shift how people engage with one another.

Still, educational opportunities are few. There is no government school in the IDP camp to serve the 700 families, so instead of attending school, children spend their days playing in the dirt paths or working as child laborers outside the camp. For any who may attend school, life skills classes are not a part of the regular curriculum.

Photo: Ramzia, an IDP from Laghman province, works in the JRS kindergarten in “Police” refugee camp while two of her brothers are paid by a shopkeeper to pack potatoes into sacks.

Photo: A boy standing in front of the JRS school in a refugee camp holds a rubber hose like the type used by some teachers to strike children who fail to learn their lessons. Other children hold the raw cauliflower florets they are munching on. The permaculture lessons during the APV-led life skills classes encouraged students to grow vegetables in small containers beside their homes. Greenery beautifies, has a calming effect, and is a small step toward combating air pollution.

*Carolyn Coe traveled to Kabul on behalf of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) While there she was a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (ourjourneytosmile.com)

Russia’s Clout In Asia Pacific, Including South Asia – OpEd

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In their strategic calculus, the Asia Pacific major powers as well as other countries do not consider Russia a major military power for the region. Although these Asia Pacific countries understand Russia’s military clout in Europe and Middle East, they somehow fail to see how overall Russian military might also have an impact in the greater Asia Pacific region, including South Asia.

Accordingly, the growing influence of Russia in the greater region finds less attention on the regional media outlets, the regional discussion platforms and the think tank papers produced across the region. This is a total contrast to Russian involvement in Europe and Middle East, something which receives huge coverage. Despite the low coverage of its engagement in the greater Asia Pacific, Russia’s geopolitical presence is increasing in the region.

Although its military and economic involvements in the greater Asia Pacific reduced significantly after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia has over the last decade improved and enhanced its military might significantly, making its military a potent power in the region.

Russia has been selling weapons and other advanced military technology to the Asia-Pacific countries in order to bring these countries into its geopolitical orbit. Besides its close military relations with both China and India, Russia is increasingly building good relations with many South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand.

Furthermore, Russia is on a spree of building certain infrastructures in several Asia Pacific countries which would make those countries dependent on Russia for the proper functionality of those infrastructures. Take for example the nuclear plant in Bangladesh, a small country located in the intersection of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Russia is setting up a nuclear-powered power plant in Bangladesh, and this infrastructure would certainly make Bangladesh dependent on Russia for the technological aspects of the project. Bangladesh has also been purchasing heavy weapons and military vehicles from Russia.

Recently this year, many regional countries were alarmed by Russia’s large scale war games. The fact that the war games was conducted in the eastern part of Russia – which forms part of the Asia Pacific region, unlike Russia’s western part that forms part of Europe – makes it an alarming development for the Asia Pacific region.

According to an Australian news website, the war games, namely Vostok-2018 or East-2018, involved more than 300,000 troops, 36,000 tanks, 1000 aircraft, helicopters and drones and 80 warships and support vessels.

More alarming was the inclusion of the Chinese military into the war games alongside the Russians. Around 3500 Chinese troops were said to have taken part in the Russian war games. Troops from Mongolia too joined the drills.

Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defense Minister, boasted about the drills saying, “Imagine 36,000 military vehicles moving at the same time: tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles – and all of this, of course, in conditions as close to a combat situation as possible.” 

Condemning the drills, NATO said the war games “demonstrates Russia’s focus on exercising large-scale conflict”.

*Yead Mirza is a blogger, writer and observer of global current affairs. Sharing his insights with the ones who too are interested in global current affairs and international politics seemed to him the best way to  convert his enthusiasm for global current affairs and international politics into something productive. He has written on a number of international publishing websites

Trump’s Peace Plan: Hints But No Details – OpEd

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The world, fed hints but no details, ends 2018 with Trump’s “deal of the century” – his long-awaited Israel-Palestine peace plan – dangling tantalisingly before them.

On Tuesday, 18 December, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, gave her final address to the UN Security Council. She had announced back in October that she would be leaving the post at the end of the year in order, many conjectured, to prepare for a bid for the presidency in 2020. She spoke at the UN’s monthly meeting on the Middle East, dealing at length with the yet-to-be-unveiled Trump peace plan which, she said, she had read. She was privileged indeed, since it has been kept under the tightest of security wraps.

According to Israel’s UN Ambassador, Danny Danon. its long-awaited rollout, once promised before the end of 2018, has been delayed until early 2019.

Although Israel has always wanted peace with its neighbours, said Haley, “it does not want to make peace at any price, and it shouldn’t.” The same, she said, was true for the Palestinians. Her analysis was that “both sides would benefit greatly from a peace agreement, but the Palestinians would benefit more, and the Israelis would risk more.”

This, said Haley was the backdrop against which the Trump administration had crafted its plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Haley said that the peace plan “brings new elements to the discussion, taking advantage of the new world of technology that we live in. It contains much more thoughtful detail.”

The plan, she said, was different from all previous ones, but the critical question was whether the response would be different.

Asserting that there were things in the plan that all parties would like and that all parties would dislike, she said: “Every country or party will therefore have an important choice to make. They can focus on the parts of the plan that they dislike – for irresponsible parties that will be the easy part to do. The other choice is to focus on the parts of the plan that you do like, and encourage negotiations to go forward.”

UN member states, she said, would face the same choice, particularly the Arab states and EU member states. In addressing Arab states she said:

“To my Arab friends… you have said that you know a solution is urgently needed. But your governments have not been willing to talk to your constituencies about what is realistic, nor to the Palestinian leadership about the harm they are doing to their very own people. By taking the easy way, you are really saying that the Palestinian people are not a priority for you, because if they were you would all be in a room helping bring both sides to the table.”

Haley said that the US would continue to offer its hand to the Palestinian people “who we have financially supported by far more than any country has done.”

She maintained that the new deal is based on rejecting the “unspecific and unimaginative guidelines” that have marked all previous peace processes. Unlike them, the Trump plan is based on reality – or in her words, because it “recognizes [that] the realities on the ground in the Middle East have changed… in very powerful and important ways.”

The European response encapsulated a mule-headed refusal even to consider any “out of the box” thinking. The little that Haley revealed of the in-depth analysis and reconsideration that has obviously gone into the long-awaited plan was clearly too much for minds wedded to the failed nostrums of the past. The eight European members of the Security Council – France, Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Italy – issued a joint statement warning the US administration that any peace plan disregarding “internationally agreed parameters… would risk being condemned to failure.”

The European statement continued, “The EU is truly convinced that the achievement of the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of both States – that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation and resolves all final status issues in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2234 and previous agreements – is the only viable and realistic way to end the conflict and to achieve a just and lasting peace.”

They then reiterated that the EU “will continue to work towards that end with both parties and its regional and international partners.” In short, any attempt to break out of the logjam that has persisted for half a century or longer, any attempt to inject new thinking into an age-old problem, will be resisted. Is universal rejection indeed to be the fate of “the deal of the century”?

Indian Demonetization As A Geopolitical Conundrum: Demonetize The Indo-Nepal Relations? – Analysis

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It would not be an exaggeration in saying that the Indian demonetization has become a geopolitical conundrum. The crescendo of cordiality seems missing in the Indo-Nepal relations, if the cursory look may be given over the dynamics of recently happening of events in quick succession. The demonetization 2016 had created a lot of chaos and confusion in Nepal along with the positive and negative vibes.

Although, the Indian currency is not a legal tender in Nepal for the financial transactions, but the same is widely circulated and accepted in Nepal in general and Terai region, in particular, i.e., one-fifth of the state’s total monetary transactions.

Due to demonetization, about INR 950 crore was entrapped in Nepal. Out of frustration due to non- exchange of the demonetized Indian currency, Nepal has banned and declared illegal the Indian currency notes Rs. 200, Rs. 500 and Rs. 2000. The demonetization and banning by India and Nepal respectively have the connotation of geopolitical dynamics.

Indian Demonetization: Devil for Nepal

The Government of India (GOI) had announced the demonetization on 8 November 2016. The GOI had claimed the main objectives of the demonetization were to curb the black money; corruption; drug trafficking; human trafficking; circulation of counterfeit currency; integration of the formal and informal economies; the expansion and increasing of tax base and taxpayers; digitalize the economy; check the free flow of funds to the terrorists and radical groups etc. Although it was started with good objectives,it had left drastic impacts. Due to the scarcity of cash, the people had faced difficulties in depositing or exchanging the demonetized banknotes. It had also left indelible imprints on the various facets of the Indian economy including the small-scale industries. Some scholars and industrialists opined that the demonetization has helped in curbing the black money and accelerated the e-commerce. But on the other hand, the same also faced severe criticism on part of many scholars like Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu, Prabhat Patnaik and Pronab Sen (Former Chief Statistician of India).

Due to the wider acceptability and circulation of Indian currency, Nepal has also been impacted very seriously by the Indian demonetization. India is the largest trading partner and the largest foreign direct investor in Nepal.

The Indian companies are the major investors and holding about 40% of the total FDI in Nepal. The tourism industry has an important place in the Nepalese economy given its contribution of 6-7% to GDP. Million Indian tourists used to visit Nepal every year and about 1.36 million had visited Nepal in 2017. Remittance is the backbone of the Nepalese economy (28.4 % of the GDP in 2017), and the same from India has been contributing significantly. A considerable number of Nepalese have been working in the Indian Army and paramilitary forces. Additionally, there are about 90,000 pensioners, and a considerable number of widows to be taken care of by India. Also, substantial numbers of Nepalese have been residing and working in India. In this background, the Indian currency is an important binding factor for both countries.

Suddenly declared demonetization, had put the Nepalese economy into turmoil, given the wider acceptability and circulation of Indian currency. Remittances coming from India got a serious setback. The people of Terai region used to use more Indian currency than other Nepalese for day to day needs, trade and another kind of transactions in India.

As per the report of The Himalayan (Feb 19, 2017), about 95 % of transactions along the Indo-Nepal border, used to take place in the Indian currency. Reuter has quoted the BMI Research that India’s demonetization had dragged down the growth rate of the Nepalese economy by seriously getting affected the trade, remittances and tourist numbers etc.

The Nepalese $21 bn economy has already been under stress due to earthquake (2015). Now, the Nepalese economy has faced a double whammy. BMI has forecasted that India’s demonetization could bring down Nepal’s growth down to 2.2 percent for this fiscal year to July 2017, from an earlier estimate of 2.5 percent.

Demonetizing the Bilateral Relations

The Indian currency has been remained an important place in Nepal’s economy, as the considerable number of people and workers are residing and working in the former. A number of people have been working in the Indian army, paramilitary forces etc. It means that demonetization one way or the other way had impacted the various facets of Nepalese people. Thus, there was a lot of pressure on the Nepalese government to take care of the money entrapped in the NRB and with the common Nepalese people.

Nepal economy is of the only size of US$ 21 bn and the trapped money is considered as a big amount for Nepal economy. It had become a serious political issue. During the last two years, the issue of demonetization and exchange of Indian currency entrapped in Nepal has been lingering on.

Bhattrai (April 10, 2018) has argued in one of his commentaries that Indian demonetization has become one of the serious bilateral irritants between India and Nepal. Nepali leaders and officials time and again urged the Indian government and officials of RBI to make arrangements for the exchange of Indian demonetized bank notes held by the Nepalese people.

In a meeting (March 2017) with the Nepal Rashtra Bank, the RBI had verbally agreed to allow every Nepal citizens to exchange up to the ceiling of INR 4,500. In this respect, NRB Deputy Governor (Chinta Mani Shivakoti) has expressed dissatisfaction and said, “But nothing has been communicated to us formally so far.” Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s visit to Nepal (March 2017), had assured the NRB and leadership of the country that very shortly RBI would make arrangements to sort out this problem.

During the state visit of Nepalese PM KP Oli, the issue did not find any place in the bilateral talks. Although, before his visit to India, PM Oli assured the Nepalese Parliament that the issue would be taken up with India counterpart, but it did not figure in the joint statement.

It was furthered cleared by Indian Foreign Secretary Vijaya Gokhale (8 April 2018) that, “This issue was not raised at any of the meetings.” During the reciprocal visit of PM Modi to Nepal, again the same issue was raised.

PM Oli said, “I requested Modi Ji to facilitate the exchange of demonetized currency notes held in the Nepali banking system and by the general public, at the earliest.” After waiting for a long period of two years, ultimately, the Nepalese government have not only banned the denomination like of Rs. 2,000, Rs. 500 and Rs. 200, rather directed its people not to keep or carry notes except Rs. 100.

The issue of exchange of currency, demonetized bilateral relations have become serious question for the policymakers and commentators. For eliciting answers of this question, a cursory look required to watch out the recent dynamics happened in the quick succession.

Being landlocked, Nepal is dependent on India but now wanted to be free from the same. It can be substantiated by some arguments like, Nepal’s strong support to Chinese OBOR initiative, China One Policy, diplomatic assurance like not to allow Tibetan to use its soil for anti-China activities, expanding strategic cooperation (Sagarmatha Friendship- Joint Military Exercise) and withdrawal from BIMSTEC Joint Military Exercise held in India etc.

Parashar (11 September 2018) argued that Nepal was not pleased with the Indian move to heighten the security and defence cooperation within the BIMSTEC, rather raised a question on the Indian stance over the BIMSTEC. The 19th SAARC has emerged as another irritant between both the countries.

While being interviewed PM KP Oli during his visit to India (April 2018) by the Time of India during , he said, “Everyone also knows that the SAARC Summit that was supposed to be held in Pakistan in 2016 has been postponed. Nepal, as the current Chair of SAARC, desires to see that we are able to revive the process. However, we are fully aware that this cannot happen unless every SAARC member desires so unanimously.”

The visit of Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal (The Ruling Communist Party of Nepal) to India and meeting with high ranking officials and fretting of India over the delaying in appointing ambassador since October 2017, have become post-demonetization bilateral irritants. The happening of these events in quick succession had resulted in mistrusts and distrusts between both the countries. The lingering impacts of the Indian demonization 2016 have further created a wide rift between both the countries. This argument is substantiated by the recent banning of high-value Indian currency notes by Nepal in December 2018.

Lingering of Exchange of Currency: Geopolitical Conundrum

During the last two years, the issue of exchange of currency has been lingering on. India’s slow and snail speed reciprocation had compelled the Nepalese Foreign Minister Prakash Mahat to state that “even before [the demonetization crisis], there were a lot of things which were not delivered […] but there was a special episode which put to test both sides [sic].”

As per the DNA report (15 December 2018), the decision of banning the Indian currency by the Nepalese Cabinet had taken place as the consequence of Indian government’s dilly-dallying over the request to exchange the old defunct currency notes worth Rs 950 crores. Nepal has also requested to increase the ceiling of Rs 4,500 per person to Rs 25,000 per person. Even this request is still pending. The fallout of the same has been experienced by the Nepalese economy, bilateral trade, the people working in India and moreover, tourism has been impacted seriously.

Resultantly, the Indo-bilateral relations passing through the thick and thins. During the last, one year, Nepalese mission in Indian is without an ambassadorial appointment, however, the same was made in December 2018. The tension between Indo-Nepal relations can be understood by the statement given the newly appointed Nepalese Ambassador Nilambar Acharya to India, who said, “although there is an open border between Nepal and India, the hearts of the two countries are yet to be opened. There is a need to create an environment of confidence as some kind of suspicion still persists in bilateral relations.”

Some media reports indicated that out of frustration caused by demonetization, pushed Nepal to China for economic and security cooperation. Leudi (January 29, 2017) has argued that India’s failure to address the concerns and apprehensions out of demonetization, had pushed Nepal to China for economic and security purposes. The economic uncertainties and upheavals given the demonetization had resulted in an erosion of confidence in the Indian currency on both sides of the border. If the crunch of currency persists in Nepal, it would be an opportunity for China to shift it away from India to use Chinese currency yuan in place of the Indian currency. If it happens, what would be the implications, needs serious rumination on part of Indian policymakers. How to keep the confidence not only of the Nepalese businessmen, traders, merchants, tourists, migrants, Nepalese workers in India rather the Nepalese citizens who keep their savings in cash in Indian currency at home, has become a serious question for the Indian government?

Although, the demonetization was done with good intentions, but the results have remained other way around. The economies, people and the bilateral relations have been put under strains. The ban imposed by Nepal seems that the neighbouring country has been losing faith in the Indian currency. Moreover, it has shoved Nepal to China. If the situation not improved and the reciprocation on part of Indian government remained in dilly-dallying mode, it is anticipated that the Chinese currency can replace the Indian currency in Nepal, which further cement the Sino-Nepal relations. Reviving confidence in Indian currency and solution of the exchange of currency may be taken care of by India in order to maintain cordial and friendly relations.

*Dr. Jaspal Kaur (AP), has been teaching Sociology in  the Regional Campus Jallundhar, Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab (India)  and Dr. Bawa Singh (AP), has been teaching in the Department of South and Central Asian Studies, School of Global Relation, Central University of Punjab (India)

The Misuses Of History: The Christmas 1914 Truce – OpEd

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All memorialised events, when passing into mythology, must be seen critically. In some cases, there should be more than a hint of suspicion. The Christmas Truce of 1914 remains one sentimentalised occasion, remembered less to scold the mad mechanised forces of death led by regressive castes than to reflect upon common humanity.

Common humanity, left to be butchered before the next grand stratagem, is the first casualty of the war room and, in many cases, parliaments. These are places where commemoration ceremonies are drafted and encouraged; they are also the places where the common soldier is left for ruin.

The Christmas Truce of the First World War arose out of a blood-bathed irony: the troops from both sides, Allies and German, were not meant to be slaughtering each other at that point. They should have been home to celebrate their respective victories or lick respective wounds. The diplomats and politicians could then celebrate what was meant to be a puerile skirmish waged in conditions more reminiscent of an old cavalry charge than mud-soaked death.

Pope Benedict XV, after his election on September 3, 1914, kept busy attempting to halt a war he deemed “the suicide of civilized Europe.” In December, he attempted, in vain, to persuade the belligerents to halt the murderous party, asking “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” This would be a prelude to discussions towards an honourable peace.

The sequence written about and recalled every year with the monotonous reflection of a prayer goes something like this: Stille nacht, heilige nacht comes from the German side of the trenches at the Ypres Salient. (The Hun proved troublingly festive and did not seem up for the killing.) The British, initially wary, show interest. Shots are not fired. The First Noel comes in reply. “Then,” remembered a British soldier, “we started up O Come All Ye Faithful and the Germans immediately joined in singing the same thing to the Latin words of Adeste Fideles.”

The gestures were repeated along the Western Front in pockets of small “truces”. British, German and French soldiers, in open defiance of orders, went to No Man’s Land in a spiritual reclamation of sorts under the pretext of burying the dead. An economy of gifting came to the fore: tobacco and chocolate; beer and pudding; sausage and Christmas trees; badges and buttons. The Allies were astonished by the goods they could receive in the exchange: the German armies were, at that point, better supplied.

Then came the football matches, though the legend here is inflated. Socks wrapping a tin of bully beef, for instance, were substitutes for soccer balls. The scores at these matches remain a subject of conjecture, as do the matches themselves.

Peter Stanley of the University of New South Wales, when asked about the record in 2014, suggested that such matches would have taken place behind the respective lines of the soldiers, if, in fact, they took place at all. The papers of the day ran “pictures of the truces, with lots of photos of men smoking but no photos of soccer matches. So what does that tell you?”

But Stanley’s insistence does not withstand the accounts of some subalterns, who describe scenes, not of 10-a-side but “a question of 70 Germans against 50 Englishmen” involving a ball with an adventurous fate. In January 1, 1915, The Times received a letter from an anonymous major that an English regiment “had a football match with the Saxons, who beat them 3-2.” (At least, mused historian Gerard DeGroot, “it did not end in penalties.”)

The legacy of the truce is somewhat estranged. While it might well have been the last gasp of civility in modern warfare – if you fall for that notion that civility was ever a part of the killing business – the truce has become a matter of commercialisation and celluloid. There are films such as the 2005 French film Joyeux Noel. Then come the commodities.

Supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s have found the prospect of making money out of the memory irresistible. A 2014 ad, specifically, was reviled and yet admired by The Guardian for its “startling array of emotional depth within a few short minutes” marked by “breathtaking” cinematography. Slaughter might be futile, fought in the name of obscene abstractions, but making money is as clear enough a mission as any.

The truce compelled Arthur Conan Doyle to deem it “one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war.” But it remains an episode celebrated with lessons to be ignored. The classroom of history troubles the demagogues and political practitioners, as it did those war planners in 1914 alarmed by the loss of faith in killing shown by the truce makers. Political figures and generals could not; soldiers could.

In many instances, the participating units in question were relieved by fresh men untainted by the temptation of mutual respect. As the war wore on in all its barbarity, such truces became infrequent. The enemy had to be hated. Common humanity, so goes that most salient lesson of all, remains a common mineral to be exploited and manipulated rather than revered.

Trump’s Midterm Electoral Defeat And Syria Withdrawal – OpEd

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Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was reportedly made during a telephonic conversation with the Turkish President Erdogan on December 14, before President Trump made the momentous announcement in a Tweet on Wednesday, December 19. The decision was so sudden that even the Turkish president was caught off-guard, according to a December 22 Associated Press report [1] by Matthew Lee and Susannah George.

Clearly, an understanding has been reached between Washington and Ankara. According to the terms of the agreement, the Erdogan administration released the US pastor Andrew Brunson on October 12, which had been a longstanding demand of the Trump administration, and has also decided not to make public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which could have implicated another American-ally the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the assassination.

And in return, the Trump administration has given a free hand to Ankara to mount an offensive in the Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, though for the time being the Turkish president has delayed the offensive against the Kurds until the nitty-gritty of the deal is settled in a planned Trump-Erdogan meeting in Washington in January.

The reason why the Trump administration is bending over backwards to appease Ankara is that President Erdogan has been drifting away from Washington’s orbit into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO, has been cooperating with Moscow in Syria against Washington’s interests since last year and has placed an order for the Russian-made S-400 missile system, though that deal, too, has been thrown into jeopardy after Washington’s recent announcement of selling $3.5 billion worth of Patriot missile systems to Ankara.

Regarding the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, more than anything it was the timing of the assassination and the political mileage that could be gained from Khashoggi’s murder in the domestic politics of the United States that prompted the mainstream media to take advantage of the opportunity and mount a smear campaign against the Trump administration by publicizing the assassination.

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered on October 2, when the US midterm elections were only a few weeks away. Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in particular have known to have forged close business relations with the Saudi royal family. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Donald Trump chose Saudi Arabia and Israel for his maiden official overseas visit in May last year.

Thus, the corporate media’s campaign to seek justice for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was actually a smear campaign against Donald Trump and his conservative political base, which is now obvious after the US midterm election results have been tallied. Even though the Republicans have retained their 51-seat majority in the Senate, the Democrats now control the House of Representatives by gaining 39 additional seats.

Clearly, two factors were mainly responsible for the surprising defeat of the Republicans in the US midterm elections. Firstly, the Khashoggi murder and the smear campaign unleashed by the neoliberal media, which Donald Trump often pejoratively mentions as “Fake News” on Twitter, against the Trump administration.

Secondly, and more importantly, the parcel bombs sent to the residences of George Soros, a dozen other Democratic Congressmen and The New York Times New York office by Cesar Sayoc on the eve of the elections. Although the suspect turned out to be a Trump supporter, he was likely instigated by shady hands in the US deep state, which is wary of the anti-establishment rhetoric and pro-Russia tendencies of the so-called “alt-right” administration.

Moreover, on November 29 President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a planned G20 meeting in Buenos Aires with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although the ostensible reason for cancelling the meeting cited in Trump’s tweet was a recent naval standoff in which the Russian forces had seized three Ukrainian ships, the real reason was a report published in The Guardian two days before the event on November 27.

In the article titled “Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy” [2], the author of the report Luke Harding alleged that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort had held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2013, 2015 and in March 2016, and several months later, WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails allegedly stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Although the report was dubiously sourced and its author lacks credibility, Paul Manafort had already accepted a plea deal. If he goes a step further and accepts the charges leveled against him by The Guardian – which is quite likely since Special Counsel Robert Mueller is already applying immense pressure on Manafort by alleging that he has violated the terms of his plea deal by lying – this scandal has the potential of stirring up a political storm which might eventually culminate in initiation of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump for colluding with a foreign government to steal the 2016 US presidential elections.

This is the reason why President Trump was apparently advised by his close aides to keep maximum distance from the Russian President Putin until the dust settles down on the Manafort-Assange affair.

Notwithstanding, it would be pertinent to note here that regarding the Syria policy, there is a schism between the White House and the American deep state led by the Pentagon. After Donald Trump’s inauguration as the US president, he had delegated operational-level decisions in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon.

The Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster represented the institutional logic of the deep state in the Trump administration and were instrumental in advising Donald Trump to escalate the conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria.

They had advised President Trump to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan from 8,400 to 14,000. And in Syria, they were in favor of the Pentagon’s policy of training and arming 30,000 Kurdish border guards to patrol Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Both the decisions spectacularly backfired on the Trump administration. The decision to train and arm 30,000 Kurdish border guards infuriated the Erdogan administration to the extent that Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in northern Syria on January 20.

Remember that it was the second military operation by the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian militant proxies against the Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria. The first Operation Euphrates Shield in Jarabulus and Azaz lasted from August 2016 to March 2017.

Nevertheless, after capturing Afrin on March 18, the Turkish armed forces and their Free Syria Army proxies have now set their sights further east on Manbij, where the US Special Forces are closely cooperating with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in line with the long-held Turkish military doctrine of denying the Kurds any Syrian territory west of River Euphrates.

Thus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that President Trump replaced H.R. McMaster with John Bolton in April; and in a predictable development on Thursday, James Mattis offered his resignation over President Trump’s announcement of withdrawal of American troops from Syria, though he would continue as the Secretary of Defense until the end of February till a suitable replacement is found.

It bears mentioning that unlike dyed-in-the-wool globalists and “liberal interventionist” hawks, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who cannot look past beyond the tunnel vision of political establishments, it appears that the pacifist isolationist Donald Trump not only follows news from conservative mainstream outlets, like the Fox News, but he has also been familiar with alternative news perspectives, such as Breitbart’s, no matter how racist and xenophobic.

Thus, Donald Trump is fully aware that the conflict in Syria is a proxy war initiated by the Western political establishments and their regional Middle Eastern allies against the Syrian government. He is also mindful of the fact that militants were funded, trained and armed in the training camps located in Turkey’s border regions to the north of Syria and in Jordan’s border regions to the south of Syria.

Quoting the retired US Brigadier General Anthony Tata on Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted: “General Anthony Tata, author, ‘Dark Winter.’ ‘I think the President is making the exact right move in Syria. All the geniuses who are protesting the withdrawal of troops from Syria are the same geniuses who cooked the books on ISIS intelligence and gave rise to ISIS.'”

Under the previous Obama administration, the evident policy in Syria was “regime change.” The Trump administration, however, looks at the crisis in Syria from an entirely different perspective because Donald Trump regards Islamic jihadists as a much graver threat to the security of the United States than Barack Obama.

In order to allay the concerns of Washington’s traditional allies in the Middle East, Israel in particular, the Trump administration has conducted a few cruise missile strikes in Syria, but those isolated strikes were nothing more than a show of force to bring home the point that the newly elected President Donald Trump is an assertive and powerful president, but behind the scenes President Trump has been willing to cooperate with the Syrian government and its backer Russia in order to defeat the Islamic jihadists who were portrayed as “moderate rebels” by the mainstream media.

Finally, up until now Donald Trump was playing softball with the Pentagon and the foreign policy bureaucracy, but after the humiliating defeat in the US midterm elections and clear hand of the deep state and corporate media in it, Trump has apparently decided to play hardball. This is the reason why he has announced the withdrawal of 2000 American troops from Syria, and the decision to scale back American presence in Afghanistan by 7000 troops is reportedly also in the offing.


Africa Missing From The Kremlin Press Conference – OpEd

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Since the establishment of the President’s Q&A press conference dubbed “The Direct Line” by the Kremlin administration, African media have been missing out. The simple reason is that the Russian Foreign Ministry has not granted accreditation to African media that could directly present Russia’s domestic and foreign policies to the African public from the Russian Federation.

In March this year, the Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department, Artyom Kozhin, reassured in his media briefing that the Russian Federation would prioritise media, art and culture among several other programmes in efforts aimed at consolidating cooperation with African countries.

While the Foreign Ministry has accredited media from the United States, Europe and Asian countries, none comes from Africa that comprises 54 states and most especially now when Russia is making efforts strengthening its relations with the continent.

According to Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, a record number of 1,702 journalists were accredited to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press conference held Thursday, December 20.

Dmitry Peskov has noted the openness of the press conference of President Vladimir Putin when he said “Of course, there is no differentiation, and they cannot be. We are guided by the law on media that guarantees same access to the authorities, to all events for all accredited media. We do not impose any restrictions, and the president does not single out any particular countries.”

The fact that the Kremlin “considers it possible to create such comfortable conditions for work even for those media that cannot be described as objective” represents a reason for pride, the Kremlin spokesman noted, adding “Overall, 99.9% of journalists who requested accreditation, got it.”

“We traditionally ask our Foreign Ministry to assist in providing an easier access to entry visas for those foreign journalists who do not work here on a permanent basis,” Peskov explained. Among accredited journalists are representatives of Asia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Europe, the range is very wide, and there is, of course, great interest.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual year-end news conference for both Russian and foreign journalists to sum up each year’s results and plans in the subsequent years. This year was Putin’s first Q&A marathon during his new six-year presidential term and the 16th since 2001. Putin has answered the questions of the country’s citizens 11 times as the president and four times as the prime minister.

The shortest of these news conferences lasted for 1 hour and 35 minutes back in 2001, while the 2013 news conference set the record as being the longest one, lasting for 4 hours and 48 minutes. The very first Q&A session with the Russian president was held on December 24, 2001.

Trump’s New Africa Strategy To Counter China – Analysis

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By Tridivesh Singh Maini*

On December 13, 2018 US National Security Advisor, John Bolton while speaking at the Heritage Foundation highlighted the key aims and objectives of ‘Prosper Africa’ which shall probably be announced at a later date. The emphasis of this policy according to Bolton, would be on countering China’s exploitative economics unleashed by the Belt and Road Initiative, which leads to accumulation of massive debts, and has been dubbed as ‘Debt Trap Diplomacy’. A report published by the Centre for Global Development (CGD) (2018) examined this phenomenon while looking at instances from Asia as well as Africa.

During the course of his speech, Bolton launched a scathing attack on China for its approach towards Africa. Said the US NSA:  “bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands”.

Bolton apart from attacking China, accused Russia of trying to buy votes at the United Nations, through the sale of arms and energy.

Bolton also alluded to the need for US financial assistance for Africa, being more efficient, so as to ensure effective utilization of the US tax payers money.

The BUILD

It would be pertinent to point out, that the Trump administration while realizing increasing Chinese influence in Africa set up the US IDFC (International Development Finance Corporation) which will facilitate US financing for infrastructural projects in emerging market economies (with an emphasis on Africa) . IDFC has been allocated a substantial budget — 60 Billion USD. In October 2018, Trump had signed the BUILD (Better Utilization of Investments leading to Development) because he along with many members of the administration, felt that the OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) was not working effectively, and had failed to further US economic and strategic interests . Here it would be pertinent to mention, that a number of  US policy makers, as well as members of the strategic community had been arguing for a fresh US policy towards Africa.

Two key features of IDFC which distinguish it from OPIC are; Firstly deals and loans can be provided in the local currency so as to defend investors from currency exchange risk. Second, investments in infrastructure projects in emerging markets can be made in debt and equity.

There is absolutely no doubt, that some African countries have very high debts. Members of the Trump administration including Former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson had also raised the red flag with regard to the pitfalls of China’s unsustainable economic policies and the ‘Debt Trap’.

According to Jubilee Debt Campaign, the total debt of Africa is well over 400 Billion USD. Nearly 20 percent of external debt is owed to China. Three countries which face a serious threat of debt distress are Zambia, Republic of Congo and Djibouti. The CGD report had also flagged the precarious economic situation of certain African countries such as Djibouti and Ethiopia.

US policy makers need to keep in mind a few points:

Firstly, Beijing has also made efforts to send out a message that BRI is not exploitative in nature, and that China was willing to address the concerns of African countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping while delivering his key note address at the China-Africa Summit in September 2018, laid emphasis on the need for projects being beneficial for both sides, and expressed his country’s openness to course correction where necessary. While committing 60 Billion USD assistance for Africa, the Chinese President laid emphasis on the need for a ‘win-win’ for both sides.

African countries themselves have not taken kindly to US references to debt caused as a result of China. While Bolton stated, that Zambia’s debt is to the tune of 6 Billion USD an aide to the Zambian President contradicted the US NSA, stating that Zambia’s debt was a little over 3 Billion USD.

At the China Zhejiang-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Symposium held in November 2018, Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Aklilu Hailemichae made the point, that Chinese investments in Ethiopia have helped in creating jobs and that the relationship between China and Ethiopia has been based on ‘mutual respect’.   The Minister also expressed the view that Ethiopia would also benefit from the Belt and Road Initiative.

During the course of the  Forum of China-Africa cooperation in September 2018, South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa had also disagreed with the assertion, that China was indulging in predatory economics and this was leading to a ‘New Colonialism ’ as had been argued Malaysian PM, Mahathir Mohammad during his visit to China in August 2018.

Washington DC needs to understand the fact, that Beijing will always have an advantage given the fact, that there are no strings attached to it’s financial assistance. To over come this, it needs to have a cohesive strategy, and play to it’s strengths . Significantly, US was ahead of China in terms of FDI in Africa in 2017 (US was invested in 130 projects as of 2017, while China was invested in 54 projects). Apart from this, Africa has also benefitted from the AGOA program (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) which grants 40 African countries duty free access to over 6000 products.

Yet, under Trump, US adopts a transactionalist approach even towards serious foreign policy issues(the latest example being the decision to withdraw US troops from Syria) and there is no continuity and consistency

 US can explore joint partnership with allies

In such a situation, it would be tough to counter China, unless it joins hands with Japan, which has also managed to make impressive inroads into Africa, in terms of investments, and has also been providing financial assistance, though it is more cautious than China and has been closely watching the region’s increasing debts. Japan and India  are already seeking to work jointly for promoting growth and connectivity in Africa through the Africa-Asia Growth Corridor. US is working with Japan and India for promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific, and can work with both countries for bolstering the ‘Prosper Africa’ project.

Perhaps, Trump should pay heed to Defence Secretary Jim Mattis’ (who will be quitting in February 2019) advice where he has spoken about the relevance of US alliances for promoting its own strategic interests.

There are off course those who argue, that US should find common ground with China for the development of Africa, and not adopt a ‘zero-sum’ approach. In the past both sides have sought to work jointly.

Conclusion

African countries will ultimately see their own interests, mere criticism of China’s economic policies, and the BRI project, and indirectly questioning the judgment of African countries, does not make for strategic thinking on the part of the US. The key is to provide a feasible alternative to China, along with other US allies, or to find common ground with Beijing. Expecting nuance and a long term vision from the Trump Administration however is a tall order.

*About the author: Tridivesh Singh Maini is a New Delhi based Policy Analyst associated with The Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

The Debacle At GCC Summit – OpEd

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Since its inception in 1981, Gulf Cooperation Council has been an umbrella for the countries in the gulf region to foster socio-economic, cultural and security cooperation. Moreover, the fact cannot be denied that the tiny Petro-monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula have always been under severe threat from the resurgent state and non-state actors. For instance, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1990s has further intensified the need of retrospective security measures in the region. And, it is often been said that without the existence of GCC, the tiny Petro-monarchies would have no status in the Middle East.

Every year, the Gulf countries gather for the GCC summit to discuss geopolitical and security affairs in the region. This year, the summit was held in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Oct 10, which is the leading member of GCC. The summit was eye grabbing and at once controversial because beside special invitation from the Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman, the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Hammad bin Khalifa al Thani boycotted the Summit. The boycott occurred amidst of the ongoing sea, land and air blockade on Qatar imposed in June 2017, by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, and non-GCC member Egypt. The blockade was justified with severe allegation on Qatar of sponsoring terrorism, and fake news through its global media network, Al Jazeera.

The ruler of Qatar has denied the allegation calling it false flag to breach the Qatar’s sovereignty. With this resentment and pretention, the emir of Qatar refrained from the recent summit, instead a delegation led by Sultan bin Saad al Murikhi, the foreign minister of Qatar was sent to attend the summit.

Though, it does not come as surprise to aggressive GCC bloc, which severed diplomatic ties with Qatar but for Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, it might have alluded a red signal that Qatar is no more a pawn in the gulf chessboard. On the contrary, the foreign ministers of other GCC countries lambasted the emir of Qatar for not accepting the invitation especially the foreign minister of Bahrain, who tweeted with utter regret, he said: “It would have been preferred for the emir of Qatar to accept the earnest invitation and the summit”.

Likewise, with the same parallel voice, all foreign ministers of GCC members called on Qatar to change its policy in order to forge the negotiation to lift the blockade by accepting demands. In contrast, the same kind of blockade was imposed on Qatar in 2014 by the same countries but was resolved at the summit that year but this time it seems that there is a complete fall-out among the GCC members.

Furthermore, the burning topics of the recent summit were security issues, Oil politics, Yamen war, Iranian activities, and indeed the blockade on Qatar. However, the absence of the ruler of Qatar has sabotaged the morale of other GCC member because this time Qatar has delivered a clear message in the off the cuff remarks that it is not going to compromise on its sovereignty. As soon as the blockade was imposed, the other regional hegemons, Turkey and Iran came to rescue Qatar even President Erdogan threatened to land its army if the GCC countries attempted to invade the country.

Consequently, on the onset of this debacle Qatar has also announced in defiance that it is going to leave the OPEC cartel, by January 2019. Qatar was the first country that joined OPEC in the 1960s and now it is the first country to leave. According to Qatar’s energy minister Saad al Kaabi, his country will quit the oil cartel by Jan 2019 to focus on the gas production.

Moreover, Qatar is the leading exporter of liquified natural gas encompassing second largest gas reserves after Russia.

Although, the sudden departure of Qatar from OPEC will not upshot its production because Qatar generates less than 2% in the Cartel’s output, but it will upshot the geopolitics of the Middle East for the years to come.

By forging new alliance with Turkey and Iran, which have always been antagonist to the Saudi-led camp, Qatar will become a biggest threat for the other Petro-monarchies. Recently, the murder episode of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Saudi consulate in Turkey has further deteriorated the diplomatic relationship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Because, President Erdogan blamed Saudi crown prince for the murder and with this excuse Turkey outraged the Saudi position in the region.

Thus, with these rapid political developments in the region, the recent GCC summit resulted in complete failure—except oil politics and Yamen war, there was no serious discussion about the solution of major disputes in the gulf region that clearly shows the dying position of GCC because the eagle has grown too much old in the desert.

*Shahzada Rahim is a postgraduate student with keen interest of writing on history, geopolitics, Current affairs, and International political economy.

Fears From An Afghan Woman Remembering Childhood – OpEd

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I was just five-years-old when Taliban took control over Kabul. Since I was very young, I only remember glimpses of the first years. However, the killing of former president Najibullah the same year, on Sep 28. 1996, the demolishing of the two Buddha statues in Bamiyan in the spring of 2001, and the 9/11 attacks are vivid and clear as if they happened yesterday.

The killing of Dr. Najibullah (ruled from 1987-1992) was one of the first cruel acts Taliban did as they announced their new administration in Afghanistan. He was beaten senseless, shot, dragged through the street and hanged at a traffic pole along with his brother. Thousands of people witnessed the barbaric act. Taliban placed cigarettes in his hands to make him appear as a drug addict. This was the earliest cruel act, and Taliban had not started their strict rules yet. We still had access to TV, and could watch the images. My mom was really sad. First, I concluded from my mom’s reaction that he was our relative, but later on I found out that he was previous president of Afghanistan. Although all my family tried to stop me from watching the scene shown on TV, I managed to see him. His blue clothes were turned red from spilt blood as he was hanging there.

It was my first experience on a long journey of fear.Taliban did serious damages to the country and the Afghan society during their rule (1996-2001), but perhaps the most serious and disturbing changes were sanctions towards women.

Burqa and breakdown of self- esteem

My mother used to work at the Kabul University science center. She was soon asked to stay at home and wear a burqa whenever she left the house. Although female civil servants and teachers received wages for a short period of time after the ban, my father soon had to start working more and harder as the sole breadwinner of the family.

Wearing the burqa was a difficult task. It is hard to see through those tiny holes. The first year, many women came home with bruises, including my aunt who broke her ribs after falling down in a water drainage. My mother needed to wear glasses, and to combine those with wearing the burqa was a daily challenge. However, the most difficult issue for her, was that her identity was reduced to nothing more than a walking ghost, looking like covered by a sack. Women had no freedom of movement outside the house, as they could only venture out if they had a male escort, a mahram.

If women were found outside without mahram they were beaten. Often, my sister and her friends managed to run from the control patrols of Taliban called Amr-i-blmaruff (who were to prevent sin and promote virtue), but they were not always all lucky. In the first summer of Taliban control, they were chased by Taliban. They split and my sister had taken shelter in a random home. Later that day I saw the red marks of flogging on my mother’s cousin’s back. She had been punished for the ‘crime’ of not having mahram and not wearing thick socks. She was crying, cursing Taliban, and her mother was dressing the wounds. Women were banned from riding a motorcycle or bicycle, even if they had a mahram. I never learned cycling, although it was one of my deep wishes.

Women were also banned from going to general hospitals, after Taliban took control. Only one hospital in Kabul offered a women ward. Male doctors were forbidden to touch the bodies of female patients. One brave woman, Dr. Souhaila Seddique, was the head of that hospital. She and her sister are said to be the only women in Kabul who did not wear a burqa during the Taliban reign.

There was a ban on women wearing high-heeled shoes. No man should hear a woman’s footsteps, in case they would excite him. Women were banned from speak loudly in public, as no stranger should hear a woman’s voice. All ground and first-floor residential windows were painted over or screened to prevent women from being visible from the street. Photographing or filming of women was banned, as was displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops or at home. Later, any kind of pictures was forbidden even in the homes. Any names of places that included the word “woman” were changed. For example, “women’s garden” was renamed “spring garden”. A ban was introduced on women’s presence on radio or at public gatherings of any kind. Women were simply not present, rather they were prisoners behind the dark walls of their homes.

Education- the impossible dream

Taliban abandoned women from studying. Girls older than eight years were not allowed to study. My elder sister was about to join 10th grade and I was about to start school when Taliban ruled Kabul in 1997. I remember my sister crying day and night, since her dream of becoming a doctor now seemed to be impossible. For a short period, the whole family broke down, but soon my mother sent my sister to Mazar-e-Sharif, in Balkh province, which did not come under Taliban rule until 1998. For my education different options were discussed including dressing me as boy. Since I did not like shorter hair than the bob cut, I denied to wear boys’ clothes and feature as the main character of the movie Osama (Bacha posh).

A second option, since I was just seven years old, was to study at a madrasa. I was sent to such a religious school. At six o’clock in the morning, we had to be present there. We would study till eight in the morning and then leave and come back for the science lessons at one o’clock in the afternoon. On the first day, I was told that my clothes were not proper: I was not allowed to wear jeans, and my scarf should be longer. In morning we mostly studied religious books and in the afternoon, some science was taught, but by the same teacher. For the purpose of having a proper school curriculum, which would include all kind of subjects as literature, sciences, arts.

I soon started going to a secret home school. We use to put our books in a Quran sheet, and I acted as if I was going to the madrasa, but still the risk of being caught by the Taliban was always there. In period of five years I changed home school more than ten times. Through this journey, I had teachers who had no instructional education and who would insult and beat students. This also happened at the madrasa. Still I was happy to obtain some kind of education, and for a young child like me the whole situation was too complicated to analyze back then.

Taliban occupied Mazar-e-Sharif, and my sister’s dream of education again risked being forgotten forever. Most families in Afghanistan married their daughters off at an early age, as there were few alternatives for them. My mother started working for Care international. She use to build secret home schools and spent her salary to send my sister to Pakistan for further education.

The mindset that changed

After the first two years of Taliban rule, the mindset of the society had changed. Now the new dominant values were those which Taliban believed in. Going to home schools and getting out of home were not only seen as crimes by Taliban, but by many citizens as well. There was a clear difference between the values of my family and those of many in the society outside. Of course, I believed my parents were right, as any other child would. To defend their points of view, I turned a bit aggressive, as a tomboy always on guard to defend myself, even in front of Taliban. I must have been around seven years old, I was playing in front of our home, when a ‘Talib’ threatened me to go home or he would beat me with a cable he held in his hand. I turned back and answered: do you think you can beat me because you have a cable? Get the hell out of here, or I will bring our video player cable and beat you till death.

Later that night, my father was informed by neighbors that I was taking about the fact that we had a TV and a video player at home. He was angry and told me it could have been a big problem for the family. Thus, I learned as a seven year old how to hide secrets in order to survive.

The light of hope

After Taliban were driven out of Kabul, I started my education in a more proper way, and my sister came back to Afghanistan. My mom started working again. Breaking the burqa tradition and starting to learn at a foreign language learning center took some time. After all, Taliban had damaged the mindset of a whole generation of Afghans. Women started their struggle for liberation, a frustrating still ongoing fight where your enemy is most of the time inside your own family. Your elder or younger brother might have joined a madrasa and become a follower of Talibanization.

Afghanistan is not the same today as it was 16 years ago. More women do understand their rights; many are educated and highly ambitious. Although women are only at the beginning of a long struggle for their rights, they are determined and progressing. It is a fight to be won by changing the societal mindsets about women. This needs time and is a slow and inclusive process.

The peace talks and concerns

The United States have sent Zalmay Khalilzad as a Special envoy to ‘invent’ a solution to end the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan in less than 12 months. The Trump administration seems determined of ending the costly war to add to the list of his presidential achievements and to take credit for this in the upcoming 2020 election campaign.

Representatives of Taliban joined meet the US officials recently and talked around peace issues in Afghanistan. Taliban have before as well asked for withdrawal of foreign forces and to suspend the constitution of Afghanistan. A variety of views and assumptions are identified, particularly distinguishing between the young generation and the traditional elites in Afghanistan about an unclear future, not least including women rights. The dissuasion inside the Afghan government as well seems to be not inclusive and women are absent in most of the decision-making consultation. In a recent twitter post Shahrazad Akbar founder of Open society foundation and women right activist wrote “Men. Men. And more men. Well, at least both meetings have one thing in common: Excluding women when it comes to discussions about the future of this country. Not very different from Taliban on this aspect.”

Women in Afghanistan are far from certain as to how much history will repeat itself with this such a peace agreement. If it happens, will the peace bring a fundamentalist Islamist generation with it to blend into the modern new Afghan educated young progressive society? If yes, what are the efficient methods, strategies for social integration of an extremist group to a new and progressive modern Afghanistan?

*Hasina Shirzad is a journalist from Afghanistan

The Influence Of US-China Struggle On Philippines Domestic Politics – Analysis

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There is an intensifying and increasingly shrill debate as to whether or not the U.S. and China are on the brink of a new kind of Cold War.  Those who argue the negative say that one major difference between their rivalry and that of the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War is that the US-China struggle has not manifested itself in proxy wars. https://www.aei.org/publication/is-this-the-beginning-of-a-new-cold-war/    

Others say ‘perhaps not yet’, but that it is sowing the seeds of proxy conflicts between and within some states. They point out that China and the U.S. are increasingly vying for influence in several countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, in contexts that could eventually lead to violent domestic conflict. The Philippines is a good example.

 Philippines domestic politics are increasingly racked and rent by a polarizing debate over its policy toward China, particularly regarding its claims in the South China Sea. 

The Philippines, under the administration of then President Benigno Aquino –with U.S. political and legal support–brought the question of the legality of China’s jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea before an international arbitration panel. In July 2016, the panel ruled overwhelmingly in the Philippines’ favor.   

But then newly elected Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte abruptly pivoted Philippine foreign policy away from the U.S. and towards China. One aspect of this pivot was that he did not try to take immediate advantage of the panel’s ruling and instead forged a positive relationship with China gaining China’s political cooperation and possibilities of economic largesse. 

But this policy shift outraged international and domestic legal idealists as well as Philippine Americanophiles, sparking bitter opposition. This has resulted in a major domestic political struggle between factions favoring preferential relations with one or the other country.

Filipino-American ties run deep and wide.   The Philippines is a US ally by virtue of a 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and harbors US military troops and assets.  But Philippine pride and patriotism still permeate the Philippines political psyche.  There is lingering resentment among some elite regarding US treatment of its people and their culture during its nearly 50 years of colonial rule.  They are wary of neocolonial attitudes and approaches by the U.S. 

China has made remarkable political inroads since Duterte’s election.  It has responded to Duterte’s ‘friendliness’  by stepping up its trade, aid and foreign investment, particularly for Duterte’s favored infrastructure projects. 

Although the U.S. and Duterte’s  opposition warn of a China debt trap that could undermine Philippines’ sovereignty and independence, China’s foreign investment is still small compared to that from Japan and the U.S. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-25/china-s-24-billion-promise-to-duterte-still-hasn-t-materialized

China also gained an advantage with Duterte when the U.S.  criticized Duterte’s extra judicial war on drugs enraging the government. China tacitly supported the effort. The historic visit of China President Xi Jinping in November and an agreement to try and agree on joint development in areas claimed by both are, in China Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s view like “a rainbow after the rain” regarding China-Philippine relations. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/world/asia/xi-jinping-rodrigo-duterte-philippines-china.html

China’s successes have stimulated a renewed effort by the U.S. and its Philippine sympathizers to preserve what is left of the US soft power advantage there.  There is a convergence—coincidental or not—between Philippines opponents of the democratically elected Duterte and some nationalistic US analysts.

Indeed, in America there is growing concern that Duterte’s volte-face marked a tipping point in the decline of US soft power influence on Asia.  Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has concluded that Duterte’s renovated foreign policy “is a potential disaster” [because] “China could either neutralize this vital American ally, or even potentially turn the Philippines into a PLA Navy base _ _.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-philippines-comment-f3cf30b6-97ad-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3-20161021-story.html

Patrick Cronin and Richard Javad Heydarian published a piece in The National Interest entitled Presidents Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte Have Obscured the True Significance of the U.S.-Philippines Bilateral Alliance.”

Their views are typical of US conservatives and reflect in part a neocolonial perspective on the history of U.S.-Philippines relations and in part a refusal to recognize reality. They extol the Philippines rating as “the most pro-American nation on earth” seemingly confirming that they approve of and want to maintain the Philippines subservient position in the relationship. 

But Duterte and his supporters defy this perspective. Recently he reportedly said ‘ the Philippines is tied to a mutual defense treaty with the United States, which [is the main concern that ] keeps it from telling the Western superpower to stay away’. https://businessmirror.com.ph/duterte-to-push-for-coc-in-the-south-china-sea-at-all-costs/ He also said that”_ _ the threat of confrontation and trouble in the waterway came from outside the region” meaning primarily the U.S.  https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2173174/south-china-sea-asean-beijing-continue-work-towards-code

Another example is Heydarian’s latest take on the China-Philippines relationship https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Philippines-China-after-the-rainbow-more-rain which is consistent with his and others’ earlier opinion pieces, particularly those published by staff and affiliates of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/this-is-how-america-and-the-philippines-can-upgrade-their-alliance ; https://ippreview.com/index.php/Blog/single/id/644.html

Heydarian seems to think that Xi Jinping’s visit to the Philippines—and indeed, Duterte’s policy of rapprochement with China– have been a failure. He postulates that “fear of political backlash in the Philippines where large numbers are opposed to any resource-sharing agreement with China” contributed to the failure to reach a concrete agreement to move ahead with joint development.  He also highlights the Philippines military’s skepticism of China’s intentions and its resistance to “Duterte’s efforts to dilute military ties with the U.S.”  But this is only one side of the story. Another faction of the politically aware think the democratically elected President in pursuing a more neutral foreign policy has made the right choice for the country and its long suffering poor.

In sum, the Philippines political elite is sharply divided on Duterte’s foreign policy vis a vis China and the U.S. This has provided opportunity for both to become involved in Philippine domestic politics—directly or indirectly –supporting different factions. This dichotomy could lead to violent internal conflict.  Moreover, the Philippines may be only one of many countries in Southeast Asia and eventually elsewhere like Africa where domestic politics become influenced and then inflamed by the US-China struggle.

This piece first appeared in the South China Morning Pos

*Mark J. Valencia, Adjunct Senior Scholar, National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China

t https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2178767/could-philippines-fall-victim-us-china-proxy

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